domain:academic.oup.com
I don't think that's possible at scale. You could get smarter, more self-aware people to do this, but most people aren't either one of these things. In fact, I think bots designed to grab your attention implicitly makes this point. The bots will grab the people's attention, so "Make better choices" isn't really feasible for the population.
The Left's attempt at trying to "end" racism by shifting blame onto the history of white people while also censoring their opinions made things worse, so I'm not advocating for going back to that, but the algorithm and its recognition of our tendency to gravitate toward controversy should maybe figure out better ways to redirect the energy people have for hating others.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
22hr ago
Mostly I was being cheeky and don't have a solid, well-thought-out definition of what it should mean.
I don't think it requires a naïve or writ-in-stone ranking, but one should, if trying to be principled, be able to articulate why they may rank principles a certain way and explain what may seem like unprincipled exceptions to someone else. In my experience not many liberals that claim to be principled are terribly effective at communicating reasoning behind their indifference to certain offenses or otherwise selectiveness of care.
WandererintheWilderness
22hr ago
a professor doing that for something a university doesn't like will often get at least a slap on the wrist for misusing their connection to the university.
I grant you that this is probably factually true, but I think they shouldn't. I disagree that highlighting one's credentials within an institution entails that you are speaking in that institution's name. Sometimes you might be trying to give that impression - but there is a difference between "speaking as a representative UCLA, it is our institutional belief…" and "here is my personal opinion; and by the way, you should listen to me because I teach at UCLA", and the latter should not be verboten, or otherwise under the university's control in any way.
"I'm a UCLA professor" is a factually true statement for Tao to make about himself. It's an outrageous free-speech violation to try and stop him from stating that fact wherever and whenever he believes it to be relevant. The university shouldn't have the right to (hypothetically) prevent him from pointing out that he has those credentials to help his case. This holds even if 299 other UCLA professors speak up as a group of private individuals, all of whom happen to be able to truthfully point to their UCLA credentials as a reason why the public ought to trust their wisdom.
Frankly, UCLA as an institution should not be in the business of having official political beliefs. The idea that any number of UCLA professors signing a politically-motivated letter could be interpreted as "representing the university" should be absurd, because the notion that "UCLA" could make a statement about Trump should be laughable - should be immediately recognizable as a category error.
throwaway-7742
22hr ago
I'll become your friendly neighborhood Shrimp-Man and the FDA can't stop me.
DelendaEst
22hr ago
I think the logic largely goes like this:
- The solution is just to jail the blacks who are committing all the crime and loudly say its a bad thing and then do nothing to the non-criminals
- The left has made clear that is not an option, as long as the levels are disproportionate doing anything about the problem members is not allowed, and loudly decrying them is absolutely verboten.
- Fine then, if the existence of a black population implies a large level of criminality and disfunction which we are not allowed to address then the problem is the existence of the population.
Its the same way that most people are not immigration absolutists but if the left and center refuse to deal with them problem and indeed insist on making it worse then I guess I'll vote for the right, even though they will go much further than I'd prefer. Or if the right insists on full abortion bans then I'll vote for the left and their up to the moment of birth plans, even though I'd prefer reasonable limits.
If the left was open to fixing the actual problem then throwing the baby out with the bathwater would be less popular. Though the fact that in this case the non-problem population is also very loudly offended by the idea of solving the problem makes it worse.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
22hr ago
I would expect the same if someone said blacks were animals or Jews were parasites or anything else.
Well yes, say anything within 10 degrees of the first and you'll be jettisoned immediately and the company will put everyone left behind through endless punishment sensitivity training. Reaction to the second depends if it was before or after 10/7.
The owner of a private company has editorial control over their company.
This attitude is what turned so many Mottezans away from being principled on this topic, noticing the massive gap between what people say they will do and how they behave in practice. Turns out very few people are really bothered by racism or sexism or discrimination in general, there's several populations that are totally fair targets. Alas, "your rules applied fairly" is not a stable point and assumes people are honest about what their rules are supposed to be.
For a public university? There should be none
The Harvard kid was more famous but it happened at NC State too. No consequences for the university afaict, and I haven't turned up the kids' names to see if they went elsewhere.
And if you think about it, groups like private Christian/Jewish/Muslim religious universities wouldn't be able to exist if they were legally bound to the same standards as public ones since they would not be able to select off religion as they do.
Are they allowed to select by religion? Hmm... looking at FIRE's page I may have been remembering that CLS v Martinez case, that student groups at public universities can't. Vaguely recall some other exception but maybe not.
I can name two pretty big examples of the top of my head, the targeting of evolution and the targeting of climate science.
I'd consider the the evolution complaint petty in comparison, but fair enough.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
22hr ago
It's maybe a depressing take, but I'd bet that aging and age-driven mortality is hugely multivariate as the result of at least a dozen factors that have all been locally optimized under a "needs to work at least one lifetime" metric. One could imagine a poorly[1] engineered car hitting it's warranty limit and immediately having all the wheels and seats fall out at once, without a simple "one weird trick" existing to maintain it indefinitely. I'm more hopeful for a bunch of weird tricks, though.
- "Poorly" here meaning not the car I want to own. But in practice, engineering things to last "just long enough" is often technically impressive, especially in other contexts. Boeing used to test it's new wing designs to failure to check that they weren't overbuilt (read: could be lighter).
Ioper
22hr ago
He is a teen and he is having tantrums and meltdowns in school? That doesn't sound like a case of a school overreacting to normal male behaviour.
Whether something this is "normal to him" doesn't really matter. This is unacceptable behaviour and he will have a really hard time if he doesn't learn to manage this.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
22hr ago
The premise is this: If we grant that the cultural right is "winning" right now, what's the strongest possible argument that this is leading to some genuinely bad outcomes for the country?
I think your premise is dubious, but assuming it's true, mostly what I see is a victory for accelerationists.
Everything Trump is doing now means when Democrats come back into power, they are going to try to reverse everything he did and then set the dial at eleventy and make sure no MAGA ever again. The MAGAs currently in power, of course, know this is what will happen, so they're doing their best to make their changes difficult or impossible to reverse, while hitting eleventy themselves.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
22hr ago
What he chooses to do with his reputation and credentials is up to him
When you're using your credentials and writing as a representative of the university, you are representing the university. He didn't sign it as "Terry Tao, regular schmo" or "Terry Tao, Fields Medal Winner," he signed as "Terence Tao, UCLA professor along with 300ish other UCLA professors."
The university didn't complain because they supported the cause, but a professor doing that for something a university doesn't like will often get at least a slap on the wrist for misusing their connection to the university.
First, culture war topics only in the culture war thread.
Second, this is not nearly enough effort even for a culture war thread, and it arguably violates our rule against consensus building (who is the "we" the recognizes "general facts" here)? "What will London look like in 30 years" is probably okay by itself in the Small Questions Sunday thread.
Third, a brand new account leading with white hot culture war material as its very first post? That's not getting through the filters, sorry. Maybe try participating in some existing conversations and get a feel for the rules and norms first?
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
22hr ago
· Edited 22hr ago
Yeah, I think that looks like a pretty good mirror image, and the US Left would be quite justified in deporting him.
(Whether it would be a good tactical move is another question. The visibly pro-Right immigrants in the US can probably be counted on one hand, so chances are the Right would just see that, take the implied deal and later expel pro-Left immigrants with far less restraint even if it means all the other three pro-Right immigrants get expelled too)
(Why do you even think I would have personal preferences in favour of one of the tribes here? I'm a European who previously spent time in the US on a student visa, and if I went again and my motteposting somehow came to the attention of the DHS it would almost certainly be the Right kicking me out for the anti-Israel component of it if nothing else)
bolido_sentimental
22hr ago
How do you feel about your personality, currently? Do you make friends easily, or have many satisfying relationships with other people?
I'm not implying that you lack those things, I'm just curious about your self-perception of them.
RenOS
something is wrong
23hr ago
As a guy, my experience is also that nobody actually wants men to show their real emotions, least of all publicly. Male anger or horniness is scary. Crying or anxiety is pathetic.
The good news is, this includes the men themselves. At least from my PoV, the toxic masculinity talking point is to a large degree the inversion of reality; there is a grain of truth, but there is also toxic femininity that tries to get men to open up more, expecting them to show emotions that accommodate the feminine worldview, in a female-friendly way, and then punishes them for having wrong feelings the wrong way, aka their actual male feelings.
And I mean, I get it, I do. They have a school to run and can't be spending all their time on the neediest kid. But I do worry at the message that he's getting. "It's not okay to be anxious." "It's not okay to get angry" - or at least not in a way that anyone can tell. Keep those feelings bottled up, young man, and only express them in socially acceptable ways. Otherwise, grit your teeth and get with the program.
So, yes, unironically this. It's not necessarily about simply ignoring or bottling up your feelings - it's that managing your own emotions is your own business, or at most to a minor degree that of your closest confidants who are giving you helpful pointers. If strangers or acquaintances can read your feeling in a way you did not intend, you screwed up. Some amount of screwing up is perfectly normal. And contrariwise, deliberately showing even anger is occasionally the correct course of action for the purpose of whatever your goals are. But losing control of your emotions as a man and openly & fully showing them to anyone but your closest friends will always be unpleasant for everyone involved (and often even then).
On the topic of managing emotions, anger is easy; Sports or competitive games generally do perfectly fine, depending on his inclinations. Anxiety is more difficult, and usually includes thinking hard about what you are really anxious about, and either convincing yourself that it is irrational or finding mitigation strategies, and then ideally exposing yourself to the thing you're anxious about, so that your strategy is proven correct (in reasonable limits, of course).
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
23hr ago
What predictions does he make that you think are wrong?
Arctotherium says this regarding AI:
For example, much writing on AI accurately points out how reliant the US AI industry is on foreign talent, with around 70% of high-end researchers being foreign born, and then condemn the Trump administration for hostility to immigration. But they typically fail to point out the tiny numbers involved.
We’re talking maybe 10000 people total in the entire world, with annual fluxes into and out of the US, including during the open-borders Biden years, in the hundreds. It is entirely possible to recruit as much of this talent as is willing to move to the United States while cutting skilled immigration by 99%, and we should. OpenAI technical staff and people Mark Zuckerberg is willing to pay a hundred million dollars to recruit are not generic H-1Bs or foreign students, and conflating the two is dishonest.
ControlsFreak
23hr ago
Yup. It's internecine war on the left. The foundational group desire is atheism. This part is the sacred, in Robin Hanson's terminology. There is a long history of trying to wield science as a sword for atheism, but in doing so, one runs headlong into pesky intellectual challenges. The core of this conflict is how to deal with them.
One common attempt is to just deny that there's any problem to be solved. The charitable view is to observe that such folks have mistaken methodological constraints for a metaphysical theory. But you sort of can't keep it from bubbling up, so you have to keep denying, keep refusing to talk about it. For example, since mathematics is so useful to the scientific method, it is natural to desire to include some grounding there. But, like, how does that work? What is the philosophy of mathematics, and how does it fit into the scientismist view? Let's not talk about it.
On the morality front, it has left most of the left just grasping for a naive form of meta-ethical relativism. When poked, there are often half-hearted appeals to game theory. I think that both sides of the internecine war do feel like this is their best grounding, but it's sort of interesting that one side just doesn't actually understand even the most basic components of what game theory is about. That's why they're surprised by the most basic concept in game theory - unilateral defection. The other side, the wokies, grok unilateral defection. They grok that once it has been accepted that it is declared not possible to reach the truth of a matter via rational argumentation, when the only thing left is game theory, one can simply move to brainwashing, shaming, canceling, deplatforming, intimidating, and maybe even having struggle sessions or genocides.
The thin line of hope for scientism on these issues was, "Since we have no clue what else to do, but we're trying to prop up science as the answer to all the things, I guess what we'll do is just ask the scientists to answer everything for us." That ran hard into unilateral defection. When the scientists are the new priesthood, it's pretty straightforward (and unsurprising to religious folks) to see that a simple strategy is to just corrupt the priesthood. The biggest difference between the corruption of the academic priesthood and the ratheism/atheism+ schism was that the former took time and was done with most people somewhat unaware, while the latter was quite sudden and visible. Neither is surprising; it's just unilateral defection, fighting the sectarian war by the only means remaining once one abandons intellectual rigor in favor of scientism.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
23hr ago
This just looks like you are deliberately misinterpreting OP's point. Surely some random "factory company" in mid-Michigan is not where the "smartest, most ambitious people from all over the world" congregate to give America a strategic advantage. Instead, if we are talking about Indians, it's going to be the likes of Google, Microsoft and SpaceX. The Gemini whitepaper, for example, has plenty of Indian names on it.
The problems prospective workers at those companies (or people who may or may not enter as students, and then later would naturally go on to work there) face are not "anti-black racism on the internet" either, but onerous checks and arbitrary rejections in the visa process and at border controls and the perceived increased probability that you will be deported over a random tweet. Now, a red-blooded red triber will for sure be cheering if some Indian Googler who retweeted an "America is helping Israel establish neocolonial apartheid" tweet gets unceremoniously deported, but it is unlikely that any damage to American interests from that retweet is greater than his contributions to American tech dominance, and other potential Indian Googlers who would never even have retweeted such a thing will only see "our countryman was deported for capricious reasons".
Since these people seem to make it an axiom that they should never have their funding cut, despite there very obviously being many serious issues with their whole enterprise (which they regularly lament), I am disinclined to weigh their opinions very heavily, shiny medals notwithstanding. Perhaps I'd rather the administration use a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer, but a scalpel isn't really an option, so sledgehammer it is.
Throwaway05
23hr ago
I mean I worry that I get to say this because I have a high degree of financial security and that we shouldn't asking others to make the same mental commitment.
But it should be talked about.
Instead we see a lot of people with no skin in the game cheering and negatively impacted people struggling to admit to themselves that it wasn't what they wanted or not worth it.
NYTReader
23hr ago
My impression is that almost everyone on the Grok and OpenAI teams are either the children of immigrants or people who came to the US as the children. This seems to be the case for almost all of our very highly successful first and second generation immigrants.
If they leave their country for a better life once, they can do it again if the situation changes.
Lots of these people are second or third generation immigrants by now. They're Americans.
In my opinion, US immigration seems to be broadly work. If Arctotherium had made these predictions 30 years ago, he would have been proven wrong. Sure, we can reduce immigration, but what we do re Chinese and Indian immigrants seems to be working very well.
quiet_NaN
23hr ago
In lighter news, the FDA has taken it upon themselves to improve shrimp welfare by calling on Americans not to eat certain shrimps.
The level of Cs-137 detected in the detained shipment was approximately 68 Bq/kg, which is below FDA’s Derived Intervention Level for Cs-137 of 1200 Bq/kg. At this level, the product would not pose an acute hazard to consumers.
Then why recall them?
Avoiding products like the shipment FDA tested with similar levels of Cs-137 is a measure intended to reduce exposure to low-level radiation that could have health impacts with continued exposure over a long period of time.
This is a weird statement. If you are concerned about radioactivity below 1.2kBq/kg, then why not have a lower threshold?
At the bottom of the page they state:
Consumers who have symptoms should contact their health care provider to report their symptoms and receive care.
Comedy gold. They should mention that the relevant health care provider for symptoms from a couple of 100 Bq of Cs-137 is your psychiatrist.
The steelman, from what I can tell, is that this is concerning not because of the dose but because it is unclear where the Cs-137 is coming from:
FDA determined that product from PT. Bahari Makmur Sejati violates the Federal Food, Drug, & Cosmetic Act in that it appears to have been prepared, packed, or held under insanitary conditions whereby it may have become contaminated with Cs-137 and may pose a safety concern.
Cs-137 is a classic mid-lifetime (T1/2=30a) fission product. Whenever you have an atmospheric nuclear weapon test or a reactor disaster, it will be one of the relevant radioisotopes.
In its decay, it also emit 660keV gamma rays, which together with its half-life make it a widely used gamma ray source.
Without knowing what exactly is going on, I see two main possibilities. One would be that the shrimps were fed contaminated food, e.g. freshwater fish from some lakes in Scandinavia. Per the FDA release, they do not believe that this is what is going on.
The other plausible explanation I can think of is contamination with Cs-137 used for food irradiation. WP:
Conversely, caesium-137 is water-soluble and poses a risk of environmental contamination. Insufficient quantities are available for large-scale commercial use as the vast majority of Caesium-137 produced in nuclear reactors is not extracted from spent nuclear fuel. An incident where water-soluble caesium-137 leaked into the source storage pool requiring NRC intervention has led to near elimination of this radioisotope.
Food irradiation is safe for the food if you take great care to not get your radioisotopes into your food. This is typically easy because you can encase your source in a few millimeters of stainless steel, and plenty of gamma rays will still make it through. If you get any radioactivity into your food during irradiation, then something has gone terribly wrong. Given the ungodly amounts of activity involved with food irradiation, this is a major concern.
I admit that my knee-jerk reaction to the FDA warning was to think that an agency which warned about a dose which was a whopping 6% of its threshold had probably not been DOGEd sufficiently. On further reflection, I think that it is more like faintly smelling smoke suddenly. Not itself very concerning, but if you did not expect to smell smoke then it might be indicative that there is a worrisome problem somewhere.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
23hr ago
Oh, he wasn't totally cooperative today? He had an understandable reaction to being disappointed or anxious about something?
We're divorced because he couldn't reign in his emotions.
Many such cases. My advice stands, he must learn to stuff his emotions.
Primaprimaprima
I am trying so hard not to say the MBTI type of everyone I reply to
23hr ago
It appears that enough people have already reported your comments here that they’ve ended up in the report queue, which is very unfortunate. Those are clearly ideologically motivated reports; nothing you’ve said here is in violation of the rules.
Your presence here is highly valued, so I do hope that you feel encouraged to post here more often. You’re not the only Trump-critical poster here, so your arguments would find some support.
They've always been right that some people are racist. The steelmanned counter-argument is just that the cure is worse than the disease . Progressives themselves agree that pure racial animus alone is not that important, which is why they define it away via "racism= prejudice . Progressives can't be trusted not because racism doesn't exist, but because it's a blank cheque for a bunch of very stupid and/or illiberal policies.
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