site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3050 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 16, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

If I wanted to cover all the obvious blind spots of the revolutionary period of the United States what books should I read?

I found Thomas Jefferson's selected writings very interesting but I'm wary about my ability to interpret certain things given how little I know about the other Founding Fathers or knowledge of what pressing political questions would have been at the forefront for him while he was writing (beyond what can be gleaned from the writings themselves).

I would recommend looking for digitized versions of contemporary newspapers, focusing especially on the pseudonymous letters to the editor that were a very popular form of political debate at the time (there are tons of letters "from a Connecticut/Virginia/etc. Farmer" written by local elites arguing over the political issues of the day. Luckily there are a lot of non-profits out there who exist for the sole purpose of making this kind of stuff available for free online, so hopefully it shouldnt be too hard to find.

When I was in law school, I took a seminar with Philip Hamburger called "Constitutional Ideas of the Founding Era," which was focused on reading exactly these sorts of oft-overlooked texts, along with sermons and some other pieces of "common" writing. It was absolutely fascinating, and I was shocked by how incredibly radical and open-minded our forbears were. There seemed to be no preconceptions about how things should be done, and citizens were openly debating things like whether constitutions or governments can ever be legitimate at all, in the major newspapers of the day. They were arguing about whether the Quakers should be allowed citizenship or not because of their pacifism. All kinds of wacky stuff. It really gave me a new appreciation for how human the founding generation was, and how, in many ways, the elites who we learn about in school were just as divorced from the ordinary citizen and their concerns as elites are today (apparently, literally the only thing anyone cared about in the 1780s was debt relief, which I don't remember being more than a footnote when discussing the Articles of Confederation in school). I might still have my old course reader lying around somewhere if you're interested in some more specific suggestions.

I might still have my old course reader lying around somewhere if you're interested in some more specific suggestions.

I'll take a few suggestions for sure, thanks!

In light of some recent discussions, I have a question about GDP for people with better economic knowledge then me. In particular, I'm thinking about the comparison between "clean" source of energy vs "unclean" source of energy in terms of gdp changes it causes (it doesn't need to be energy, could be food or whatever). I've heard the claim before that GDP does not properly price in externalities, but as far as I can judge, it's even worse than that: GDP makes externalities seem positive!

I'll set up a very simplified example to get at what I mean. Assume two groups of each 10 people, let's call them the cleanies and the dirties. Both groups are mostly subsistence farmers so we ignore almost everything except food. Unlike real-life subsistence farmers though, they put up all their food on a shared market so we get to accurately assess their generated food with a GDP. The cleanies do "clean" farming that generates no externalities and each generates one unit of food, so they generate a GDP of 10. The "dirties" generate 10 units of food with only 5 farmers, but the other five are collectively hired by the farmers to clean up the externalities to the degree that it is bearable and getting 1 unit of food in return. The collective GDP is then 15 units, despite living standards being worse since the externalities are too expensive/impossible to perfectly clean up entirely (these uncleaned externalities are the usual "externalities are not priced in" that is often talked about). As far as I can see, neither per capita corrections nor PPP corrections change anything about this.

Am I misunderstanding something here?

Yeah, it's just a miniature version of the broken window fallacy, where it's claimed breaking windows generates more economic activity - the farmers hire the cleaner with money they'd spend on some other service, and the cleaner spends work-time he'd spend on some other task. And even if the cleaner wasn't going to spend that work-time on another task, the cleaner then has extra money, which he spends on some new service...

This is captured in Bastiat's essay That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen, where the fallacy's name comes from.

Note that this is just an econ approximation - maybe the farmer was going to save that money for 30 years, maybe the cleaner was poor and the farmer gives him money instead of walmart so overall welfare is improved, but it explains the average case.

i think usually people cleaning up externalities would otherwise be doing something else to produce GDP in the economy so the issue is usually not so bad in practice. also, in practice how GDP is calculated might not include some cleaning externalities. GDP is based on final goods otherwise you could just increase GDP by infinitely splitting production into smaller steps. some externality cleaning is going to look like an 'input' to a final product.

Is anyone of the opinion that even honest, non-coercive casual sex is immoral, for secular reasons? I think I share a common preference among men that I’d rarely pass up on a hookup with an attractive woman but would probably not date a woman long-term who has slept around too much (“too much” is probably decided on a case-by-case basis and there are other factors involved). I can see how that’s hypocritical in one sense. And according to my own value system, I’m denigrating the value of women I have no long-term intentions with but other men with my shared preferences might. But a certain libertarian perspective also says “whatever is honest, legal, and uncoerced is ethical” and men (including me, probably) will just have to learn to settle later in life for women with a higher body count than they deem acceptable.

I'd fuck just about anyone attractive and female without an STD, and so would most men.

Personally, when it comes to relationships, I'm not that fussed about bodycount, but then again I evaluate myself by Indian standards, where having had more than a handful of steady boyfriends before marriage time is a cause for opprobrium.

Isn't this an extremely common religious view? It's exactly what many a Catholic priest or Orthodox rabbi would say to you.

Hypocrisy is something to be aware of. It's a fact of life and one of the necessary copes, I'd say, but it does not generally endear you to your peers and it is therefore, on some level, antisocial behavior.

I don't think the average modern secular man is capable of judging a woman's bodycount well, at least provided he lives in a city, is dating someone over 21 and can't do a full background check with childhood friends, classmates, college friends etc. A lot of the women I know who've slept around a lot had like one three or six month phase of sleeping with a large number of men in a single summer or study abroad or college semester or gap year or something when they were 19, even people who knew them quite well might not know the full extent unless they're very close female friends, who probably aren't going to spill to her new boyfriend.

So to me, the logic for many men would be something like :

"Unless I become a very trad Mormon (or equivalent) and commit to dating and trying to marry a 19 year old of good provenance (which, by the way, is very hard as a Mormon/Orthodox Jew/Tradcath etc if you're over 22/23 and didn't grow up in those traditions), I will probably have very little way of knowing what my wife's real bodycount is, and (if she's somewhat intelligent and it's high) she'll probably only tell me what I want to hear".

It's kind of like the "have you ever fucked a hooker?" question for men asked by their girlfriend/wife. Unless he thinks she's trying to set up a threesome with an escort, there is literally no reason for him to answer this question with a 'yes', whatever the truth. Women are mostly smart enough to know what men want to hear on the bodycount question and will lie where necessary accordingly. Maybe it's better, then, to convince yourself it's less important? I don't know.

While I can't quite bring myself to call casual sex immoral, I can definitely stand on terming it anti-social and/or degenerative to society.

First, two major starting assumptions:

(1) The reasons people commit murder in all non-nomadic societies across epochs can be roughly grouped into three broad areas: Money / resources, social standing or prestige, and sexual partner access or exclusivity.

(2) The Judeo-Christian theory of marriage, which has strongly influenced secular marriage laws in western societies, is concerned with regulating sexual activity to ensure more couples are starting more families instead of a very, very few percentage of men impregnating everyone, leaving much of their progeny to fend for themselves and, if the local community is small enough, getting to really thorny issues around incest and inbreeding in just a few generations. Long term monogamous pair bonding that produces above replacement level births is the best way in humans have come up with for building long lasting societies that persist over multiple centuries if not longer.

Any personal sexual strategy that ignores the first assumption (why murder?) and is directly in opposition to the second (marriage is good and we should be marriage-like even if we aren't doing the vows/ring/contract thing) is degenerative at the societal level even if it is well managed at the individual level. I think a really useful analogy is hard drugs like heroin or even cocaine. Why isn't there a sincere decriminalization / legalization movement for those drugs the way there is/was one for marijuana? Is it so hard to imagine people "responsibly" using cocaine / heroin in the privacy of their own homes? Sure, if they use it and then go out and engage in other behavior that's illegal or antisocial, we arrest them for that secondary behavior. But what's so wrong with just the use itself?

Well, the standard argument (that I agree with) goes "it's just far too high of a risk that even infrequent use of cocaine and heroin will result in extremely damaging behaviors." This doesn't even touch on the much stronger risk of addiction and the secondary degenerative behaviors that go towards supporting an addiction.

Sex is extremely powerful and therefore poses some real risk - again - at the aggregate societal level. There are certainly people out there who can find casual sex partners who understand that they are casual sex partners and both parties (or more than two if you're into that ;-) ) can leave the experience feeling fine. But, in my estimation, the vast majority of society cannot, especially over repeated trials. This brings up one important additional point related to body count.

Hyping female virginity is odd in a society with technology that allows us to determine paternal identity. No one who recommends low body county for women says this (in the West) because "how do we figure out who the kid's dad is?!?" No, the argument - often poorly formed - is that there is something suspicious about a woman who sleeps around with multiple guys even if both she and those guys are up front about the casual nature of the relationship. She is seen as somehow less valuable because of these repeated liaisons. Let's throw in a trope (because culture wars are fun) that our hypothetical female in this scenario also has some trendy tattoos, several piercings, and rotates through hair-dying phases. Why is this woman both often so compelling yet so reviled? Risk. She is signaling her high risk tolerance - preference even. Well, why is that bad? People are allowed to make their own risk assessments of their partners. True, but an overall higher risk tolerant society, especially at the point of family creation, will start to see higher base levels of instability. This doesn't guarantee fast and radical demise of the society as a whole, but it can absolutely raise the base levels of violent interpersonal conflict.

(A quick aside: Substitute in a Andrew Tate kind of fellow bedding random models at will for the female in our above scenario if you like - I don't think the responsibility in casual sex is anything other than equal across sexes).

So, what to do about casual sex in a society that now absolutely condones and even actively supports it? The first and obvious answer is to simply reject it. I'm not saying "virgin until marriage" but I am saying serial monogamy (with relationships lasting in several months) or celibacy / masturbation. In terms of finding a good partner, explicitly ask them about things like body count, perspectives on casual sex etc. If they adhere to the default line of "people shouldn't be judged on their sexual history!" well ... you have your answer, don't you?

From a policy level, I'd love to see massive bonuses for earlier family formation and marriage (i.e. you get huge tax incentives to get married and procreate before 30) ... however, I feel like this is legally really hard to do and would get into a whole strong of Supreme Court cases. There are more intelligent legal minds on The Motte who can comment. A general trend to support more sexual modesty would help, but that's not going to happen. Structured dating is something I'm sort of optimistic on. There's a tacit acknowledgement that the big dating apps create a tyranny of choices for women, and a desert/starvation feedback loop for most men. I've (anecdotally) seen a trend back towards social-group expansion dating where women won't go out with someone who has been "endorsed" by a friend. This also carries with it the added friction of not wanting to be that girl/guy in the friend group who just bounces around from bed to bed. (A fun question to ask related to this is "Sure, people shouldn't be judged on their sexual histories ... how many friends do you have who are avowed sluts / cocksmen?")

Wrapping up where I started, because casual sex can be consensual in a way that murder/rape/theft cannot be, I don't think I can quite file it under "IMMORAL.That's a paddlin" but I think it's fair to say that regular casual-sex-havers are probably not who we want to model all of society on and should be viewed as a sort of 1970s swingers kind of eccentric or outcast.

I think I share a common preference among men that I’d rarely pass up on a hookup with an attractive woman but would probably not date a woman long-term who has slept around too much

I'd pass on even a hookup with an attractive woman who has had too many partners. Some character traits or behaviours lower a woman's attractiveness so much that she just drops below a critical level for me. For instance, if I see a woman being cruel to a child, she could look like Emily Ratajkowski, and I still wouldn't want to fuck her (or maybe at that point it wraps back around to hate-fucking, I'm not sure)

But yes, I think that casual sex unethical, because "casual sex" is for men what "friendzoned orbiters" is for women. In both cases only one party gets most of what they want: sex for men, emotional intimacy for women. In most real cases of friendzoned guys and girls having casual sex, no one is making it clear that the relationship has no chance of going further, both these situations are fundamentally consequences of power imbalances.

I'd pass on even a hookup with an attractive woman who has had too many partners.

It's usually not that easy to tell. There are indicators of particularly extreme promiscuity but I've often been surprised.

In both cases only one party gets most of what they want: sex for men, emotional intimacy for women. In most real cases of friendzoned guys and girls having casual sex, no one is making it clear that the relationship has no chance of going further

This particular argument doesn't convince me at all. If you go home with a man after a first date that wasn't particularly romantic you should be aware there's a risk there won't be a second. If it's happened to you a few times, learn to say no or lower your standards to find a man more likely to commit. The friendzone example is even less convincing, are women supposed to suss out which of their male friends are romantically interested in them and preemptively reject them?

Is anyone of the opinion that even honest, non-coercive casual sex is immoral, for secular reasons?

I'm not a secular person, but yes. I value meaningful forms of joy, the more meaningful the better. Strong drugs are generally immoral because the opportunity cost (the chance you could be working or calling a friend or something) far outweighs the benefits (meaningless physical pleasure). Similarly a casual relationship is less meaningful than a committed one and so is immoral to the extent that it keeps you from pursuing a long-term partner. I also think making sex an intimate thing is meaningful, so casual sex somewhat decreases the intimacy of any eventual long-term relationship, meaning that casual sex is immoral even when it is definitely not replacing/delaying a potential long-term relationship.

There's no need for a "moral" justification when it comes to preferring chaste women for long-term relationships. Potentially wifing up a hoe gives most men a sense of male ick, just as short, low status, sexually unsuccessful, physically and/or mentally weak men give women the ick.

It's not like women feel compelled to "morally" justify their preferences. At most when they get cornered, it gets rolled into Merited Impossibility/Celebration Parallax: "No, women aren't shallow and don't care about things like height, but if we do it's only because all you stupid manlets deserve it." Men should internalise that, like those of women, their preferences are legitimate in and of themselves.

Interesting. It's long been the case that short guys have to be remarkable if they want decent partners. This being said. I've observed two clusters of promiscuous women. The first isn't satisfied with herself or her life, and seeks casual encounters to numb an inner pain. The second is an adrenaline junkie and generally plans things well. The second type frequently does pretty well in life: loving, put together husbands, kids if they want them...The first type doesn't do as well.

These aren't moral questions, they are aesthetic questions. There's nothing wrong with preferring one type of woman for one type of relationship and a different type of woman for a different type of relationship.

Of course, women get to have dual preferences too, much to the despair of the red pill community.

I'm not sure I buy it, but I've heard the argument that sex before marriage is bad for lifetime satisfaction. Kind of like delayed gratification.

Immoral? No.

For a woman, a bit dumb and indicative of low self-esteem? Kinda. The sex will almost certainly be rubbish. All she's getting out of it is the fleeting gratification of being desired. Most of the women who make a habit of this are struggling with something sad, and they won't necessarily get over that sadness just because they enter a long-term relationship.

I know there are exceptions! I've met and love some of them. But it's a rule of thumb.

For a woman, a bit dumb and indicative of low self-esteem?

This nails it (cf. my 20-something self). I don't think morality comes into play so much as just poor decision-making. I'd say most woman grow out of it eventually, so it seems odd to judge one for her past.

Yup. 's why body count matters only if your are on the exponential climb part of the curve, for all genders and preferences.

If someone is out there FUKIN and you are propositioning them to consider a picket fence/dog/2.5 kids, you are making a stupid mistake.

Likewise, if you take someone looking for said picket fence to pound town then fuck off, you are a piece of shit.

I'd say most woman grow out of it eventually, so it seems odd to judge one for her past.

Should we also ban women from mentioning their college degrees, since it's something they did in their early twenties as well?

Most do grow out of it, yes. But we can't assess potential mates on their futures. Her past is all we've got.

How about their present? How do they act now? How do they treat you and others?

When I met my husband, I never asked him about his history. I just observed how he behaved in our relationship. Seems pretty simple to me.

I don’t disagree with you, really. If a woman went through that phase, grew out of it, and seems well-adjusted with good judgment, there’s nothing to worry about.

If she spent considerable time racking up a statistically unusual partner count, it’s less likely to have been a phase and more likely to be an enduring aspect of her personality. Especially if she was only cured of her low self-esteem by meeting her current boyfriend.

It’s all in the details.

Edit: I’d compare it to binge drinking. Risky behavior, can be a product of social pressure, often associated with underlying psychological distress. Plenty of people do it in college, then quickly grow out of it. But some people have such a long or egregious history of bad judgment with alcohol that it is relevant information when assessing a potential mate.

So, a secular red tribe view- fornication is part of dating but women definitely shouldn’t be too promiscuous and how much is too much depends on how badly you want to date her, also casual sex is morally suspect but what can you expect from men offered the opportunity? Not an uncommon view among the red tribe.

But most hookups don’t start with the man being propositioned, it’s usually a result of them consciously pursuing a woman.

Does anyone know of a good history of NRx, discussing the emergence of different strains of thought and where they’ve settled?

I suppose much of the culturally right-wing, nationalist branches were integrated into the alt-right and national conservatism movement, but what of neocameralism and the libertarian ethos of competitive governance? Peter Thiel, Patri Friedman, charter cities, etc.? Yarvin simply writes too many words for me to bother reading outside of certain exceptional pieces.

I vaguely remember there was a progressive author who wrote about the development of the very online / ‘alt’ right and while it was riddled with very stupid culture warring I seem to recall that as a straightforward history tracking various Twitter accounts, obscure blogs and online personalities it had some value.

Angela Nagle - Kill All Normies?

Yes, it's a polemic (mainly against centrist progressives, actually) but I recall it having a lot of good stuff about how obscure figures and movements kind of coalesced into the online right pre-2017.

I learned about it from Scott. But that was ten years ago, and didn’t cover any of the real expansion.

Yeah, I’ve read Scott’s two pieces from back in the day. I thought the piece you linked to was great, while the anti-NRx FAQ wasn’t his best work and did a disservice by not attacking his steelmanned version. Regardless, these pieces are nearly a decade old. I’m wondering where all the neocameralists went (Prospera?) and how the movement developed since then, considering it’s now basically disappeared as it’s own entity.

I don't know a lot about this topic, so I want to see if it makes sense: instrumental convergence is often posed in AI alignment as an existential risk, but could it not simply lead to a hedonistic machine? There is already precedent in the form of humans. As I understand it, many machine learning techniques operate on the idea of fitness, with a part that does something, and another part that rate its fitness. Already, it's common for AI to find loopholes in given tasks and designed aims. Is it a possibility that it would be much easier for the AI to, rather than destroying the world and such, simply find a loophole that gives it an "infinite" fitness/reward score? It seems logical to me that any sufficiently intelligent entity, with such simple coded motivations, would have almost a divergence, precisely because of self-modification. I suppose that the same logic applies to a system that is not originally like this, but turns into an agent.

Essentially: given the possibility of reward hacking, why would an advanced AI blow up the Earth?

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?

Trainspotting would have been a much happier movie if Renton and friends were able to do their reward hacking without fucking over everyone around them.

I do admit that I'm assuming that computers will not be similarly stupid lol but yes, I definitely thought a little about a comparison with humans.

Essentially: given the possibility of reward hacking, why would an advanced AI blow up the Earth?

If you consider that it might want to disassemble the planet to produce computational megastructures that make reward value go brrr, then from the perspective of a humble human who needs the biosphere, the difference is rather moot. You can always use more storage to hold larger values.

I'm not sure if that's the case. Acquiring more storage for that end means that you're, in the short-term, decreasing the reward value. It's functionally no different (eg. 100/110 and 90/100 have the same arithmetical difference). What's the incentive to go beyond a maximum? That would be like "over-completing" a goal, or, rather, setting a new goal- why would it expand its own laundry list? For example, an AI which has the goal to solve chess, has no incentive to go beyond that, if its reward value is maximum when it does solve chess. The machine is only incentivised to please this, it doesn't have any other prime motivation like long-term thinking. As a simplistic comparison, it's kind of like why very few projects aim to take control of the world.

You never specified that the AI in question had a "maximum" reward value beyond which it is indifferent. If it simply seeks to maximize a reward function, then more resources and more compute will obviously allow it to store bigger values of reward. If it hits a predetermined max beyond which it doesn't care, further behavior depends entirely on the specific architecture of the AI. It might plausibly seek more resources to help it minimize the probability of the existing reward being destroyed, be it by Nature, or other agents, or it might just shut itself off or go insane since it becomes indifferent to all further actions.

For example, an AI which has the goal to solve chess, has no incentive to go beyond that, if its reward value is maximum when it does solve chess. The machine is only incentivised to please this, it doesn't have any other prime motivation like long-term thinking. As a simplistic comparison, it's kind of like why very few projects aim to take control of the world.

You ought to pick an easier goal than solving chess. To dig down the entire decision tree would take colossal amount of resources, maybe even more than exists in the observable universe. Consider what that might imply for other goals that seem closed-ended.

You never specified that the AI in question had a "maximum" reward value beyond which it is indifferent.

Isn't that kind of implied if it can't store beyond a certain number? Like I said, acquiring more compute to store bigger values of reward is functionally the same as decreasing its value of reward.

If it hits a predetermined max beyond which it doesn't care, further behavior depends entirely on the specific architecture of the AI. It might plausibly seek more resources to help it minimize the probability of the existing reward being destroyed, be it by Nature, or other agents, or it might just shut itself off or go insane since it becomes indifferent to all further actions.

Yes, that's my central question. My argument is that it need not do anything close to apocalyptic for preservation. I am interested in the other possibilities, like "going insane", since I'm not sure what would happen in that case.

You ought to pick an easier goal than solving chess.

Ah, it's just a cliche example. However, I think that you can realistically weakly solve it, nonetheless. You're right that it would take an enormous amount of resources. My point is that it was a close-ended goal- but if you can't even measure the fitness properly for solving chess due to the complexity, and it would potentially ealise the futility, I'm not sure how ultimately relevant it is?

Isn't that kind of implied if it can't store beyond a certain number? Like I said, acquiring more compute to store bigger values of reward is functionally the same as decreasing its value of reward.

I struggle to think of any AI architecture that works the way you envision, using fractional ratios of reward to available room for reward instead of plain absolute magnitude of reward. I could be wrong, but I still doubt that's ever done.

Yes, that's my central question. My argument is that it need not do anything close to apocalyptic for preservation. I am interested in the other possibilities, like "going insane", since I'm not sure what would happen in that case.

It's impossible to answer that without digging into the exact specifications of the AI in question, and what tie-breaker mechanism it has to adjudicate between options when all of them have the same (zero) reward. Maybe it picks the first option, maybe it chooses randomly.

However, I am under the impression that in the majority of cases, a reward maximizing agent will simply try to minimize the risk of losing its accrued reward if it's maxed out, which will likely result in large scale behavior indistinguishable from attempting to increase the reward itself (turning the universe into computronium).

My point is that it was a close-ended goal- but if you can't even measure the fitness properly for solving chess due to the complexity, and it would potentially ealise the futility, I'm not sure how ultimately relevant it is?

Why could you not measure the fitness? Even if we can't evaluate each decision chain in chess, we know how many there are, so a reward that increases linearly for each tree solved should work.

using fractional ratios of reward to available room for reward instead of plain absolute magnitude of reward.

How does it follow that it's a fractional ratio? The only relevant fact is whether the maximum value has been reached. How could it even compare the absolute magnitude, if it can't store a larger number?

However, I am under the impression that in the majority of cases, a reward maximizing agent will simply try to minimize the risk of losing its accrued reward if it's maxed out,

I agree with this, but based on my knowledge of speculative ways to survive until the end of the Universe, few involve turning it into computronium. Presumably, AI would still factor in risk.

Why could you not measure the fitness?

I mean that, in practice, it could never be realised, for the reasons you mentioned- as in, achievement beyond a certain value would be impossible, since you can't strongly solve chess within current physical limits.

Please excuse me for asking this uncomfortable question. Given the nature of affirmative action and other similar dynamics on both medical school acceptance rates and then hiring decisions on the labor market, how much racism is rational for a patient to exercise in selecting a surgeon? While it seems like the racial hierarchy of talent is pretty clear, are the gaps small enough that a patient should simply prefer a risky surgery be performed by someone from one of the higher achieving groups? Or are the gaps so large, a patient should do everything in their power to make sure they have a higher achieving group member performs the risky surgery? Obviously a direct individual comparison between available surgeons would be ideal, but often not possible for patient to accurately assess.

IIRC more complex and difficult surgeries get put on capable white men anyways, while less capable doctors(who tend to be more black) are given more routine tasks, to the point that black doctors as a whole have far below average patient death rates. So you should probably assume that A) medschool is an effective filter for basic competence and B) the existing medical system does a good job of assigning physicians to tasks matching their skill level.

In India, all else being equal (or rather equally obfuscated), I'd certainly do my very best to avoid being treated by a doctor who was SC/ST/OBC or the myriad other categories that entitles them to our equivalent of AA. It would take them listing objective markers of performance like test scores (that weren't weighted for AA) for me to reconsider them.

I'd assume the situation is about as bad in the US, certainly to the degree that unless I had more objective assessments, I'd take the doctor less likely to have been pushed through.

Should you lose sleep over it if you don't have a better choice? Probably not, but you should still make a good effort.

In 2020 the average black person accepted to med school had an MCAT around the 62nd percentile. Whites were at 83 and Asians were around 86. Also men score higher than women but the difference is smaller. Personally I would only ever go to a white or asian doctor given the choice but it's really up to your own risk tolerance.

https://medschoolinsiders.com/pre-med/surprising-med-school-stats/

What strange, unique, personal, harmless design flaws does your body carry? On balance, looking around, I'm extremely satisfied with my body, but over time I've noticed...some minor problems.

-- My ears clog up with wax, any time I get a cold or my seasonal allergies act up. No method of removal solves it reliably other than using those drops from the drugstore several times.

-- I feel like I can't really spit with any velocity. Seriously, I don't get how people spit on other people to start a fight, any time I spit it just kinda...falls? I can't get much forward momentum on it. I guess I could spit on somebody's shoes if I leaned over, but that seems like a bad idea before a bar fight?

-- I have seriously flat feat, the "barefoot" shoe trend is great for me. I'm still frustrated that it's gone away, I basically buy Amazon knock-offs of shoes that Merrill and New Balance used to make. I see a shoe that promises arch support and I groan. Supposedly flat footed soldiers were once frowned upon or something? But idk why, other than shoe limitations I've never had a problem.

How about you?

Flat feet. Unusual physical flexibility, although this is slightly harmful all things considered. Male pattern baldness. High cold tolerance; I sweat easily.

I get bloody noses in dry climates. If I lived in a dry climate without access to Vaseline I’d have daily bloody noses.

My bones and especially my skull are noticeably harder and thicker than most peoples, I've gotten comments on xrays and my weight being a bit too heavy for my volume.

I am hypersensitive to bright lights, but only in respect to the total amount of light I am seeing. So if it's too bright I can close one eye and the discomfort goes away.

I look like a gorilla; my arms are too long and my torso and neck are way too wide/thick. I have a great photo I like to break out for laughs of one of those "You may think gorillas look like people, but not so!" standees at a zoo where you are supposed to stand in front of it and go "wow gorillas are big!" but I perfectly overlap with the fucking thing.

And I have that wax thing too! It's supper annoying, I've had to have my GP irrigate my ears with hydrogen peroxide solution 3 times to remove a blockage that was messing with my hearing and balance.

A gene for congenital lactase deficiency.

It's harmless for me since I don't actually have congenital lactase deficiency, you need the gene from both parents for it to possibly actually trigger in a baby... but my infant son does have it, and it made the first weeks at the hospital very scary for us (it means serious lactose intolerance right from birth including for mother's milk), until they found the proper diagnosis and started feeding him lactose-free formula. After the first year passes, which is pretty soon, it's just going to be a equivalent to normal lactose intolerance and easy to deal with, but if they didn't have the modern scientific knowledge about this, he would have died miserably in few weeks from birth.

There's only, like, 60 known cases of congenital lactase deficiency in the world, 50 of them in Finland, and the Finnish cases are connected to two specific, fairly low-population regions in Finland, one of which happens to be the one where both me and my wife have some roots.

You can also try warm water. It works just as well as hydrogen peroxide for me, and doesn't tickle my ear.

Irritable Bowel Syndrome

harmless

Either way, you have my condolences, nasty little disease

I don't actually know if I have IBS, afaik it's an exclusionary diagnosis.

But my symptoms are mild enough and varied enough that I think pinpointing a problem is going to be hard. Symptoms are;

  • Alternating constipation and diarrhea (psyllium fixes the constipation)
  • Very mild abdominal pain before bowel movement.
  • Inconsistent stools. Sometimes narrow, sometimes thick/regular. Sometimes flat, sometimes round.
  • Gas
  • No blood or weight loss. I did have a few drops of blood a few months ago but that was after severe straining (probably a fissure or hemmoroid) and dissipated within 2 days.

I'm meeting a gastroenterologist soon nevertheless, because WebMD keeps on telling me I have colon cancer and the resulting panic (which I should be able to but can't avoid) is probably causing a negative feedback loop.

Given that you don't have weight loss, and that you're not middle-aged, I highly doubt it's colorectal cancer. Still, you're doing the right thing in seeing a GE, since you might need an colonoscopy to really rule things out, including more benign conditions.

I feel like I can't really spit with any velocity

I think this has to be a 'you never learned it' thing? The velocity of spitting comes from, I think, collecting at the front of the mouth, building up air pressure behind it by squeezing the mouth/from the throat, and releasing it. It's hard to imagine a physical/structural reason you couldn't do that.

"barefoot" shoe trend

Check our Xero (prio/hanna being my favorites)

My ears produce wax at an accelerated rate, but since I normally have no qualms about putting q-tips inside my ear canal, I can usually take care of it. (If putting them inside my ear is bad for me, why does it feel so fucking good??). Ok, I managed to give myself a nasty middle ear infection once, but that was because my mom cheaped out and bought me the cheapest Chinese ones, which ended up detaching and blocking my ears for months.

I can't put contacts on by myself or remove them because my eyes flutter like a coked up butterfly when anything gets too close, and I can't suppress it no matter how hard I try. Shame, because I like wearing contacts.

My teeth ache when I'm looking at hot women while simultaneously craving them in the distant sense, it never happens when I know I can sleep with them. It's been the case for me ever since I was a middle schooler looking at the hot MILFs, and it feels a little like sensitivity from biting ice cubes. I don't even know what wiring had to get crossed for this to be the case.

I can't do rolling rrrrrrs, as seen in French.

My teeth ache when I'm looking at hot women while simultaneously craving them in the distant sense, it never happens when I know I can sleep with them. It's been the case for me ever since I was a middle schooler looking at the hot MILFs, and it feels a little like sensitivity from biting ice cubes. I don't even know what wiring had to get crossed for this to be the case.

Is this genetic immunity to pornography?

Doesn't happen when I look at porn, as far as memory serves.

It happens primarily when I look at a real woman who also happens to be unattainable.

It's also not particularly painful, so I doubt it would dissuade the average coomer.

when I look at a real woman who also happens to be unattainable

I don’t know who this non-stereotypical attitude disappoints more, me or your Desi brethren.

A general anti-simpery adaptation. Likely a fitness-enhancing trait in the current environment.

I'm about as anti-simp as you can get while still entering into a relationship with women, I don't think I've ever not split the bill on dates, and I wouldn't even consider it unless I was like an OOM richer and dating someone significantly poorer.

Er, the takeaway might also be that I'm a congenital cheapskate, but I'm sure the two coexist!

My right thumb is double jointed - it can pop forward in a weird and unexpected way.

I can disjoint my jaw out of its socket and back in harmlessly and painlessly.

I sweat like a motherfucker - I am constantly sweating, even at 65f. As soon as humidity rises above 40% or so it becomes noticeable.

Do you sweat mostly from the armpits, and perhaps even the palms? You can get the sweat glands lasered away if it's more than a mild inconvenience.

Armpits yes, palms no. I don't think I'd want to stop sweating TBH.

I'm sure that removing all sweat glands would adversely affect your thermoregulation, but if you're sweating all the time even at below body temperature, you might benefit from a partial removal. Hmm, I don't know if that's routinely offered as a service as opposed to all or nothing, but I'm sure they could work something out if you asked!

  • When standing neutrally, my feet are angled outwards by around 15 degrees or so. Everything about them works and feels fine like this. I'm pretty sure at least one health teacher and/or medical professional has told me that it's a normal and common individual variation. But it's surprising to me how many gym coaches and other such lower-level professionals have acted like I'm doing it on purpose and I should be able to just stop and point my feet straight. I can point them straight ahead, but it feels highly awkward and unnatural, with a constant tension to move back to my "neutral", and I don't think I could keep them like that while doing any significant activity. So the behavior of my actual feet/legs is just fine as-is, but the behavior of certain people about it is highly irritating.

  • I'm pretty sure my nose runs about 10x more than most people in all situations. It tends to be particularly severe around temperature changes, like eating temperature-hot food or going from a cold outdoor environment to a heated indoor. Keeping boxes of tissues around is pretty much a must.

  • A possible advantage or corollary to the above, I basically never get sick. The last time I recall being sick was around 15 years ago, and I only noticed when I came home from work and went to go up the stairs of my place at the time and found it much more difficult than usual, enough to make me think something was wrong besides just being tired or sore. I actually felt fine again the next day, though I took the day off of work anyways as a precaution. Aside from that, nothing. I'm one of a relatively few people I know who, during the entire course of Covid mania, never felt sick a single day, despite taking few to no precautions and breaking most of the rules.

My feet and arms do that as well. I had to push back on gym coaches trying to put my feet into a "correct" position for the exercise and to refuse any EZ-bar exercises they suggest.

My feet used to do that. Then I tried horse stance with toes pointed straight forward. After only doing it a few times my feet started pointing forwards. The body is very strange.

1.) When I was younger, I would start bleeding from the belly button like once every few years. It would last for a week or two, and then stop. It wasn't painful and it didn't seem to be infected.

I eventually went to a clinic about it. They said apparently I had a tendency to form little granulomas in there; that it would be possible to surgically remediate, but not really worthwhile.

I got into better physical shape, and haven't had a recurrence of this in nine years. I guess it just stopped. I theorize that maybe having lost a certain amount of weight, I eliminated any tendency for friction there. I was never actually so heavy, topping out at 220 at my very heaviest; but still, it seems logical. Everything really does get better as you increase fitness.

2.) I have a very short tongue. I have never known anyone with a shorter one. It is a little bit surprising that I can speak totally normally.

3.) In situations that lead to sweating, I sweat a ton. Huge volumes of sweat. I don't sweat at rest, and I don't have sweaty palms. But when I engage in athletic endeavors, I always out-sweat the competition.

One that my wife is fond of making fun of me for - completely unprompted by any remark about the integrity of my knees, unrelated to the nature of the visit, a physician asked me if I have Osgood-Schlatter disease. I did have tendonitis from basketball when I was a kid and I have experience IT band issues from running, but on the whole, my knees work pretty well despite me putting them through their paces. They're pretty stupid looking though, so there's that.

I am completely unable to whistle. Like, not even a little bit. All I succeed in doing is spitting and making a non-whistle sound.

I can't whistle either, but I don't know if I'm actually incapable or just haven't managed to teach myself how to do it!

I have the wax thing. When I first moved to London it was great, my local NHS GP would flush them every month for free with a syringe. Clearly this service was taken advantage of by the populace because about a year ago they said they now ‘discouraged’ booking an appointment solely for this purpose, so now I pay £75 to get it done on occasion at this chain clinic that has branches all over London.

I am the ultimate example of a Jewish wristlet (actually I say Jewish, but I have no idea if that’s a stereotype or just something we say in our family). I have the thinnest wrists I have ever encountered on an adult except for a 4’9 half-Laotian I met. All my family have thin wrists and ankles.

I hate that my brother and I have thin wrists. I'm sure it's much worse for men than it is for women, or at the very least I have never heard a man complaining that his girl is a wristlet.

Despite naturally being tall with broad shoulders, I hate that we never manage to build solid forearms and wrists. It's like the easiest thing to flaunt too, and I get pissed off when people who have never worked out a day in their lives have naturally thicker ones than me.

It's strange how different people can be. My thin wrists are the only part of my body I actually like. I'll often focus on them to the exclusion of anything else to calm down when I'm feeling bad about myself.

Are you a guy? I've never heard a guy say they were happy with thin wrists before.

Yes I'm a guy, as much as I may wish otherwise.

You can flush your ears yourself, but there's a minor risk of passing out from vagal stimulation, so you're better off just having someone else do it for you. Certainly not something that really needs a doctor!

Try not to use excessively cold or hot water, a little warm is ideal, but you should be able to pour it on your skin without discomfort.

I misread vagal for a second there and did a double-take.

Sorry, carry on.

Thin wrists and ankles are features, not bugs on chicks though.

I’ve never heard of thin wrists being stereotypically Jewish, as opposed to alleged things like (at least for men) larger noses, Jewfros, and somewhat greater hairiness overall.

I got the whole shebang: the nose, fro, wrists, the waterproof coat of fur. It's funny on me because the rest of me is fucking huge; so I'm only slightly taller than I am wide and have to by shirts a couple sizes too big to fit my neck, but I have delicate looking little lady wrists.

Doesn't seem to effect performance and there is no saving my ascetics, so I'll take it!

I am the ultimate example of a Jewish wristlet (actually I say Jewish, but I have no idea if that’s a stereotype or just something we say in our family).

Interesting, that’s not a stereotype I’ve ever personally encountered about Jews; I also have very thin wrists (I call them “little bird wrists”) for which I blame my mother’s genes.

Suppose you know a secret about something.

And that secret would be profoundly distressing and traumatizing to a person if said person learned about it.

And there are no practical benefits to that person learning about it (ie learning about it would not incentivise said person to act in a way to protect themselves, or to do something beneficial in any way)

Do you think it would it be ethical to tell the secret to that person or not? What conditions are relevant in deciding whether to tell them or not?

Would they want to know?

It’s probably not ethical to lie about it. That’s not an obligation to share, unprompted.

I agree with @RenOS. Overthinking it won’t help anyone. Consider responding honestly if asked, but otherwise, saying nothing.

Ironically I increasingly think that these kind of thought experiments are net negative to pose, i.e. making people think about them causes them to make real-world decisions that are worse by most reasonable metrics than if they haven't thought about them. The reason is that they regularly make assumptions that are almost universally untrue, in this example the claim that we have perfect knowledge whether it has practical benefits to the person. Some people will then over-apply their conclusions from these thought-experiments into the real world (in this case, keeping secrets by finding lazy, convenient excuses), and some people will smell that something is funny and go to the other extreme (in this case, practising impractical radical honesty).

In the end, the extremely vague "Think about how you think this particular person will react to you telling them the secret, whether that reaction is good by what you judge their own moral position to be, whether that reaction is good by your own moral position and to you worth the hassle, how likely they are to find out regardless, how likely they are to find out you knew, how they'll react when they find out that you knew but didn't tell them, and so on" and further weighted by things like your own risk tolerance will lead to the best decisions. This is obviously quite bothersome to do and explains the appeal of simple approaches like radical honesty or "it's none of my business", which are also the best starting points for less important secrets which aren't worth making a huge calculus of (but which also runs the risk of falling prey to lazily call everything unimportant).

I find your judgement very pertinent. In real life there is alway a unique set of conditions to be taken into consideration, and intuition is often better than a pre determined set of rules.

Still I find thought experiments of an ideal environment, while not applicable, are good to understand our own thoughts and values. Just have to be careful.

I'd try to find a way to ask this hypothetical question in a group that includes the person, then abide by their answer.

My own answer would be that I prefer unhappiness over ignorance, but I'd hate to impose my preference on others if I could figure out how to avoid risking that.

Motte: In my opinion the compassionate thing to do is to mitigate any suffering and withhold the truth in regard to any interpersonal interactions. Bailey: I would even take this to a grander level and say that certain Big Lies can be ethical as they allow humans to cope with almost unbearable sorrow.

Agreed, Noble Lies are a thing for a reason. Humans must rationalize and believe in fictions to escape the horror of knowing your own death is coming.

A good friend of mine found out that a mutual friend’s father had a long reputation as a rapist in the country they were both from. It’s likely his wife / said mutual friend’s mother knew, but had never said anything to her daughter. My friend told her, and it ruined her relationship with both parents and her wider family, and with my friend. Nobody was ever brought to justice or anything. Some things should stay hidden. But it’s impossible to advise unless you provide at least some detail.

Conversely, 30 years ago an in-law of mine who worked with disabled children was accused of inappropriate behavior with one of them. No one involved law enforcement, not much came of it, and the family never spoke of it again. I met this in-law much later and always considered him pleasant. No one ever breathed a word.

3 years ago, he was arrested for some pretty revolting behavior with a disabled preteen. It seems clear that he did in fact do what was alleged. It was at this point that the offender’s brother admitted to the offender’s son that there had been previous allegations.

The offender’s son had to reckon with all the nights he’d dropped off his own kids for sleepovers at Grandpa’s.

If someone is a rapist, that can be very relevant information for those who regularly interact with them.

In this case it was more of a Harvey Weinstein type situation except with very poor women who had come from abroad, I think if it had been more like your example the 'right thing to do' changes pretty dramatically.

It does depend on the risk he still poses, for sure.

That is an interesting case. But I am thinking there are benefits in her knowing it: there is a good chance she would find out later in a worse way, or that she could have been in danger, or that her knowing it could help bring about justice. Can't say for sure. But what if we could reasonably predict that none of these things would happen. Would it still be a good thing to tell her?

Knowing a secret is a burden, I think that's why we usually want to tell (especially if it's not our secret). But part of carrying that burden is, I think, that we use our discretion with whether we reveal the secret to others. "Deserves to know" is more complicated than it seems, we discussed this maybe a year ago here with regards to infidelity (a lot of the reason cheating partners confess is because their own burden is too much to bear, it has nothing to do with the partner they are humiliating and disappointing). There are no clear answers, but it made me think more about whether these things should be shared. If someone does some DNA testing and finds out their elderly parent's father wasn't who they thought he was, should they tell them (assume both biological and legal father are dead)?

Generally yes I would tell them. The truth has no value if it cannot be distinguished from lies. The only reason the person is not currently distressed and traumatized is because they trust that that bad thing has not yet happened. If whatever happened is relevant to them then they should know about it.

Very consistent and straightforward approach - though some may call it controversial. Thanks for sharing your opinion

Hmm, I would say that if the secret is like "AI will kill everyone and there's nothing you can do to stop it", don't tell her. If the secret is like "your father was a murderer" or "you have terminal cancer", then do tell her, because it's "her business" in some sense. Another factor is how much knowing the secret will eat at you over time, if the person is a close friend of yours, keeping this secret forever will be a great burden and you should tell them, if it's just an acquaintance, then not so much.

If you think you're good at acting and deception, you could even indirectly ask for their opinion on the matter, all you have to do is invent a new secret with all the relevant characteristic about some distant friend, then ask them whether you should tell your distant friend.

Under the facts as you state them, no. Because you have not mentioned any benefits to anyone from disclosure. If an action only results in harm, then it seems to me that the action is wrongful. Your hypothetical would be more interesting if you posited some benefit from disclosure.

That is a pretty straightforward way to put it, and probably a good approach. But I want to challenge it. Some people want to know things even when it does not lead to anything good - such as a cheating partner, or that they are adopted, or they were conceived by sexual violence. Their life may be worse after, but they do not wish they stayed ignorant instead. Is that a good reason to tell them?

Yes, that's an example of a benefit: respecting the preferences/personhood/whatever of the other person. And of course there are other benefits to some of them, such as knowing they are adopted, which might get them access to info re susceptibility to genetic disease.

It depends on the secret I would say. There is a sphere of things which people have a right to know about from friends and things which might not strictly be their business.

(ie learning about it would not incentivise said person to act in a way to protect themselves, or to do something beneficial in any way)

For one I'd say that's only your judgment on the situation, which may not align with the judgment of the person who received that information. Secondly I'd say that a person's interest in knowing information can extend past the practical benefit, e.g. finding out you were adopted may cause a lot of distress without providing you with much useful knowledge beyond what genetic diseases run in your family (which as I understand it can be learned through direct testing), but we still generally think it's fair to tell adults this information.

What conditions are relevant in deciding whether to tell them or not?

There are outs for this kind of thing. If you think they would lash out at you for telling them then they're mostly just a victim of their own short-tempered character. If they're having a particularly hard time in their life then perhaps now might be the best time to tell them.

The being adopted case is an interesting one, we in general assume that it is not ethical to not tell someone they are adopted - maybe partly because we think the person will eventually find out anyway, so better tell them now.

True, kind, necessary. Needs at least two. This secret is unkind and unnecessary, so it fails.

Telling someone they are adopted would be true, probably not kind, and probably not necessary - it could be necessary in case their genetic history is relevant, or if there is a good risk they would find out in a more traumatic way. But assume a case where it is not reasonable to assume the necessity of it. Would it be ethical to hide that secret?

Am I having a deja vu, or have you asked this question before?

Repost since i did not get engagement in the other thread

Listening to a news broadcast recently, I noticed the country Turkey is now called Turkiya

This didn't seem to be part of a broader trend of using non-anglicised forms (the same news report referred to Sweden and Germany, not Sverige and Deutschland). Why Turkiya, why now?

The change happened last year as a nationalist PR move by Erdogan, partially motivated by annoyance at having the same name as a dumb-looking bird and partially by a sense of pride in being able to force foreigners to use their endonym. More broadly, there does seem to have been a slightly higher rate of country name changes in the past few years (Turkey to Türkiye, Czech Republic to Czechia, Swaziland to eSwatini, and Macedonia to North Macedonia).

Typical insecure nationalist thing. This will have no other result (after should popularity boost) that people all over the world, even ones who do not care about Turkey at all, would call the country T-U-R-K-E-Y with great relish to the end of time. Because Erdogan does not have any power to "force foreigners to use their endonym".

Chad move would be to embrace brave and noble Turkey as your national bird, build giant statues of majestic turkeys in Turkish national costume elsewhere, paint all airplanes in turkey colors, put traditional turkey dishes in every restaurant and bask in the free name recognition. No one knows what is "Türkiye" and no one cares. Everyone heard about the bird.

Yes, I know that Benjamin Franklin never proposed to make the glorious gobbler American national symbol, but he should have.

They're going to struggle to get anglophones to use an umlaut when our alphabet doesn't have them.

That hasn't seemed to have harmed Häagen-Dazs, so I am not too worried.

Probably because they're not demanding that people actually use their fake Danish diacritics.

Wasn't Macedonia's change a result of international politics rather than internal? I.e. Greece took issue with it?

I recall that being a longstanding issue.

Also there was a funny part with the previous name and UN seating, which is alphabetical.

Macedonia was officially known as "The Republic of Macedonia". They wanted to be seated under "M".

Greece insisted they should be called "The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" and seated under "Y".

The compromise was to seat them under "T" for "The".

Very little foresight here in not changing their name to "AAA Expert Macedonia 2021" -- I guess the leaders are too young to remember the Yellow Pages or something?

The leadership of Turkey specifically requested a name change in a bunch of international organizations, UN, Olympics, Council of Europe...

UK government has a helpful list of changes to how it calls certain countries

These changes can be confusing, I confess that I still have to catch myself when I start saying "Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" rather than the newfangled "Libya."

So, why does the Western multi-national coalition want al-Assad dead or dethroned? Since the WMD narrative fell apart for Iraq and I believe the chemical attack narrative was a false flag by rebels, there has to be something more. But I never see these rationalist or rat-adjacent spaces talking about it.

It’s accepted truthiness among the alt-right and conspiracy spaces that Gaddafi was killed for trying to make a pan-African state backed by a gold Dinar. Is it something like that?

I thought I sent this response yesterday, but…

Why do you think the chemical attacks were a false flag? I would expect that to be less likely than the regime, which is known to target civilians, known to have the relevant weapons, and known to control the most likely launch sites.

Anyway, if you’re going to oversimplify geopolitics, might as well go all the way: Assad is on the naughty list. The most important predictor for Western attitudes towards a given dictator is whether he looks amenable to negotiation. Assad got a reputation for not playing ball.

I could get into the “he said” / “they said” of it all, but for me the bottom line was the timing. Trump was planning on pulling out. That’s exactly the wrong time to do a chemical attack..

The response to the Douma event was American cruise missiles hitting an airbase after clear warnings to evacuate. To his credit, Trump walked the fine line between retaliation and no response, and the feeling among his fans on The_Donald was that he knew it was not Assad but had to do something after having mocked Obama’s “red line” backdown.

  • Syria is a Russian & Iranian ally.
  • They've been refusing a Saudi oil pipeline to Europe for a long time.
  • The governing tribe is made up of Alawite Muslims. There's a longstanding conflict between the Alawites and the Sunnis. The Saudis feel that the Alawites are heretics unjustly ruling over their Sunni brothers.

So really it's an assortment of reasons, but the US & allies wanted al-Assad gone and Sunni leaders brought in.