zataomm
1yr ago
Attempted crimes should be punished, but the details of why the "attempt" failed are relevant to determining whether it was a genuine attempt at all. In your attempted murder analogy, yes, you couldn't shoot me because your gun jammed, but if prior to that attempt you purposely manipulated the gun by jamming up the chamber so that a spent round would get stuck in there and be impossible to eject, that would be evidence that you never intended your "murder attempt" to be effective.
The fact that Congress wasn't fooled doesn't by itself make election fraud not a crime, but the fact that apparently Trump tried this maneuver in several states and in no cases were the "fake elector" votes counted, indicates that there is something suspicious about the narrative that he was trying to deceive Congress. Yes, they sent a piece of paper to Congress saying they were the duly-chosen electors and they were voting for Trump etc., but that paper was presented as what it was, an alternate slate of electors. At no point was Pence saying, "well, now I have no idea which ones are the real votes!"
This is fairly impressive. Did you make this with assistance of generative AI?
Oh, very much so. Github Copilot + Claude Sonnet 4, if you care to know. Technically I am a web developer but at this point I am basically all-in on using AI wherever possible. Nice to get done in a couple hours what would have taken me much, much longer, and much more frustration, using the old method of typing code by hand.
zataomm
1yr ago
To not clog up top comments, I'm deleting this and and putting it in a new thread which hopefully will be of interest to somebody. Colorado Supreme Court thread
zataomm
1yr ago
Technically I said fraud not defraud, so that makes me the best kind of correct. Here is the relevant Georgia law, since you are a big fan.
That said, as humorous as you are, you are still wrong. What do you think is involved in the theft? Let's use our imaginations and imagine that Donald Trump says to the official who controls election data, "hey, it's me, Donald Trump, your favorite president. Way better than Carter, obviously. Anyway, I suspect there was fraud in your state, so I need access to your voter data, please send it to me by December 1st." If the official then sends Trump the election data, do you think he would be guilty of theft?
I'm going to skip the part where you answer. The only way Trump and his allies "defrauded the state" in the case at hand is if they falsely claimed that they had the right to voter data.
zataomm
1yr ago
they LIED. They were not the duly elected and qualified electors. It was public knowledge that the duly elected and qualified electors had been chosen on November 20.
You understand that lying involves more than just uttering a false statement, right? Merriam Webster says: "to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive". No intent to deceive, therefore not a lie. As to your question "How are they not fake?" Same answer. No intent to deceive.
zataomm
8mo ago
Absolutely incredible finish. Commanders avoided a very tough-luck loss by handing the Bears one instead.
A defense of... what, exactly? Haiti, Ukraine, and the Calculus of Sovereignty
Imagine that tomorrow, by some insane folly, Brazil decides to invade and annex Haiti. Brazil in general is... not great. Lots of poverty, questionable rule of law, wild swings in politics in recent years. But compared to Haiti, whose government is a strong contender for worst in the world? Living in a society merely as flawed as Brazil would be an incredible improvement. So okay, in our imagination, Brazil definitely annexed Haitian territory through unprovoked aggression. But would we encourage Haitians to resist? Put Haitian flags in our Twitter bios? Would we support a government that is failing its people? Or would we ask whether Brazilian rule, however illegitimate, might offer Haitians marginally better prospects? So there's the question: Under what conditions does a state's right to sovereignty outweigh its failure to secure the welfare of its people?
This is the question I keep trying to answer for myself on Ukraine. In 2022, I didn't know much about Ukraine but my stance aligned with the general consensus: Russia's invasion was a brazen violation of international law, and Ukraine's territorial integrity demanded defense. But after three years of stalemate, over 500,000 casualties reported, a failed counteroffensive, and no plausible path to Ukrainian victory, I'm asking "What's it all for?" The conflict will ultimately end in negotiated concessions. Crimea retained by Russia, Donbas partitioned, security guarantees exchanged. Why prolong a war of attrition that sacrifices a generation to marginally adjust the terms? Why fight for Ukraine at all?
Poland vs. Ukraine: Reform and Stagnation
For contrast, consider Poland, a nation that, like Ukraine, emerged from Soviet domination in 1991. Both inherited corrupt, centrally planned economies and oligarchic rot. Yet Poland since then has been growing like crazy and today boasts a GDP per capita around $21,000. Ukraine, by contrast, basically didn't advance at all, and was at $4,500 per capita pre-war. As I said, I was ignorant about the details before, and I am only slightly less ignorant now of the specifics of these two countries' trajectories, but as a big believer in Adam Smith's economics, I am convinced that a GDP of $4,500 indicates something really, really wrong with Ukrainian governance.
So if Poland were being invaded by Russia, I would see their post-Soviet trajectory as something worth dying for. I would feel like they were fighting to stay on the one true path, all that is good and right about liberal democracy. But Ukraine? "Fighting for all that's good and right" is definitely the vibe on Twitter, but where is the evidence that Ukraine is on the path to becoming Poland? Okay, they elected Zelenskyy in 2019, but what has he done? What have been the fruits of Ukrainian reforms?
Conclusion
Shouldn't the hypothetical Brazilians invading Haiti be greeted as liberators? It truly would be hard for Brazilian colonial rule to be any worse than the current government of Haiti. Ukraine isn't the basket case that Haiti is, but its pre-war stagnation, evidenced by a $4,500 GDP per capita, casts doubt on its claim to be a bastion of liberal democracy, an ideal actually worth dying for. I see no virtue in increasing this war's death toll merely to tweak an inevitable settlement's borders. Russia's aggression is unjust, but if Ukraine's fight preserves only a corrupt stasis rather than a transformative future, why are we supporting it? It used to be that more cynical people said the US supported Ukraine because Russia is our enemy, and it's good for us that their soldiers die. But now we just hear the idealistic case. Is the idealistic case strong?
zataomm
1yr ago
The sad part is they couldn't even find a good "insurrection" to allege. Hunter Biden's dealings with China? Come on. Can't they argue that Biden in some way encouraged the protesters who block traffic to fight climate change? Or the people who graffiti'd the Lincoln memorial in support of Palestine? Everybody hates those guys, why not go ahead an call it an insurrection?
zataomm
9mo ago
Anybody want to talk about World War I? This is culture war in the sense that the culture war led me here, and its application definitely seems to fall along tribal lines, even though this is all ancient history.
So on a recommendation on Twitter from MartyrMade, I've started reading Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War so I can figure out who the real villain was in WWII. But I guess we can't get there without discussing WWI, so that's where the book begins. A fundamental cause of the war, according to the author, is that Germany and England had conflicting views of security. In general, England's policy was to play European powers off each other, always supporting the second-strongest power against the strongest power to ensure that no one country would dominate the continent and thus be in a position to challenge Britain. In the early 1900s, that meant supporting France in opposition to Germany. Germany's idea of peace, on the other hand, was precisely to dominate and unify the continent under German rule, thus ensuring that they would have no problems on the continent.
As an uninformed person, I am struck by a similarity in current politices with America and Russia. It seems that America finds itself in the same position as Germany before WWI, seeking to unify as many countries as possible under NATO, effectively ensuring that America's vision dominates world politics. On the other hand, Russia's best available strategy is to weaken America wherever possible, by supporting America's most troublesome enemies, e.g. Iran.
The point of all this is I'm wondering whether there is any way to achieve Trump's goal in the Ukraine war, which is for "people to stop dying". America being dominant means they can't really allow Russia to challenge their world order by taking over Ukraine and stopping NATO expansion. But if Russia is going to be able to exert its will at all in the world, they can't really allow Ukraine to become just another part of the Western bloc.
Still, Trump says he'll solve the issue and the war will be over within 24 hours of becoming president. What do you think his plan is?
zataomm
1yr ago
I can't imagine a definition of fraud that wouldn't involve some kind of deception. Merriam-Webster:
1a : DECEIT, TRICKERY
specifically : intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right
zataomm
8mo ago
I guarantee this never happened.
I don't know, there are a lot of people in the world who say a lot of things. This sounds like a really weird thing to say so maybe in context it made more sense? I tend to believe it, I just don't think it actually matters, doubt there was any animus behind it, and overall think that hypersensitivity to microagressions tends to make racial relations worse.
David French's current views overall are garbage, though.
zataomm
1yr ago
The first person to use the word fraud (without de-) was you. You stated that you didn’t think deception was an element. I commented that fraud would seem to always involve deception. That’s why it’s relevant.
I’ll ask you once again to consider the method by which Trump stole the relevant voter data. It involved lying. A lot. Do you think Trump would have been charged with theft if his claims about the election had been true? The indictment sure makes it seem like the fact he was lying is relevant.
Also, stepping back for a second, there are so many counts in the indictment related to forgery, false documents, and false statements, I don’t know how you managed to start a debate over the one count that (arguably, in your opinion) doesn’t involve deception.
zataomm
3mo ago
Produce seems like the perfect example of a place where regulation is not needed. Lidl’s general guarantee plus consumers’ discernment should be enough without Brussels needing to mandate a standard banana
zataomm
1yr ago
My question about the Secret Service was an ironic reference to the idea that if the pieces of paper from these "fake electors" were a big problem when it came time to count the votes, presumably because said papers are difficult to distinguish from the votes cast by "authentic electors," then maybe they would have to call in the Secret Service, who are in charge of prosecuting cases of counterfeiting money and therefore experts in document authentication, to help sort things out.
Honestly my impression as I start to learn about this topic is the opposite of this. It it looking like Britain (today Russia) really screwed things up. I get why they did it and saw it as their interest to oppose Germany, but everybody would have been better off just letting Germany (today America) win to establish pax Germana on the European continent.
But yeah, I guess I am trying to look for something deeper than "Putin is an insane tyrant" as the reason for Russia's current behavior. Do you really oppose even that minimal amount of respect and context applied to the current conflict?
zataomm
1yr ago
zataomm
1yr ago
From the indictment:
COUNT 11 of 41
And the Grand Jurors aforesaid, in the name and behalf ofthe citizens of Georgia, do charge and accuse DONALD JOHN TRUMP [et al.], [...] unlawfully conspired, with the intent to defraud, to knowingly make a document titled "CERTIFICATE OF THE VOTES OF THE 2020 ELECTORS FROM GEORGIA," [...] insuch manner that the writing as made purports to have been made by authority ofthe duly elected and qualified presidential electors from the State of Georgia, who did not give such authority
Read the above and recall that what AshLael wants anyone still reading this to believe is that for the purposes of the Georgia indictment, it makes no difference whether in creating the alternative slate of electors (aka "fake electors"), the accused parties intended for the "CERTIFICATE OF THE VOTES" to deceive Congress into wrongly counting Georgia's votes for Donald Trump.
To echo a favorite line of mine, I cannot imagine an interpretation of the phrase "with the intent to defraud," or really the entire context and meaning of Count 11 and several other counts like it, that would make AshLael's position reasonable.
Whether the intent of the "fake elector" document was to deceive Congress matters to the legal case. Of course it matters. Anyone who says differently either hasn't read the indictment or is a troll.
On the one hand, I'm sure you're right that it's not as good as a human developer. On the other hand, it's kind of like the web in general. Websites all kind of suck now because React gives developers the ability to be lazy and not worry about resource usage or anything else because everything's kind of "good enough." But the cost and speed advantage of using AI is so overwhelming that I don't think your concerns are going to hold up. Developers are just going to have to add more bad code on top of bad code until it works.
Full disclosure: I really think that a lot of concerns from sophisticated developers about how AI makes mistakes are just snobbery/posing. But that's what I, an unsophisticated developer, would think, right?
Like, I'm not saying I've never had an experience where AI is going down a path that I think is bad and needs to change course. But in those cases, I usually hit the stop button and say, "Hey, I think you need to do this in a totally different way," or I can just say, "Hey, your last change was terrible. Can you just revert it?" There are a few instances where I feel kind of dumb because I'm using three prompts to say like hey I need you to change the font size, when I probably could've done it more easily myself in that specific case. But overall, I'd rather be talking to my agent than looking at code.
zataomm
9mo ago
précipitâtes
Hey, we’re talking about New York magazine here. Get back over to the New Yorker with your weird orthography
zataomm
1yr ago
Horrifying. Context makes it a little better but definitely bad to imply any kind of debt owed to Trump by any of the justices. Not sure who Alina Habba is exactly though, she’s not one of the lawyers whose name appears on Trump’s petition to the court, all of whom surely want to kill her right about now.
zataomm
1yr ago
Yes, I agree with your assessment of Gorsuch and Roberts, which is why if they do agree I could pre-commit to following whatever they say as both wise and respectful of the relevant laws as written. Not sure what I'd do if they disagree but again I think you're right, Gorsuch is more likely to apply the law with strict correctness while Roberts will look for the decision that is best for the political system overall. My heart is with Gorsuch but I think I'd have to go with my head and favor Roberts.
zataomm
1yr ago
Looking at the IRS IRA required minimum distribution (RMD) table, at age 80 you are required to withdraw 5% from your 401k, and the percentage goes up each year after that. At age 75 your withdrawal already exceeds 4%. You don't have to spend it, but you do have to take it as income and pay taxes on it.
zataomm
1yr ago
Sorry for the leading question but am I the only one naive enough to ask "Why don't the israeli troops just walk into the al-Shifa hospital?"? Where I live, if the national army wanted to take over the closest hospital I am confident they could do it in like 5 minutes by walking in through the front door.
If the answer is as I suspect, "the Israeli troops can't walk into the hospital because the hospital is being defended with guns," then why doesn't that fact appear in your average news story like this one? I know this sounds like a post from a person who really cares about Israel and is always going on about media bias against that country, so I just want to add a disclaimer saying that my position on Israel is that I'm just a normal American non-Jew who doesn't really know or care very much about it.
But honestly, to go back to my opening question, what the heck is going on at the hospital? Why can't they just take it over?
Recently, I've been subjected to several posts on Twitter about Peter Singer. Singer posits a compelling argument: Society accepts a certain concept, A, yet its variant A', which along many relevant dimensions is similar to A but should be less objectionable, is met with taboo. Here is Singer's post, although I don't want to get into the the details because I'm thinking not about the argument itself but the prevalent reaction to it. The most common response to Singer's points is not an intellectual rebuttal but rather an expression of shock and outrage. The taboo around A' is like an emotional firewall, preventing any rational discourse.
This pattern of reaction is disconcerting. We live in a world of complex issues that demand thoughtful consideration, yet it appears that a significant portion of discourse is reduced to emotional outbursts. It's really hard for me not to feel disheartened or even adopt a misanthropic view when I see things like this.
So, is this emotional explosiveness truly representative of the general populace, or is it just that on Twitter, the most extreme views gain the most traction? Moreover, how can we, as individuals seeking constructive dialogue, navigate this landscape without succumbing to frustration or misanthropy?
I'm genuinely interested in understanding whether these reactions are as pervasive as they seem and what strategies we might employ to foster more meaningful, thought-provoking conversations, especially in a world dominated by emotional responses.
Besides being obvious sneerclub bait, this post is kind of ridiculous because you can sum it up as "Why does the Motte exist?", but I just want to know if there is any way to bring more people into the Motte's style of discourse or how serious a problem it is that some people are seemingly unpersuadable.
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