domain:slatestarcodex.com
quiet_NaN
16hr ago
See my reply here.
Again, it is technically possible that they aided Reyes in raping the victim alone, then killed her, and for some reason decided to shield him (and only him) in their confessions by claiming he was not present. Perhaps he was a member of the illuminati, and the defendants who were afraid enough to betray their buddies were nevertheless more afraid of him than of a murder sentence, and had taken the steps to coordinate a false version of events -- which lead to them spending decades in prison -- so they did not have to implicate him.
Or it could be that Reyes is psychic and edited himself out of the memory of his accomplices after the deed.
Or perhaps a bunch of forensic experts formed a conspiracy to falsely exonerate a bunch of murderers and get them millions in restitution instead, and falsified the DNA evidence after convincing Reyes to confess. Perhaps they did it to make Trump look bad a decade later when he would start to become a political force.
Here is what I think likely happened. CP5 was a big, political case. Trump published his attack ad on the mayor. The mayor knew that he needed a conviction, and made it clear to the police that he wanted a guilty verdict. For a cop, this is the kind of case which will make or break your career. They found the likeliest suspects that they could find and convinced themselves that they were guilty, which was easy because it was in their personal best interests to believe it (as opposed to telling the mayor that they had been unable to find the killer). Confirmation bias did the rest.
They did not follow good epistemic protocols, like having different cops get confessions from different suspects, and then check the confessions for consistency, or determining if the suspects had perpetrator's knowledge.
In their mind, there was no need, because they already knew that they were guilty ("police instinct" and all that), and their job was simply to paint a picture which would convince any bleeding heart jury.
They very likely cut corners in the process, skipped legally mandated safety checks. Even if you are a cop who will mostly play by the book, this case was to important to leave it up to chance if the real, circumstantial evidence would convince the jury. So you 'forget' to give your suspect the Miranda warning. Perhaps you beat a few of them up to get them to confess, after all, these scumbags just murdered a girl, and you are not even breaking their bones. Or you prompt them with the same story which they should confess. Who cares if you find out in which order they raped her, the important thing is that you present a version of the story which will get them sent to prison, not contradictory confessions which will confuse the jury. Simulacrum level two, not one. Perhaps you even plant a bit of evidence to help justice along.
And they would have gotten away with it, too, if it were not for the fact that the boffins developed a new forensic technique which is far more reliable than any amount of confessions.
In a way, the case exposed the whole rotten underbelly of the US criminal justice system. I wonder how many other 'criminals' are still sitting in prison because the same dirty cops played the same dirty tricks on them. (While I believe that most convicts are in fact guilty, I also believe that US cops do not have a culture of good epistemics and calling out the ones who use illegal shortcuts to paint a nicer picture.)
The reason why every kid learns that the only thing you say when arrested is "I will not answer any questions and I want a lawyer", no matter if you are innocent or guilty, is because US citizens can not trust the police to be interested in determining the truth, especially if they are already detaining you.
The fact that they are still breathing is an affront to justice
Oh come on. Now every state that does not execute prisoners is inherently unjust?
daguerrean
16hr ago
Why is physically negative feedback taboo but other negative sensations are not? They are all just dolors, negative hedons, whatever you want to call them. I’m fairly confident that dogs might choose a small shock over, I don’t know, being refused access to a particular treat. In my mind if a dog would prefer it I struggle in understanding what makes it wrong other than the squeamishness and moral purity of the pet owner
daguerrean
16hr ago
Have you not encountered invisible fences? They are extremely common and widespread in my experiences and use shocks based on proximity to the fence
daguerrean
16hr ago
There is nothing wrong with using a shock collar. View the dog as a working animal, its job is essentially to perform as an actor contributing to his streams. In exchange it receives food, shelter and so forth. It seems like a fair deal for the dog, I see nothing wrong with this.
Pet owners online are some of the most deranged, toxic people I have ever encountered. They seem to view dogs and cats as our masters, that we must deliver them lavish accommodations and expect nothing in return. Suffice it to say I find this unreasonable. If a human is expected to have a job, so too can a dog.
TK-421
16hr ago
Probably true empirically but that doesn't mean you should therefore support those breaking the law*. Consider Prohibition smuggling gangs or drug cartels. You could frame them as supplying a product that consenting adults want to use and have a natural right to ingest. That is not untrue. But these laws were put in place using the pre-existing processes within a system that generally (albeit imperfectly) works to promote human flourishing.
We live in large, complex, diverse environments. It is true and unfair that there will likely always be some subset of laws that any given person doesn't agree with at some time. Becoming a civilized person requires acceptance of that fact. It is simply not currently feasible to allow each person to craft their own legal code that conforms to their individual morality. Many people fervently believe that idolatry is immoral - they cannot break into a Hindu temple to destroy statues. Many others believe that it's morally right to punch someone who could be characterized as a Nazi - that is still assault.
So even laws as broadly unpopular as Prohibition (or, hey, immigration) are legitimate to be enforced. Attempts to circumvent them should be policed and anyone using violence or other force against their enforcement is, even if they think the law is bad according to their personal "higher ethics", scum. I support the state coming down on them with significantly higher intensity and organized violence. This is not because helping people take a chemical or cross an imaginary line between countries is depraved, it's because they are chipping away at the machinery that drives organized, peaceful, advanced societies.
It's about results; morality ain't got nothing to do with it.
- Yes - Nazi Germany, the USSR, and many other examples of oppressive governments have and do exist. There is obviously some fuzzy line that varies by individual where a government is sufficiently oppressive that resistance, including violent resistance, is justified. No, there is no objective standard; this is the Politics department, the Physics classroom is down the hall if that's the sort of thing you're looking for. And no, just because that line exists does not mean that the United States government at any level is on the wrong side.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
16hr ago
A lot of the failure comes from the fact that European countries could not really fathom a guest worker program with NO route to permanent residency.
I'm pretty sure they existed within my lifetime.
Totalitarianit
16hr ago
Fair point. We just really don't like Hasan, so we need to find more reasons not to like him.
hydroacetylene
16hr ago
Beats dying before you get to it…
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
16hr ago
Cities in the sunbelt are hiring.
Yes, but then you still have to start all over on building up that pension…
cjet79
17hr ago
The constitution was a political document. The distinction you are making seems meaningless to me.
I'd describe the divide on preferred gun policy or preferred speech rights in the same way.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
17hr ago
America is really down bad if that's where people's standard is
It is indeed, no lol. This is what it now takes just to see that the law is enforced. For decades, we've waited for another option, and tried many, and nothing has worked. Things will continue to get more extreme until either the law is actually enforced or America rips itself apart.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
17hr ago
Seeing the many replies downthread, I'm reminded of two video clips I saw on Youtube sometime back.
One was one of several "highlight reel" compilations of Nov. 2024 election night coverage by various left-wing outlets (watching them go from confidence to doubt to cope to crashing out is hilarious), this one an all-black online show. At one point, the low performance of Dems with young men comes up, and one of the older women points out "Well, what do we have to offer them, except increased economic opportunity for everyone who isn't them?" (IIRC, the response was a half-hearted 'well, the other side is so evil we shouldn't have to earn anyone's vote'-type argument.)
The other was a short clip Shoe0nHead played from a left-wing Youtuber. This was a skinny, very gay young white man, and he was stumbling over his words trying to assert, in the most unobtrusive way possible, that there's actually something to the "male loneliness epidemic" — at one point he says "I'm trying to think of how to say this so my own side won't murder me" — and then his female guest (it might have been Taylor Lorenz) responds with "Well, the whole problem with the 'male loneliness epidemic' [eyeroll] idea is that it's an idea that centers men and men's problems."
(I also recall other lefty streamers making post-election comments about how, if you're a straight white male, that yes, the Left hates you; yes, Dem policies probably hurt you; yes, you'll probably do better with Trump in office than you would with Harris… but none of that matters, you have to vote D anyway. The Left don't have to earn your vote, they don't have to do anything for you — they are the Good Guys, and thus entitled to your vote. You have a moral duty to 'vote blue, no matter who.' When people aren't voting for the Democrats, that's not the fault of the party, it's the fault of the electorate; the party doesn't need to change, the voters do.)
Ioper
17hr ago
It's wild how you seem to think negative feedback has to include physical pain. Dogs are social animals that are easily trained without pain.
NullHypothesis
17hr ago
I think there is a significant difference due to which population gets impacted; prohibition impacts citizens, ICE doesn't. Certain rights are determined by whether you are a citizen of the country or not. I don't think it's inconsistent to want less freedom for foreigners than for fellow citizens.
please
17hr ago
The Supreme Court heard oral argument in Chiles v. Salazar yesterday, a culture war-y case about Colorado’s law banning talk therapists from discussing “conversion therapy” with minor clients.
The oral argument ended up hinging on a different culture war question: is strictly talk therapy – without prescriptions, shocks, clinical analysis, official diagnosing, whatever – inherently medical? I.e., is addressing “mental health” through conversation really “health” at all, or is it something far simpler?
Colorado admitted a priest or a life coach could have the very conversations that it was banning therapists from partaking in; why would the difference in title suddenly change the classification of the act itself?
Some arguments tried to say that talk therapy is medical conduct because it triggers a physiological reaction in the brain, but all speech has the capacity to do that – someone telling you they love you can release dopamine and oxytocin; someone telling you “gross, no” after you ask them on a date can create a crushing response; etc. And yet, speech in a general sense continues to receive protections that conduct does not.
Does “medicine” need to be something that physically manipulates and alters the body? Does medicine need to be something directed towards solving an illness?
I can see the argument that mental health as addressed through a clinical diagnosis and prescriptions is medicine. But I am struggling to understanding talk therapy as falling into the medical category, in part because much of talk therapy isn’t related to the prevention, treatment, or cure of mental illness – a lot of talk therapy is simply asking for help with a difficult relationship, achieving a deeper understanding of self, or venting to someone who is trained to recognize self-perception road blocks.
Taking the view that medicine is about preventing/treating illness, it would be especially odd to view conversion therapy conversations as medical – after all, society has moved past viewing same-sex attraction as a disease, supposedly. So why then would conversations about attraction be medical in nature in this context? Is it from a larger need for therapy to be considered health more broadly?
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
17hr ago
That just completely cedes the media ground to opposition agitprop.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
17hr ago
(Don't) Burn This Fucker Down!
A guy's been arrested for the Palisades fire. Note: link to an article from the Guardian, which I know is goofy, but the details are better in that article than in a few others that I pulled.
Of note:
After dropping off a passenger, according to the investigators, Rinderknecht parked his car and walked up a nearby trail, taking iPhone videos at a hilltop location while listening to a rap song whose music video included objects being set alight. He had reportedly listened to the song and watched its video repeatedly in the days before the fire.
First, I'm pretty stoked that the government went to what seems like a lot of trouble to find this guy. In fact, I can't remember if there was much reporting, at the time, on this being an intentional / negligent fire. This is tempered by the fact that this arrest was obviously only possible by employing the surveillance state to its fullest extent. People get squeamish about facial recognition technology, but using cellphone location data is both less "emotionally" invasive as well as more durable as a tracking mechanism. Maybe carrying around constant location trackers in our pockets is a bad idea?
Second, culture war angle (of course) - Odd and lonely uber driver dude sets something on fire while listening to rap music. Was it truly intentional? Maybe, maybe not. Negligent, yes. What's truly frightening however is that this is literally an almost literary manifestation of alienated male nihilism. Rinderknecht didn't shoot up a school / church/ political figure. He didn't disappear into drugs / porn / 4chan. He didn't commit suicide. He just kind of got pissed off one night and started a fire that deleted a whole section of a city.
We need to give the boys something to do. I've written about this before on the Motte. One of the primary tasks of human civilization has always been to manage, curtail, and, when necessary, punish the violent impulses of young men. War and famine did a lot of the heavy lifting for a while, and "frontierism" helped out towards the end (i.e. the idea that listless young men could at least try to find fortune in physically difficult locations. Not just "The West" but think also whaling ships, mining, etc.) But the world is fully mapped now, more or less. If you pack up your shit and hit the road, YouTube is going to be the same wherever you go. You can't get it away from it all when it's all in your pocket.
The necessity is in developing better pathways for young men to enter adulthood and develop a sense of self paired with durable external meaning. Some sort of religious or, at least, high-minded civic metaphysics is a necessary part of this. Young men, on their own in a truly atomized sense, turn into their own kind of decentralized stochastic terrorism. Stochastic chaos might be the more accurate term.
But this won't be accomplished by TikTok ads (lol) encouraging the boys to man up and / or talk to a therapist on BetterHelp (thank you for sponsoring this podcast, BTW). I think it requires the sincere confrontation of a modern liberalism that prizes the autonomy of the individual above the stability of society. I can see a good argument to be made that liberalism should be about the tension between those two things. But I don't believe we're living in that world. We're in a world where individuals demand acknowledgement, recognition, and validation from all of society all of the time regardless of any conflict between an individual's value system and societies. This is "live your truth" in a nutshell. And when that nut cracks open, it burns down everything it touches - like, literally.
cjet79
17hr ago
I don't read Twitter. Patton Oswalt's comments got picked up off Twitter space, that's how I know about them.
The kid in the incident successfully sued/settled with two news agencies over how irresponsible they were in reporting on this.
BurdensomeCount
Unable to escape TheMotte's cycle of Samsara...
17hr ago
Fair enough, points for consistency.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17hr ago
There are Spanish versions of those ads. I suspect they're both.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
17hr ago
The gravity of the incident was not about the twitter comments but the media coverage, which was both defamatory and inflamatory.
Ioper
17hr ago
Now that I think about, everyone I knew with well trained dogs has them on shock collars. But maybe that's regional or social bubble related.
I would assume so. As I said, I know literally no-one that uses them and that includes Trump voting Americans with land (California, Nevada and Colorado).
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
17hr ago
Somebody has to pick the crops and slaughter the chickens and thats a very reasonable principled exception.
Without really wanting to weigh in on whether this statement is true or not, it's at least possible to note that Congress in its wisdom created visa categories (H-2A, H-2B) for these sorts of jobs. Is it completely crazy to think "maybe we should actually use (or expand/modify as necessary) the existing visa program, rather than allow 'anything goes' under the table"?
Although there's probably an interesting tangent on using AI and robotics in slaughterhouses.
"Is talk therapy medicine?" seems like a very easy question to answer.
Is it licensed and regulated by a state or federal level medical board? If yes then it's medicine, if not then it's just speech.
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