domain:forecasting.substack.com
MayorofOysterville
4d ago
And of course, the very idea that individuals may have innate differences that cannot be attributed to their environment is utter anathema to Marxist orthodoxy—
This is a common point I see repeated about Communism, but in practice it's more promoted by liberals and Western Marxists then actual Communist regimes. Both the Soviet and Chinese education system are hugely based around finding talented students and elevating them through intense educations. The actual implementation of blank slate equity type programs and elimination of gifted tracks is an oddity of Western capitalist countries neither the Soviets or Chinese ever attempted to put anything like that into practice. And the leaders of both were willing to make statements about people groups that would make most Western leaders faint.
Your absolutely right that the Chinese and especially Xi Jinping are true believers in Marxism but it's a syncretized and Sinicized, Marxism full of Han chauvinism. Very few Chinese ascribe to blank slate ideology and I don't think the government particularly cares about promoting it or even subscribes to it themselves. I feel like trying to predict the CCP based on "Orthodox Marxism" Is like trying to predict the behavior of Evangelicals based on the Catechism Catholic Church, you might get some hits but it's not a useful way to go about it. For example the CCP is comfortable not suppressing theories about Chinese being a separate race of humans descended from a different ancestor, while these theories are not mainstream they aren't taboo either. The PRC is a national project for Chinese and nationalism and pride in China are off the charts, it's not a self hating liberal western country but neither is it a post national experiment like the Soviet Union. The CCP is out to benefit Chinese and justifies it's rule as a meritocratic rule of experts.
I agree the CCP reaction will be interesting and they may very well be hard against all this, but if they are it's not going to be against based on a slaveish adherence to blank state theories that they don't subscribe to and their entire society is organized in opposition to.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
AFAIK, Tesla’s battery and motor tech is very competitive, and sees use in aftermarket retrofits. That can’t be a huge market, and I suppose it could be a political or branding statement, but I take it as evidence that their fundamental parts are decent.
It’s the interiors and user experience that has always bothered me about Teslas. Fragile paneling, that big ugly screen… I could tell a story where Tesla was able to surpass legacy automakers in their core design, but failed (or chose not) to compete on making it feel luxury. That’s the kind of decision I could see Musk making, especially when pressed for time and money. But perhaps it’s too tidy .
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
4d ago
What he really needs to do is negotiate tariffs with Powell instead of the Europeans. Powell has more of what he wants, and is a better negotiator.
PokerPirate
4d ago
My wife basically arranges all my/our socialization. From my perspective, people just randomly show up and leave. I login to the motte when I'm waiting for the code to compile.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
4d ago
the term would be gibberish to him
Indeed, and it continues to be! I think we're talking past each other a bit and/or you're underestimating the degree to which academia shapes a thing by naming the unnamed. It is not The Way, but in describing it they hem it in from it may otherwise have been. The thing that existed before is not the same that exists after, and in some sense can never be again.
At any rate, I appreciate the input and your general tendency to remain calm and forthright.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
4d ago
I don't expect us to come to agree on much of anything but I always appreciate your input.
This particular example enrages me because it was much more direct than what I think you're suggesting- it was about withholding vaccines from older, high-risk populations and distributing them to young, low-risk populations by virtue of race. I think the people that suggested this should've been first in line to Seven Pounds for health equity, if they believed it so strongly.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
I’m not convinced that it makes sense to count potential people as, well, people.
The eggs which are never fertilized don’t get to be living people, either.
TIRM
4d ago
Also the main character has a fatal heart condition and says he has a 99% chance of heart failure with a few years. He collapses clutching his chest partway through the film. He is entirely medically unqualified to go on a multiyear space program.
The central point of the film is the opposite of what was intended. They would be right to reject him.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
4d ago
trying to negotiate an accounting identity ... which is precisely the thing Trump says he wants them to stop doing
And is now firing people for similar! If he wants Powell to lower rates, bad job numbers would help...
TIRM
4d ago
I'm quite skeptical about an exodus of American academics. I'll believe it when I see it. My prediction is a tiny portion actually leaves.
sodiummuffin
4d ago
That isn't really how people think about counterfactual people in other contexts. Relevant post from Scott:
sammysoccer411
4d ago
Maybe.
It seems to me that this requires the belief that a person is defined by their DNA, either 1. axiomatically, or because 2. the soul exists, and is inextricably linked to one's DNA.
Counterpoint--in the aftermath of Chernobyl and the atomic blasts in Japan, we have empirically witnessed people with tremendous DNA damage survive for several hours or days. Many of them could still talk, express their memories, behave as they always had. Due to the alterations in their DNA, would it be accurate to say that these people were, in fact, entirely different people to what 'they' were before?
But cisheteronormativity doesn't refer to that, not precisely. By the act of naming, by the deliberate use of 'cis' and 'hetero' which are nouns with explicit opposites 'trans' and 'homo', it posits cisheteronormativity as one of many options, it refers to 'the pervasive societal assumption that everyone is cisgender and heterosexual, and that these are the only acceptable or natural ways to be, despite the wrongness of this fact as indicated by the existence of this word'.
I know that one can go down the rabbit-hole on this kind of reasoning, but there's still something to it. Real cisheteronormative societies don't have a word for cisheteronormativity in the same way that fish don't have a word for water. That's why they're cisheteronormative! And nobody would understand it if you tried to explain it to them, they would say, 'Well yeah, men sleep with women and make kids, that's how it works. Even people who bugger sheep know that. What's wrong with you?' The cisheteronormative word for 'cisheteronormative' is 'normal'.
A society where people use 'cisheteronormativity' in conversation is simply not the same as one where people don't. The creation of the word cisheteronormative innately destroys cisheteronormativity.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
4d ago
I just bought a Tesla, and I didn't find any of the other American market very competitive on price, and none of them offered FSD.
FtSoA
4d ago
I guess it depends on what your standard for pulls is
I think it's pretty clear that the P320 stock trigger pull is standard for its class. It does not have a trigger safety, of course, and in general striker pistols are far lighter than a DA pull. Which is why Glock Leg was such a thing when police departments started moving away from revolvers and DA/SA pistols.
Imagine if this had happened in the present social media era: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1998/11/18/armed-and-unready/419a50bf-23b0-4175-93ee-33211044c8df/
the P320 did poorly on the drop safety tests resulting in a redesign
The P320 passed industry drop-safe testing standards. Through extra testing outside those standards, it was late found a very particular kind of drop did cause an issue. The XM17 drop testing found essentially the same issue with the same fix--lighter parts to reduce inertia issues.
https://thrumylens.org/featured/my-thoughts-on-the-sig-p320-30-degree-drop-failure/
some rather unique elements to its design such as a fully cocked striker on recoil that no one else has done (including Sig on their other guns like the P365)
As an overly committed P365 owner, I assure you they are also fully cocked. While broadly similar, it is a different FCU design. For one thing, the rails on the P365 go the whole length of the FCU.
but I havent heard much about any of their testing, there doesnt appear to be a whole lot of it done
Seriously? This is probably the most tested gun in history between common adoption worldwide in militaries and LE agencies, plus a huge private market. And now several years of ongoing drama.
Whatever the problem is, it's nonobvious because you have all kinds of people trying to find it. My understanding is that this is the likely explanation for the ones firing in holsters (found in YouTube comments):
Here’s how it goes off uncommanded: grip modules too tight, and loose slide/frame lockups. This is the combination. The trigger bar doesn’t move freely in the grip module, and can hang up with trigger partially pulled. This defeats the striker safety. Then, a loose slide rocking on the FCU rails pulls the striker off the seer and… bang. It’s a problem with tolerances- but you need this exact combination of bad tolerances to have a problem. It’s not difficult to do at all, but you need to mix/match FCUs and grips until you get the magic combo. It’s not ONE flaw, it’s two. And you require BOTH to make it unsafe.
At the end of the day, Sig has handled this poorly and, even if I discount like 50% of the alleged uncommanded discharges as actually negligent discharges, there's some kind of manufacturing/design/wear/tolerance flaw that is insufficiently rare and so the problem isn't going away. If I were Sig, I'd probably halt all P320 production, figure out some kind of safety field test to identify units with the flaw(s), and then not resume production until a full fix was in place.
On the other hand, if it turns out the USAF incident was actually not as popularly described (I'm seeing some reports it was airmen fooling around), then a lot of people should eat some crow.
NunoSempere
4d ago
The forum was one that was trying really hard to be heterogenous in terms of opinions and also to be nice and moderating it was a nightmare ... A: Here's the troll who comes by only to post egregiously offensive "go kill yourself [list of slurs]",
B: Here's the more subtle troll, who keeps toeing the line as much as he can get away with.
C: here's the user who is not a troll. They actually do participate in discussion and are clearly trying to be a part of the community. They're also abrasive and/or obnoxious and/or inflammatory.
D: And then here's the final type of user that's problematic as a mod: They're a sensitive snowflake. Honestly they need to be sub-divided further, because some of them are just born snowflakes that can't handle any opposition to their viewpoint at all, and others are retaliatory snowflakes, because if I got a ban for three days for saying this opinion is dumb then that guy also needs to get a ban for three days for saying this other opinion is dumb.
I had a similar experience. From your perspective I would have been C or D. From my perspective, the moderators were Dolores Umbridge equivalents, trying to keep the appearance of legitimate discourse but also not really being able to take legitimate challenges to the sensitive consensus. Eventually I just left when enough Bs left as well.
SecureSignals
Training the Aryan LLM
4d ago
That literally happens all the time and this kind of reaction to that sort of confrontation would be unimaginable and never happen.
zoink
4d ago
Source got an econ-minor at a no name school. Econ major will know calculus. It's the business Majors that have to take econ classes beyond macro that struggle.
JarJarJedi
4d ago
I've always been indifferent to sports. Team sports kinda bore me, and for the American ones, like baseball or handegg, I can't even comprehend the rules, let alone understand what's going on in the field. Individual competitions look pointless to me - after all, jumping 2.40 or 2.42 high looks exactly the same. I mean, I understand how much it means to the athletes, but it doesn't excite me. And the combat sports look too cruel - I'm not a pacifist but I can't really enjoy so much pain being purposely inflicted on a person that didn't really deserve it.
However, some time ago, the Facebook algorithm, for reasons known only to it, started to suggest to me a lot of sumo content. Initially I just ignored it, as I ignore most auto-suggested stuff. I never thought much of sumo, and considered it being rather comical. But, after watching a few bouts out of idle curiosity, I discovered, to my big surprise, that I am actually enjoying it. So I looked for more, and turns out I like the sport! It has everything I want: it's competitive but not cruel (yes, it can be quite traumatic at times, but they don't try to hurt each other intentionally). The bouts are short (2 minutes is considered a long one, though lower leagues have longer ones but never seen such a long one in the top league so far) so I do not get bored. The rules - at least the basic ones I need to understand what's going on - are extremely simple. The participants are varied - everyone has its own style and approach. It has a lot of tradition behind it and also has varied and sometimes complex technical aspects.
During the last two basho - May and July - I found myself checking the results each morning and watching the highlights each evening, which I never ever did before with sports. I totally did not expect it but it looks like I became a sports fan. I definitely will also follow the next basho - in September one - closely.
There were plenty of cases like that back during Trump I, and nothing happened. Admittedly Trump himself was a lot less agentic back then, so maybe he would do something if such a case came up this time, but I don't know if they aren't happening anymore, or if they just blended into the background.
EDIT: After watching the video - wow that's extremely mild. I'd be really surprised if these things weren't regularly occurring at universities for all sorts of MAGA people, even now.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
4d ago
The combination of better automation, simpler missions (and in particular not going behind the Moon and therefore potentially having to carry out manoeuvres while out of comms with Earth) and more payload meant that the Shuttle could afford to carry passengers in a way that earlier missions could not.
2rafa
4d ago
Why do we think the Trump admin wouldn’t grandstand in this way if someone wearing a MAGA hat was embroiled in this kind of thing with an annoying woke-presenting individual saying “Fuck Trump” or whatever?
thejdizzler
4d ago
I'm not sure Tesla and SpaceX are actually "effective". Tesla did certainly do a lot of good in making electric cars "cool" but the product on offer is far shittier and more expensive than Chinese or even US automaker electric cars. SpaceX is a classic case of overpromising and underdelivering. It can't even do something the US government could do in the 1960s consistently.
Yeah, that's a good way to put what I was trying to get at elsewhere with a Ghostbusters reference. Choosing the form of the destroyer is a meaningful step!
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