voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
No bio...
User ID: 3622
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2d ago
I put this in my edit, but your comment stood out to me:
I appreciate the responses, there was actually quite a bit of variety which was nice to read. I came away with a steelman (which I didn't have originally) which is that the theatrics of ICE is meant to intimidate illegal immigrants.
What are your thoughts on the selective pressure this will have for illegal immigrants? My first thoughts were that it would select for:
- immigrants who are reckless and fearless (or motivated by lots of money, e.g. coyotes) - basically, criminals
- immigrants who face such extreme danger in their home country that even Twitter videos of brown people being tackled by men in masks doesn't slow them down - these desperate people would probably be considered "authentic" refugees by most leftists, and not just "economic migrants"
Probably a general success, then, because "economic migrant" is probably the lowest position on even the left's list of "immigrants who should move to the front of the line".
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2d ago
Forcefully and publicly initiating the detention of illegal aliens for their removal is not a novel tactic: raids on businesses (but no accountability for the business owners) has always been an ICE tactic. That new-new is everything that's actually being complained about: masks, no badges, no warrants presented, no cooperation with the judiciary (yet), no oversight by congress (yet), no transparency with the public beyond "Rah Rah go-get-em" and "Enemies of America"-rhetoric by Noem and Leavitt.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2d ago
I think you should read some of the co-commenter responses to get a better idea about what most people thought of when I mentioned "ICE" and "blackbagging" in the year of our Lord 2025, June. I don't think I was being particularly vague.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2d ago
I can tell by the lack of responses that this comment didn't really resonate with anyone else either.
Is this just "Nothing ever happens, stop overreacting" in more words?
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2d ago
I appreciate the response. I had figured that your perspective existed among the perspectives on this forum (I've seen ~ "illegal immigration is the most existential threat the US faces" expressed).
General poll of opinions here, since I don't see much conversation about it - either because of news bubbles or general disinterest in discussing the ugly side of authoritarianism.
Main query: Are the blackbagging tactics of ICE a necessary evil, a dangerous overstep, or some nuanced in-between?
Genuinely, I don't have a steelman for blackbagging tactics. Right now, ICE is targeting a certain type of "undesirable", namely, allegedly undocumented illegal immigrants, and appear to have carte blanche to apprehend anyone who disrupts that process. But the hallmark of authoritarianism is to expand the definition of "undesirable" to include your political opponents - and if blackbagging undesirables is already palatable, then you can blackbag your political opponents. It's a matter of convenience that political enemies are already attempting to disrupt the blackbagging of undocumented illegal immigrants - it makes that leap that much easier were it to happen. How convenient as well that there's now an entire organizational apparatus gaining valuable experience in how to make people disappear on US soil? They may look like mall cops who are dressed for the paintball arena for now, but if they happened to get any of that DoD money...
Blackbagging by ICE seems to be an extrajudicial process by design, as a flex of the unitary executive theory that the judiciary exists only to serve the will of the executive. The judiciary is viewed as uncooperative and painted as obstructive, despite being intentionally hamstrung by the right wing of congress that has refused for several presidential terms to pass any immigration reform despite bipartisan efforts. One doesn't have to look very hard at all to find red tribe voices foaming at the mouth to declare enemies of the state: official mouthpieces of the current administration, senators, congresspeople. History rhymes, and I know enough of the current admin has read Carl Schmitt to recognize the paths that are available to them at this point if they happen to be hungry for power.
Ending query: Assuming (for the sake of this question) that the end goal of this administration is to establish a type of authoritarianism where people are kidnapped and disappeared because of vocal opposition to the regime, what should be the response by the opposition that would want to prevent that? History buffs, what are the best examples of countries barely recovering from the brink of authoritarianism?
Edit: I appreciate the responses, there was actually quite a bit of variety which was nice to read. I came away with a steelman (which I didn't have originally) which is that the theatrics of ICE is meant to intimidate illegal immigrants. In effect, it would seem like that would select for immigrants who are reckless and fearless (yikes), or immigrants who face such extreme danger in their home country that even Twitter videos of brown people being tackled by men in masks doesn't slow them down (these desperate people would probably be considered "authentic" refugees by most leftists, and not just "economic migrants").
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
21d ago
There's also a pretty big difference between an 18-year-old spending 6 figures to go to a state school whose uncle happens to be well-connected to the party in a rural province, and a 26-year-old grad student with a fuzzy past going into [insert military relevant field] at [insert top tier school for that field].
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
1mo ago
Nope, just trying to move the goalposts so we're at least on the same playing field.
Unfortunately you edited your comment though and now I've completely lost the context of our discussion. Maybe I'll wait next time for the second version of your argument.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
1mo ago
AI-hallucinated quotes seem likely to be exactly as easy as falsifiable as human-fabricated quotes, and easily-falsifiable propaganda seems to be an example of something masquerading as journalism. These just seem like describing different aspects of the same thing.
I'm clumsily trying to capture the sentiment that AI-hallucinated quotes and human-fabricated quotes have different motivations that can be attacked in order to discourage them, the former basically being increasing revenue without increasing costs, and the latter being the age-old "lie to someone to manipulate them". I don't think either are particularly moral, and it's a cultural battle to be waged against both. I don't think we'll ever convince fellow humans to stop lying to manipulate people, but I can at least imagine a world where we universally condemn media companies who publish AI slop. We've done it with companies who try to sell cigarettes to children, for at least one example of "universal condemnation".
Mea culpa, I shouldn't have said "worse", but "more easily discouraged".
Obviously not, or you wouldn't be making an appeal to elitism as opposed to popular consumption, i.e. the numerically broader basis where 'we all' consensus derives.
I make the appeal to elitism because I don't think popular consumption has shown any evidence of being capable of fighting against manufactured consent. Unless you think otherwise? Personally: I'm making the appeal because I want to live in a world where publishing AI slop is universally seen as low quality as the content in the 90s conspiracy magazines at the grocery store checkout (National Enquirer), and evidence of a media institution using AI slop should create scandals large enough to cause executives to resign. Personally: AI-hallucinated quotes are worse than fabricated quotes, because the former masquerades as journalism whereas the latter is just easily-falsifiable propaganda.
The belief that AI outputs would be equivalent or even higher quality than human writers at election propaganda has been the basis of AI election interference concerns.
I actually haven't seen much in the way of "AI election interference concerns" specifically. There's been a lot of noise around the potential for deep fakes to sway an election, but so far there's been no smoking gun that's been brought to my attention. On the left, I don't think people distinguish much from someone blindly consuming FoxNews opinion propaganda versus X AI bot propaganda (or MSNBC and Reddit, if you prefer the examples for the right). Which kind of plays into your broader point:
There is no russel conjugation in play. It is not your humans produce articles, your opponents' partisans demonstrate bias, and AI make slop. It is nearly all slop regardless.
Can I extend this to your view on the OP being that it doesn't matter at all that the article that Adam Silver reposted is AI slop, versus your definition of "slop" in general? It doesn't move your priors on Adam Silver[1] (the reposter), X (the platform), or Yahoo Entertainment (the media institution) even an iota?
- [1] Leaving the error. NBA playoffs on the mind.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
1mo ago
Hmm, is this a signal that we can finally go back to a time where a wider populace puts trust into specific media institutions, and rewards ($$$) them for earning that trust? Can AI be the deathknell of the mAiNsTrEaM mEdIa snark? Can we start being elitist about media institutions that don't utilize AI slop, regardless of their political slant? Surely articles written by an actual human, no matter their political bias, are universally better than AI slop of any particular bias? Can't we all agree on that across the political spectrum?
That Adam Silver posted an article from Yahoo Entertainment damages my base level of respect for him, regardless of the content of the article. The 90s version of this is like picking up a magazine from the grocery store checkout[1] and trying to form a cogent political argument based on its cover article. I guess that makes X the backyard grillout: "Dave69420 told me that the Clintons had Vince Foster killed".
- [1] Curiously, though, I haven't actually seen magazines where I buy groceries these days, but they're still at CVS / Walgreens and other drug stores.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
1mo ago
I mean your comment kind of acknowledges that using or not using AC is something that most mathematicians do mostly as a thought experiment, and that they don't have a personal, ideological bias for or against it. In other words, rejecting all proofs that use AC on purely ideological grounds (dear-leader-style) is flirting with quackery.
I think the important thing for avoiding political targeting of a field's theories isn't whether the field is "pure", but whether its complex-to-apply theories lead to simple-to-verify results.
Agreed, up to the point that "simple-to-verify" can also lead to ideological ambiguity, e.g. is the Earth's oblate spheroid shape or even gravity "simple-to-verify"?
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
1mo ago
Your response made me reflect on my own secondary education, where my school district certainly punched above its demographic weight in terms of educational quality. When I look back at it in terms of my personal experience, I remember specific teachers who were highly effective and probably had a profound impact on the way I think and reason about things. I also had plenty of teachers who were completely uninspiring and gave no indication during class that they had an IQ above room temperature (maybe they were different in their personal life). I actually don't think about the textbooks or exam structures at all, but maybe that's because it's a bit easier to remember human beings rather than pens and paper.[1]
In retrospect, I think what made those highly effective teachers exceptional is that they really seemed to know more than I could imagine even learning at that time in my life. They also seemed genuinely keen on sharing not just that knowledge, but in little ways their own personal philosophies on how to properly learn. Is the "industrial scale" version of this identifying these highly effective teachers at scale, properly compensating them, and just letting them loose on our youth?
Tying into the second paragraph of your response, I think I just got real fucking lucky that my father's blue collar job transferred him to a semi-rural Midwestern town that somehow managed to gracefully keep up with the regional transition from a populace working on assembly lines to working in cubicles. Our sister city across the county line didn't fair nearly as well: it smelled twice as shitty, had 75% of the median household income, and sent almost no one to our state's flagship university. The question it provokes: what's the incentive structure for the ruling class for organizing education in these two cities over the coming years?
- [1] Actually, funny anecdote, there was one AP class that a lot of the "jocks" took because the teacher presented as hypermasculine while he wasn't teaching (I think he was the strength coach for the football team?). But the thing was, he was actually a pretty damn good teacher as well. A bunch of boneheads accidentally got a pretty good European history education because of masculine vibes.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
1mo ago
if the Politburo demands you go to the moon or be shot
The funny thing about this is that the "golden age" of Soviet mathematics directly coincided with the height of Lysenkoism, and both somewhat petered out before the space race really kicked off.
But yeah, the broader point here is probably that some disciplines manage to avoid being dismantled by the regime. But I could also easily imagine a scenario where a despot decides to do something like reject the axiom of choice and cancel any mathematicians who don't agree (there is quite a bit of quackery in amateur mathematics...), so I'm not necessarily convinced that just because a field is more "pure" (e.g. mathematics) doesn't mean it won't get targeted.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
1mo ago
I see. So any policy that predates "DEI" as a boogeyman is safe from being labeled DEI? Bummer that affirmative action was collateral damage.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
1mo ago
Currnetly you have cases where people who score a literal zero in exams can teach math
I know this isn't the main thrust of your post, but it reminded me of a blog post that was trending on Hacker News sometime this past week. It basically describes the author's disillusionment with the academic "industry" in Romania after an influx of EU funding to increase the number of PhDs in the late aughts.
I'm becoming more convinced that creating an actual education system (one that creates highly skilled intellectual workers) is nontrivial and probably rare throughout history, and it's far too easy to create systems that LARP or cargo-cult education instead of actually performing education. Authoritarian regimes seem to have a knack for creating systems of alternative science that are more palatable to their dear leaders and their cronies than whatever "mainstream" science they are supplanting. It's almost as if the deck is stacked against humans and scientific progress is an unnatural status quo that we've lucked into because of certain post-enlightenment conditions?
This is also me positing nurture over nature - that humans have quite a bit of potential but the difference between a real education system and one that LARPs as an education system is staggering in terms of the intellect of the people it produces. There's a bit of big fish little pond / little fish big pond in there as well (speaking from firsthand experience).
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
1mo ago
This is funny to me.
I mean, my interpretation of your comment is that DEI is everything indefensible (from your perspective), and everything that's defensible is not DEI.
I mean ADA can't be DEI, it's one of the most successful programs in the history of the world in terms of creating real outcomes for people who do not have the same abilities that the median individual has.
So I guess we just have to wait for that gentle slide of the Overton window for it to turn into DEI?
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
I'd also say it's likely that the people who enshrined jus soli for the United States could never imagine a world where a (common) pregnant women could not only travel, but also give safely give birth in a foreign land that they were not intent on living in for the rest of their lives, or that they would even want to!
I'm curious how opposition to jus soli has evolved over time to match the world that we live in due to technological advances (e.g. maternal mortality rates).
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
Well, I'd say it's pretty obvious. If you can't tell the difference between your dog and your chair, you might sit on your dog, and take your chair out for a walk, which is exactly what we're seeing with things like male rapists being sent to women's prisons.
See that's the line I'm interested in. How do we go from "gender and sex are different concepts, and woman is attached to gender, not sex" to "Whoops I sat on my dog because I can't tell the difference between a chair and a dog?" That's the bailey and:
is exactly what we're seeing with things like male rapists being sent to women's prisons.
this is the motte. It's a real problem that I can't argue against. Why can't we update our institutions to be sensitive to the rights of inmates in general? Why does it take a "male rapist" being sent to a "women's prison" for us to give a shit?
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
I find your analysis lacking as even a starting premise. Your claim that the people who do this were purged in favor of loyalists is more characteristic of a partisan narrative-level understanding than familiarity with what's happened in the US government over the last few months.
This is a competence-of-evaluation issue. Call it a 'vibes-based analysis' if you will. It is consistent with your vibes-based understanding of history, both contemporary-american and broader leader issues. It is not consistent with accurate model-building of people or efforts outside your vibe, which so far you have not demonstrated.
Genuinely: do you have a recommendation of who to read in order to gain a non-partisan narrative-level understanding of what has happened with the US government over the last few months? I'd like to get away from some of my regular sources of information and into ones that provide a higher signal-to-noise ratio.
For example, analyses of the actions of the executive branch here on the Motte contradict each-other on a week-to-week basis as more information comes out. I come here to find takes that would temper a "partisan narrative-level understanding", but often find most posts that analyze the actions of the executive branch as highly speculative ("5d chess")[1]. Should I just read Project 2025 and take it as gospel, despite the counter-hysteria during the campaign season? Is the executive executing reactionary revolution? What is the bar for competence-of-evaluation for an average citizen to judge the worthiness of their executive branch? Should no one protest the actions of their government because they're not qualified to evaluate the competence of those who took those actions?
However, the nature of being a vibes-based analyst is that contempt / condemnation of other people for being vibes-based decision-makers rings more than a little hollow. This is particularly true if you cannot model what other people outside your vibe are trying to achieve, or why they believe certain actions will advance that goal, without building in a back-handed basis of dismissal.
Yes, but to an outside observer I'm just a shitposter[2] on a political forum, and they're the supposed leaders of the free world. Different standards, no? I do have models for the actions of those in the executive branch. I think they're mostly of disreputable character, as are many politicians and people in positions of power, but they're not irrational or stupid. It's their failure to disclose the honest motivations behind their actions that limits the effectiveness of my model for their behaviors.
- [1] I agree with posts beyond the obvious leftwing posters, for the record. Some of the things I agree with may even surprise you if you have a simplified model of the political opinions I represent. It's that specifically any analysis of the actions of the current executive branch that I find lacking.
- [2] Caveat for the moderators, I don't actually view myself as a shitposter. Make the Motte a better place and all that.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
I was hoping a response would be more about the threat of epistemic collapse, rather than the certain evidence of it. But I'll bite.
The whole "what is a woman" thing is just a "gotcha" that abuses the fact that words have different meanings in different contexts. Very few words evoke a singular meaning in our minds. It's like asking "what is water"? Well, are you asking about the thing I can drink? The thing I can swim in? The chemical composition? My take is that if you asked people before the concept was politicized, very few people would spit out the answer "someone with a vagina". They would probably describe quite a few gender-coded concepts, thinking that you were asking something that had more philosophical depth than the most obvious answer. Just like when you ask me "what is water" I don't immediately go "H20, dumbass." Matt Walsh is a hack and this paragraph sums up his entire strategy.
More importantly, within our legal documents the word "water" takes many different meanings as well! Why not "woman"?
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
Stick around, new kid. Time in this community will thoroughly disabuse you of that notion, presuming you can avoid the traditional leftwinger meltdown and flounce-out when you realize that other people are going to continue to be allowed to argue back.
Thanks, bro. Genuinely, I'd like to. It would be far too easy to comment somewhere that I receive no push-back, but then I wouldn't be sharpening my mind at all, would I? Unless you're not interested in also sharpening your mind, I would imagine you wouldn't want this to devolve into a reactionary circlejerk?
Prospiracy with significant conspiracy elements.
I'd buy it. But I'd also push-back that it was a one-way street and that conservatives had no agency in the matter. It's almost as if it would be convenient that academic institutions were one day able to be simply "deleted" for wrong-think.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
Genuinely, I am here to get into the weeds so I would love to hear the line drawn between "cannot define what a woman is" and "epistemic collapse", and the threat that "epistemic collapse" poses, especially since throughout scientific history we've updated words to better match the scientific consensus of the model of our universe and our existence within it. I do assume you have more evidence for epistemic collapse beyond the "definition of a woman"?
I, too, have deep antipathy towards the perverse incentives within current academic institutions, and the actors who exploit those perverse incentives. Maybe you and I actually have some common ground there?
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
This is just a rephrasing of "reality has a liberal bias", the veracity of which is being tested now.
It was specifically sidestepping the nearly-20-year-old Colbert meme, but I guess you caught me. Maybe I am inclined to believe that those who seek truth for the sake of truth do tend to come out with a "liberal" bias. But more importantly, I feel more strongly that the painting of universities as institutions of liberal indoctrination deny entire cohorts of students their own agency in developing political beliefs, and equal-and-opposite mirror of the claim that FoxNews has indoctrinated an entire generation of cable news subscribers. Like you, I look forward to the results of this "test".
I would say The Long March Through Institutions qualifies as a strategy.
I would say it also qualifies as a conspiracy theory. I am curious, though, is your theory that the Long March Through Institutions was a concerted effort, with agents who collaborated and took specific actions? Or one that happened more "naturally" due to the perverse incentives of a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_education](liberal education)?
You really set me up for a "Just following orders" response here after I already invoked Carl Schmitt.
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