Tretiak
If you know you know, if you don’t you don’t.
#209, #StandUpLocust, #MurphysFerry, Surah Yunus 10:71
User ID: 2418
Tretiak
If you know you know, if you don’t you don’t.
5hr ago
If you don’t have the fundamentals you’re not going to understand the rest.
We could probably have a debate over the details of some of this. I don’t know what your background is, but I’m just an advanced layman who’s more than just a little bit literate on these topics. I agree that mathematically modeling this is hard. Very hard, in fact; but you can still do it well enough to extract valuable data from this. Just a note on such models ln how I see it.
If you look at global circulation models (GCM’s), they use physical data on the chemical composition of the ground, atmosphere, air and sea temperatures, wind velocities, rainfall, river flows, et al., the key variable in all these being greenhouse gases (‘GHG’s’ which we all know) because they absorb and re-radiate heat back to the Earth. The most important GHG is water vapor; but the problem is it’s inherently localized; making it the least controllable and hardest to obtain data on a global average; and it accounts for between 1/3rd or 2/3rd’s of the GHG effect. The next one is CO2, followed by methane and a few other industrial chemicals. If you compare things on a simple molecular basis, methane is more potent than CO2, but it doesn’t remain in the atmosphere for as long (about 5-6 years if I recall), compared to roughly a century for CO2. There’s much less methane in the atmosphere than CO2 but that could change if emissions from the methane clathrates in the sediment under the east Siberian shelf begin to accelerate.
This might be more to your point perhaps but yes it’s known that GCM’s have weaknesses. The first is that they assume vertical atmospheric thermal convection without wholly taking to account the horizontal component of circulation that arises from ocean currents and mixing. The other is that they divide the surface of the globe into icosahedrons but the minimum size of the grid area (with the exception of the poles) is way too large. You can’t simulate small scale behavior within just a few kilometers (which is nowhere near the 10’s of 100’s of meters necessary to predict local precipitation patterns or storm paths). That’s one of just a handful of problems which is why they also rely on comparative models, but the general trend of things has accelerated even faster than scientists forecast after factoring in the uncertainty of their models.
Have you actually examined the details of Nordhaus’ models?
Nordhaus assumed that the majority of the economy (which is to say > 87%) is immune to climate change because it takes place in "carefully controlled environments" (i.e., indoors). That’s an elementary mistake of taking the “climate” to be the “weather.” Climate change can destroy infrastructure, disrupt supply chains and completely upend the availability and distribution of energy and resources, regardless of whether the work occurs under a roof or not.
His math also uses a simple quadratic function to estimate the relationship between rising temperatures and output and his approach is mathematically incapable of adequately capturing tipping points or any non-linear breakdowns. Also the standard discount rates you have in Neoclassical models are bad for the existential timescales involved in climate change. And other economists have actually pointed out that his rates lead to an artificial undervaluation of future damages, and so you can’t accurately estimate economic growth over the long-term habitability of the planet.
The fact that Nordhaus ever won the Nobel Prize is a scientific travesty and sad state of affairs, and behind closed doors was aggressively challenged by others. If you want to understand climate change and why it’s so catastrophic, you have to model and understand the complex interactive feedbacks and it’s abundantly clear that he doesn’t.
Here’s why it’s a problem. (Some basic science)
If you have a steady state equilibrium condition, the first law of thermodynamics (which is conservation of energy) says that inflows of short-wave light into the Earth have to be balanced by energy outflows in the form of infrared heat. Otherwise what happens is the Earth heats up too much or cools down too much. Both of these outcomes are bad. Normally the energy imbalances are small and responses to changes are slow. But now due to human activity, the climate is changing faster than the response to it. One of the problems with comparing the climate at other points in the Earth’s history, is that it doesn’t take stock of cyclical phenomenon like the gains or losses in natural systems like glaciers, forests, deep water, etc. The problem with getting human beings to understand this is most of us have only two modes of psychological operation: complacency and panic.
A better person to listen to and read on this is Nate Hagens (he’s also very entertaining).
Tretiak
If you know you know, if you don’t you don’t.
17hr ago
My father and sibling were frequent users of it late in their life. They both encouraged me to try it a couple of times but I always refused. Heard it was made illegal in California, so no idea how distributors are still getting their product out here above the board. I still advise staying away from it.
Part of the problem though that I keep coming back to has to do with modeling solutions. We all model reality whether it’s by simple or more complicated means: equations, statistical inference, physical laws, human intuition, etc., but these are only as good as the faulty human beings can make them. Models are virtual representations of real world phenomena. We run models in the virtual space of our minds all the time.
When you select a model though, you have to choose one that has all the relevant parameters. But one thing they always teach you as you learn this is that the more parameters you add, you increase the scope of uncertainty exponentially. The worst of these problems happen when there are so many degrees of freedom in your equations you can find an excellent fit for the data using the wrong model. Von Neumann taught us this in the 20th century:
“With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”
The classic way of attempting to mitigate this is sensitivity analysis (studying how the output of the model is related to changes in the input parameters). The other problem works in reverse of this example and that’s when people think that “simple” means “inaccurate.” It’s why politicians and decision makers are irrationally skeptical of you if you can predict where a trend is going with only a few parameters. But even if you have an accurate model? You have to know how to use it.
(First post, hope I’m doing this right.)
The Link Between Environmental Exploitation and Collapse
This was something that randomly popped into my head a couple weeks ago at work, and I can’t seem to find a solution for it. As a species, we’ve evolved and reliably patterned our behavior to exploit opportunities when they become available. We are not naturally wired to operate for deliberative, careful, and long-term planning. Our genetic makeup works very well for small, hunter-gatherer societies to optimize for our local catch and bring it back home to the tribe. That doesn’t scale and work very well with modern technology, where we’ve now become good at exploiting resources which allow us to destroy things quicker than we can reform them. Despite being equipped with logical reasoning, why do we fail so much at being able to use our capabilities?
Every time I think of this conundrum, it always reminds me of the gamblers fallacy, which is essentially our inability to accurately estimate probabilities. The short of it is: gamblers often think some random events are related to each other when in reality they aren’t. If you’re out fishing for instance, a fisherman may think several bad days increases his odds of a lucky catch today; and these misperceptions are often reinforced when he sees a colleague coming back with a full load of fish. This leads him into thinking the balance has to swing back in his favor at some point and the only source of the problem has to do with how hard he tries. Maybe he ends up redoubling his efforts, buys more expensive equipment, or falsely believes luck will repay him for his past losses.
Human minds are incredibly hard to change. If over exploitation is one of the historical forces that leads to collapse, then fighting its roots may be impossible if it involves trying to stop people from engaging in irrational behavior.
Possible Solutions and Their Problems
Privatization
Libertarians often think privatization is a solution that can mediate some of these problems via efficient allocation of resources. If a herdsman owns the land on which his sheep pasture, then he’d have to be stupid if he didn’t understand that if he added more sheep to his flock he’d end up ruining himself. So privatizing things removes the network of interacting herdsmen, by turning them into single operators who do their jobs without broad external interaction. Maybe for some things this works but it has massive problems.
First, privatization isn’t always possible. You can’t fence the atmosphere or the oceans, if we’re talking about climate change. But even so, even where privatization is possible it always carries a cost along with it. In the west we take it for granted that the government protects the property rights of its citizenry. But this isn’t true in many other parts of the world where ordinary people are subject to dispossession depending on who covets their land/property.
But even with best good will and control over the system, people may just be unable to manage a system that has too many non-linear feedbacks and delayed reactions. And that’s a tendency that casts a wide shadow over all ideologies that propose a solution to this.
Quotas
The first problem with quotas is that the method only works if there’s a general consensus in place that establishes the framework of restrictions. Secondly, people also aren’t usually interested in quotas imposed on specific industrial sectors, and battles often rage between interested parties that degenerates into shouting matches and protests between lobbies and well intentioned politicians.
The Montreal treaty that imposed a limit on CFC gases in the late 80’s was successful in reducing emissions worldwide, but that led to a spike in illegal manufacturing and smuggling of forbidden gases. It didn’t prove to be a significant problem though, only because good substitutes of CFC gases were already available at that time and so resolving that problem proved to be rather painless.
Back in the 90’s, the fishing industry in the Aral lake in the Soviet Union was destroyed, due to it being dried out to use its water for irrigation purposes. That wasn’t the only example of ecological crises either. The mining cities in northern Siberia are notoriously known for some of the worst cases of industrial pollution on the planet. So even communism can’t save the commons then.
What ultimately is the solution?
Tretiak
If you know you know, if you don’t you don’t.
3d ago
We obviously have very different ideas about this. Agree to disagree I suppose.
Tretiak
If you know you know, if you don’t you don’t.
3d ago
Yes. They’ve read it in a book one time. They don’t know what it is by experience.
You know ironically, that’s how lobbyist’s most effectively agitate for their positions? People often think there’s this conspiracy that lobbying and 'special interests' work like some kind of nefarious Jewish cabal, straight out of the Elders of Zion. It isn't like that, at all. I have a relative that's done lobbying work in DC.
First the public perception of lobbying is 100% wrong. People think it’s like something straight out of House of Cards, and that's simply not the case. There is literally no such thing as 'here is a sack of cash, now go pass this legislation for me.' The Abscam Scandals ended like 95% of that in the 80's and what little left there was ended with the Jack Abramoff scandal. I know some people think it's ridiculous when they read this, but it's true. 99.99% of federal and state legislators actually do take ethics seriously.
Lobbying is using money and public support to sway a legislator to see how voting for/against a bill is in the best interest of his/her constituency. I'm not saying you have to agree with this entirely, only that 'that' is what it 'is'. Who are the players? The traditional 'rolodex' lobbyist is a dying beast. This is the lobbyist that people are probably thinking of when you think 'lobbyist', somebody like Trent Lott. This is the guy that can open the doors, and knows the guy that knows the guy. This is 'somewhat' valuable, but not very. One thing that's great about our government is that you can solicit your representative anytime you want. All of us are familiar with this. And of course people do this. Every person that ever worked on the Hill knows about crazy constituents that went into the legislator's office and read them the riot act over something. But the truth is the rolodex lobbyist isn't that valuable. Where they 'are' valuable is describing relationships between important people (e.g., "Sen X won't wipe is ass without Sen Y's approval. If you get Sen Y onboard, Sen X falls right in line").
The biggest players in the post-Abramoff world are trade associations and advocacy groups. 'These' are the people that fuck, and there's 'literally', tens of thousands of them. A great example is the NRF. To put it simply, every little retailer that wants to belong, from Mom and Pop's all the way up to Wal-Mart contributes money, and that combined money is used to advocate for the industry. The NRF sends people to conferences, to Capitol Hill, to state legislatures, everywhere, to support pro-industry legislation and to shoot down anti-industry legislation.
A tertiary player (but growing in influence) is the Government Affairs groups for large companies. Here's AT&T's head guy. They are basically single-company trade associations. But a big company like AT&T belongs to a lot of associations in addition to having their own GA team.
Now as far as the money goes, this is actually the least important aspect of lobbying. That name of the game is campaign contributions. Campaigns at all levels are extremely expensive, and you need help paying for them. But, direct contributions are limited and public, so they aren't too valuable. The contributions come in from PACs and advocacy groups or organizing groups (NCSL is an example).
Mechanically speaking, the NCSL will have a conference and a shit ton of legislators (state-level in this case, but there are tons of federal conferences) will attend. They have to attend because if they do NCSL will contribute $X to their campaign fund. Also a massive huge number of lobbyist from trade associations and company GA teams will also attend. Incidentally, those lobbyists paid anywhere from $10k to $100k to attend the event. This is the money that goes into the legislators' campaign funds. At these events, all the lobbyists elbow-jockey for the attention of the legislators. The goal is to get a 'sit down' or a call set up at some later date. Why does the money not matter? Because the legislator gets his campaign contribution irrespective of what happens at the meeting. He's under zero obligation to even 'listen' to the lobbyists. At the sit down, the lobbyist is going to try to explain why issue X is important. Or even better, the lobbyist will set a meeting and bring some constituents.
Another thing too is the fact that for just about every issue in America, there are two extremely well funded but diametrically opposed parties. Take net neutrality. If I'm a legislator, I can be in the ISP camp or in the content/Google camp. But it doesn't matter, one of the two sides will fund my campaign. I don't care who does it. And this is what's so funny about it. There is 'literally' so much money in politics now that there is a PAC/group that will fund almost every possible position. This is very true on the federal level, sort of true at the state level.
So if money doesn't matter, how do lobbyists pressure legislators? They call it 'social advocacy'. It's a 'huge' business. Say for example, Congress is pushing a bill that would be bad for retailers. The NRF is going to be tasked with killing it. This is a campaign. The first thing the NRF is going to do is call, not Capitol Hill, but local retailers. The NRF will broker phone calls between Mom and Pop retailers and their representatives to put 'extreme' pressure on the congressman to vote a certain way (e.g., "I have been in business in your district for 20 years. I'm hanging up a sign in my window 'tomorrow' about how you are killing the local community by voting for bill X. I'm also going to the local Rotary Club and we are going to discuss how you have turned your back on your constituents!"). Believe me, congressmen listen to these calls, and they will have no idea is was set up by the NRF. This is extremely common. Also common are email campaigns (less effective) and 'fly-ins' where an association will get, say, 10 local store owners to fly to DC and complain to their representative for an hour. As you might imagine, this is also extremely effective. At your local level, you should try this if you want something in your city changed, it will very likely work.
A very common thing a legislator will ask a lobbyist for is 'cover'. Asking for cover is asking a lobbyist to sway public opinion on an issue. This is also fairly common. Believe it or not, there are 'media advocacy' companies that will set out to sawy social media in favor or against an issue. I don't know how they work exactly, but they have their hands in everything, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, 'definitely' Reddit, all of them. A trade association will hire an agency to 'paper' an issue. So the agency will scan, say, Reddit and whenever issue X comes up, the agency will start commenting with "Well this article is total bullshit because X" and upvote himself with other zombie accounts. Same with Twitter, same with Facebook. I didn't believe it until it was shown to me by my relative awhile ago. Its extremely expensive, but extremely effective.
This whole industry grew out of SOPA/PIPA legislation some years ago. It was a watershed moment, when lobbyists and legislatures simultaneously realized the power of organized social media. Media advocacy is 'expensive' and the people that work there get paid big time. If you can do this, I highly recommend you explore the field.
That's basically how it all works.
You talking about all the hoopla over Citizens United? I remember that case pretty well. Citizens United was decided based on a first amendment framework which supersedes congresses power to legislate.
You’d need a constitutional amendment to reverse CU and there’s no way that’s happening. Even so, it’s unclear that an amendment to overturn CU would be a good idea. If you actually read the decision (and let’s be honest, 99.99% of people have not), it’s a good piece of judicial thought and reasoning. Even the ACLU thinks CU was a good piece of jurisprudence.
(You can read the case here) CU was a major decision that impacts a ton of things, including the upcoming SCOTUS battles over net neutrality and ‘digital first amendment’/‘the right to post’ arguments.
This was the gist of it: individuals have first amendment rights. No argument there. Two people, working together, collectively have individual first amendment rights and as a group they have a right to expression. Same with 4 people all the way up 400,000 people, etc. So we can agree that groups of people working together have a collective set of first amendment rights. This concept already has a long and detailed history in the US; for example during the civil rights movement, people tried to shut down the NAACP/SPLC/SBLC/etc., by attacking them on an institutional level. SCOTUS (rightfully) said ‘Lol. Nice try, but no’.
So then take a step back: groups of people organized together under a common purpose have first amendment rights, we should all agree there. But isn’t a ‘company’ from a mom and pop restaurant up to Google and Amazon, simply a collection of people organized for a common goal? Just because a company is for-profit, it doesn’t mean that the government should be free to restrict their speech.
There’s a lot of people that try to be clever and say ‘corporations are people’, but this willfully misses the point. The real point is that corporations are simply a collection of people and those people have basic civil rights, so a group of people also has those same rights. Restricting political speech by the government simply because a group of people are pursuing profit doesn’t pass the ‘strict scrutiny’ test that all impingement to first amendment must pass. So SCOTUS struck down the FEC law.
It was a good decision. Keep in mind the alternatives: whatever the ruling was in CU v FEC was also going to be applied to groups you might care about, such as NAACP, EFF, Sierra Club, etc.
Now what about ‘commercial speech?’ Commercial speech falls into a weird category called ‘intermediate scrutiny’ where companies do face some restrictions but are largely free to say what they want. The important part is that CU v FEC specifically ‘only’ covers political speech. Commercial speech just wasn’t part of the debate.
At the end of the day, look at why people get upset at CU v FEC. It’s always the exact same argument dressed up slightly differently: “somebody is going to say something or believe in something I don’t like!” It’s always, “but Amazon is going to oppose Medicare for all!” Or “that power plant is going to advocate for coal!” People that fight against CU want to use it as a way to suppress speech they disagree with. That’s precisely why we have a first amendment and why it’s so important.
Any legislative act to reverse CU is going to be judged against the fact that it’s actively stripping first amendment rights from a group. Any judicial review by SCOTUS is going to be framed as the court stripping rights from people. People clearly want to argue that CU is bad, but pretend you are arguing before SCOTUS: what’s your legal theory behind why certain groups of people should have their speech suppressed? There’s not any really good arguments.
Tretiak
If you know you know, if you don’t you don’t.
3d ago
Finkelstein is a first rate scholar of the region who’s recognized as such. Destiny is an idiot who thinks he’s on the level because he can print out Wikipedia pages. He got treated exactly the way he should’ve been.
Tretiak
If you know you know, if you don’t you don’t.
3d ago
Dude. If you go into AP high school classes and ask the boys there, the last breast they ever touched would be in a KFC bucket.
Tretiak
If you know you know, if you don’t you don’t.
3d ago
That’s why I said ideal world. I was anticipating precisely that objection.
Tretiak
If you know you know, if you don’t you don’t.
3d ago
I’d been looking for a particular pair of men’s, blue Stacy Adams for years before finally coming across a brand new pair that was just my size once on eBay. I instantly bought it despite it being on the pricier side of things, specifically for the reasons mentioned. Directly on their website they’d long since been out of production.
Tretiak
If you know you know, if you don’t you don’t.
3d ago
If you’re pursuing the religious vocation, then it makes sense to me. With the exception of Paul and Barnabas as prominent figures in the church, tradition suggests all the apostles were married and thus couldn’t completely devote their lives to God.
Tretiak
If you know you know, if you don’t you don’t.
3d ago
Because generally that relationship is inversely proportional if you’re a smart kid.
… And anyone who understands how babies are made can make use of sodomy, fellatio, and coitus interruptus.
So butt sex, blow jobs, and the pull out method? See this is why every generation thinks it was the one who invented sex, once you start talking about things this way.
Tretiak
If you know you know, if you don’t you don’t.
3d ago
I think in an ideal world if you choose to not have kids, you forfeit your right to social security; since you depend on others and successive generations to fund your retirement.
They have to be. People have to contend most immediately with what’s right in front of them. Even with foresight the tendency to remain idle is difficult to overcome, because why address things that aren’t presenting a problem? The solution I’ve always had for this isn’t to think 10 years in the future, it’s to think about the big picture in general.
People who don’t have kids because they “aren’t prepared” to have them don’t take stock of the fact that you can almost never be prepared for it until it happens. “I’m too immature,” well guess what, you’re about to grow up really fast now. Sure there’s always finances and other things to work out, but when it comes to family planning, there’s far too much expected parents happen to overthink.
Tretiak
If you know you know, if you don’t you don’t.
3d ago
If there was a glut of people in the rhetoric or philosophy department that could handle themselves well in this kind of debate they'd be able to make a splash in the debate scene, which is fairly open.
William Lane Craig has been doing this his entire life. That’s what debate is. Destiny understands zero about debate, because the fool doesn’t [and probably can’t] read academic literature. Norman Finkelstein trolling him was always hilarious to watch.
Tretiak
If you know you know, if you don’t you don’t.
3d ago
By fashion management are you talking about the retail side or brand management? I’d imagine luxury and even mid-tier brand managers understand the trends and forces quite well. On the outlet side of things, I can see how they’d be suffering.
Tretiak
If you know you know, if you don’t you don’t.
3d ago
The recent updates to Gemini that I’ve experienced have felt like night and day compared with the iterations of maybe 3-6 months ago. It seems to parse and select for data that’s relevant to what I ask it without losing context as easily. It’s getting better at handling edge cases too, but it’s still imperfect.
Tretiak
If you know you know, if you don’t you don’t.
3d ago
You can already approximate some unique experiences in modern VR, although I’ve never tried it. I’m still waiting for the day law enforcement gets involved when someone decides to make a sim that allows you to smoke crack and generate the psychological state of getting high without actually doing it. When the day comes though for the kind of thing @Primaprimaprima is pondering, it’s not going to be a pleasant one in one respect, because human beings are going to have to rethink so many things about what we actually are.
Clearly he’s preparing for hyperinflation.
More options
Context Copy link