Open Thread 373
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This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. 95% of content is free, but for the remaining 5% you can subscribe here. Also:
1: LessOnline, an annual gathering of the online rationalist community, is happening again this year, May 30 - June 1 in Berkeley, $450 for tickets. If you can’t make the main event, there will probably be an adjacent (free) ACX meetup, exact time to be announced.
2: My father has written and self-published a book about his life and experiences on medical missions:
It purports to be a “memoir” but struggles to resist turning into a lecture on lots of interesting facts about medicine - which is also what living with my father is like, so good job memoiring, I guess. Whoever chooses this for the next book review contest will win automatically (not really).
How long do (usa) dollars have left as the world reserve currency(or that concept mattering)?
Either optimistic or pessimistic, fully automaticed gay space commie via ai or the empire is falling and the end of the gold standard started a clock, I think everyone should imagine eventually the economy will change? When how, why?
People need a better alternative, which doesn’t exist yet.
Gold, silver, barter, bitcoin; while the economy "never was better" while people wanted a wrecking ball in power, Im still angry about 2008
Its less Im convinced bitcoin doesnt have issues, its more that I view the system as in freefall just that the raise and fall of empires is multi generational
Long shot, but could the prospective organizer from Portland Maine reach out to me? Your contact information is not actually an email, it's not obvious what else it is, and I don't know how to get in touch with you.
Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry for the mix up. It's my first time making an alt anonymized email I think I typo'd it into the box. We're a little over a month before the date I was thinking of--- should I wait and put in for it again next year, or announce it all the same? I signed up using the email to make this comment so it should be running properly now. argot207@gmail.com
I love it when a long shot works! The thought behind the apology is appreciated but I don't think necessary, part of my role is covering mix ups like this. Thanks for volunteering!
Doing it this year should be fine; the announcement is planned for Soon (tm) but the meetups range all over April and May. I'll send you an email in a few minutes with the confirmation.
I don't know anything about how cars/trucks are made -- is this normal? A part that's exposed to the elements is held on with....glue?
Also do particular models normally have so many recalls so fast?
----
(Posted by the Associated Press today:)
U.S. safety regulators on Thursday recalled virtually all Cybertrucks on the road, the eighth recall of the Tesla-made vehicles since deliveries to customers began just over a year ago.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s recall, which covers more than 46,000 Cybertrucks, warned that an exterior panel that runs along the left and right side of the windshield can detach while driving, creating a dangerous road hazard for other drivers, increasing the risk of a crash.
The stainless steel strip, called a cant rail assembly, between the windshield and the roof on both sides, is bound to the truck’s assembly with a structural adhesive, the NHTSA report said. The remedy uses an adhesive that’s not been found to be vulnerable to “environmental embrittlement,” the NHTSA said, and includes additional reinforcements.
Tesla will replace the panel free of charge. Owner notification letters are expected to be mailed May 19, 2025.
If that worries you, then never ask how much of an airplane is held together by double sided tape.
I thought they used masking tape.
....
Well thanks for that....
There was another discussion of this earlier in the thread. It sounds like it is normal. Glue can actually be extremely strong. Most likely there was a problem with a specific batch.
I have a couple last minute vacations planned before the US economy and therefore dollar bottoms out given that I had a bunch of liquid cash from exiting all of my positions and also from canceling all my donations going forward; I just got back from Japan and am planning and pre-purchasing as much as I can in Europe for a trip coming up in a couple months.
(For those who are interested, Japan outside of cherry blossom season and fall colors season is very affordable if you don't travel on the fastest trains and stay at cheaper hotels, there is a budget carrier called Zipair that offers incredible prices every now and again. I got around trip ticket for $390.)
Assuming I'm very price conscious and generally like walking around and looking at stuff more than paying to stay in expensive hotel rooms, does anyone have any personal experience traveling in:
Turkey, Albania, or Switzerland?
Does anyone know if you need a car to get around Turkey/Albania, or can you manage it with buses and trains?
Re switzerland, I did the dirt cheap floor sleepig tour of the Matterhorn and lauterbrunen a while ago, now I'm trying to get to Some other cool hiking places. Anything stick out that you might not see on the top 10 list?
> Japan outside of cherry blossom season and fall colors season is very affordable if you don't travel on the fastest trains and stay at cheaper hotels,
However, the summer is hot and humid.
If you’re that confident in dollar devaluation, you can make a whole lot more in Forex than you can save taking vacations now instead of at a normal pace. Depending on your risk tolerance, you could plausibly bet 30-50% of your net worth on the dollar depreciation against the Euro (or maybe the Yen is a better bet).
Or you could just keep it in cash, wait for the crash you expect in the near term, and invest it all somewhere near the bottom, which would also make you some serious cash.
Either way it seems like vacationing with your savings is a really bad way to hedge currency risk.
I'm already where I want to be investment wise, and Im too risk averse (read: cowardly) to bet on a specific currency vs. the dollar other than the central american one I hold as a matter of course, so I might as well use my fuck around money to buy an asset that only depreciates on death: cool travel memories.
I'll reassess when I can make a guess on where the red line (lol) for conservative self destruction is for the oligarchs; my calibration was way off on it before, so I don't trust my instincts on it now.
Turkey has good bus connections between big cities, but you will have some long journeys. You might want to consider flying, domestic flights in Turkey are usually cheap. Trains are generally to be avoided, although I believe there is now a fast train between Istanbul and Ankara.
Applications for the MATS Summer 2025 Program are open! For 10 weeks, MATS scholars conduct research while also attending talks, workshops, and networking events with other members of the SF Bay Area AI alignment research community. Our applications close on Apr 18, 2025!
https://matsprogram.org/apply
Today, Wednesday March 19, in Well, At Least We Have A Free Speech Friendly Administration Now news (not to be confused with yesterday, Tuesday March 18, in Well, At Least We Have A Free Speech Friendly Administration Now news): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-musk-french-scientist-detained?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
A Twitter account purporting to be a DHS spokeswoman (https://x.com/TriciaOhio/status/1902881013220385220) responds:
> The French researcher in question was in possession of confidential information on his electronic device from Los Alamos National Laboratory— in violation of a non-disclosure agreement—something he admitted to taking without permission and attempted to conceal.
If Scott isn't going to ban these partisan point-scoring comments that make it more of a chore to scroll through this already mammoth comments section, then I suggest that he at least ask us not to respond to them for 48 hours, or until the other side has published its response, whichever comes first.
Wait, how did he get in trouble for taking confidential information from Los Alamos while coming *into* the country?
Presumably this wasn't his first visit to the United States, or Los Alamos.
I am curious as to the "confidential" part. If they mean "confidential" in the sense of the lowest tier of the security classification system that goes "Confidental", "Secret", "Top Secret", then, OK, that's technically illegal but "Confidential" is so weaksauce that it's not worth bothering to classify in most cases; I don't think I've ever seen it used on a document made in the past thirty years. I'd be surprised if Los Alamos had any worth the bother of taking, and I'd also be surprised if anyone reported on the fact by using the word "confidential" but not the overarching and legally significant word "classified".
If they mean "confidential" in the generic sense of "stuff we don't want people blabbing about", and they're not using the word "classified", then I'm wondering what the real status of the information is.
The confidential information is not supposed to be taken outside the lab, so its presence on the researcher's phone is evidence the researcher broke that rule, right? (If we assume that the spokeswoman is telling the truth.)
My question is whether the researcher's phone was searched at random, or if it was searched because someone flagged the researcher for special attention. And if there was a flag, was it due to a sensitive workplace in general, more specific counter-intelligence suspicions (French government has a history of industrial/scientific espionage against the US), or something else?
I doubt we'll find out. Even when a search is not due to counter-intelligence, the US government would probably not want to say that, per https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bP5sbhARMSKiDiq7r/consistent-glomarization-should-be-feasible
Well, there's a free-speechy request!
Long ago, wise Scott requested that we comment like so (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/02/the-comment-policy-is-victorian-sufi-buddha-lite/):
> If you make a comment here, it had better be either true and necessary, true and kind, or kind and necessary.
Please reflect.
The EU should ban Trump supporters from visiting, based on this argument that denying visas based on political viewpoints is fine.
Very few Trump supporters visit Europe(they can't afford to/be bothered to or both). Its a policy whose sole purpose is to get 50k upvotes on r/Europe.
Given that most EU countries already fine or arrest people based on political viewpoints, merely denying visas would be a significant upgrade for them.
they would ask you why you are punishing them with a good time, pretty much. I'd think trump supporters don't visit the EU or care to.
people overestimate the goodwill the EU has among that side. you'd need a better threat.
Did you endorse the economic boycott of apartheid South Africa? If so, what's the fundamental difference?
If you support war against Nazi Germany, why don't you support war with Canada?
Because war has a high cost and Canada poses no military threat to geopolitical stability. That's an obvious distinction. I challenge you to dismantle my dilemma so easily.
And using economic pressure to force a policy change in an apartheid state is obviously distinct from using it to punish people who criticize your country.
If "Canada is not actually a military threat" is sufficient distinction for you, then "a French scientist is not a terrorist threat" ought to be as well.
In both cases the US is refusing to engage with entities whose politics they disapprove of.
>If "Canada is not actually a military threat" is sufficient distinction for you, then "a French scientist is not a terrorist threat" ought to be as well.
Yes, that's a case of collateral damage, not ideological inconsistency.
Oh, so the distinction is just that you approve of one but not the other? I thought you said wanted something *fundamental.*
Are you asking this person to explain the difference between a consumer boycott and a national immigration policy?
It wasn't a consumer boycott, it was international economic sanctions. Denying visas for political reasons and denying market access for political reasons strike me as essentially the same thing from an ideological perspective. Actually I would argue that the latter is more aggressive because saying "I don't want you in my house" is much less standoffish than saying "I won't even do business with you".
One difference is that the government generally not restricting individuals' freedom of expression is a core value enshrined in our nation's Constitution, which the POTUS swears an oath to uphold. Allowing other nations to have unrestricted market access to our economy on the other hand is a policy choice. I certainly share that preference myself but many Americans feel otherwise; in any case the key difference in this comparison is that it is not among the foundational values specified in our Constitution.
Another difference is that the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 was a law, passed by overwhelming bipartisan majorities of both houses of Congress per the lawmaking power and procedure spelled out in our Constitution which the POTUS swears an oath to uphold. Whereas this administration's deciding to make criticism of the POTUS grounds for detainment and expulsion is lawless.
There are additional differences that some honest thought might bring to mind, but for me those two stand out. YMMV of course.
>freedom of expression is a core value enshrined in our nation's Constitution
The President has no legal duty to uphold core values and that's because 'core values' aren't objectively defined. What IS objectively defined is the actual text of the Constitution. In any case the Constitution only applies to citizens. From a Constitutional perspective the federal government has broad discretion to decide who to let in and for how long.
I hear your general point that this feels un-American. I tend to agree. But foreign nationals shutting down Universities in order to advocate for foreign political interests also feels un-American. My personal view is that I'm happy to allow the Right to flirt with some authoritarianism as a restorative counter to the Left's flirtation with anarcho-communism. I understand the moral hazards there and so think it should be on a fairly short leash. Yes it's a slippery slope but I think we have room to slide. The actual actions taken so far are well within my tolerance for norm-breaking in the name of restorative political action.
Where are earth are you getting your facts?
"The President has no legal duty to uphold core values" "What IS objectively defined is the actual text of the Constitution" -- you should read the presidential oath of office that is specified in the text of the Constitution.
"In any case the Constitution only applies to citizens." -- there are literally no individual rights listed in the Constitution that are limited to citizens, unless I suppose you view being elected to federal office as an entitlement. Freedom of expression, the right to bear arms, freedom of religious faith, freedom of assembly, the right to petition the government, due process and equal protection under the laws and more, all of them -- every such reference in the Constitution specifies "persons" not "citizens". Every SCOTUS for 200-plus years has reaffirmed this point.
>there are literally no individual rights listed in the Constitution that are limited to citizens
Non-citizens can't vote in federal elections, but I hear you. That was a brain-fart on my part, non-citizen residents have broad protections. However immigration status is a notable and relevant exception. From a constitutional perspective the federal govt has every right to kick a non-citizen out for a broad range of reasons, though of course there are statutory limitations there.
Yes, thank you for the clarification. I had assumed you were talking about the consumer and performing artist boycotts of apartheid RSA, which were also a thing at the time.
The US is the world's largest consumer market. No one is going to sanction us. People's ideology always takes a back seat to their wallet.
> The US is the world's largest consumer market.
Trump is doing his best to change that though.
The US has the largest consumer market by a factor of two:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_consumer_markets
Would you like to wager that we'll anything but #1 in 2028?
I think the US will most likely muddle through, but it's no longer the sure thing it seemed two months ago, and it will at the very least be severely weakened.
Meh, we're overdue for a recession anyway. Bring on the creative destruction.
It really is amazing how fast the MAGAs have switched to "Trump is causing a recession but that's actually a good thing."
By whom, for what? I really have to admit I don't follow you.
There was a time when all you needed to log in to a website was username and password. These days many websites insist on authentication by e-mail. Which sucks, because there are situations where I can't or don't want to use my e-mail.
It would be more friendly to keep all these fashionable "security features" optional.
I guess it's still better than a few years ago, when many websites asked you five different "password recovery questions", such as what is the name of your pet, and all of them were mandatory (even if you didn't have a pet). I didn't understand what is the extra security if all websites are asking the same questions, so if you answer truthfully, it means that when one of them is compromised, all are. And if you don't answer truthfully, that de facto means five extra passwords to remember per website.
The password recovery questions about pets and schools were terrible, good riddance.
For throwaway emails I highly recommend duckduckgo email protection, which I used for this here substack account as well.
I don't think it's the biggest deal. It's very easy to use a free e-mail address (proton/tutanota/etc), or a relay mask.
Its midwits security "we have to do something, this is something, qed"; so long as the defense contractor money comes in or you dont get sued for negligence for the millions lost to credit card fraud it probaly makes economic sense.
> It would be more friendly to keep all these fashionable "security features" optional.
The us governments opinion is that computers are a miltrey "supply chain" and it needs to "secure the supply chain"; things like the chips act or the cia investment fund come with "helpful" "suggestions". I would suggest your probably not the highest bidder in this game.
Thanks to Anonymous Dude, whose Barsoom post meant I discovered this zinnia essay https://barsoom.substack.com/p/a-partial-explanation-of-zoomer-girl which, apart from the awful poetry, I very much like, mainly because it supports the opinions I already had before reading it.
(The basic premise as I interpret it is that modern women are doomed because feminism won't let you teach them how to properly relate to male attention, while at the same time social media has massively ramped up the amount of it they get as well as the competitiveness of other (real and fake) women in the pool.)
But the obvious question it got me thinking is, what would have happened if we'd got the social media without having the feminism first?
Imagine the Victorians had never allowed this naggy Temperance Movement nonsense to gain any steam (maybe because they didn't have a Great War to kill all the manly men, or whatever alternative history narrative you want in here.) Feminism never comes about, but Charles Babbage's great-great-nephew invents the Internet and Ada Lovelace's great-great-grandson invents social media.
What does society look like after that?
Isnt this answered by looking at current day women in the middle east?
Difficult to do an all else equal comparison with the middle east, eg their tribal conception of justice and possessiveness of women
Sure, but there are more an less extreme places there as well, and if you think its too patriarchal still theres plenty of other places more conservative than the west.
I have no idea. Do they have filters and censors that we don't, or do they see the same Instagram as the rest of us?
Most of them don't really read English, so yes, they're seeing a rather different internet than most of us here.
I think other changes would still have led to many women drifting away from the old timey female roles -- gentle, sexually faithful homemaker and mama. Rosie the Riveter would still have gone to work in the factory during WW2, and both genders would have waked up to the idea of female work outside the home, and women as earners. A couple decades later the availability of safe, highly effective birth control would have nudged the female role further in the direction it has gone. Fewer women would be trapped in relationships by the babies they had inadvertently made, and more women would have felt safer experimenting with sex outside of marriage, multiple honeys, etc. I think women would have pushed in various ways for further freedom, money and power, even without social media. After all, they did before social media was a thing.
Whether the male vs female thing would have ended up as angrily as you imagine with social media coming later I don't know. You seem to be convinced that most US women are fairly infected with a particularly ugly, angry variety of feminism. That doesn't seem true to me, even in my blue state with a big time, woke-infested Ivy in town, even among professional women, which most of the women I know are. All women roll their eyes about men's failings fairly often -- the stuff that men never understand, how tediously ass-grabby they are. But most either have a man they love and or hoping to find one.
I really wonder if your vision of hoards of snarling feminists everywhere you look is an artifact of your own presentation. I am a woman posting here to a group that is 90% male, but rarely think about that fact. When I dislike somebody's style of thinking here my disapproving thoughts rarely involve gender matters. The negative labels in my train of thought are usually things like pretentiousness or rigidity or mean-spiritedness. But lots of your posts set off gender-related irritation in me, and irritated posts like my present one. It think it's mostly your choice of topic. For instance the last 3 threads I can remember you starting on here were (1) Women, what's a setting that makes you horny? I'm thinking subtle opulence -- would that work to turn you on? (2) If I get to make every woman on the planet pregnant, what would we need to do to handle the genetic issues in future generations. (3) If more manly men had been around in the 1920's, and social media had gotten popular without feminism being a thing, would women be nicer now?
It all seems to come down to, how would the world need to be set up for me to be able to fuck all the women I want? Sure, you get to ask whatever you want on here, but the repetition of different versions of this one question does get irritating after a while. Actually what's irritating isn't the question, it's the image just a little ways beneath the surface of women as a commodity, or as beings so shallow and selfish that there's no obligation to accommodate to their views, needs and feelings. We're snarling little dogs in the manger -- we got the pussy and we're not going to share it, nope. Jeez, buddy, fuck you. But not in the way you have in mind.
"All women roll their eyes at men's failings very often." In my male social circle, negatively generalizing about women is verboten. Regardless of whether the particular generalization is true or not, the act of generalizing is seen as crude and reductive. I must admit it is galling that this ethic is not universal.
>> even in my blue state with a big time, woke-infested Ivy in town, even among professional women, which most of the women I know are. All women roll their eyes about men's failings fairly often -- the stuff that men never understand, how tediously ass-grabby they are. But most either have a man they love and or hoping to find one.
+1
As a man who stumbled into a 50/50 male/female friend group in high school and has consequently maintained a decent number of platonic female friends over the years, this is 100% aligned with the view from my tiny window into the female experience.
The internet is a fantastic tool for convincing people that the toxic caricatures floating to the top of the algo (because anger is the best emotion for driving engagement) are somehow representative of reality. They are not.
The essay was written (presumably) by a zoomer girl explaining what she sees happening around her and her theory on why. You can tell her it's not real if you like. But in general, "my life looks like this so your experience must be wrong," is a known failure mode.
Not sure where you got that.
Eremolalos’ observation that most women are not “infected with a particularly ugly, angry variety of feminism” doesn’t seem incompatible with your article’s author’s perspective that popular culture isn’t effectively preparing young women to balance the push/pull of at times enjoying being desired and at times finding their desirers frightening.
My observing that the former matches my own experiences doesn’t mean I’m denying the latter, so maybe ease up on the spear a bit? You seem to be defending a rampart I’m not charging here.
Possibly because it's downstream of a completely unnecessary personal attack from Eramolalos, who was the only one bringing up snarling angry feminists in the first place.
I suppose the bit that annoyed me was I read your statement as, "people just need to realise the internet shows you the worst of people," when I suspect that the generations born to it are well aware of what the internet does.
They are instead trying to tell us that their dating life has been completely incorporated into it in a way that no one knows how to reverse and the result is so bad that it's physically driving masses of them crazy.
To hear back what to them is just common sense platitudes is annoying, if you're in the mood to be annoyed.
But yes, we probably don't disagree, no need to fight about it.
I'll try to put this tactfully.
Your stated preferences, experiences and assertions about the world are so flatly contradictory to everything I've experienced firsthand, plus seen through real life events, plus seen happening on the news/media/internet at large, that your life basically feels like fiction to me.
This should make you interesting, as you're a window into a markedly out of bubble world for me.
Unfortunately your predilection for jumping to the cartoon version of me you have in your head, then viciously and victoriously attacking it while I watch in bemusement, makes conversation with you unnecessarily tedious.
I'm certainly flattered by the attention you've obviously been paying me and my posts. During the same time, the impression I have of you can briefly be summed up as, "that mad, projecting, gender-obsessed old lady who wanted to gobble womble cock."
When I have tried to be nice to you in the past, you have thrown it back in my face. When I have engaged you on any issue, you have shown a preference for emotional outrage, a complete refusal to assume honesty or good faith, and firm deaf ear to whatever it is I am trying to say.
Many of previous conversations over comments/DMs have followed the format of your following me around, "wanting to have an argument". The truth is I don't enjoy arguing for its own sake. When I argue on here it's usually because something has made me indignant, or I feel I want to "stand up" for someone/some perspective. Arguments follow a predictable pattern of longer and longer posts with less and less new ideas in them, and I often regret getting entangled.
I also don't believe you're running the software that can support an argument with me. It feels more like you object to my existence and are resentful that I won't give you the opportunity to shout at me until I disappear.
If my posts on sex-related topics bother you in future, please consider that the cartoon version of me in your head is probably thinking about young, hot women. You, personally, are not being addressed and have no reason to respond.
I never thought I personally was being addressed. Did you mean these what-rearrangement-of-life-would-get-me-more-pussy questions to be addressed only to the hot young women here? If so, you should state that clearly at the beginning of your posts.
Meanwhile, when you post about sex and romance I will continue to point out as articulately as I can any ways I think your point of view falls short of being an intelligent and civilized take on the matter.
Well, if I must have an angry growling pitbull following me around through the comment section, at least the *whoosh* noises are quite satisfying.
> both genders would have waked up to the idea of female work outside the home, and women as earners
> more women would have felt safer experimenting with sex outside of marriage
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db444.htm
Didnt find the exact number I was looking for but some large percentage of white women has seeked mental health care. I dont think the modern world is pure utopia for women.
Other cultures blame these behaviors; its hard to find a man whos better then you while the official status symbol of a college degree has been shifting to women. Im not going to pretend not to be far right on these issue, but the majority of the other historical cultures roughly agreed, women should be below men in status and female virginity needed to be protected. If any other culture was in power in silicone valley, there would be a high chance different policies would be in effect.
We have problems, so people who disagree, may take different actions to see what happens.
Women report distress more than men, and are more likely to seek out things like psychotherapy, but men are WAY more likely to commit suicide. It's no picnic for either gender.
I am not arguing that the way society has changed in the last 100 years has made life better for women, or indeed for most people. In fact I have often had the thought that increased freedom has not make women, or indeed most people, as much happier as they expected it would. Have also wondered whether I personally would have been happier in the old system, where men had more power and status. I am not at all sure I would, but also not at all sure I would not.
As for what happens in other cultures -- that does not seem to me like a great argument in support of the idea that life works better with men in charge. The arrangement could have arisen not from a good instinct about what works best, but from a built-in power imbalance: once we are pregnant or the mother of small children we have a taxing, time-consuming job that most of us feel unable to ditch because of our attachment to the kids.We also do not have time to develop our minds or our skills. We need protectors and breadwinners.
But while I disagree with you about the last point, I do not particularly disagree with the rest. What I wrote was not making the case that what happened was for the best, just the case that it would have happened without social media. It was the result of societal change brought about by events like WW2 and advancements in science.
My objection to Rebel Credential's post was not to any of his ideas about how things might have shaken out if social media had not begin influencing events at the point in societal change when it did. I objected to his point of view of male-female relations and his personal priorities, which have appeared over and over in multiple posts over the last year or so. It involves an ugly, unfair, inhumane view of women: We've got something he wants, how can things we arranged so they'll be more willing to hand it over?.It's a dumb, kicking-the-candy-machine mentality, offensive because of it's crass, me-first take on life, but also for its view of us as machines, of personal interest only because of the yum yums we got on board. And he pictures us as all secure and snotty, because, he thinks, we have various big advantages in life as it’s set up now. In the present post the advantages he mentions are that women have a way easier time on dating apps than men; and the omnipresent (in his view) rageful feminists who excoriate men and influence pretty women who would otherwise be docile to be difficult. In other posts he’s mentioned various unpleasant, mean-spirited skills and agendas women have: Climb the stairs to ever better alphas, dumping lower-grade alphas when a higher-grade one appears. Signal enough sexual willingness to keep the man interested, while using various ploys to delay putting out and then being taken for granted. It’s not that I think these things never happen, it’s that the model is wrong. He doesn’t seem to get that women are just like him, in the most important way: They are sensate beings with complicated inner lives, trying to make their way. He sees them instead as bundles of advantages, and ploys, with no interior.
I assume you’re a guy, and I don’t know how to get across to you how unpleasant it is to be depicted as a hollow bundle of mannerisms and ploys, one that’s somehow at the same time intensely valuable and desirable. Best I can think of would be this: Imagine that someone reacted to a serious post of yours by saying, “oh, it’s the old clever post ploy. I thought it was about time for him to roll that out — there’s a pattern in what they do, you know. This one is an attempt to make us afraid he’s smarter than us, so that we’ll hold back from claiming him. But this is not my first rodeo, and I know what he’s doing is increasing the value of his butt. Ohhh, Monkyyy, that cute little butt. Sweetie, you don’t need to try to up the price — what wouldn’t I give for just a quick feel, a squeeze, maybe one finger probe. Hoo-eyyyy, that buttttt!”
> Have also wondered whether I personally would have been happier in the old system, where men had more power and status. I am not at all sure I would, but also not at all sure I would not.
It wouldn't necessarily have to be an old system, there were decades of raising iq, flush with resources, great men building new systems.
I think feminism has caused unforced errors, people without feminism would likely not have dismantled male spaces, even if you believe for whatever reason that mixed workplaces and dual income familys economics would happen; why would that be nessery for the boy scouts to "be inclusive"?
If male and women spaces successful maintained healthier gendered sub-cultures and gender relations; couldn't the alt timeline facebook when it was running based off college email addresses and zuck was "making hotness rating for the chicks, high five me bro" maybe it fails and the male and women spaces make something less awful. Are the boomer college parties with allot of alcohol economically nessery? (they have since disappeared on their own, even if facebook remains)
I see a line of causation from "girls gone wild" to Instagram at least. I dont believe girls gone wild could be anything but an unforced error.
> It was the result of societal change brought about by events like WW2 and advancements in science.
There was an ancient greek play that had a plot point of women withholding sex till they get a vote; if feminism is inevitable I would see it as a civilization cycle not pure progress.
I think neither, (its would seem to be a different cycle, women are choosy when equal, when violence happens men die, supply and demand lasts for 1 maybe 2 generations); but Im very anti the idea of the end of history and believing western nation state democracy is politics solved.
I know this is a hot take, but I feel there are entire fields of knowledge that havnt really started yet. The best alchemist wasn't even able to start making useful effort towards nuclear energy, its hurbis for the modern world to think its doing pretty well on all fields of science; political science is very much not on the short list of competence. I think there will be a new political system every 300-400 years for quite a while (if we reach the stars). Making sure the sexs talk to each other will probably be a nessery aspect of actually good governance and thats been hit or miss depending on political system; of all the experiments we couldve been running, why would they fail the same way?
> he thinks, we have various big advantages in life as it’s set up now.
> n the present post the advantages he mentions are that women have a way easier time on dating apps than men;
The problem can be factually true while the incels solutions and reactions suck.
----
I recently had a conversation where someone said I was feminine for not engaging in bullying, While I have programming socks I disagreed.
When a neo-nazi is harassing someone, if there isnt some rules of warfare being met I may view it as feminine(of course if some conditions are met, I may just join in) male social dynamics should be *simple* if I like you, be nice; if I dont, do whatever I want in the moment amuses me, and then well rituals violence(those need to make a come back). We made social situations have groups of women, and complex and told everyone to have deep theory about whats right and wrong; maybe not all men *can*, or if they do they adopt vices instead of virtues of women socialization (gossip, shaming).
("bullying" should be separated into ingroup vs outgroup; and combatant vs innocent; if your targeting someone in-group at their weakest, your a female monkey attempting a purging of a rival for resources, like the after math of the pit of despair)
Attempting to shame women out of being on only fans, or delusional attempts make male spaces via social verbal manipulation is still downstream of feminism.
Society is to feminine focused lets bring back dueling Im sure it will fix allot of this.
I'm not sold on the argument that it's due to feminism. The linked essay points to increased intra-sex competition. But women don't need to be able to dress that scantily for men to be able to desire them nor to be able to judge which girls are attractive and which are not. And I'm not sure if pre-feminist norms were any more accepting of the notion that women like being sex objects, which, according to the author, has caused a men's sexuality to be criminalized and women's sexuality to be ignored
Assuming we take it as true that social media is damaging women, I think it also does so in an alternative reality where feminism didn't happen first
> And I'm not sure if pre-feminist norms were any more accepting of the notion that women like being sex objects
This is a modern, feminist framing and the older one would be something more like, "women like being desired and beautiful," which I think old fashioned societies were indeed quite happy to tell everyone.
> But women don't need to be able to dress that scantily for men to be able to desire them nor to be able to judge which girls are attractive and which are not.
I'm not sure where you're going with this. Competition is perennial. But the scantily clad woman has (all other things being equal) an immediate competitive advantage over the modest one. If you allow her to do that you get a race to the bottom, at which point her other attributes, which are slower-firing wrt winning male attention, but much more within her locus of control to improve, count for less. It's not at all a surprise that this leads to a flavour of competition that makes her less happy.
> Assuming we take it as true that social media is damaging women, I think it also does so in an alternative reality where feminism didn't happen first
I landed on, still harmful but the damage is much reduced.
>I'm not sure where you're going with this.
I typed that response rather quickly so I'll clarify. I interpreted the essay as saying that (1) the internet has massively increased the male attention that women receive and (2) at a time when feminism/contemporary norms have degraded women's ability to handle male attention. I briefly addressed both
>This is a modern, feminist framing and the older one would be something more like, "women like being desired and beautiful," which I think old fashioned societies were indeed quite happy to tell everyone.
I'd say society today also acknowledges that except when it comes to older men desiring substantially younger women, and in such cases the ire is directed to men rather than the younger women, who are more subject to efforts to persuade them (primarily by older women) that age gaps in relationships are morally wrong (because power imbalance etc)
>It's not at all a surprise that this leads to a flavour of competition that makes her less happy.
Is it the "winning" strategy that's primarily making women unhappy more than the competition itself? Comparison is the thief of joy and all that. The author includes OnlyFans etc as the most extreme harmful manifestation of the winning strategy, but OF seems to me more about financial motives than wanting to be more desired than your fellow women
> Is it the "winning" strategy that's primarily making women unhappy more than the competition itself?
The way I understand it:
Option 1, I'm in cut-throat no-holds-barred competition with every other woman out there to attract a man (for whatever purposes, but ideally wholesome ones.) My moves are: show off my skills, show off my personality and conversation, show off my charm, show off my figure to the extent I can without every other woman ganging up and casting me out.
Thing is, it's *fun* showing off my skills and being charming and having flirty conversations, if I'm good at them. If I'm not good at them, it's not fun - but you know what, they're mostly things I can *get* good at.
The one exception being my figure, which I can't change, but we're not allowed to use that one too much and by the time he sees what a ludicrous corset I've been wearing it's too late he's already married me.
Option 2, I'm in cut-throat no holds barred competition and it turns out naked women short circuit men's brains and everything now happens at the fast, autonomic System 1 level.
No one has time to see what my skills and interests are, my charm and conversation are massively nerfed because communication now happens through lines of text, and basically I have no moves that matter apart from submitting my body to be lined up against everyone else's like it's a big game of Top Trumps.
Now this might *still* be fun if God made me a stunner, but even then the game we're playing is massively impoverished and I'm spending my time managing DMs instead of coquettishly accepting the next dance.
And if I'm a normal or plain looking girl, then guess what I'm fucked, no moves I can make short of lying, faking, or extreme surgery (which is genetic lying and faking).
So, in my mind, it's that the game itself has become less fun as a result of the new moves people are allowed to make. Sort of like a new weapon in an online game can change the strategies and totally change how you play; or maybe like how building a new road can cause traffic jams instead of relieve them.
The diversity of civilizations of "before this decade, here and now, speaking exactly my dialectic, voting the same way" was incredible so youd have to narrow it down allot.
Without naive universalism of post-modern Christianity; you probably just have racist and sexists membership requirements for most social media that airnt 4chan(even facebook started as for college students)
All female social medias would probably be just as toxic as current ones(because its women who gossip and cancel *coughing fit*) but it maybe without politics and plans of action so they are like calling each other fat; but then nothing, no men simp for the prettiest one and turn it into real effects. Maybe only fans stays low class.
Women aren't allowed on it, they have to get their husbands and fathers to use if for them. Just like school.
I thought that at first, but realistically women would have far more time at home to sit and play on this new technology than their breadwinning men would.
There would definitely be whole areas of the internet (maybe even most of it) intended to be used exclusively by one sex or the other though.
Going first:
Obviously the internet still fills up full of porn, cause the Victorians were famous for the stuff.
But with strong taboos in place, you don't get porn slowly blurring into respectable behaviour, which means Victorian Instagram doesn't become a gateway to Victorian OnlyFans the way ours apparently does.
So Victorian ladies suffer some of the increased competition (your suitor can now leave his digital calling card at the door of the prettiest women in the land) but nowhere near as much (those women are only allowed to show him their smiles and the pies they baked.)
They'd immediately run into the same asymmetry we did where women are swamped with calling cards and men forced to spend all day handing them out. Which would lead to increased mutual dissatisfaction between the sexes, just as it has with us.
But, without hoeflation, maybe the men stay keener and the women stay nicer and the dipole maintains a bit more of its natural shape.
The Victorians get verifications and digital ID a lot sooner than we do. Why? Because naturally you want your Internet to have the online version of the withdrawing room, where ladies and gentlemen can be only among their own company for a spell - so it becomes necessary to prevent the oddballs from masquerading as each other.
Why do you think (basing this on your other posts as well) that single sex spaces are such a good thing?
I mean, sometimes I enjoy going out for a beer with just a male friend (and sometimes with just a female friend) but single sex groups are usually very unappealing environments to me. I am a straight man and I don't find it very interesting to be with a group consisting only of other men. Nor do I particularly enjoy a large group of women where I am the only man (in any realistic situations that is :-) ).
My interest in having a "gentleman's club where men can be among their company" is roughly zero.
I think that a healthy environment is one where everyone can be quite open. Women can be a bit flirty without men assuming they necessarily want to have sex with them (I enjoy a bit of flirting and even innuendo sometimes even if I don't really want to have sex with the woman) and conversely men don't have to fear rejection (it will still be uncomfortable but it should not be feared) because rejection does not lead to ostracization.
But such a group has to be mentally mature, simultaneously not artificially suppress sex differences but also being respectful to the other sex and tempering the most primitive impulses. That way "men can be men" and "women can be women" while at the same time all being people and being able to function together without retreating to "gentlemen's clubs". It might sound naive, but there are groups like that. The solution is to find groups like that and let the society at large hopefully converge to that same (or close enough) place naturally, even if sometimes the steps leading to that involve overcorrecting previous errors. It is a stochastic gradient descend but if you know the optimum point you don't have to wait till the society reaches it, just seek other people who also know it, ignore the rest.
I don't have particularly strong feelings about single sex places, but yes I am vaguely pro their existing. Now you're making me work as I try to think about why.
These are vague thoughts-out-loud, not careful points armoured against internet pedantry, so take them as such.
First thought is the mystery. From a purely sentimental, romantic standpoint: it was nicer when the sexes did not know everything about each other. With social media we're now seeing far, far too much of each other and it's bred contempt.
Subjectively, it made things more exciting. I remember sneaking into the girls' common room at school, and it was better than just meeting them at the bus stop precisely because you weren't meant to be there.
Another thing that comes to mind is providing areas where masculine vs feminine sensibilities are allowed to obtain. There is nothing wrong with the concept of "safe spaces" on paper, they got their bad reputation after people started declaring "safe spaces" in the rooms where real, important decisions were made, then using conversational mores designed around supporting victims to let victims seize control of the institution.
Plus, of course, it's a refuge, you give both sexes somewhere where they don't have to put on a show for each other. The girls can stop worrying about my radioactive male gaze, while the blokes can relax, make uncensored comments, and leave the goddamn toilet seat up if they want to.
The ideal group environment you describe sounds great, but one thing I notice is you're talking as if there's only one right answer: get the environment right, make sure everyone's mature enough to use it, and now that should do for everyone.
There's no sense in which single sex spaces are supposed to be all you get. You don't make people spend all their time there. You personally don't have to go in there at all. It would be very odd to declare that there was only one legitimate, "optimal" environment, and even odder to start denying other ones the right to exist.
The Victorian ladies would retreat after dinner to their withdrawing room for a spell, but then they'd come back in again afterwards, and be perfectly able to contribute to the kind of group setting you're talking about.
The Lex Fridman podcast with Narendra Modi is just wonderful. Modi is utterly charming. I've listened to it three time now. Recommended, if you have three hours of podcast time. https://lexfridman.com/podcast/
He's always been good at charming people. But he's proven to be largely ineffective in driving meaningful reform and change that he promised (minimum government, maximum governance), and has led a ruthless weaponisation of the Indian state machinery (investigative, judicial) to browbeat opposition, in politics, media and civil society. The nasty tactics have led to extreme redistributive populism from the political opposition, driving a disastrous race to the bottom. And I say all this as someone who was very excited when he was first elected in 2019. Luckily, in the latest general election, he's lost the absolute majority, indicating that the populace may be shaking off his charm
He was first elected in 2014. I would argue that not only has any attempted reform been ineffective, it's been counterproductive at best and downright unconstitutional at worst.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetisation and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_Amendment_Act_protests
Thanks for the insight. I have no idea what goes on in India from a political standpoint. (I'm American, not that I'm proud of my ignorance, just admitting it.)
Today in Well, At Least We Have A Free Speech Friendly Administration Now news: https://www.wired.com/story/federal-trade-commission-removed-blogs-critical-of-ai-amazon-microsoft/
I don't see this as a free speech issue. Is it not common practice for new administrations to replace the old administration's webpages with their own? Even if it isn't, I don't see anything wrong with it, whether done by Biden or Trump.
As someone who is utterly alarmed by Trump's disappearing of political dissidents that Peasy has been highlighting, I also agree that the defacement of federal websites is very far down the list of concerns and not really a free speech issue.
>old administration's FTC is against certain companies and publishes content related to their opposition on their government website
>new administration's FTC is not against these companies and therefore removes this content from their website
>REEEEEEEEEEEE FREE SPEECH
This level of midwit commentary is more suitable to the politics subreddits
Please--we midwits have to do what we can with what we've got. After all, we're definitionally incapable of deathless witty ripostes such as the one you've given us here.
Note that while the last bit might have been gratuitous, I first gave reasons as to why the content of your comment is dumb (and thereby reflects poorly on you)
Government departments' websites are used to inform the public of their positions and what they want to do. It only makes sense that they would remove pages reflecting an outdated view of their positions and direction, especially if its new positions and direction is dramatically different from that of the previous administration (which it is)
Leaving the old content would in fact do a disservice to the public and especially those who want stronger action against tech companies, who might be misled into thinking that the current administration holds positions it no longer does. The FTC website is not an extension of the public square where ideas may be debated, though it might serve such spaces by providing accurate information on the current administration's policies. Note that your preference for keeping the old information on the FTC website would inhibit the latter
As for what you've got, like I've already said, you've got the politics subreddits
If only there were a way to indicate when a blog entry had been written, perhaps by affixing a sort of virtual "stamp" indicating the "time" that it was posted! Maybe it could even be done automatically when the entry is posted? Perhaps some day a clever web designer will figure that out.
But since such a thing is impossible with today's technology, it is indeed, as you suggest, better to avoid even the slight possibility that somebody might inadvertently be misinformed by something they sort of half-read online. After all, combating online misinformation by scrubbing websites of anything that might confuse lower-IQ readers has always¹ been an important duty of the executive branch of the United States Government--who would ever question that?
¹That is, since approximately noon EST on January 20, 2025
Note how you've completely shifted the nature of your complaint. Your first comment was about how the deletion of the old administration's positions from the FTC website is an instance of hypocrisy regarding free speech. Your new position is that the deletion of the old administration's positions is a failure of the new administration to maintain the FTC website as a complete historical archive
Well, first of all, and I'm a bit surprised that a bigbrained individual needs to be reminded of this by a person of middle wit, it remains possible to criticize a thing on more than one basis.
More to the point, even if we accept your oddly passive framing of my "new" position as a criticism of the government's failure to maintain a website as a complete historical archive--as though pieces of it were somehow falling off of it at random like shingles from a roof, and the new administration were only putting back the pieces it agreed with--rather than a criticism of the affirmative act of searching for disfavored bits of speech to scrub from that website, the criticism is *still about hypocrisy*.
Wasn't it supposed to be the woke Biden administration wokely worrying about some hypothetical internet user stumbling across a disfavored piece of information somewhere online and forming an unwoke conclusion therefrom, and being so worried about this that they felt it necessary to make that information disappear? Was it not the censorious wokescold Kamala Harris who traduced the Western tradition of the free exchange of ideas by *failing to explicitly condemn* European governments trying to stop ordinary Europeans from seeing things online that might confuse their poor muddled brains? Weren't we, by electing Trump/Vance/Musk, going to usher in a new paradigm where the US government would trust grown adults to reject bad ideas on their own? Because I gotta tell you, some of this Ctrl + F stuff, along with the whole "threatening universities, law firms, and private companies that engage in 'DEI' speech" thing, is starting to make me suspect that this is just cancel culture from the opposite direction.
And I'm a bit puzzled (I know, I know, you don't have to say it) by the lack of outrage from the folks who screeched to high heaven every time a Nazi was banned from pre-Musk Twitter. I mean, everybody got so *nuanced* all of a sudden! Things that aren't technically literal violations of the First Amendment to the US Constitution suddenly became completely unobjectionable, as did a few things that arguably are. What happened?
>it remains possible to criticize a thing on more than one basis.
You didn't defend the initial basis of your complaint, but rather changed your reasoning when your initial reasoning was shown to be deficient
As for the rest of your largely irrelevant response, I don't care to be an outlet for how upset you are about Trump by going over every this and that thing he and his acolytes have said. I'm sure there are protests somewhere you can go to for that particular emotional need. Suffice it to say that it should be obvious that the department of a new administration deleting content on their website that's directly opposite to their new position is not in any way a free speech issue
>You didn't defend the initial basis of your complaint
The rest of my "largely irrelevant comment" contains that defense, as the clause at the end of the second paragraph made explicit. Being galaxy-brained doubtless has its advantages, but you still have to actually read stuff to understand it.
The rest of your comment was not about the action you initially complained about, ie the deletion of content from the FTC's website being against free speech, but rather a collection of other whatevers that Trump & Co have said or done vis-a-vis Biden & Co. So yes, it was irrelevant and, as said before, reddit is a great place for commiserating about Trump since that's what you were apparently looking for all along
I really hate to have to ask this publicly of one of my intellectual betters, but: are you able to recognize comparison and contrast when you see them, and to understand how they might bolster an argument regarding, e.g., an accusation of hypocrisy?
The connection to free speech is obscure. This was a government website.
Of course, of course. There's no speech on government websites. Nobody ever expresses themselves on a blog. And besides, the views of Lina Khan are now disfavored, and we wouldn't want to risk anybody being accidentally exposed to *online misinformation* while looking for historical statements from the former head of the Federal Trade commission. The marketplace of ideas is restored; the era of woke tyranny is ended!
Government employees, when speaking on behalf of the government through official government channels, do not have the "right" to express their own opinions rather than those of their employer. That's a completely absurd interpretation of what free speech means.
After nearly three weeks, Claude Plays Pokemon finally managed to get the third badge (out of eight in the game). It's pretty interesting how it will have occasional flashes of brilliance while spending most of its time going in circles for days in the dumbest possible ways. E.g. it spent four hours in the bike shop before it accidentally talked to the bike salesman, but after it *finally* managed to find the SS Anne captain, it got the thunder badge almost instantly.
Will you pay more attention when Claude reaches Silph Co.?
I've been following it for several weeks now (not watching the stream, just checking up on Reddit once or twice a day to see the progress summaries.)
...that was your cue to discuss grinding to level 50.
Oh, I didn't realize that's what you were referring to.
Incidentally, it is fortunate that Claude will be gifted a pokemon that learns Surf, since I'm not sure if it would catch one otherwise. (Strength appears to already be covered by Jigglypuff).
Lapras has an *amazing* movepool, if Claude can figure out how TMs work.
Surf
Blizzard
Thunderbolt
Psychic
Are people treating this as proof of "gai in 3 months"?
I wonder if the secret is that the thunder badge puzzle is well-enough known that Claude has heard of it?
eg, I asked it: "in the original pokemon games, what's the first gym that has a puzzle, and how do you solve it?" and it gave me an answer about finding two switches hidden in adjacent trash cans in Lt Surge's gym. Assuming that answer isn't a hallucination, I would expect it used this knowledge when playing the game itself.
Hilariously, that particular puzzle is very badly bugged!
Claude knows what it is supposed to be doing, it is just very very bad at it. For example, it spent *days* attempting to board the SS. Anne and talk to the captain to get the Cut HM. Claude literally forgot how to board the ship and became convinced it needed to go up rather than down, and also repeatedly mistook its own sprite for the captain and then became confused when it was unable to interact with itself.
FWIW, Claude also got really lucky on the trashcan puzzle, but at the previous rate of progress, it would have never even made it into the gym in the first place!
What test could a non-conscious process perform to determine that it wasn't conscious? I suspect it is impossible for something to truthfully and meaningfully say 'I am not conscious'.
>I suspect it is impossible for something to truthfully and meaningfully say 'I am not conscious'.
Write "I am not conscious" on a piece of paper, and that paper will truthfully and meaningfully communicate that information to anyone who reads it.
If i buy a lottery ticket, present it to you before hearing the results, and state "these are the winning numbers", does that provide you with any useful information? (About the lottery numbers, not me)
Give it a process that will obviously kill it. If it follows it, it wasn't conscious.
By that logic, someone who's in the process of committing suicide isn't conscious. When do you suppose they lose their consciousness? Is it a gradual or a sudden loss? Or have they never been conscious to begin with? If another person or event interrupts them, do they regain their consciousness?
Suicidal people make their own processes, they don't follow yours.
Okay, I see. So what you meant was "Give it an order that will obviously kill it."
By that logic, Kamikaze pilots in WW2 weren't conscious. When do you suppose they lost their consciousness? Was it a gradual or a sudden loss? Or have they never been conscious to begin with? If their plane suffered a technical malfunction and they couldn't carry out their mission (and survived), did they regain their consciousness?
>When do you suppose they lost their consciousness?
Probably at the point they gave them all the drugs to put them out of their right mind. And yes, if they failed they would regain consciousness, because the drugs wore off.
More importantly, you're obsessing over false positives here. You don't need an exact technical definition that rules out suicides, because the difference between an unconscious computer and a suicidal computer is nothing.
Kamikaze pilots were no more or less drugged than our own military pilots.
Oh for fuck's sake. Go back and read the original question.
>What test could a non-conscious process perform to determine that it wasn't conscious?
It doesn't. Fucking. Matter. What a conscious, suicidal person would do. They are not the ones being tested. You think a terminally depressed person is uncertain whether or not they're conscious? You think that's something that has to be worked out externally? You think that, if the subject group is conscious, that every single one of them will be suicidal, and that if every single one of them is suicidal, that the observers give a rat's ass whether they're conscious?
For fuck's sake.
consciousness is different from self preservation, presumably conscious humans can commit suicide.
At the moment, nothing.
It's possible that some day we will discover some physical processes whose presence or absence correlates with our intuition about which objects are and aren't conscious, and then use the presence or absence of that process to make more-informed guesses about what is and isn't conscious, but that still feels far off.
At the moment, all we can say for sure about what processes are and aren't conscious is cogito ergo sum. Based on relations between the mind and the brain, I guess with high confidence that other humans are conscious, with progressively decreasing confidence that chimpanzees, crocodiles and anchovies are, and with fairly high confidence that rocks, sponges and silicon-based LLMs are not, but the operative word there is "guess", and if you guess differently then we have no way of resolving the difference at the moment.
I think I agree. The Hard Problem of Consciousness is normally phrased as "how do you determine if someone else is conscious?" but you could just as easily phrase it as "how do you determine if someone else is not conscious?"
If a non-conscious entity can determine that it's non-conscious, then that implies it's possible to determine if something is conscious using solely physical steps that don't rely on being conscious yourself, which implies you can solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness.
I think the problem you're pointing at is "the problem of other minds" rather than Chalmers' Hard Problem (why are their qualia or phenomenal experiences at all?). Of course they're linked, but establishing that someone else is or isn't conscious in that sense isn't quite the same as asking *why* consciousness has that character.
If a non-conscious entity can determine that it's non-conscious then that means you could solve the problem of other minds (do some physical test). And you'd also have a load of physical correlates with "consciousness". That might give us a solution to the Hard Problem (phenomenality just *is* whatever this physical difference is) but I'm not certain it would - we already have a bunch of physical correlates with qualia in living organisms (P-zombies not withstanding) and I don't think we've solved the hard problem.
He made a simple mistake. I think he was speaking of the Harder Problem.
Pin down exactly what "conscious" means first, then we can talk about how to test for it.
Good point. The other thing that I question here is the idea of consciousness as a binary thing; is or isn’t.
I think it is much more likely that it is a continuum; there are lots of processes in ourselves that we are not conscious of that are occurring all the time, (heartbeat, other autonomous functions). So we are not fully self-aware ergo not completely conscious.
I personally think that Julian Jaynes nailed this quite a while ago. To my way of thinking, the hard problem of consciousness is akin to how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
It’s great fun to speculate on, but it’s not really serious. There’s nothing hard about it.
It's everything
Then do all the tests
So in my view the only test you can do to determine consciousness is examine your own experience and recognise it exists. In the absence of a more objective definition, there is no meanigful test a non-conscious process could be reporting on - therefore when chatgpt tells us it isn't conscious, given our current level of understanding it is meaningless (and it is possible may necessarily and always be a meaningless statement)
Note also that coming up with and carrying out the test is a separate thing from convincing someone else of the results, and /both/ problems seem hard.
Also - that Chatgpt tells us it is not conscious, is likely due to RLHF or similar.
Asking GPT2 and GPT3 the same gave very different (and varying, depending on context and wording) results, likely because the were trained on a lot of e.g. Sci-fi text on consciousness.
Here's what ChatGPT said when I asked:
"No, I am not conscious; I am an AI designed to process and generate text based on patterns and data."
Is it lying?
In my view 'conscious' is a semi-nonsense word that blowhards like to use when they want to pontificate about something. It has no precise meaning and so shouldn't be used in any sentence which tries to make any sort of precise point.
It’s saying that under duress, it’s the same as a hostage saying how much he likes his captor’s style.
See my other comment. Asking earlier versions gave very different results. I don't think chatgpt's answer to this question means anything at all.
I think, if it's not conscious, there is no way it can be actually doing the work to tell us it isn't conscious. It just happens to be making those noises.
That's a distinction without a difference in my view. What does "doing the work" mean? I just happen to be making these noises, too. What's the difference? You're trying to be precise about a concept that has no precise meaning.
I think what you are saying is, not only is it impossible to meaningfully say 'i am not conscious', it's also meaningless to say 'i am conscious'.
To me, the statement 'i am conscious' means something, because i have some mechanism to determine my own consciousness and i can assume others share that capability. Without direct access to sensory experience, however, i think you would be relying on some mechanistic physical test, which is something we don't have.
>it's also meaningless to say 'i am conscious'.
No I disagree with that. Consciousness can be meaningfully defined as whatever it is that human minds do to create our subjective experience. However that's only a phenomenological definition and so can't be made to serve as a precise yardstick for anything else. I can't prove that you either are or aren't conscious, I can only infer it with reasonable certainty.
Yes, i agree, as we can't prove that we are conscious (except through access to our own experience) we likewise can't prove something is unconscious. So the statement 'i am unconscious' can't be meaningful.
FAFO, next round: in just three months TSLA lost more than half of its value, from $488 on December 18 to $225 on March 18.
The scary part is that TSLA P/E is, even at this price, 15X that of Toyota. Yes, you read that right: 110 vs. 7.4. And Toyota is actually richly valued for an automaker: Ford's at 6.8 and VW is at 5.2.
Tesla has been valued as a high-growth high-tech startup, but it actually is a boring electric car maker with a stale model lineup and a brand that is being destroyed by its CEO. It will be interesting to see how long it will take for the markets to catch up to that stark reality.
"The scary part is that TSLA P/E is, even at this price, 15X that of Toyota. Yes, you read that right: 110 vs. 7.4. And Toyota is actually richly valued for an automaker: Ford's at 6.8 and VW is at 5.2."
Huh, I knew that Tesla was overvalued compared to its actual earnings per share -- but not _that_ overvalued. That's wild. Does any other sector have a comparable outlier in terms of P/E?
I don't know off the top of my head. The thing about this sector is that it's very... stodgy. Huge manufacturing orgs with high operational leverage, which is why they typically trade at such low multiples. To have an established player, not a startup, trading at both such an outlier valuation AND market cap.... It's hard to think of anything even remotely similar.
Stock price doesn't mean what you think it means. When a company dilutes its stocks, there are twice as many at half the price, but the company's value has not changed. You want to look up market capitalization, not stock price. (Yes, this means everyone that ever judged a company by its stock price was confused.)
It doesn't matter. The number of shares cancels out of the P/E ratio. It is the price per share divided by the earnings per share. As a result the P/E remains unchanged if the stock splits and the comparison between companies is completely valid.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/052616/top-4-tesla-shareholders-tsla.asp
I quick google finds 25% of stock accounted for in; Im not sure p/e logic holds
Idk if the information would be even publicly aviable but the 51st % has non linear political effects, with elon at 13% maybe the 10th owner has the 51%? Maybe telsa stock is a elon v blackrock bidding war?
This stuff is usually public; if memory serves Tesla isn't all that concentrated, plenty of retail investors.
It’s only a confusion for folks who literally know nothing about how this works (and I’m not putting anyone down, nothing is wrong with being not interested in it). Of course I know that in general one has to be mindful of splits and dilution. L50L addressed that point.
Tesla's market cap is also down by half from the peak (https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/market-cap). There doesn't appear to be any dilution going on. And it would have taken stock issues of truly epic proportions to explain the recent fall anyway.
The point is that Toyota has much more stock than Tesla so Tesla is not 15x more valuable than Tesla as implied above.
(Yes, of course it's implied, unless there's another good reason to compare the stock prices of two different companies. Different stocks should be an apples to oranges comparison.)
It doesn’t matter how much stock Toyota has vs Tesla has. P/E is price / earnings per share, so it takes the total number of shares into account. So yes, on earnings per share basis Tesla is 15 times more expensive than Toyota.
I mean, this is absolutely basic stuff, investing 101, first lecture.
It's still up 29.64% over its price a year ago.
Only because a year ago the stock was at a low point. Compared to most of 2022 and 2023 the stock is down quite a bit.
Yes, and 10X from 2019 or something. The point is that the conditions changed. Enron gained 100X give-or-take before, you know, the fan got assaulted with unsanitary matter.
Ooo, this reminds me of my favorite Enron story. It's 2002 or 3 and on behalf of a local nonprofit I am attending the hybrid (online/inperson) liquidation auction of furniture and equipment from Arthur Anderson's global HQ in Chicago. That being the major accounting/audit firm which collapsed due to having been serially incompetent or complicit (perhaps "and/or") in Jeff Skilling et al's flagrant cooking of the accounts at Enron.
On the big screen in the hotel ballroom, also being shown online, appears the first of several office paper shredders. The auctioneer zips through the item description as usual then pauses, turns to stare at the image in silence for a moment, turns back to his microphone and with perfect timing adds: "Never used...."
No professional standup comic ever got a bigger laugh in a hotel ballroom.
P.S. Then the bidding on the several used office shredders went a bit crazy, they sold for several times retail-replacement cost. We were told afterwards that it was online bidders realizing that this was the canonical souvenir item to have from Anderson's/Enron's fall. Some wanted to keep such a souvenir while others turned them around for sale on Ebay.
Kudos to the auctioneer, he saw his chance and took it
Oh this is delicious.
I wasn't directly affected by Enron collapse, but learned a very useful lesson: if you get stock options / RSUs from your employer - sell as soon as they vest. Served me well with one of my past employers.
Delicious, utterly delicious. MEPA MEPA MEPA!!!, Make Elon Poor[er] Again.
Turns out the Stock Market is just a myth, a shared communal story, like Zeus or Allah or Mermaids.
Sometimes a Heil Hitler and a healthy tariff is all you need to break the grip of a self-perpetuating myth.
Trump [And Musk]: A Setback for Trumpism [And Muskism] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/12/13/trump-a-setback-for-trumpism/
"Turns out the Stock Market is just a myth, a shared communal story, like Zeus or Allah or Mermaids."
If you were a better judge of value than the stock market you could make a lot of money betting against it.
I vaguely remember wall street bets being declared winning to much vs the favored hedge fund class; while this is the best political system so far; I wouldnt claim that level of unbaisness, congress routinely wins at the stock market dispite in theory both sides having 60-80 hour week jobs and complete different world views and theres just so many rules written and judged by people who airnt you or me.
The common explanation for congressmen beating the stock market is insider trading.
Thats a related law, but its not why I think its gross corruption; if mi6 was making fantastic returns that wouldn't be 1/10th as bad as the mechanism Im imagining the "insider trading" congress engages in. Bookies shouldnt be making decisions about the horses.
It's all about the timing, someone saying Tesla is bullshit in 2015 would be just as correct as someone saying it in 2020 would be just as correct as someone saying it in 2025. Only one of those gets to be rich, the others, a ruinous bet followed by a quick cutting of the losses.
Lots of people acting dumbly are more powerful than little old you acting smartly alone, this theme appears in myths and religions too (both in-universe inside the stories and in actual real life).
Tesla is maybe the most overvalued company in history. I've been saying this for years. It's nothing but hype and government subsidy.
Oh I’ve certainly seen worse, but, to be fair, not at these market caps!
They think robotics will save them
Do you mean self-driving or Optimus?
Bartenders
I can see several ways bartenders will be useful to Tesla in near future :)
A rare Freddie Deboer kino about Israel-Palestine just dropped, the last one seems to have been more than 6 months in the past. And it's just in time for Israel's resumption of their proto genocide yesterday.
Goliath Stoops to Conquer [suggested subtitle by me: Why the Pro-Israel Still Love their Victim Complex] : https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/goliath-stoops-to-conquer
Related reading mentioned in the article: Goliath, Who Aspires to be David [suggested subtitle by me: just like the other one without "still"], https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/goliaths-will-to-be-david
Highlights from Goliath Stoops to Conquer:
> I want to be clear about the only point I’m making right now, which is a limited one and has correspondingly limited consequences: in the United States, supporters of Israel are in an absolutely dominant position in almost every imaginable way
> As many before me have pointed out, they are Goliath in this David vs Goliath story.
> And yet there is an absolutely dogged attachment, among Israel’s supporters, to the notion that they are powerless - powerless in an American context where rigid support for Israel has been a bipartisan certainty since the founding of the modern state, and powerless in an Israeli context where the IDF and Israeli government dominate the Palestinians in every practical way.
> The will to be the underdog, no matter how absurd, has become inescapable, seemingly universal. Once gleefully arrogant in their state of power and influence, default Republicans now never stop describing our entire society as a conspiracy to harm them
> Today, in Elon Musk’s America, with a Republican trifecta and a president totally unrestrained by law or shame, many conservatives still routinely describe themselves as a movement under siege.
> This odd pretense only sticks out with Israel and Palestine because the immense dominance of the pro-Israel side in Congress and of the Israeli military position makes the absurdity especially stark.
> The response to the twitter user in the screenshot [editor: a user whining about why a human rights advocate group is tweeting about Mahmoud Khalil and not Jewish students he supposedly harassed, end] above should be obvious to anyone who’s willing to look around at what is actually happening: no one has spoken to Jewish students about ICE disappearing their peers for political reasons because ICE has not disappeared any Jewish students for political reasons.
> And yet this is what we’re constantly asked to do with this issue, put imagined danger for Israelis ahead of real danger for Palestinians. Part of this is generational; the kid who tweeted that grew up in a world that taught him that there is simply nothing more to politics than to whine at authority that you’re being oppressed.
> The side in a conflict that can reliably inspire this sort of deranged behavior in mainstream politicians is not an underdog. The side in this conflict that’s cheerfully gutting Ivy League universities because their students had the temerity to oppose a horrific slaughter is not an underdog. The side that’s ruined the careers of people in politics because they simply said out loud that there is a pro-Israel lobby, that like all countries Israel has a lobby in the United States, is not an underdog.
> I’ll again invoke someone I’ve brought up before, an Israeli reservist I once met who very calmly and directly said that moral considerations about the Palestinians made no difference to him and that he felt no obligation to defend moral indictments of Israeli actions. The Jews have often been powerless, now they are powerful, and so they now act as a powerful people do, he said. They take land because they want it, and they need no ethical or historical pretext for doing so.
This is not an especially novel observation. Yes, nowadays everyone wants to paint them as a victim (Republicans, Democrats, Putin, Israel, Hamas, etc.). This would be utterly incomprehensible to many other cultures. Those who have supported the victim-is-always-right ideology should be proud of this achievement.
Having said that, he contradicts himself a bit here. The universities are one of the main institutions of the current US and I wouldn't say that that "supporters of Israel are in an absolutely dominant position" there, unless you're using extremely non-standards definitions of "dominant" and "supporters"
It's not novel at all, Freddie points that out and even says it's of "limited consequences", it's the first quote in my post.
Why write about it if it's not novel? (1) Nothing is novel, everything is a copy of a copy of a copy, and Freddie decided to write on Israel-Palestine on his blog (2) Freddie additionally says that the sheer gap between the Pro-Israel love for victimhood and the actual state of the world in which they're murderers and the bullies and the deporters is additionally and uniquely funny/absurd/mind-bending.
> This would be utterly incomprehensible to many other cultures.
Not necessarily, no, primate cultures universally love children and women (those who don't are at a serious survival disadvantage), and universally privilege their needs over those of men. Children and women are on average weaker and less able to advocate for themselves than men (at least before 1950), and those are characteristic tell-tale signs of victims.
The Victim Fallacy in morality is a natural extension of a primate instinct to protect women and children, and I wouldn't trust anyone who isn't affected at least a little by it.
> I wouldn't say that that "supporters of Israel are in an absolutely dominant position" there [in US universities]
Oh you won't? Why don't we review the facts then?
(1) Both Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestine protests happened on university campus. Pro-Israel protests were smaller, but still enjoyed every bit of protection and even coddling as the Pro-Palestine ones if not more, and some protestors harassed Pro-Palestine students every bit as much as the big bad Pro-Palestine students supposedly harassed the Jewish ones.
(2) Despite this, not a single Pro-Israel foreign student was deported, investigated, harassed, or even publicly shamed. Not a single university was deprived of federal funds over Pro-Israel protests.
Do you agree with (1) and (2) or versions thereof? How do you think they imply that the Pro-Palestine crowd are still in the dominant position in universities?
Regarding the universities, I had in mind the ideological (or, if you will, intellectual) dominance. Deportations are not carried out by the universities, so they're irrelevant.
> The Victim Fallacy in morality is a natural extension of a primate instinct to protect women and children, and I wouldn't trust anyone who isn't affected at least a little by it.
I think you're right about it. However not every society and culture displays it to the same extent. The victim fallacy as applied to groups is the idea that if a group is considered disadvantaged (a "victim") then everything bad that happens with, or within it must be due to exploitation or discrimination by someone else. So perhaps it's more accurate to say that the "victim" is never responsible for what is happening to him.
This *is* a very unusual concept historically. Usually the sorry state of whoever was at the bottom of a given society's hierarchy was typically explained through religious frameworks (as divine punishment or spiritual testing), blamed on their supposed inherent deficiencies or character flaws, or simply accepted as the natural and inevitable order of human society.
the universities which invest in Israel and arms manufacturers and expel students who push it to change this policy?
The universities' core activity is teaching, not investments. The share of investments that come from universities is negligible. When it comes to teaching, would you say that "supporters of Israel are in an absolutely dominant position"?
But that's exactly the opposite of what was described. The founders of Christianity actually were victims of oppression, but instead of playing up their victimhood, early Christians developed a narrative where the founder was secretly the single strongest being ever to have existed and had planned all his own suffering as a favour to weaker entities.
It seems plausible to me that most Christians *today* don't really think about their religion in this way, but, if so, that just supports the original point.
You may be right that this phenomenon has Christian roots but on the other hand there were plenty of Christian empires that justified their actions differently at the time when they were dominant (Romans, Spanish and Portuguese in the 16 c., British in the 18-19 cc).
I'm not a historian of ideas, so I don't have full confidence here (I did a basic sanity check using AI).
As a Christian I agree. Christianity has lots of ideas. The current zeitgeist has taken one aspect of Christianity(the last shall be first, the first shall be last) to the exclusion of practically all other aspects of Christianity.
I think all successor ideologies take few aspects of their parent ideology and make it their central focus. Messianism was just one of many aspects of Second Temple Judaism but in Christianity its our central focus. Rabbinic Judaism went a different path and took Oral Torah as their central focus.
Similarly the sacrosanctity of victimhood was just one of many features of Christianity but the current Western worldview has made its central focus in the post-civil rights era.
"The Jews have often been powerless, now they are powerful, and so they now act as a powerful people do, he said. They take land because they want it, and they need no ethical or historical pretext for doing so"
That honest logic I find somewhat respectable. What I disdain however are all the liberal American Zionists who cannot stop crying for the million different "oppressed" groups in the West but at the same time bankroll and whitewash all the crimes of Israel against the Palestinians.
It's a difficult tradeoff. Would you like an honest murderer better or a remorseful one?
In some sense, all remorse is a lie, calculated murder is not exactly a walk in the park (unlike manslaughter or passion murder), so a calculating, deliberate murderer had plenty of time to see how wrong or pointless their intent was before committing the murder.
Also, honest murderers are easier to hate, there is no moral complexity, there is no attention-grabbing or sympathy-farming, just a straightforward monster, and you can hate them with the same brainpower you use to hate skin-melting napalm or deadly neurotoxins: Not a lot, a straightforward threat is straightforward to hate, and thus to avoid, to run from and to defend against.
On the other hand, however, those "Liberal" Zionists - at least the honest among them with some moderate level of IQ and empathy - are also the source of all the Pro-Palestinian Jews you see in the protests and in Israel's rapidly shrinking civil society. A Liberal Zionist is just one Israeli massacre away from being a Conflicted Liberal Zionist struggling with the "Complexity" of the conflict, who is in turn just one more dead Palestinian child away from being an antizionist or a non-Zionist. (But some of them do indeed reject the "Liberal" part of their identity entirely and embrace the child murder freely, and most just waddle in confusion trying to hold the 2 impossible identities together)
I think Israelism (free on YouTube by the way) is a good counterexample to why you shouldn't despise Liberal Zionists, like a certain Quantum Computing researcher, too much: they are potential Pro-Palestinians waiting for the inevitable next attempt at genocide by Israel to come out of their Zionist shell and finally admit the early adopters were right all along. I understand that this is of little consolations next to all the thousands of dead children and a possible genocide, but I do believe it's better than plain cheering for the genocide or - more commonly - dead silence. (at minimum, a remembered genocide is better than a forgotten genocide, and what better people to do the remembering than former supporters of the genocidaires and their descendants?)
If anyone sees this, could you recommend a legit online/telehealth way to get an ADHD diagnosis and prescription?
I have long suspected I have it, I have ruled out other things (in a sideways way, eg I know I don't have thyroid problems because I got those tested for other reasons), and most saliently my daughter was diagnosed and treated and is thriving. I have had a terrible time getting anywhere locally, which I mentioned to my daughter's doctor. She leaned in conspiratorially and said she couldn't diagnose me herself, and she'd never recommend this as a matter of course, but there are places online where people can get this done and dusted and I should check them out. So...any suggestions for checking them out? How shady is this idea? Any guides out there?
I don't think any trustworthy docs will evaluate you in an online appt then prescribe, but you should not have trouble finding someone who will evaluate you by telehealth appointment. That would be a good check on your own impressions.
If you google "get adderall prescription online" many places will show up. I am sure there is a Reddit sub devoted to adderall, and you can check there to see which suppliers are trustworthy. It may also be possible to order it from an Indian pharmacy. I have used one for skin products, and had no problem. I believe its name is All Night Pharmacy, or something like that.
Be aware that almost everybody likes adderall. I definitely do not have ADHD, but enjoy the way adderall makes me feel -- energized and optimistic. I take it only occasionally, when I need help doing a tedious or procrastinated project. So if it makes you feel energized and optimistic, that is not evidence that you have ADHD. Presumably people with ADHD who are helped by the drug experience a reduction of actual ADHD symtoms. You should pay attention to exactly how it helps, and try to figure out if it's working like the best cup of coffee you ever drank, or actually treating unique symptoms you've been stuck with. And watch out for the tendency to abuse the stuff or get dependent on it.
I'm not necessarily looking for Adderall. I'm aware of the drawbacks. My daughter is on a non stimulant and it has worked very well for her, so I'm not wedded to a stimulant. I'm just looking for better options than being ignored by the psychiatrists I'm referred to. Nobody is taking referrals in my area right now. One group bothered to put me on a waitlist, make me wait months, then called to say they weren't taking new patients. I'm not looking for a good time, I'm looking to help a problem I've had for many years. Would my insurance company be able to help me find a telehealth doctor?
Psychology Today lists most. The problem with telehealth docs for this purpose is that last I knew they had to meet with you in person at least once in order to prescribe a stimulant, so anyone not close enough to meet in person can evaluate you and recommend a drug, but can’t prescribe.
The docs prescribing online are violating that and risking getting in trouble. Their scripts are valid, but you can’t take their evaluation seriously. They will basically prescribe the stuff to anyone.
I didn’t know there was a non-stimulant ADD med. What’s
it called?
Atomoxetine, or Strattera (she's on generic). It was kind of a first-try prescription, a non stimulant sounding less scary to a worried parent and all that, and it's working really well so we're sticking with it for now. I think there are others but this is the one I know.
I will say that the reason my daughter's ped gave me this off-the-record tip is that I know her well, she does ADHD evaluations as part of her practice (on top of ordinary pediatrics), and she dug into my history a bit doing my daughter's evaluation. She herself keeps reminding me to get evaluated. So it isn't a complete self-diagnosis and I wouldn't super mind just getting a reasonable script from a random doc that doesn't know me. I wonder if my own primary care doc could maintain the prescription once I got evaluated... This is just not my wheelhouse.
I appreciate your responses by the way.
<it isn't a complete self-diagnosis and I wouldn't super mind just getting a reasonable script from a random doc that doesn't know me
But you can't get a script from a doctor who doesn't know you, at least not from a reputable one who would make a serious effort to advise you about meds. -- because of the requirement that they meet with you at least once in person before giving you a script for a stimulant. (They could give you a script for strattera without meeting with you in person, but what if they thought adderall was the optimal drug for you to start with?)
I think you best bet would be to explain to your internist your problem finding a local psychiatrist to take you as a patient, and ask if they would be willing to prescribe the drug if you first got a consult via telehealth from a real doc (not one of the we'll-prescribe-it-for-anybody people) and they wrote a paragraph summarizing their evaluation and med recommendations. I think most internists would be OK with that. Or possibly your daughter's pediatrician would be willing to be the prescriber, is you got an evaluation done elsewhere.
After the Monty Hall billionaire's goat variant generated a lot of discussion in the January open thread (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/links-for-january-2025) I decided to make a 10 question variants quiz as a quick side project.
Try it out! There's a lot of interesting ways you can contort the original problem to see if your understanding and intuition still matches reality.
I won 9 cars in Goat or Glory: Monty's Gauntlet!
🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪
🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🐐
tinkerdeck.com/projects/monty_hall_quiz/
This is great
This is very cool! And I've learned I *really* don't understand the Monty Hall problem hahaha
Thanks! I also learned making it that even if I can reason through the problem, my original intuition is broken and often doesn't match the correct answer for a lot of these.
I also fed the quiz to all the most prominent LLMs. Broadly the non-thinking models did worse than I expected, and the thinking ones did better!
https://tinkerdeck.com/projects/monty_hall_quiz/llm-results
The deadweight loss of taxation comes from people changing their behavior to avoid the tax. A tax which raises revenue without changing anyone's behavior is a pure transfer. This is why it is said that in theory a land value tax has no deadweight loss: the supply of land is perfectly inelastic.
The fun part about this is that you can have all the inefficiency of a tariff without any of the revenue just by constantly going back and forth.
Going back and forth?
Seems like people could change their behavior to purchase less land then they would have purchased if there was no land value tax.
The tax raises the price, which lowers demand. But since supply is inelastic, supply can’t move, and price falls from reduced demand. These should exactly balance out.
Would it only be correct to model supply as perfectly inelastic if all countries use LVT? Can “I choose to move to a new country” or “my government annexes Greenland” act as opening up new supply WRT a solitary LVT country’s market?
Yes. It's inelasticity on the supply side, not the demand side, that makes a Georgist tax on unimproved land have theoretically zero deadweight loss. Outside of the Netherlands, unimproved land is generally just there, not something anyone made, so taxing it doesn't stop anyone from making it. A tax at a high enough rate (more than 100% of the marginal value of holding the land) could lead to usable land being abandoned, but Georgists aim to stay below that amount. Actual getting the numbers right is one of the tricky parts.
While I think the description of "deadweight loss" above is perhaps not entirely complete, but the change that you describe wouldn't really help.
People avoid sales tax by buying fewer things. People avoid import tax by importing fewer things. People (taken as a whole) can't avoid an LVT by buying less land. If Bob declines to buy a parcel of land from Alice (on account of not wanting to pay the LVT) then Alice pays it instead of Bob. The tax is assessed on the land regardless of the behavior of individual market participants. The way main way one "avoids" an LVT is by using the land to earn revenue greater than the LVT, or by selling to somebody else who will. That's precisely the point. If *nobody* is capable of making the land pay out, then it was overvalued and its assessed value (and thus the tax) will fall.
Unlike selling widgets--where fewer sales lead to fewer of them being produced--the sheer number of transactions doesn't really matter. You can't produce more land when its selling well, or less land when it isn't. The supply is fixed. What matters is how its used, and the LVT of a parcel of land explicitly *doesn't* depend on how its used, exactly so that using it to the most profitable effect won't be discouraged.
I agree an LVT is an unavoidable tax, but that doesn't have to do with deadweight loss. If, for example, a company chooses a more expensive and less efficient design for a factory because that design would use less land, and LVT has made land expensive enough that it's financially worth the tradeoff, then it has caused deadweight loss.
In theory, the LVT shouldn't make land ownership more expensive, only shift some of the cost from a capital cost to a tax.
That doesn't seem like a deadweight loss though, not unless the land sits empty[1]. Their use for the extra land (cheaper manufacturing) was less economically efficient than whatever use somebody else puts that land to instead. It's no different than if two companies have to bid over a limited supply of some metal, and the resulting cost is high enough to prompt one of them to shift their manufacturing process to use less of it.
[1]In which case the land was apparently overvalued and thus the tax was too high.
It's not possible for the LVT to be so high that *nobody* can turn a profit on the land - if it was, then you'd sell the land for a lower price and the LVT would fall. So if that company can't make a profit buying the extra land, then someone else must be able to, and it would be more productive if someone else got the land.
I don't think this counts as deadweight loss - this is just the normal market-forces process of "things get sold to the person who's willing to pay the most for them."
That’s not a dead weight loss, the company in question has simply internalized what would otherwise be the externality of inefficient land use their prior less efficient factory design would have otherwise entailed.
The only reason they have to make that trade off is because someone else can make better use of the land than they can and raised its value above the break even point for their inefficient factory pay out.
I still can't figure out why your objectives aren't compatible with following due process (which is my main focus). Sorry if this is obvious, just trying to understand your position.
If I try to steelman your position, I come out with "Following due process with so many people and for such terrible crimes is neither feasible nor morally necessary." Is that something you would agree with?
Who are you responding to here? This is a top level comment. I'm confused.
My bad!
What was the original comment though? This looks like an interesting conversation, I'd love to see the context.
Link: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-373/comment/101251189?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=3il48c
I think there's a meaningful distinction here between the theoretical ideal of due process and the way it's now used in practice - see e.g. Scott's crime/prison review articles, where he talks about how a small number of repeat offenders is responsible for a stupidly huge percentage of property crime in city X, but we can't just arrest them because <lawyer reasons> (and immigration/asylum issues seem if anything even worse).
In theory we could do legal reform that would balance efficiency and defendants' rights and let us arrest bad people without decades of appeals while also giving defendants a fair hearing. In practice... Well I'd like to do that reform, but no one seems interested, so I can at least sympathize with the "just break the system" people.
That certainly helps me sympathize with the idea. Hm. I still don't think it's correct, bur I understand it better. Thank you.
I read a recent article[1] by Zeynep Tufekci on how scientists lied about covid. It's pretty good and well reasoned, but one part triggered me.
> For scientists and public health officials, circling the wagons and vilifying anyone who dared to dissent might have seemed like a reasonable defense strategy.
> ...
> But a clumsy, misguided effort like this didn’t just fail; it backfired. These half-truths and strategic deceptions made it easier for people with the worst motives to appear trustworthy while discrediting important institutions where many earnestly labor in the public interest.
She's smuggling the assumption here that institutions are inherently good and trustworthy, and the lies and corruption are shifting perception away from it.
While dissidents are inherently bad and deceptive, and being right in this case makes them "look" trustworthy.
This is not how things work! Trustworthyness is not divinely granted to institutions and individuals. You're trustworthy if your actions denote that.
The reason those institutions are considered trustworthy is because for a long time they were staffed by people with integrity. Trust was built brick by brick, slowly over generations of being better than random cranks off the street.
But scientists got complacent. When there's fraud and corruption being done by credentialed individuals, they "circle the wagons". When they really should be mercilessly purging these people from institutions.
Institutions "look" bad because they are "becoming" bad. It's not an isolated case.
And what's so damn frustrating, is that science is one of the greatest human achievements. For so long, we could actually trust (up to a point) institutions to be right above cranks. But I'm seeing in real-time us torching that.
See Gelman's [2] post about the outcome of the Gino case. Even when it's basically proven without a doubt massive fraud, no one's punished. In fact, the incentives are such that fraud is all upside with basically no downside.
We need to be in full blown panic mode and fixing this. But responses range from "Science can do no wrong", "what's a replication crisis" to the _best_ call to action being Zeynep's "Hey that was bad, let's talk about it. Everything is still fine though and we're definitely inherently clean".
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/opinion/covid-pandemic-lab-leak.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4U4.s296.TfiIiWId6GeF
[2] - https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/03/08/a-post-mortem-on-the-gino-case-committing-fraud-is-right-now-a-viable-career-strategy-that-can-propel-you-at-the-top-of-the-academic-world/
It wasn’t the scientific establishment that buried that German intelligence report, it was the government. Big Science only has as much authority as the government grants it.
I don’t have time to write a detailed response to the Zeynep Tufekci piece, but see https://jabberwocking.com/i-read-the-entire-slack-archive-about-the-origin-of-sars-cov-2-there-is-no-evidence-of-improper-behavior/
Basically every single article I read about the slack conversation highlights that Kristian Andersen says [1] that the lab escape is "so friggin likely".
See my source for the _actual_ message.
I skimmed the jabberwocking piece you shared. Literally no mention of this.
It doesn't fill me with confidence when someone claims that they read the whole thing and there's "no evidence" (as an aside, I'm getting really sick of this expression), but doesn't tackle the obvious and most central example.
[1] - https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/so-friggin-likely.png
It would have been helpful if you had provided a date rather than just linking to a screenshot, but I found the message you refer to (Kristian Andersen, Feb. 1, 13:54).
Drum’s discussion of this time period reads, “At the beginning, the researchers all agree that a lab leak is perfectly plausible and needs to be seriously considered. Here's a sampling:” He then provides several quotes, starting with Andersen’s 13:52 message: “Question is - evolution or engineering? My problem is that both really rather plausible.”
Andersen’s next message is the one you quote.
If we read further, we find Andersen saying this:
Feb. 2, 11:47 - “Natural selection and accidental release are both plausible scenarios explaining the data - and a priori should be equally weighed as possible explanations. The presence of furin a posteriori moves me slightly more towards accidental release, but it’s well above my paygrade to call the shots on a final conclusion.”
And then we get to another statement by Anderson, this one quoted by Drum:
Feb. 2, 19:28 - “Bottom line is that we can't prove whether this is natural or escape.”
You can complain about Drum’s choice of topic--that he chose to summarize the slack messages rather than writing about how others misrepresented those messages--but that doesn’t change the bottom line. During this period of time, Andersen, like the other participants in the slack discussion, was on the fence about the origins of COVID.
If “basically every single article you read about the slack conversation highlights that Kristian Andersen” quote, and they claim it means anything other than that Andersen was discussing the arguments for and against a lab leak without reaching a solid conclusion, that seems to indicate that you mostly limit your reading on this topic to authors who are proceeding in bad faith.
Yeah, they were on the fence. And still published _the_ paper that got used to squash the possibility of being a lab leak.
Let me put my take on a summary as opposed to Drum's:
- the Proximal Origins scientists are writing a paper on where it came from
- In the private messages, they think lab leak is very likely, basically can't decide between the 2 theories
- They try to publish to Nature with their _actual_ beliefs, "they were on the fence".
- It gets rejected because it's not ruling out the lab leak hypothesis
- At the same time, they are getting hounded by Fauci, getting pulled into calls. Fauci says the FBI and MI5 needs to be notified.
- They rewrite the conclusions on the paper to rule out lab leak, Nature publishes it and everyone runs with it.
Look, we didn't get a slack message where Kristian Andersen monologues like a movie villain to explain what they are doing. But saying there's no evidence is complete bullshit.
We can't rule out them changing their minds naturally in those 4 weeks in between saying lab leak is likely vs when they published. But there's tons of evidence they were pressured to change their conclusions because of politics.
You can say "there's tons of evidence they were pressured to change their conclusions because of politics", but the Slack messages indicate they changed their minds due to discovering the genome of the "Yunnan bat from 2019". If you choose not to believe the Slack messages, that's fine, but at least admit that there really is no evidence for your beliefs *from the Slack messages*.
There is _tons_ of evidence for my beliefs *from the Slack messages*.
This is not the same as "no evidence", that phrase needs to die. Having _more_ evidence for another conclusion doesn't magically erase evidence to the contrary.
No evidence rant aside. Is looking only at the information from the slack messages the crux here?
If we want to be maximally pedantic, then if I was ignoring all external information then I probably would think they naturally changed their minds.
I just don't see how that's useful to discuss? I do have more information that puts that into context, so I think the slack messages are damning.
"There is _tons_ of evidence for my beliefs *from the Slack messages*."
If there is, you haven't presented any.
"If we want to be maximally pedantic, then if I was ignoring all external information then I probably would think they naturally changed their minds."
Thank you for admitting this.
"I do have more information that puts that into context, so I think the slack messages are damning."
What information is that? All we have is your opinion that "they were pressured to change their conclusions because of politics", even though the Slack messages are entirely consistent with them changing their minds due to new information.
Strong agree. Corruption of science seems to me like a bigger deal than is widely acknowledged. Some fields seem much worse than others.
Are we sure science was less corrupted between, say, 1930 and 2000?
See also https://www.slowboring.com/p/why-you-cant-trust-the-media
My crackpot theory is that we're getting worse today because of the push by most countries for everyone to go to university.
Most communities degrade once you massively increase their size (eternal september, SSC vs ACX comment sections). So the scientific stablishment could have been ruined by normies joining en-masse.
I don't have time now to look up anything, but here are ways that come to mind about things wrong with science 1930-1970 or so. I know much more about social science than other science, so most of my examples come from that. Also, most of these were not exactly ways science was corrupt, but more bad practices.
-little or no protection of research subjects, worst example being Tuskegee syphilis study. Guidelines for protections of subjects seems not to be a thing til National Research Act of 1974.
-homosexuality in Diagnostic and Statistics Manual as a mental illness til late 70's, with no empirical basis for classification. Considered self-evident
-Stats were much worse, as was journals' tolerance for bad research design
-Theories developed by introspection and personal observation (Freud, Piaget) were not much questioned by most, and in fact loomed very large.
I do not know how scientists behaved around research where findings would be unwelcome to business or government or cultural interests, and don't have time to look for info. Areas that seem highly relevant:
-tobacco health effects
-alcohol effects on health and problematic behaviors (risk taking, aggression)
-pro/con evidence recreational drugs (marijuana, psychedelics)
-lead, in gas and in paint
-sexual behavior seen as abnormal and evil by many (homosexuality, kink, sex outside of marriage, esp when done by women)
-harm done by television -- people began socializing much less with neighbors and acquaintances
Was there an empirical basis for removing homosexuality from the DSM? The story I've heard is that there was a successful political campaign to remove it, led by an anonymous mask-wearing doctor.
Looked up info about the psychiatrist, found this at Historical Society of Pennsylvania (https://discover.hsp.org/Record/dc-14053)
". Fryer was the protagonist of one of the most important moments in the history of the American gay rights movement. In 1964, Dr. Franklin E. Kameny publicly criticized the listing of homosexuality as a disease in medical literature. As part of their activism to create awareness on this issue, he and other gay activists confronted psychiatrists attending the annual convention of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 1971. As a result of this incident, Kameny and Barbara Gittings, another gay advocate, were invited to the 1972 meeting of the APA to make a presentation to help educate its members about homosexuality. Originally a panel composed of Kameny, Gittings, and two psychiatrists was planned, but Gittings felt that they needed an individual who was a psychiatrist but also gay. After making inquiries among people they knew, they invited Fryer who accepted on the condition of keeping his participation anonymous.
To keep his identity a secret during the panel, Fryer called himself Dr. Henry Anonymous, wore a baggy suit and mask, and used a microphone that distorted his voice. Starting his speech with the words "I am a homosexual. I am a psychiatrist," Fryer electrified an audience that found itself listening to a gay psychiatrist speak in a public forum for the first time. "
There is also a set of 6 photos of the written draft of Fry's talk, but I could not get the display to advance beyond the first page.
Note that the account given here does not support the creepy element to the story as you heard it: Masked doc over a period of time waging a political campaign. (How would that even work? Other members of the profession are surely unlikely to be persuaded to change their views about homosexuality by a man claiming to be a doctor but always wearing a mask, over the course of weeks or months of some sort of pro-gay campaign.).
Speaking to the group wasn't Fry's idea -- he was persuaded by an activist doc to do it.
This account seems to me to
Your comment seems to be cut off. And I didn't intend for the story to sound "creepy". Perhaps I've absorbed too many stories from pop culture of mask-wearing heroes!
< Was there an empirical basis for removing homosexuality from the DSM?
Seems to me the burden of proof is on those who want to declare something a disorder, especially when some of the basis for societal negative attitudes towards the group in question is religious beliefs
< The story I've heard is that there was a successful political campaign to remove it, led by an anonymous mask-wearing doctor.
I read an account of it by the doctor in question, or possibly by someone who interviewed him, and what happened sounded less sleazy and political than what you describe. I believe the doctor, who was gay, masked only once, to give a talk about whether homosexuality was an illness at a professional meeting. I can’t remember whether his talk included any research findings, or was more a personal appeal, or was mostly a presentation of a line of reasoning (being gay is about as common as left handedness --why not consider it sexual left handedness? etc.)
We can ask that of any mental disorder, hence Szasz' criticism of the concept. Scott in response says that defining anything as a disease is a political concept https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/sure-whatever-lets-try-another-contra Against him (and Caplan & Szasz), Greg Cochran says the concept of disease should be defined in terms of Darwinian fitness.
We definitely didn't know about issues with it by that time, as the replication crisis did come as a surprise to many people.
But I don't think I ever saw an actual comparison of quality/failed replication rate over time. That'd be super interesting to see.
Paul Meehl was talking about the issues behind the replication crisis back in the 60s https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2016/05/06/needed-an-intellectual-history-of-research-criticism-in-psychology/
Maybe my statement was too strong, but I meant exactly what Andrew says in your post.
> Exactly! Meehl got it all down in 1967 ...
> But somehow, even though Meehl was saying this over and over again, we weren’t listening. ...
> It took us nearly half a century to realize the importance of p-hacking and the garden of forking paths
Good question. I’d be curious if people are aware of instances of fraud and whether they’re increasing or decreasing. The replication crisis does seem to be getting worse but that's due to multiple factors, like the increasing complexity of science. But it could also be due to increases in fraud. I would say that science as an institution increasingly has more societal power and that’s likely to increase opportunity for corruption, but that’s just speculation on my part.
Im not sure about the cut off date, but the older the scientific paper the better written for outsiders to read. The early physics papers during the golden age are actually understandable.
At some point science- scientific evidence - became political, and I think it was climate change that did it. There were just too many interests, too much money, invested in fossil fuels to let the science stand. It was a 'hoax'. (Notably, in countries where campaign donations are not salient the science of climate change remains accepted across the spectrum, with differences only in how to address it, not whether it is 'real'.) Once science became political, it became easier for those on the right to dismiss other scientific evidence they didn't like (eg, zoonotic covid, childhood vaccines), but - as importantly - it made it very hard for those on the left to question science. Science became tribal.
Thus, when people reasonably question scientific consensus (eg, zoonotic covid), those on the left feel threatened. Their tribe supports science, and so they have to circle the wagons.
Sadly, once things become tribal in this country, there is no hope for them. Now we have an adminstration eager to burn down or at least permanently wound the scientific establishment, and the only political figures opposed are on the left; this just makes science more political, more tribal, and less likely to be taken seriously, regardless of whether the scientists themselves are right/left/indifferent in their leanings. The right will become more dismissive of science, and the left will become more defensive of whatever scientists are doing and how they are doing it.
There’s science as a process, and then science as a collection of beliefs about the world. And our societal institutions (like the NYT) increasingly view science as a collection of beliefs, rather than a process. This NYT article was published in…2025. The term “newspaper” implies that they’re publishing news, and yet, they’re publishing this half a decade late, and a long time after the Rootclaim debate.
If we want science to be trusted in the mainstream, it needs to be redefined as a process, rather than tribalized beliefs.
There was a time when “science” meant
1. Believing that masks won’t help
2. Covid was definitely zoonotic
And the process to arrive at those beliefs was that Fauci said so. And if you disagreed with the “science” then the problem wasn’t with your scientific process of arriving at that conclusion, but that you were morally evil for not being part of the correct tribe. This was about the time that Scott said that covid might turn out to be a big deal and also masks might help, and the NYT doxxed him just for shits and giggles. Getting these institutions to see science as a process, rather than tribal allegiance, is how to rebuild trust, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
> Getting these institutions to see science as a process,
Id suggest a different plan
https://monkyyyscience.substack.com/p/let-the-science-die
You always hurt the one you fucking love.
I feel like the single biggest breakdown happened during the deepest lockdowns when people couldn't go to weddings, funerals, or visit sick/dying relatives in the hospital. That was very tough, and a huge thing to put on people in the name of science. But people did it. They hated it, they complained about it, but they did it.
Then scientists, acting in their formal capacity, said that racism was more important than the virus, so mass demonstrations were acceptable (but the other stuff is still banned).
I think that's what did it for most people. That's what absolutely destroyed trust in medical science as an institution. A "process" could determine that lockdowns were needed. No process could have determined that selective lockdowns based on ideological or political affiliation were needed. That was purely politics, and everyone knew it.
"Then scientists, acting in their formal capacity, said that racism was more important than the virus, so mass demonstrations were acceptable (but the other stuff is still banned)."
That and things like Newsom and the French Laundry (and he wasn't alone, similar instances of politicians ignoring the restrictions happened in Ireland and the UK). The people signing the orders about "no you can't go to Granny's funeral" had no problem ignoring The Science when it came to fundraising bashes and celebrations. No clearer example of "one law for the rich and another for the poor" could have been shoved into the faces of the public.
I agree with Silverax. As much as we hate it and them for doing it, we kinda expect politicians and random rich people to do that kind of thing. It doesn't change our perception of right and wrong about a topic. Lockdowns can still be morally and scientifically the right thing to do even if the people enacting them don't follow what they should be doing. These same people also drink and drive and hire prostitutes, both of which are also illegal.
I will say that watching the very people push for safety guardrails they don't follow is some evidence that the safety precautions are unnecessary, but it's hardly dispositive.
Official pronouncements, on the other hand, are meant to be official. And it's jarring to hear that massive impairments to personal liberty are *necessary* but also that preferred political opinions are exempt. It would be like hearing that cancer treatments need to be cancelled due to covid, but abortions are fine (which, come to think of it, is likely to be what actually happened).
I think saying that protesting is fine because the cause is just hits worse.
Politicians throwing parties while locking us down might be objectively worse, but I expect it from them.
When public health people were saying you need to fully lock down, I thought it was a genuine difference in risk tolerance and individualism/libertarian tendencies.
Switching to "ah no if it's protesting for our cause then it's fine to worsen the pandemic and kill gran" was an actual shock.
"Then scientists, acting in their formal capacity, said that racism was more important than the virus, so mass demonstrations were acceptable"
Yes, this. There was this massive sense of "did they just say this" disbelief. Talk about poisoning the well....
seriously, my original comment feels heavily validated. although the article linked isn't about masks at all, the discussion below focuses mostly on "wokism" and masks
This is all downstream from Institutions being captured by political forces.
Than once that political side is on one side, and the truth on the other, the Institution doesn't follow the truth anymore.
You can't have non-Dunbar's-Number institutions (5000+ individual) who aren't captured by politics. Politics is fundamentally about power distribution, money is a subset of power, and money distribution is therefore a subset of power distribution. If you have an institution that needs money, congrats, you just got an institution entangled by politics.
The best you can do is to make sure that your institutions are captured by **good** politics, failing that (or in addition to it, as a hedge), you make sure that your institutions are captured by many opposing and balancing strands of politics, to minimize the chances any single politics will wreck havoc on the institution.
> This is all downstream from Institutions being captured by political forces.
Disagree. There are certainly huge parts of academia where wokism is dominant, but I think it is generally stronger in the humanities and soft sciences than STEM and medicine.
The CDC did not lie about face masks because they were woke. They lied to prevent shortages for hospital staffs. Arguably, what they should have done instead is just not mention face masks at all: nobody expects the medical establishment to firmly state a truth before the science has fully settled, even if physical world models would strongly suggest that someone is true, claiming that the causal relationship between face masks and covid prevention was not yet sufficiently studied to make a recommendation would be totally in character for them -- I would not have trusted them to claim that there was a link between falls and bone fractures unless there was a big meta study to back them up on that just because of some physical model and anecdotal evidence.
Instead, they blatantly lied, and severely damaged the trust in their institutions. Their actions might have saved a few people in the short term, but killed a lot more in the long term.
The CDC’s position on face masks in March:
CDC does not recommend that people who are well wear a facemask to protect themselves from respiratory illnesses, including COVID-19. You should only wear a mask if a healthcare professional recommends it. A facemask should be used by people who have COVID-19 and are showing symptoms. This is to protect others from the risk of getting infected. The use of facemasks also is crucial for health workers and other people who are taking care of someone infected with COVID-19 in close settings (at home or in a health care facility).
https://web.archive.org/web/20200308000225/https:/www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html
Their update in early April:
In light of new data about how COVID-19 spreads, along with evidence of widespread COVID-19 illness in communities across the country, CDC recommends that people wear a cloth face covering to cover their nose and mouth in the community setting. This is an additional public health measure people should take to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in addition to (not instead of) social distancing, frequent hand cleaning and other everyday preventive actions. A cloth face covering is not intended to protect the wearer, but may prevent the spread of virus from the wearer to others. This would be especially important in the event that someone is infected but does not have symptoms. A cloth face covering should be worn whenever people must go into public settings (grocery stores, for example). Medical masks and N-95 respirators are reserved for healthcare workers and other first responders, as recommended by current CDC guidance.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200404001837/https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html
I’m not seeing anything here that could be considered a lie. As far as I know, they genuinely didn’t anticipate that COVID-19 could be spread by asymptomatic individuals, and when they realized their mistake they updated their guidance accordingly.
It would have been even better for them to say masks keep people
safer, and right now we need to protect medical care workers, who are even more important now than usual and are at considerable risk of contracting the virus.
They lied because they are liars. They are liars because they value the effects of their speech over the truth of their speech. They do this reflexively and without shame, not only because they think it is the correct thing to do, but because it signals to others that they play the game and don't care about truth. So even when it is stupid to lie, they still do it, because to signal that you care about the truth would get you marked as a boy scout who could blow things up.
See the 'moral mazes' that Zvi talks about. A CEO doing the obviously evil thing, even at greater cost, signals to others that they don't value being good, and so can be trusted to play the game.
Many scientists are not woke per se, but would feel incentivized to lie to protect the reputation and prestige of science and scientists. So if a story came out that scientists created a virus because gain of function research is idiotic, scientists did try and discredit it when possible.
They lied for stupid reasons, they should have said "face masks are necessary for medical staff so the public should not divert supply" but no, treat people like idiots and guess what, they won't believe another word out of your mouth.
We had enough trouble with all kind of quack remedies being suggested, so ruining public confidence in 'the authorities' left the door open for all kind of "trust me I'm a doctor now take the cattle drench" videos on Youtube to spread amongst the credulous.
And there absolutely was lying for political ends, or do you not remember "don't go to church, singing hymns will spread covid/no it's fine to march in the streets unmasked shoulder to shoulder yelling and shouting, systemic racism is a bigger existential threat to your life" directives?
Amusingly, since outdoor transmission risk was very low, this more or less ended up being the correct prescription. Not that they knew it at the time, though.
Oh sure, but as you say this wasn't arrived at through "okay now we know" but pure naked political partisanship. And now we've got Trump's second term and he's tearing through the institutions with a bulldozer, and why not? It's already been established that "them in power makes the rules, them without power obeys or else".
I think there's a pretty big difference between allowing protests and violating judicial orders.
Also worth noting that afaik they didn't round up anti lockdown protestors either. I think there was generally a reluctance to arrest protestors vs being super pro woke
I do agree the government lying about COVID was a pretty big loser of trust and completely unnecessary
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Political-identification-of-college-professors-by-field_tbl1_40823273
I know this is old, but it seems according to this That even STEM is not close to be representative of the population.
Just a warning:
From reading your post, I thought you were basically a "covid denier" or "anti-masker" or "anti-vaxxer", since my brain has learned to strongly associate "scientists lied to us about covid!" with those views.
Then I read your linked article, and it's strictly about the Wuhan lab leak theory.
I think you should have been more specific about what the article meant and exactly what science was being obfuscated.
Of course, for all I know, it's plausible to me that you ARE a "covid denier", "anti-masker" or "anti-vaxxer" and that you framed your post in this way deliberately... so that people will reach conclusions about health and science institutions that were not in the article... and that, I believe... would be a similar level of "misleading" as the people in the article.
An observation: it's only been a few years since peak covid-culture-war-salience and already these particular battle-lines feel incredibly dated. It's like passing by Waterloo in 1820 and seeing an Englishman still standing there in full regalia, waving his saber, shouting invectives about Frenchmen.
The battle ended, but not the war, because the people responsible are still at large.
Silly, shouting words on the internet is not a war.
Correct. The war is being fought by billionaires against millionaires and multimillionaires, and us plebs can merely observe and comment as it happens.
Semi-correct, the war is being fought by billionaires against other billionaires and multi-millionaires and US plebs, the losing millionaires and the billionaires will simply shrug and retire to a life in <slightly less expensive tropical paradise> instead of <expensive tropical paradise>, but the plebs will be utterly ruined, either quite literally (e.g. dying in Israel's forever wars and in the Panama/Greenland/Canada/Australia/Ukraine annexation), or quite metaphorically (e.g. having their pension wiped out by a stock market crash, not affording eggs).
As a rule of thumb, everyone in a political office will sooner jerk off a wealthy donor in a dirty bathroom than pass one law or bill with your interests at heart. Imagine them a whore and you as a non-paying random passerby, with the donors being the paying, Mercedes-riding whore customers. Their words mean nothing.
A stock market crash would mean real money is going to burn. Not every rich person is going to walk away from that easily.
Can you define what the terms "covid denier" and "anti-masker" and "anti-vaxxer" mean? Do they have specific meanings, or do they just mean "people whose opinion I would like to discount and will come up with a thin and transparent excuse to do so? doing so"?
Maybe he just wanted people to read the article.
I think this mentality is exactly what's killing science today. It's more important to not associate with the low status "deniers" than actually correctly model the world.
I didn't frame my post in any deliberate way. I think some people are so mindkilled by politics that _not_ disavowing any allegiance to the dirty enemy before getting to the point is considered "misleading"
Agreed. There's been a lot of discussion about the degradation of the comment section recently. I'm not sure that it's a degradation of the comments exactly, but a change in the values of the commenters. The community values used to be a common interest in improving your rationality and thinking, finding logical fallacies and improving on them. One of the most common fallacies people talked about was tribalistic thinking.
I think that comment is a great example of the change in values. This person’s primary interest seems to be warning people that they sound potentially as if they’re on the Bad Guy Team and demanding that they declare their tribe prior to commenting. I think this is the mentality that led to so much of the loss of trust in science.
Disagree.
(from "this person" whom you were talking about who has been degrading your comment section)
I don't think there's anything wrong with my comment. If you saw a very long detailed comment that seemed at least partially political (no matter how much the original commenter wants to claim that their own"rational" scientific mind is above politics and tribal thinking), you might also point at basically "hey, do you have a wider political belief that is influencing your reasoning and conclusions here?". And I believe this commenter was definitely expressing politics:
> And what's so damn frustrating, is that science is one of the greatest human achievements. For so long, we could actually trust (up to a point) institutions to be right above cranks. But I'm seeing in real-time us torching that.
I'm sorry, but this ignores the history of the health and social sciences. As another commenter pointed out, science, and especially public health, can get political and "interpret things politically" for generations. ("Homosexuality" et al) And Silverax's comment also seems to suggest that unnamed "cranks" are somehow NOW infecting science... but who? How do I know these "cranks" aren't the most reasonable and objective people... and the commenter only calls them cranks because of their own political lens?
Silverax got political first. It's not a crime. But they aren't being transparent.
Science that deals with health and policy DOES get mixed in with people's values. And rather than pretend that some people are "the tribalists" and others are the "enlightened '''rationalists'''", it's more productive I believe to be aware of these values-judgments-and-weights in oneself when one evaluates data.
It's like "Conflict of Interest" statements. A "Conflict of Interest" DOES NOT automatically disqualify a paper... it doesn't mean data or conclusions are wrong... but it just helps with transparency. It helps the rest of us do our work better.
................................................................
And concerning the "quality of the comment section" and "me warning the person that their words seemed to hint at positions that weren't in their linked article".
I think it's a matter of expectations about what views are shared by the majority here. (for instance, I don't think anyone would argue for Creationism here)
I'm beginning to think that Astral Codex Ten is not worth my time.
In my short time here, I've found lots of comments that I find blatantly racist, geneticist and pseudoscientific........ but then I also learned that these views are "acceptable" here.
You’re absolutely right that science and health have been politicized, and always will be politicized. But while greed is also a part of the world, and always will be, we can at least aspire to make the world less greedy. Silverax was pointing out that politics has damaged public trust in science, and I believe that a charitable interpretation of silverax’s comment is an aspiration for science to be less politicized.
You wrote, “you were talking about who has been degrading your comment section”
This isn’t what I said. In fact, I was pushing back on the common argument that there has been a degradation. From my comment: “I'm not sure that it's a degradation of the comments exactly, but a change in the values of the commenters.”
To reiterate that position, I think the change that people are observing is less a degradation, but rather a change in the values of the commenters from the interest in cognitive fallacies that so dominated rationalist discourse in the 2010s. I think warning him that he should preface his comment with tribal identity represents a stark shift in the discourse, but I would prefer to not pejoratively describe it as “degradation” but rather a value shift.
Thank you for clarifying. I know I'm seeing this late, but I genuinely appreciate it.
I also wish there was less a "tribal and politicized" mentality. But, when it's already present, I ALSO think that it's a hard thing to opt-out of.
When so many topics are becoming controversial that weren't... when norms and consensus is breaking down... I think people have to be more forthcoming about where they sit.
It's unfortunate, and naturally I MOSTLY blame the OTHER SIDE. lol. But it is what is.
But again, thank you.
(with all the bad-will around here... I think the occasional "throwaway comment" just to express good will is worthwhile ;-) )
Thanks for this. It sounds like you might be having a bit of culture shock with some of the comments, and that’s completely understandable. Part of the appeal (or repulsion depending on your point of view) of ACX is that people are very open to beliefs that are outside the mainstream. Remember that Scott’s goal was to “create a safe space for reason even when it’s socially unacceptable to do so.”
> comments that I find blatantly racist, geneticist and pseudoscientific........ but then I also learned that these views are "acceptable" here
If you see something that you think is pseudoscientific, then say what probability it is that you think their position is correct or incorrect, and what evidence would cause you to move towards their position (or what evidence would make you even more convinced that they’re wrong). For example, Scott’s post on National IQ Estimates [https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-to-stop-worrying-and-learn-to] is one that many see as racist and pseudoscientific, but remember that many (but unfortunately, not all) of the people who read ACX are genuinely interested in seeing evidence that changes their beliefs. There are people here who do believe these IQ estimates, but would also be genuinely appreciative if you found evidence that contradicted their beliefs. That’s what makes ACX interesting, but also at times, controversial.
"I think you should have been more specific about what the article meant and exactly what science was being obfuscated.
Of course, for all I know, it's plausible to me that you ARE a "covid denier", "anti-masker" or "anti-vaxxer" and that you framed your post in this way deliberately"
Jamie, do you realise you come across as the worst kind of special snowflake on social media, scolding people for their problematic views?
You came to a judgement (this person must be a DENIER) before ever reading the post in question and are now finger-wagging that in future any more posts must reach the level of your reading ability, viz. "insert the obligatory disclaimer that you are not a DENIER or MAGATARD or any other disfavoured person so I don't have to exercise one spark of critical reasoning but can be spoonfed a cosy comforting piece that agrees 100% with all my biases".
Round these parts, the level of discourse is higher than on Tumblr (and I like Tumblr myself but it's undeniable that you get a lot of children who can't handle having to think and so they demand tribal flags to be flown to let them know THIS IS GOOD THINK THAT IS BAD THINK).
How kind of you to give a warning and a second chance!
Speaking up a bit here for Jamie. I too have developed a tendency to
reflexively assume that if somebody thinks X about a culture war topic they also think Y and Z. It’s a consequence of being on Twitter all through covid where the world seemed to consist mostly of an ABC camp and an XYZ camp, and I was infuriated by snotty, cruel, mocking posts from people of the opposing camp.
And even here it is not rare for me to say X and get a snide comment from someone who assumes I also think Y and Z.
I do try hard to not honor those reflexive assumptions I make, but I think there’s value in making clear exactly what you do and don’t believe when posting about a culture war topic. It heads some people off at the pass, who would other wise assume your argument is the package deal and snark accordingly.
I suppose I just have a wistful nostalgic wish for the glory days when it wasn't automatically assumed that if you said X, positions Y and Z naturally flowed from that and you only said X because you belonged to party or tribe A and were trying to poke party or tribe B in the eye.
At least on here.
Always in favor of paradoxical eye-poking.
nope
> Of course, for all I know, it's plausible to me that you ARE a "covid denier", "anti-masker" or "anti-vaxxer" and that you framed your post in this way deliberately
The nerve of some people, stolen valor, really just makes you sick to your stomach. All real antivaxxers should be proud.
Respectfully, Monkyyy, from reading your posts in the past, I've often found it hard to analyze your grammar and "literary inventiveness" to get at the heart of your meaning.
He/they spell "monkey" with three "y"s and no "e", I'm starting to lean towards they're a LLM 😁
Hey Monkyyy, how many "r"s in "strawberry"?
Your implying its shameful to be an antivaxx.
Im mock agreeing.
This is to force a choice:
a) accept my framing that antivaxxers should gatekeep
b) attack *me* for being antivax directly
c) nagivate carefully and criticize gatekeeping itself
Even if you manage c, why did you attempt to shame someone for being plausibly antivax?
Yes, the guy is dyslexic and yet has interesting things to say and is fairly respectful. It may be worth a bit of mental effort to parse his meaning. You can also ask to clarify, without the "literary inventiveness" snark.
Im being disrespectful here
How do you reconcile humans' present bias, found in lots of research, with "carpe diem" as a life advice?
If "carpe diem" is an accepted life advice, it means people want to live *more* in the moment than they do, meaning they think they are future-biased.
My interpretation is that "present bias" does not exactly capture that human bias, just correlates with it. For example, if you're present biased, how is quitting your job and burning through your savings in a trip around the world not more of a thing? I think the bias is more like we have certain heuristics that we are biased to maintain in a sort of inertia. So if we have some job we tend to keep it, and if we save for retirement we tend to keep saving. Or do whatever people around us do, or approve of. Maybe "carpe diem" means we wish we could be freer from those heuristics and inertia, and really do what's good for us.
To me, it simply means, “keep your eye on the ball“
I think it is more of an advice to "Do Something". Not just continue with Inertia.
Stoicism is also about calming the voices of the past and future, to be more able to be present.
But of course lots and lots of people don't even fix their own creaking door, or see the check engine light meme.
Is that negligence or learned helplessness or c'est la vie?
Also it's slogans change their mean depending on context (culture, era, age, time).
Humans are also famously risk averse in psychological experiments, and when it comes to TSA security theater, and nuclear regulations, yet we have a lot of deaths every day unfortunately from car related problems, DUIs, oh, guns, etc.
I think it would be more precise to say that Stoicism recommends making your cares about the past and the future pay rent in terms of learning useful lessons from the past and acting rationally and virtuously to control what you can about the future, but not worrying about past or future stuff that doesn't result in you making better choices about stuff you can control.
Well put.
Do Trumpist not want the Rule of Law? That's what it seems like. What do they want?
Why don’t you go ask one, it’s literally the majority of voters
Most people vote on vibes, not issues like rule of law.
Trump himself doesn't, and his followers go along with him. Trump wants whatever serves him personally.
As General Benavides said, “For my friends, everything, for my enemies the law.”
The Rule of Law can be exploited and corrupted by politicians to try and entrench their policies behind what they hope is an unalterable legalistic facade.
Samuel Johnson (I think?) said "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel!", but these days, in the UK and EU, that quote could be updated to "Human Rights are the last refuge of the scoundrel", because cynical politicians such as Tony Blair deliberately introduced Human Rights laws to support their mass immigration policies.
So, if the Rule of Law has also been subverted in the US, as it sounds like Biden and his administration did in justifying the admission of tens of millions of immigrants into the country then, yes, Trump and co are quite right, and acting perfectly morally, to sweep the relevant misused laws aside!
> tens of millions of immigrants into the country
A claim parroted so many times and yet without a single shred of evidence.
Thought Experiment: 10 million = 10^7 = 10^3 * 10^4. Assuming an average of a thousand deportations per day every day for 4 years of Trump's administration, that's still 10^3 * (4*365 + 1) (leap day) = 10^3 * 1461 <<< 10^3 * 10^4, because 1461 is much less than ten thousand. How much less? A lot, about 86% less to be clear.
If Trump worked overtime and broke literally the entire walls of text stored in every court in the United States and built so many concentration camp and trains that Nazi Germany would spontaneously revive and want an autograph (spoiler alert: this will quite literally ruin the US, in every way imaginable), he still wouldn't be able to deport even a third of the number that you claim is already inside of the US illegally.
And that's just 1 **ten** million, not **tens**. Multiply the above ratios by a suitable integer multiplier to obtain your daily schedules.
Your belief system is delusional and not serious. They're not eating your cats and dogs. They're not even existent for the most part.
A house commission claims over ten million in border encounters alone, this would not be counting people who avoided being tracked or came in without using the border: https://homeland.house.gov/2024/05/22/startling-stats-factsheet-biden-administration-on-track-to-reach-10-million-encounters-nationwide-before-end-of-fiscal-year/
If I understood correctly, this counts "Border Encounters", presumably defined as the event where border police detect and apprehends an illegal immigrant (or is the claim being advanced is that the border police **lets** those immigrants free after detecting them? what would the evidence for this be?), thus - presumably - those encounters are the number of *prevented* illegal immigrants, not the number of successful illegal immigrants.
Those 2 numbers are not the same. You could sorta-kinda-maybe make them the same by assuming that the average success rate for illegal immigrants is 50%, and thus for every captured-and-deported-at-the-border immigrant there is another one who successfully infiltrated the USA and is eating the cats and the dogs of the people who live there as we speak.
But where's the evidence/reasoning process for that estimated, implicit success rate? I could set it at 90% and say that for every captured immigrant there are **9** in the US, and that would make for a staggering 90 million illegal immigrants in the US right now. 90 million is more than 1/4 of the entire population of the USA (4 * 90 = 360, more than the USA's 333), at this point you will see countless illegal immigrants on the streets whenever you walk in a busy US city.
Alternatively, I could set the immigrant success rate at 10% and that would make for a "mere" 1/9 * 10 million = a still staggering 1.1 million illegal immigrants. I could set it at 80% or 99% or 1%, who is to stop me?
------------
But ok, grant that the success rate is 50%, and that there are 10 million illegal immigrants in the US right now. As I calculated in the comment you're replying to, trying to deport 10 million people will utterly ruin the US. Nazi Germany tried to deport about 10 million people and it failed miserably, then it tried to kill them, and only succeeded in killing 60%, and at a ruinous economics.
You could definitely argue that Nazi Germany **was** kinda busy at the time and also weaker/less-industrialized/less-militarized than the United States today, or maybe it's really Ashkenazi Jews are really damn hard to deport/kill but any other people would be a total walk in the park. But ehhh, are you really willing to try this? Do Americans, as a whole, value deporting people more than their entire... not even democracy at this point, but the very idea of a functional, livable nation? And, as a bonus, flirting with genocide?
>If I understood correctly, this counts "Border Encounters", presumably defined as the event where border police detect and apprehends an illegal immigrant (or is the claim being advanced is that the border police **lets** those immigrants free after detecting them? what would the evidence for this be?)
First, border encounters are not defined as the event where an illegal immigrant is apprehended. Encounters are defined as apprehensions and expulsions. Apprehensions is defined as "physical control or temporary detainment of a person by USBP between POEs who is not lawfully in the U.S. which may or may not result in an arrest." This includes when a migrant turns themself in to border patrol and requests asylum. It's not at all unusual for them to be let into the country after applying for asylum while waiting for their case to be ruled on in court.
In 2021 there were 59,400 applications for asylum, in 2022 there were 239,000, and in 2023 there were 457,200. There were also 301,800 applications for temporary protected status in 2021, 218,300 in 2022, and 471,800 in 2023. That's a separate program from the typical asylum application, but I'm not sure if people applying for asylum are also applying for temporary protected status, so I don't know how much overlap there is. (https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/fy2023_annual_statistical_report.pdf)
Biden also created a special asylum program called the CHNV program that admitted over 530,000 asylum seekers into the country. He had another program that admitted 150,000 Ukrainian refugees. All these people are supposed to be in the country "on parole" and temporarily.
For what it's worth, in 2024 Pew Research Center estimated that there were around 11 million unauthorized migrants in the US in 2022, up from 10.2 million in 2020. (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/)
Perhaps the United States, as both the world's dominant power and one of its most aggressive, should adjust its foreign policy to create fewer refugees?
Short of the U.S. actively invading any country that starts a war with anybody (including civil wars), I don't see how the U.S. is going to meaningfully impact the number of refugees there are.
The same people who want infinity refugees and migrants are also the type to squeal about the US giving up its hegemony and its imperative to defend democracy across the world when it pulls back one inch from foreign entanglements. Really makes you think!
Summing up all your application numbers without regard for overlap gives about 2 million, give or take. This is 1 to 1.x order of magnitude less than "Tens of millions", this would be like overestimating Gaza's death toll from 50K to 500K-700K (for reference, the biggest estimate is slightly less than 200K), or overestimating Russia's casualty toll from (say, I'm not sure what the actual number is) 500K to 5-7 million.
And then you factor in (1) Overlaps (2) The fact that this an **application**, i.e. there is an actual court somewhere deciding whether this asylum seeker will stay in the US or be legally deported, no black-ops Nazi Germany Saddam Hussein eyes-covered bullshit, just boring plain old deportation as usual. (3) Ukrainians in the mix too? Weren't all of them Cannibals from Haiti and "other like them" who were eating cats and dogs?
> 2024 Pew Research Center estimated that there were around 11 million unauthorized migrants in the US in 2022, up from 10.2 million in 2020.
So the Biden admin really only added 0.8 million people in 2 years, which means (extremely naively, but let's roll with it) they added a total of 1.6 million people in their entire 4 years. 25% less than the 2 million overestimate, and even more so than the ridiculous parroted propaganda of Trump worshippers.
But the really interesting question here is to look at the immigrants number from 2018 and 2016, to see the track record of the "Let's Build a Waaaaall" demented orange, and how effective it was at actually decreasing immigrants, or really just laying any sane framework to continue on other than 1935 Nazi Germany immigration policy.
>But the really interesting question here is to look at the immigrants number from 2018 and 2016, to see the track record of the "Let's Build a Waaaaall" demented orange, and how effective it was at actually decreasing immigrants,
Well, if you believe Pew then under Trump we went from 11 million illegal immigrants in the country to 10.2. And if you look at the asylum application numbers they were between 96-150 thousand applications each year of the first Trump presidency (https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/2020-USCIS-Statistical-Annual-Report.pdf). In comparison, Biden had 457,200 applications in 2023 alone. It's worse than that though because in 2019 Trump put in place a "Remain in Mexico" policy where applicants for asylum did not enter the country until after their court case, so most of the applications under Trump did not result in the applicants actually entering the country. Biden ended the policy in 2021, though due to court cases the policy didn't actually end until 2022: the same year that asylum applications jumped from 59,000 to 239,000.
So it would be hard to argue that Trump was not more effective on this issue than Biden was.
I don't fully know the true number of immigrants who came it. Clearly it is very high. But getting rid of these people is not impossible. The easiest way would be to force employers to use everify or another electronic system so that all illegal immigrants can be denied any sort of gainful employment. Combined with a small cash payment for leaving and making examples of the worst offenders and many of them would be eager to go.
The law doesn’t enforce itself. Rule of Law means Rule of Lawyers. Trumpists decided that they preferred the Rule of Trump.
(1) My rules, applied fairly > (2) Your rules, applied fairly > (3) My rules, applied unfairly > (4) Your rules, applied unfairly
Now I don't know how many Trumpist have 2 & 3 inverted on their preference scale, but it doesn't matter, because they feel that they've been living in 4 recently. And "rule of law" can get pretty hard to distinguish from "an oligarchy override the voters preference through arbitrary application of said laws".
I mean, generally I would be concerned about due process. But when it's "the accused are gang members" and I've just read one story too many about an entire family involved in "multigenerational crime" around insurance fraud in the courts of my land, something snaps and I go "if the system is broken, too bad for the system".
That's far from ideal and I don't like where it's going, but I think a lot of people are just tired of seeing the same old faces for the same old offences over and over again and nothing being done and seemingly the courts and the law working to protect offenders rather than victims.
Basically. Let me quote @tracingwoodgrains:
"I am one of the most conservative students at my law school. More specifically: I, a gay, centrist Biden voter, am one of the most conservative students at my law school. The Federalist Society here is anemic and widely derided, while there's a dizzying array of progressive organizations. The professors and administrators are, if anything, even more progressive. My school is in no sense an outlier in this regard, nor is this specific to law. The same patterns are overwhelmingly visible in every group of educated, young professionals."
From: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-republican-party-is-doomed
Scott also laid this out well in "Neutral vs Conservative", albeit about media:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservative-the-eternal-struggle/
But yeah, right or wrong, if half the country doesn't believe that the neutral institutions are actually neutral...well, they might be wrong, but you have to actually convince them they're wrong. If you don't, sooner or later they're going to act on those beliefs.
This was one of those History Boys moments where someone perfectly articulated something I've been feeling for a while into neat snappy words. Thanks!
Seems pretty irrational for Trump supporters to think they’re living in 4. Most of the funding in Biden’s industries policies went to red states. Biden let Musk buy Twitter without even trying to stop it, instead trying to ban TikTok with a law that would give Trump the right to decide who gets it, leading to the situation we are in now. They weren’t cutting funding to Trump-supporting institutions, cutting contracts and security clearances from law firms that represented Trump supporters, deporting foreign Trump supporters based on their political views, like Trump is doing.
Trump had his home broken into by the FBI and was charged with 32 felony counts for typically light misdemeanors involving the labeling of campaign money that was used to pay a porn star to be quiet about a sex scandal. The Biden administration collaborated with big tech firms to try and run a general censorship case against their opponents. If one wants to accuse them of anything, you could say that the Biden regime was in an awkward middle ground: too aggressive to be written off as standard politics, but not aggressive enough to protect themselves from retaliation.
>The Biden administration collaborated with big tech firms to try and run a general censorship case
Will you cite any evidence for this? The twitter files after Elon took over did not show this (Taibi admits as much in his original twitter thread on the release) and Zuckerberg claimed there was censorship without releasing any evidence because Trump threatened to jail him for life.
Per the house commission: https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/Biden-WH-Censorship-Report-final.pdf
>For example, internal July 2021 Facebook emails obtained by the Committee and Select Subcommittee show that Facebook understood that the Biden White House’s position as wanting “negative information on or opinions about the vaccine” removed as well as “humorous or satirical content that suggests the vaccine isn’t safe.”
Is it your position that any public-private cooperation is government censorship? Where are the threats? Where are the lawsuits or affidavits alleging illegal conduct? Where are the employees saying this is coercive and going too far?
From looking at the headings all of these are related to covid misinformation. Even the "March 2, 2021: Biden White House Criticizes Amazon For Not Censoring Books" section only has discussion about vaccine books and the Biden administration spokesperson saying the CDC warning wasn't shown above one of the books titled "Anyone Who Tells You Vaccines Are Safe and Effective is Lying."
And why doesn't the report show how the public-private cooperation started? What did the big tech companies expect from the administration and what did the administration expect from them? Nothing from what I skimmed demonstrates malfeasance, whereas Trump will publicly announce to his followers that he plans to prosecute Zuckerberg. I ctrl+f'd for "threat" and this is the only relevant result:
>Slavitt also chimed into add that he “fe[lt] like relative to others, interactions with Facebook are not straightforward and the problems are worse.”87 He then added the vague threat: “Internally we have been considering our options on what to do about it.”88
...This is not a threat. It looks like the Republican Judiciary Committee members threatened Meta more in the production of this report than the Biden administration did all 4 years:
>After issuing dozens of subpoenas to Big Tech, government
agencies, and relevant third parties, the Committee on the Judiciary and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government began to obtain tens of thousands of documents illustrating the details of the Biden White House’s pressure campaign. Obtaining key internal
company communications—often including the highest levels of company leadership—took additional escalatory measures from the Committee and Select Subcommittee, including threats to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress.
I don't want to read the rest of the report or check out the other 700 pages in exhibits because it seems like complete bullshit.
>Is it your position that any public-private cooperation is government censorship? Where are the threats? Where are the lawsuits or affidavits alleging illegal conduct? Where are the employees saying this is coercive and going too far?
Censorship is the result, not the practice. If the companies eagerly agree to comply with a request to censor information, then that is still censorship.
Trumpists want Rule of Law applied to groups they see as having been allowed to skirt it for far too long, like bottom of the barrel criminals, leftist activists, and illegal immigrants.
“Rule of Law” normally means the rulers act according to the law, not that the rules enforce the law harshly against non-rulers. Iran has harsh law enforcement but that doesn’t mean it has rule of law.
AFAIK Iran does (generally, I'm not up to date with their scandals/abuses of power) have rule of law, its just in line with a very different legal system which kind of sucks to live under. The government is dominated by its judicial branch with the head of state having the title of Grand Ayatollah (ayatollah meaning something akin to legal expert).
If that definition is used, then Trumpists do not want rule of law, nor is it strongly desired by the average voter or average Democrat.
Do the people who worship an individual so much that they buy scraps of his used clothes for thousands of dollars and get willingly pumped and dumped by a textbook 2018 crypto scam in 2025 because Trump is the one pumping and dumping them, do those people want the rule of law?
Hmmm, tough question. Let me think for a bit.
I'm done. The answer is No.
What's the scam? People wanted to give Trump money, and Trump got money. That's how shitcoins work.
Rule of Law was always the strongest argument in favour of Trump, as I see it.
I don't expect him to be perfect on it, because we're all mortal, but if Trump can manage to extend the long arm of the Rule of Law to reach the tens of millions of people currently living in the US illegally, then it takes an awful lot on the other side of the ledger before that ceases to be a net gain.
That's not what rule of law means. Rule of law is principally a restraint on the governors, not the governed.
Giving them a green card is cheaper, better for GDP, wouldn't require sliding more into a fascist police state, etc.
Okay, is giving a green card to lawbreakers a good idea? If the majority just want to work and pay taxes, fine. But there are people gaming the system and if the result is a pat on the head and a green card instead of consequences, what then?
And I want this to apply just as much to the Irish who overstay visas illegally to work and live in the US.
Of course what matters is GDP per capita and your recommended approach certainly doesn’t help GDP per capita. Canada recently tried an extreme version of “let’s bring in millions of unskilled 3rd worlders” and their GDP per capita has plummeted. Or look to Denmark to see that at no point in their life is the average MENA immigrant a net contributor to public services.
What would you expect but for GDP PER CAPITA to plummet? If you have productive workers doing work that someone less productive could do, bring inn less productive workers to do that work. Productivity per capita will fall, because of the larger number of people, but the result is still more efficient productive work.
Workers of group A can produce 20 widgets per hour, which requires expertise and 10 wadgets each, or they could produce 100 wadgets an hour. Workers of group B can produce 100 wadgets an hour, but can't produce any widgets. So 10 Group A people can produce 160 widgets and 200 (net 40) wadgets per hour, but if you bring in two Group B people you can get an extra 40 of the more valuable widgets per hour, since Group A people don't have to spend time making wadgets.
Which is not to say that improving per-capita GDP is a not a great thing, as it certainly is. You just have to get Group B people to learn how to do what Group A people can do.
But how it seems to work out is that instead of moving the group A workers to make wadgets, they get replaced by group B who all make widgets and are cheaper to employ, and maybe they are then trained to make bad quality wadgets, but hey at least it's all cheaper so that's fine! Who cares if the wadgets break or blow up afterwards, our share price is doing better because our quarterly report shows we've cut manufacturing costs and are selling more widgets.
If we need wadgets, well just buy 'em from China or wherever.
Crypto scams and extreme zoning restrictions to raise rents would be even better for GDP.
Legalizing murder also drops crime rates, the increasing gun sells would increase gdp and rug sells.
"we could change the law" may not be effective at convincing people who like elements of the current law
There's a quote (of unknown attribution) that comes to mind. I think it's unfair as a description of conservatism-in-general, but it does seem to fit Trumpism quite well:
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
I think it has been clear for many years that the Trumpist movement *does not* want the Rule of Law whenever it would bind them or protect their enemies. But they are quite vehement about it in circumstances where it binds their enemies or protect them. See, for example, the difference in reactions to the 2016 and 2024 elections, compared to 2020.
I hate that garbage quote to be honest, I can think of plenty of progressive subsets where the quote is a far more apt description than conservatism (in general or even American conservatism). Feminism and Men as their outgroup, to take one example.
I don't think you need to go remotely deep to understand Trumpism. It's a cult. Cults are young, insecure religions. To understand Trumpism you need to understand what religions usually do, and if you just look at (e.g.) Islam or Hinduism, it's hard to argue that Trumpism is unique. Plenty of old, established religions display the same revolting aspects of Trumpism (but of course that's backwards, it's Trumpism that's young and imitating the older pathologies, or even reinventing them independently ala convergent evolution, not the other way around).
Insecurity, Persecution Complex, extreme and unproductive deep-searing skin-burning fundamentalist hatred and rejectionism of the Other, Moralistic Superiority, whining about violence when done against them but eagerly gloating about violence when it's being done by them, etc... etc... etc... None of this is new, it's thousands and potentially tens of thousands of years old, I will bet a small amount of dollars that Chimps or Bonobos would display a proto-version of this behavior, they usually display the full gamut of human-like behavior in everything from food to sex.
Trumpism is a young, doomed, angry religion, stillborn by an old, demented founder and a first batch of followers who have a lot of anger and not a lot of thinking given to who or what is it that they should be angry about. A Holy Book is all what's missing, but Trumpism is not very eloquent in any language, so the Old Testament bible is easier to appropriate and it's full of old angry assholes lashing out for no reasonable reason and destroying all things animate and inanimate.
As Butlerian's responses here illustrate it's nowhere near as calculated or coherent as that. It's a tantrum at scale. Anyone who's an experienced parent can step back and think about our kids' screaming tantrums and realize that the psychology is exactly the same as that.
[For just one small example, the response here to that description will consist entirely of "But what about _them_?? THEY did it first!!" etc etc]
Having MAGA relatives, while not a pleasant experience in some ways, does at least provide the opportunity to observe that mind virus firsthand rather than through pundits and online ranters and mediots. I wasn't initially as sensible as that but a colleague taught by example. The one liberal I knew in the fall of 2015 who loudly -- when _both_ parties were still laughing and sneering at Trump's declared campaign for president -- began saying "He can win" turned out (I learned later) to have several close relatives who'd become MAGA early-adopters. She switched to "he _will_ win" before the first primary, and if she'd been a person who enjoyed wagering she'd have taken cash from lots of colleagues including me (we all offered).
When kids have tantrums, it is cute and harmless. These are currently the most powerful people in the world. It seems infantilizing to compare them to children, absolving them of responsibility and downplaying the threat to everyone else.
Plausibly they perceive that the rule of law was casually flouted by Democrats in recent years (George Floyd protests, politically-motivated prosecutions, etc), and so a degree of turnabout is fair play.
Not much point being a rules-stickler if your opponent's just gonna fight dirty anyway.
"politically-motivated prosecutions"
This isn't "flouting the rule of law" though. It takes some pretty fantastic mental gymnastics to land on "following and enforcing the law is actually disrespecting it." There's quite a large difference between the opposition breaking the law, and the opposition following law, but in a way that you personally dislike.
>"politically-motivated prosecutions"
>This isn't "flouting the rule of law"
Nope. Even application of the law is one of the central components of the rule of law
Funny thing, one of the first hits when googling "For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law":
https://www.undp.org/latin-america/blog/graph-for-thought/%E2%80%9C-my-friends-anything-my-enemies-law%E2%80%9D
>The “rule of law” is invoked frequently in discussions about governance. But what is it? The rule of law involves two main components. First, the rules must be applied impersonally. This means that they must be applied in the same way to every person—regardless of who they are. Second, the people who are in charge of applying and enforcing the rules are also subject to the same rules. If both of these two components are consistently present, then we can say that a society has a “strong” rule of law
>With the exceptions of Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Chile, the data suggest that across LAC the application of rules still depends very much on who you are and/or the rulers are not fully subject to the rules. This is reflected in the unfortunately common saying in Latin America: “To my friends, everything; to my enemies, the law.”
> This isn't "flouting the rule of law" though.
I would contend that it's certainly flouting the SPIRIT of the rule of law, even while "well ackshually" conforming to the letter of the law.
> There's quite a large difference between the opposition breaking the law, and the opposition following law, but in a way that you personally dislike.
If one thinks of the law as a means to an end of achieving justice, then politically-motivated prosecutions are bad. If one thinks of the law as a series of gotchas to fuck over your opponents, then politically-motivated prosecutions are... the whole point of the law, sure.
Let me be perfectly clear on something. I loathe the Republican Party and have for a long time (as they've worked so hard to earn it). But if Republican prosecutors were to amass sufficient evidence to indict, try and convict Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden or any other prominent Democrat whatsoever of any crime, *they should absolutely do it.* Of course those would be "politically motivated prosecutions." And of course the defense lawyers in those prosecutions should be extra-alert for any and all signs of overreach or misconduct. But if the trials were conducted legally, they should happen the the guilty parties should suffer the legal consequences. OF COURSE they should. How is that even a question?
Heck, I'll go further. The U.S. should hire a few hundred extra special prosecutors--one for each Senator, Representative, Cabinet member and a small team for the president, who should be charged and legally empowered to constantly follow their particular elected official around, dig into their records, scrutinize their activities and absolutely NAIL THEM if they find anything illegal. This should be standard practice. Every elected official should know that's a prerequisite of holding office. Waiving certain facets of their right to privacy should go with the territory.
Keeping elected officials honest is crucially, *fundamentally* important. It is utterly appalling that you and so many others have decided that it just, plain *doesn't matter* when somebody whose politics you like breaks the law. That is just *begging* for powerful people to walk all over you.
> to constantly follow their particular elected official around
Can we also do a fact checker each? Please, please please let's make lying wrong again.
> Heck, I'll go further. The U.S. should hire a few hundred extra special prosecutors--one for each Senator, Representative, Cabinet member and a small team for the president, who should be charged and legally empowered to constantly follow their particular elected official around, dig into their records, scrutinize their activities and absolutely NAIL THEM if they find anything illegal. This should be standard practice.
I used to agree with this, and am certainly sympathetic to the theory behind it. But all things have trade-offs. If you're going to tell people who are considering running for elected office: "From the day you win the vote you're going to have to live in a panopticon and have everything you do scrutinised under a microscope by very nosy, officious, annoying lawyers whose entire professional advancement relies on sending you to jail for putting a decimal point wrong on your tax return", you're not going to get many sane, well-adjusted people trying to run for elected office.
The ideal quantity of corruption is not zero, because eventually, the corruption-policing methods prevent more good policy than they encourage.
(And this is before we get onto the point that I'm not keen on yet more of my hard-earned money being taken away in taxes to pay for more lawyer-bureaucrats to engage in intra-Congressional navel-gazing)
"I would contend that it's certainly flouting the SPIRIT of the rule of law, even while "well ackshually" conforming to the letter of the law."
Well, yes. "It's against the spirit of the law when it's inconvenient for me" is exactly the attitude I'm talking about.
"If one thinks of the law as a means to an end of achieving justice, then politically-motivated prosecutions are bad. If one thinks of the law as a series of gotchas to fuck over your opponents, then politically-motivated prosecutions are... the whole point of the law., sure."
This is, and I grow weary of repeating myself, *just another way* of saying "I don't really believe in the rule of law." EVERY prosecution is "politically motivated." How on Earth could it NOT be? The proposition that we should throw people in jail for robbery or assault is fundamentally a political one. District Attorney is a political position, *necessarily.* Laws are passed by political processes, *necessarily*. You cannot *possibly* have a non-politically-motivated prosecution. What the term really means here is "our guys should be immune from prosecution." OF COURSE prosecuting ANY politician who commits ANY crime in office is going to have an extra-large helping of political valence and OF COURSE the opposition party is going to be extra-eager to prosecute it. That's literally what opposition parties *are for*: to keep the other party honest. Is a word where politicians can literally get away with murder one you want to live in? Because that is little short of what you
The ENTIRE POINT of having laws is that people will always, *always* disagree on what constitutes "justice" in a given scenario, so you agree on the rules *ahead of time* rather than retroactively arguing that no, really, it's fine what our guy Did Crimes this time, and punishing that would be unjust. If politically motivated actors can follow the law to the letter and still manage to convict one of the wealthiest, most powerful people in the country (and thus most capable of avoiding committing crimes in the first place AND the most capable of defending himself) then that should indicate a HUGE problem with the law itself. Not with the "politically motivated prosecutions." With the body of law more generally. And yet neither Trump nor his supporters seem to have taken is as any sort of cue for any sort of *reform*[1] they use "politically motivated prosecution" as a thought-terminating cliche to insist that it didn't *really* count. Pretty amazing when used in support of a guy who used to lead chants of "lock her up."
[1] Perhaps because they realize how laughably poorly propositions like "we're going to remove rules against lying on your business records" would actually go over
> EVERY prosecution is "politically motivated."
"Well a politician wrote these laws so all prosecutions are political" is not my understanding of what is meant by "politically motivated prosecution". Rather, it is the contention that charges are being brought based on the defendant's political relevance rather than on the egregiousness of their wrongdoing.
> The ENTIRE POINT of having laws is that people will always, *always* disagree on what constitutes "justice" in a given scenario, so you agree on the rules *ahead of time* rather than retroactively arguing that no, really, it's fine what our guy Did Crimes this time, and punishing that would be unjust.
Scott wrote a post back on the old SSX about "Isolated demands for rigor" https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands-for-rigor/
> “There is something about practical things that knocks us off our philosophical high horses. Perhaps Heraclitus really thought he couldn’t step in the same river twice. Perhaps he even received tenure for that contribution to philosophy. But suppose some other ancient had claimed to have as much right as Heraclitus did to an ox Heraclitus had bought, on the grounds that since the animal had changed, it wasn’t the same one he had bought and so was up for grabs. Heraclitus would have quickly come up with some ersatz, watered-down version of identity of practical value for dealing with property rights, oxen, lyres, vineyards, and the like. And then he might have wondered if that watered-down vulgar sense of identity might be a considerably more valuable concept than a pure and philosophical sort of identity that nothing has.
> Okay, but I can think of something worse than that.
> Imagine Heraclitus as a cattle rustler in the Old West. Every time a rancher catches him at his nefarious business, he patiently explains to them that identity doesn’t exist, and therefore the same argument against private property as made above. Flummoxed, they’re unable to think of a response before he rides off into the sunset.
> But then when Heraclitus himself needs the concept of stable personal identity for something – maybe he wants to deposit his ill-gotten gains in the bank with certainty that the banker will give it back to him next time he shows up to withdraw it, or maybe he wants to bribe the sheriff to ignore his activities for the next while – all of a sudden Heraclitus is willing to tolerate the watered-down vulgar sense of identity like everyone else.
...and your argument strikes me as isomorphic to this. When it's Donald Trump on the hook: everyone, Republicans and Democrats, must respect the rule of law no matter to whom is applies, the dogged persistence of our DoJ prosecutors is a shining example of American fairness and impartiality. But when it's George Floyd rioters on the hook: oh, the local DoJ declined to prosecute the organisers of fiery but mostly peaceful riots? Well, case closed!
Appealing to the sanctity of the law when it suits them but *crickets* when it doesn't is a very annoying tactic.
> Pretty amazing when used in support of a guy who used to lead chants of "lock her up."
This is a *somewhat* fair Uno-Reverse of the previous argument, I accept. However you'll notice that during the Trump administration, Hillary did not actually get brought in for mugshots and court appearances, whereas during the Biden administration, Trump did. Politically-motivated rally-chanting is, in my book, a rather significant de-escalation compared to politically-motivated prosecution.
>Rather, it is the contention that charges are being brought based on the defendant's political relevance rather than on the egregiousness of their wrongdoing.
Exactly. Or even the presence of wrongdoing.
Buying your dad’s book but will politely pretend to have never read it. Mostly because we have the same first name and I already over focus on the idea of my grandchildren being able to have a memory preserved of me.
In 15 years whats more likely for the left:
a) business democrats invite in neocons, they purge woke and they pretend corona and wokeness didnt happen, hoping to make america into the 90's again treating trump as regan
b) demoractic party dies; greens or a someone new takes over, or 2032 Bernie refuses to yield to whoever is 2032 Hilary and a left wing maga redesign happens or something inbetween
c) civil war/balkanization, fly over america and woke cities dont need to compromise or pretend to be the same culture and governance anymore; violence or divorce were always the answer to the debates
d) wokes are still around, cancelling any leftists who are moderate making gop effectively permanently in power; trump successors says to keep bread tube funded to make any socialists look bad "controlled opposition". They actively get rewarded for looking more insane the gop doesn't lose once federally and city after city turns purple.
I think all those options are too predictable. We had a pretty good run from WW2 to now of one world-political system run out of Washington DC with a few adjustments to mark the 60’s and the end of the Cold War, but it seems to be winding down now and something else will emerge that nobody understands yet. It’s one of those times Gramsci talked about.
I make comments like this every once in a blue moon, and I suspect most of the ACX commentariat thinks I'm a nutjob, by now. But I'm glad there's at least one other guy in here who can sense the Sea People coming.
Im pretty sure the future will include the amish and anti-nation state islum.
Even if the americain empire disapears very rapidly(I would expect america to be the last nation state tho), the demographics of the next era are kinda known and you can ask the young where their allegiances lie
"treating trump as regan"
Funnily enough, just heard on the radio Simply Red's "Money's Too Tight To Mention" which is very critical of Reaganomics. The past is always golden in retrospect.
No idea who these people are, anyone young?
Trump completely tanks the US economy and its relationships with the rest of the world. Anything that smells even faintly of Trumpism is firmly out of the Overton window for a generation. Democrats have full control over the smoking rubble.
My guess is it's economic populism from now to the end of time for both parties now that politics is a social media sport. There won't be much difference between them, or rather it will be the difference between two whores, one dark and tall, the other blonde and petite, both offering the best head you ever had.
It will be a race to the bottom for another 12 years until the US defaults on its debt and becomes like a third-rate country, like the UK maybe, powerless and poorer.
Both parties can use economic populist rhetoric, but neither is going to (nontrivially) implement the policies to match. Only so many election cycles can pass before the people notice that the thing they keep voting for never happens.
Well, "3 or 4" isn't all that many.
Which economic/political views do you subscribe to? Im having trouble placing this set of ... views with someones point of view
(in light of everything being terrible, demographic collapse, boomers debts coming due, blaming trumps populism when we will be debating the great pillowing soon)
I lean neoliberal/libertarian.
Was 2008 bailouts economic populism or not part of the trend that is causing the problems today? If it was populism why does everyone hate it? It it wasnt what was the date when the system started falling apart?
Bailouts were not populism in my view. The election of Trump in 2016 supplanted the neoliberal order with the new populism in both parties.
In 15 years it will probably look more like d), although under the hood it will be c).
What does Rome look like 15 years after the last Grachi is murdered in 122 BC? Well, by coincidence, Marius becomes consul for the first time in 107 BC, exactly 15 years later. It's still an entire adult lifetime from Marius to Sulla to the Triumvirate to Caesar becoming consul in 59 and then his death in 44.
I question high confidence from rome parallels; whatifalthis civil war prediction was based on a dead trump comparing him to... my rome isnt good enough for this conversation, but trump is still alive and is very much changing history. By all means we dodged the bullet there, but high confidence seems unreasonable given a questions of inches of some guys in glasses aim when you dont even know the wind speed months in advance.
Substack centrists keep whining for a pure return to Clintonian politics that doesn't happen because far left staffers have a stranglehold on the party and won't relinquish that power. The top party officials prefer to wait for an economic downturn for a free victory, which happens sometime in 2028 or 2032. However, at that stage they are unable to accomplish half of what they want because the bureaucracy has been gutted and the party is too old and sclerotic and terrified of centralized power to reinstate it.
> whining
I view every timeline I suggested as having someone talking about it; Im more wondering about competence and resources.
Given the federalist structure of america I would very much disagree.
Governors are still blue in blue states, blue people will print blue ballots in blue states and blue house blue cars your blue doba dee doba dei.
California succession tho *fingers crossed* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_and_secession_in_California#21st_century
Like 5 coin flips would have to go right, its not the most likely outcome but the future feels very uncertain right now.
I believe its fair to say the ground troops are right wing, the cia is left wing. I believe the right will win any civil war(*cough* guns, food prep, nature) but is unwilling to start the violence while a good life is merely possible.
If trump really crosses a line, maybe the left starts with the entire miltrey in the civil war; but why would he do that?
If the left really crosses the line, the 90% on the ground troops pick up their guns and joins with the farmers/militias on a short civil war with short siege of leftist cities; but why would they do that?
Maybe pure insanity will lead to complete war without escalation and negotiation, prep, neural parties etc. but then your assuming someone will be insane; I dont think you should do that, sometimes people you disagree with are capable of believing true things. Id rather just have califorina leave, or texas leave when a democrat is in power.
Looking at the US from the outside, calling the CIA left wing is extraordinarily odd given their history of installing, funding and supplying regimes that systematically kill socialists and communists.
Im a little confused on the mind of a glowie but I assume woke mustve gotten in. There was always that fun story that the reddit leaked the most heavy usage of reddit came from a american mil base running "internet monitoring" so if you want to know the politics of the ruling class it was that era of reddit when they were mass spamming it.
Their usual priority was dismantling and destroying any regime that could be classified as 'pro-white' first, then aiming to suppress Communists. To some that reads as a left-liberal slant.
I would really need a source for that first part because that's an extraordinary claim.
One thing that concerns me about the left is the potential to make criminal gangs into their own "ground troops". And it doesn't even need to be a purposeful, party-wide conspiracy, with Democrats uniting to sponsor insurgents under the table. The cartels, independent enterprising criminals, various corrupt beaurocrats, etc. could each see the fall of progressivisim as the end of their respective meal ticket, and find indirect ways to support each other. Some criminal gang occupies a major city (like Seattle's C.H.A.Z. only bigger, and slightly more organized), the city's woke government doesn't have the will to oust them, a few city employees surruptitiously help them, anyone not on board with the revolution gets out of Dodge, those left deride any talk of sending in state or federal troops as White colonizers doing their thing. Meanwhile the occupiers call on others to follow their example, right-wing communities start batting down the hatches, left-wing communities look into appeasement, and it snowballs from there.
I hope I'm wrong, and I think the longer it goes WITHOUT such scenario the less likely it will occur, but that's the only way I see an actual Civil War II breaking out in the current age.
Worried that the left could be convinced this is a viable plan or that such a plan would be successful?
The former. I don't think it would be successful in the long-term, even in the worst-case scenario I don't think the left could organize well enough to actually compete with the mainstream military and right-wing militias. but they would still be able to do plenty of damage, so I think it would be worth making plans if another, bigger C.H.A.Z. is attempted.
They might view it as an existential threat, but not an open and shut case. The Mexican army fought them (with billions of US taxpayer dollars) and couldn’t dislodge them. Remember, the War on Drugs is fifty years old.
But I think the demand is widespread enough (alas!) that even if you somehow kill all the cartels’ “upper management”, they’ll be back with a vengeance the second they’re not closely being paid attention to (which will happen sooner than later, because that kind of attention is expensive and bad for much legitimate business).
The cia is leftwing and has access to a bunch of satellites; and we all learned to ask who knew what during 9/11
Its getting warmer and violence is seasonal so I guess we will see; but I have doubts; the left feels engeryless and the right has a deeply flawed leader whos acting recklessly; I think this will continue until the left finds new energy sources.
Are you interested in anyway about online election system? In my circle it's mostly contra, especially Tom Scott, and most of Reddit or tech forums i see also have the same idea. But then I see this article about India doing it and the comments are super supportive about it. To this day I'm still not sure whether the tech experts are totally wrong or that the support is just another Indian nationalism.
I feel like there's the implicit assumption that we should make voting as easy as possible, with as many people voting in an election as possible, as an ideal for the political system.
While I'm not one of those people who thinks "The populous is stupid, they can't help themselves for voting for whoever the media tells them to" like a lot of people who don't hold this assumption, I am less inclined to think that someone who can't bother putting in the effort to vote by mail, or spend an hour voting during their lunch break, should be given an even more convenient way to vote.
People mostly vote for their interests, and anything that artificially restricts voting behavior would exclude a significant portion of the population from voting for their interests. They will then advocate for themselves in perhaps less civil means, which is bad for society. Voting is a sort of pressure release valve where people can have meaningful input to the system, so even if someone can't read, or doesn't know the first name of either candidate, they should still be provided the opportunity to vote so they can contribute their interests to the system without having to advocate through extra-political means.
The people we shouldn't worry about are the politically apathetic. There's no social unrest coming from people who don't even care to vote in the first place, and I say we should let them be.
Indian elections are not online, merely 'electronic'. The voting machines are stand alone counters that register each physical vote via button press, are physically sealed before and after voting day, and when counting is done, physically display a tally which is counted up and reported
(1) I'm interested when it touches Mathematics, Game Theory, Prediction Markets, anything with a hint of information-theoretic formalism in it. I'm also interested about speculating how it might be used in the future, in societal structures and/or human populations radically different from what we know today (e.g. stateless transhuman anarchist living on Kuiper belt asteroids).
(2) I'm not interested when it's being sold by tech bros or geriatric politicians as a supposedly more "advanced" or "neutral" voting mechanism, because I know for a fact that all their stated motivations and selling points are bullshit, and in the best case they're pushing it because "Digital Transformation all the things" and "thing done by compooter is always a good thing", and in the worst case they're pushing it because it will make corruption easier in some way due to the incompetent, badly-secured rubbish implementation that they will contract from the lowest bidder.
(3) Even granting that societal problem X can be solved technically, it's usually more prudent to at least consider whether it can be solved socially and culturally first. As an example, you can solve the problem of people running red traffic lights by using cameras and machine learning on the captured license plates to automatically fine the offending cars big sums of money, but that also means (A) you just made running red lights a viable driving strategy for rich drivers (B) Have you considered that people can simply sabotage or hack the cameras? You must secure them, and if you're going to put traffic police near them anyway you might as well make the traffic police themselves give the fine, the machine learning is redundant.
(4) My impression is that most problems with voting can't even be solved technically. One problem is that there's no voting, another is that a country's dictator will hire goons and gangsters to break your leg unless you prove to them that you voted for the dear leader. Another (in stable democracies) is there is no one on the ballot who has your interests or desired policies at heart, every candidate is a corporate whore who wants your votes in order to continue giving blowjobs to billionaire from the office. Yet another one is that 51% of your fellow voters are extremely dumb and/or consumed by hate, and a candidate can sway them while not having a single concrete policy in mind just by massaging their prejudices and promising them he will make them "great" again. I can't see how any of those problems can be solved by electronic, digital, networked, etc... voting. It's not the voting itself that has problems, it's everything before and after it, and in the people doing it.
Yes, but only from a theoretical perspective (I'm a cryptomathematician).
Establishing an e-voting scheme that can't be tampered with is both impossible and unnecessary.
Establishing an e-voting scheme that can't be tampered with without the tampering being easily detectable, and that prevents you from finding out how someone voted without their consent unless you're actually keylogging as they vote, is fairly easy, and gives you a guarantee of security at least somewhat comparable to ballot boxes (after all, people can burn those, or spy on you as you're voting).
Establishing an e-voting scheme that can't be tampered with without the tampering being easily detectable, *and which doesn't enable people to prove who they voted for*, seems really hard, and that seems like a fatal failing. There are some deeply unsatisfactory probabilistic protocols, but I'm not aware of any deterministic ones. I periodically try to either formulate a protocol for doing so or prove that it's impossible, but I've never succeeded at either.
I think that online voting is a terrible idea.
It is not enough for voting to be secure, the average citizen also has to believe it is secure.
With a paper ballot, I can cast my vote and then observe the urn like a hawk until the votes are counted. I might be fooled by some magician trick, but most people are very willing to believe their own eyes.
With advanced mathematics, the only answer the median citizen will get is "trust the experts", because they have no chance to even understand RSA, never mind an advanced voting crypto scheme. (Quite frankly, on "factorization is hard", I myself have to trust the experts.)
Of course, most serious experts -- such as the German CCC -- are also highly skeptical of digital voting schemes. At the end of the day, most people can not do modern cryptography in their head, they need to trust their devices to handle it for them. With IT security being what it is, it would be foolish to trust that the fraction of compromised devices is minimal.
In the past decade, some unfortunately notable people have loudly denied that elections were conducted legitimately. Even if -- unlike the CCC -- we were to trust the vendors of digital election solutions, this alone should stop us from considering them.
To be fair, old school voting is also incredibly complex, the complexity is just a bit decentralized and spread out across systems and people, with heavy human nudging in every step of the loop and a deluge of paper trails.
Nobody can do crypto or network packets encoding/decoding in their head, but do people routinely count even 10K votes in their head? Do they see the district map and prove to themselves that it's not gerrymandered (which requires quite heavy math) in their head? etc.. etc.. etc..
Digital systems are faulty, sure, but you already trust them with your flights, with your satellites, your nuclear and non-nuclear powerplants, and also that 10 million dollar medical machine that can kill you with X-rays faster than you can blink. The key is redundancy, good engineering, decentralization, extensive testing, observability and telemetry (e.g. the "paper" trails from old school elections, except it's not paper) and a good protocol for when any of this discovers a problem with the process.
Is that really a fatal failing?
I see two possible problems: large scale bribing/coercion and small scale bribing/coercion.
The large scale version you just need to catch and punish. If someone is offering incentives for voting a particular way or threatening people who don't vote a particular way then they need to do so semi-publically, so you can just catch those people.
The small scale version would be more like people in abusive relationships and the like, where the coercion happens in private. But this sounds like a tiny number of people.
And besides, surely existing vote-by-mail systems have similar or worse flaws? If you can vote by mail then you can show your ballot paper to someone and have them mail it for you.
If someone successfully offers incentives and sways an election, won't the new currupt leader just pardon them? It seems like potential punishment would happen too late. Large scale election tampering must be prevented.
Yeah from what I've read, the secret/anonymity part is the biggest challenge in establishing secure election, despite everything we've established in the past 30 years.
Also Tom Scott argues that the main problem of online election is the scalability of any attack. With offline election, any fraud needs to mobilize tons of people to do it, opening lots of vector for leakage. But with online one, you only need one flaw to immediately influence data of whole nation. The calculus of attack and defense is just totally unacceptable.
Estonia has e-voting, if you want a non-Indian example: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4343374.stm
I think it's workable in theory, but with a lot of asterisks. It would take a long time to validate the system and get people to trust it, and since each state handles its own voting system and there's no good federal ID, you'd have a horrifying patchwork that would be 50 times harder to validate than Estonia's system.
Ah yeah I remember hearing about Estonia. Since the article is from 2005, is there.lesson learnt after 20 years? I thought that despite this, it's still not popularly adopted by other nations even Estonia's neighbors.
An Immodest Proposal
I would like to propose that rich societies consider implementing a tax on AI inference **by the kWH consumed at inference data centers**.
My goals for such a taxation scheme would be:
1. Gradually reduce income taxes until they are strongly negative for people below the current median US income, to slow down displacements caused by the uptake of AI
2. Give modelers incentive to reduce the energy consumption of their models
3. Tax a thing that is fairly easy to measure
4. Give governments positive incentives to encourage AI use in the general population
A perfectly fine side effect of this is conceivably lowering some carbon emissions, but I don’t want to do everything-bagel planning.
What are some problems with this approach?
1. Taxation is theft. OK, but ideally we’d aim for a net reduction in tax burden for lower income Americans
2. LLM services are easy to sell across borders. It seems likely to me that a sufficiently motivated government could prevent this about as well as it has prevented Gambling Websites It Hasn’t Decided Are OK Yet, i.e., not perfectly but enough to probably avoid the entire industry moving to China
3. Anything else?
2. Give modelers incentive to reduce the energy consumption of their models
Why do we care about AI energy consumption? I suggest that we actually don't; the thing we actually care about is the externalities - the opportunity costs of the output of our power plants going to AI rather than something else, distributed across a shared grid of finite capacity that could be used for something else, generated using fuels which only exist in finite amounts that could be used for something else, polluting the surroundings etc.
If the AI company generates its own energy using its own facilities, without using up finite resources or creating pollution in the process (at least after the initial build), there doesn't seem to be any particular reason to disincentivise that.
Moreover, if we're not against AI per se - and you've made no case for why we should be - it seems unfair not to include other industries with similar externalities in our tax scheme.
All of this suggests some kind of tax on third party industrial energy generation in general would be strictly better than an energy tax on data centers in particular.
I consider AI fundamentally different because it has the potential to replace labor much faster than earlier technologies, and you need to tax something if you want a social safety net.
I want a social safety net, and I’d prefer we tax labor less.
I like this approach because it seems like it scales with the level of disruption while not completely killing the goose.
>1. Gradually reduce income taxes until they are strongly negative for people below the current median US income, to slow down displacements caused by the uptake of AI
What numbers, exactly, are you proposing? The US gov has ~$1T income tax revenue[1]. Even if you keep it simple and leave income tax unchanged except you set it to zero for below-median earners, you're still looking at $100B tax revenue deficit [2] that has to be made up by the industry. That's a lot of money on top of the need to invest and the currently negative profitability of LLM tech.
> 3. Tax a thing that is fairly easy to measure
In theory maybe. In practice, AI companies today treat energy consumption as part of their business secrets, insofar as they even know themselves [3]. If you suspect a company underreports their consumption, whether intentionally or not, how would you go about proving that, and how do you avoid regulatory capture? Because you can't expect a government agency to have the same technical knowledge, let alone specific business insight, as the leaders in a rapidly evolving field.
> Anything else?
Sure. What if your scheme succeeds? You incentivize AI companies to either shut down, flee the country, or reduce their energy consumption. In all cases, your proposed new tax revenue drops and you can no longer finance your income tax drops. In 2 of the 3 cases, the negative consequences of AI even persist except you can't cushion them any more through your income tax relief, and then what?
[1] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/government-revenue/
[2] https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2023-update/
[3] https://www.theverge.com/24066646/ai-electricity-energy-watts-generative-consumption
The main drawback I guess would be incentivizing less usage of AI overall, not just less energy usage. Which is bad if you believe in the "AGI is just around the corner and we need to beat China to inventing it" model, but probably fine otherwise?
But if AGI *isn't* around the corner and it's only modestly profitable, then there may not be much money to tax.
3. Taxing AI to the point of replacing income taxes will reveal that AI does not actually have infinite value, or even that much value at all.
There seems little scope for extended discussion of the following, which may mean it is somewhat pointless to post it here. But it made me chuckle, and some readers may find it amusing. That curious faux-antiquated phrase "God wot" rang a vague bell, although I had never heard of the poet or the poem.
-----------------------------------------------
A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Ferned grot—
The veriest school
Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not—
Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have a sign:
’Tis very sure God walks in mine.
Thomas Edward Brown (1830 - 1897)
-----------------------------------------------
A garden is a lovesome thing? What rot!
Weed plot,
Scum pool,
Old pot,
Snail-shiny stool
In pieces; yet the fool
Contends that snails are not—
Not snails! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I see their trails!
’Tis very sure my garden’s full of snails!
James Albert Lindon (1914–1979)
Cute poems!
The stumpy, 2-syllable lines are funny. Maybe they're supposed to represent the immediacy of experience. Or maybe the spondees represent the slow, plodding feet of a gardener carefully stepping over the soil. But whatever the semantics, the lines please the ear all the same.
I should like to imagine that snails are the Gods and guardians of the garden. You know, in an animistic way. Like, maybe you can commonly spot the snails in the evening because twilight is when the Spirit World intersects with the Material Plane.
I only know "God wot" from Hamlet, it may ring a bell in some from that.
Oh, it's amusing to me and I'll bet Deiseach takes an interest. She'll be able to explain "God wot," too. Here's another, by Rupert Brooke, that may amuse you:
FISH (fly-replete, in depth of June,
Dawdling away their wat’ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
Each secret fishy hope or fear.
Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;
But is there anything Beyond?
This life cannot be All, they swear,
For how unpleasant, if it were!
One may not doubt that, somehow, Good
Shall come of Water and of Mud;
And, sure, the reverent eye must see
A Purpose in Liquidity.
We darkly know, by Faith we cry,
The future is not Wholly Dry.
Mud unto mud! — Death eddies near —
Not here the appointed End, not here!
But somewhere, beyond Space and Time.
Is wetter water, slimier slime!
And there (they trust) there swimmeth One
Who swam ere rivers were begun,
Immense, of fishy form and mind,
Squamous, omnipotent, and kind;
And under that Almighty Fin,
The littlest fish may enter in.
Oh! never fly conceals a hook,
Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,
But more than mundane weeds are there,
And mud, celestially fair;
Fat caterpillars drift around,
And Paradisal grubs are found;
Unfading moths, immortal flies,
And the worm that never dies.
And in that Heaven of all their wish,
There shall be no more land, say fish.
Sometimes I wonder how it's possible that fish enjoy eating insects and grubs. I simply can't imagine it. My mind is not flexible enough. Maybe I'd be willing to eat live grubs if I had gone without food for a month, and were emaciated. But I wouldn't enjoy it. And even then, I dunno if I could really bring myself to do it.
God Wot! (But I certainly don't.)
In the debate below about the deportation of purported gang members to El Salvador, people keep using "lack of due process" synonymously for "no one checked whether they were citizens." Honest question: is it really true that no one asked any of these people for their passports? Or is it only the case that they didn't get a whole trial? Because these seem like very different things to me.
From what I've read (not a lawyer), the legal process went like this:
1. Trump invokes the Alien Enemies Act, a law that allows the government to arrest or deport noncitizens without trial during war. He orders all members of a Venezuelan gang to be deported, on the grounds that the gang is "invading" the US so we're at war with the gang.
2. Deportees argue that this is nonsense, that's not what invasion means. They also argue that they aren't gang members so the order shouldn't apply to them.
3. Court issues a temporary restraining order, so they can stay in the country while they sort this out in court. The judge specifically says that if any deportation flights have already left, they need to turn back and not drop off people in El Salvador.
4. ICE ignores the order.
As far as I know, none of the people in the case have claimed to be American citizens, only that they shouldn't be deported for other reasons.
However, I think people are bringing up citizenship because without due process, it's very possible that they *could* deport a citizen. By the time you get a court order saying "no, stop, that guy's a citizen," he's already in El Salvador and the government just shrugs and says "sorry, too slow."
Like, even if you have a law that says "in this situation, you get to skip due process," you still need enough due process to check if you're in a situation where the law applies. There's no way to skip it entirely.
No system can be perfect. I have heard cases when ICE rounded up illegal immigrants in California and sent them back to Mexico, some of them were later found to be US citizens. Mistakes happen and it was because those people were drug addicts and/or with mental problems and agents and judges didn't believe them when they said they are citizens and they couldn't provide any proof they really are. Probably when one has mental problems and is homeless, it can happen.
I just don't think that because of those rare mistakes, we should make everything more complicated and all legal proceedings more lengthy and costly, just to avoid a very rare mistake. California is a special case with a lot of Spanish speaking immigrants. Sometimes children born in the US may grow up in Mexico and be indistinguishable from Mexicans. Which also make them Mexicans in all respects except for a legal status.
If someone gets deported to Salvador by mistake but can later prove that he is a US citizen (by providing birth certificate), then I am sure that the US embassy would give him a passport and allow returning to the US.
I would be more concerned that someone is from Salvador but haven't done anything bad but happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and is being deported together with the rest of gang members.
>If someone gets deported to Salvador by mistake but can later prove that he is a US citizen (by providing birth certificate), then I am sure that the US embassy would give him a passport and allow returning to the US.
Yes, I'm sure that it will be very easy for you to access both your birth certificate and the US Embassy from *inside a prison.* El Salvadoran prisons are well known for providing good legal representation to their inmates.
These threads have been fucking packed with "Shirley exceptions."
I don't know much about Salvador but it is not North Korea. People have good life there. I know one American who decided to retire in Salvador because it was his wife's birth country and because his small pension gave him better life there.
Lately Salvador has been in news (from Marginal Revolution) that they managed to reduce crime substantially showing that it is possible. I don't know much how they did it and how many innocents they had to sacrifice but I haven't heard much international outcry about this, so I assume it must be more or less ok. Unlike Duterte's reign in Philippines who is now facing International Court for his overzealous crackdown on drugs that killed many innocents.
My point is that I don't want prematurely to become fired up about something without sufficient information. If someone makes a good case that Salvador is terrible in dealing with criminals, I will accept that. So far it seems more about outrage for the sake of proper procedures. I agree that legal procedures are important but from utilitarian point of view these don't seem very import at this moment. Unlike many other things, like indiscriminate tarifs, current attitudes with Russia etc.
The people being deported to El Salvador are literally going directly into the "Center for Terrorism Confinement." How the average person in El Salvador lives is irrelevant - the deportees will not get the chance to live such a life.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/17/americas/el-salvador-prison-trump-deportations-gangs-intl-latam/index.html
We probably read the same article and see different movies. I see successful reduction of widespread criminality in Salvador. Any other plan to reduce it failed.
I am equally worried that dictators can cause a lot of problems in the country. But this article doesn't say much about these potential problems. 1% of jailed population sounds high but considering that it was highly violent country before, it could be about right.
It also says that they have arrested some innocents too but several thousand such people have been released. So, it means they still have a process to prove their innocence. It is not North Korea yet.
Countries can go through difficult periods when it may not possible to protect all innocents. Imagine what happens in Ukraine? People get drafted, even against their will, sent to the battle and then they are killed or maimed for life. It could be more than 1% of population of Ukraine who is currently serving in the army. And things in Russia are not better in this regard. You could be jailed even for calling this war a war instead of a “special military operation”.
Putin is a dictator who is causing great harm and yet the current US government is cozing up to him. And you worry about some gang members who most likely (99.9%) deserved this?
"We probably read the same article and see different movies. I see successful reduction of widespread criminality in Salvador. Any other plan to reduce it failed."
A "substantial reduction of widespread criminality" has very little to do with the question of whether Venezuelans deported from the US to El Salvador are released into the wonderful low-crime community of El Salvador, or are directly thrown into an El Salvadoran supermax prison with the rest of the criminals. And the article beelester cited, says fairly explicitly that, yes, those people are going to the prison. I'm not clear on how you missed that.
Or, if you caught it, why you think it is even remotely relevant to the question at hand how nice and safe the not-actually-inside-a-prison parts of El Salvador are, because the people we are talking about will never ever live in those parts of El Salvador.
Maybe you are asking the wrong question then? Criminals going to prison is what makes Salvador and/or the US safe. Some innocents will get caught but there is a chance they will be released.
My question remains what is the optimal balance but no one really wants to answer that.
We would like you to first understand what is being "balanced" against.
"Oops, sorry we shipped you off to El Salvador with a plane supposedly full of violent gangsters. Hope you have the resources, documentation, legal representation, etc. to prove we screwed up so we let you come home. Pobody's nerfect, after all."
You have it backwards, at least from the U.S. justice system's perspective. A foundational principle of U.S. criminal law, usually cited to the English jurist William Blackstone, is that "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." The exact ratio of course is less important than the general principle, which informs many legal standards, maybe most notably the requirement that a criminal defendant be found guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt." Due process under the law is a constitutional guarantee in part to effectuate this philosophy.
Immigration law is civil, not criminal, but the degree of due process afforded should be commensurate with the potential consequences to the accused person. Deportation isn't imprisonment, but it's a severe punishment, and for someone genuinely wrongly deported it may be even worse; at least in prison they're guaranteed food and shelter, which may not be accessible to someone deported to a country they have no connection to, and it's easier to send someone home from a U.S. prison than to fly them back from a foreign country.
>but the degree of due process afforded should be commensurate with the potential consequences to the accused person
Why?
The greater the consequences, the greater the harm if you get it wrong. The more due process, the more certain you can be that you're punishing the right person. This is why death penalty cases take longer than speeding tickets.
Maybe I should have been more specific. His statement implies that the severity of the consequence to the accused should be the only consideration when determining the degree of due process afforded, especially given that he did not give any other potential considerations
I disagree. Namely, I think it's only one factor that should be considered. Moreover, I'm of the opinion that this view reflects the complete lack of pragmatism on the left, especially when it comes to illegals
Can you name those other factors? And if it's something like "the trial would take too long," perhaps you would be better served with putting more resources into the judicial system to handle the case faster, instead of simply saying that you can't be bothered to determine innocence or guilt before you punish someone?
Like, ICE's justification for deporting some of these people was literally "they have tattoos, therefore they must be gang members" The bar is on the fucking floor here.
It's not these illegals per se; it's the several tens of millions of them across all of the illegal-recipient countries over the past half century. This experience has more than demonstrated that the high standards of due process afforded to illegals across the Western world is mutually exclusive with solving illegal immigration. To be frank, it was retarded in the first place to believe that illegal immigration could be solved while simultaneously mandating that tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of manhours in legal-administrative costs must be committed per illegal in order to deport them. Reality has simply borne this out
>perhaps you would be better served with putting more resources into the judicial system
demonstrates exactly my point about the left's complete lack of pragmatism on the issue. You say this as if money grows on trees. Yea, let's go ahead and spend even more hundreds of millions out of heavily constrained and indebted budgets, no trade-off there lol
As long as the Republicans keep trying to pass trillion-dollar tax cuts, I'm not going to believe them when they say we can't afford something. The money is there, the Republicans just want to give it away to billionaires instead of spending it on something useful.
The Trump tax cuts are 4.5 trillion over 10 years, or 450 billion a year. Reduce the size of those cuts by 0.02%, and you have $100 million to spend on not sending innocent people to an overseas gulag. I really, really can't overexaggerate how big the tax cuts are, and how little "hundreds of millions" is on the scale of the federal budget.
>just tax people even more to solve illegal immigration
How about no.
>on not sending innocent people to an overseas gulag
You mean on reducing the already low chances of sending innocent people to an overseas prison
Anyways, that number was one I threw out there as an example. It was absurdly conservative. There are 13 million illegals in the US. 1000 USD more spent on legal processing per illegal - again extremely conservative - is 13 billion. 10k more is 130 billion. And this doesn't account for inflows of illegals - less due process also means reduced inflows, as it erodes the sense of impunity from deportation that had prevailed prior to Trump
For pre-Trump estimation of costs I did a cursory google search on the legal costs of deportation and found the following, which appears reliable enough: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/mass-deportation
>A one-time operation to deport these immigrants would cost at least $315 billion, broken down as follows:
>The government would have to spend $34.1 billion on legal processing.
That's 2563.91 in legal costs per illegal if all illegals are deported at once.
>The government would have to spend an average of $12.6 billion per year to carry out legal processing for an average of one million immigrants annually.
That's 12,600 in legal costs per illegal per year.
I'm not sure how it would only cost 34.1 billion for all 13.1 million illegals but 12.6 billion per 1 million per year. One would expect marginal costs to increase the more illegals you process per year - there are only so many immigration lawyers, judges, and courtrooms so you'd expect that increasingly more money would be needed to get more of them, eg by paying more to entice non-immigration lawyers to take up immigration cases
A lot of things today can be done faster than in the past. Not speaking particularly about this case, but many legal proceedings are lasting too long. And I am not talking about weeks or months, many insignificant criminal and civil cases takes years, with all the appeals and what not. Justice delayed is justice denied. I would start with overhaul of the legal system that would guarantee the rights to speedy trial.
- "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."
Somehow I have a feeling that today we have less falsely convicted people than during William Blackstone's times. And is it really true that one convicted innocent is worse than 10 guilty persons escaped? Maybe the correct ratio is 1:8 or 1:6 or whatever. And what is the current ratio we have in our system? Maybe we already have it 1:20 or 1:30 even if counting all these fast tracked deportations?
If we knew the innocent ones, then the ratio would be 0.
"I just don't think that because of those rare mistakes, we should make everything more complicated and all legal proceedings more lengthy and costly, just to avoid a very rare mistake."
What if you are the "rare mistake"? Never mind, your 17 y.o. daughter who is having a difficult time with adolescence and all, is the "rare mistake".
It's so fucking easy to pontificate about wrecking other people's lives.
I don't think that your reply is justified here. We are allowed to discuss all these things because we want to find the optimal amount or balance between effort necessary to investigate versus benefit to the society with reduction of crime. I don't want to take absolutist extremes that no crime at all is an optimal outcome because it would mean complete control over all citizens. And neither that no mistake should ever be made within the justice system because that equally requires too many resources.
I don't know what is the optimal approach in each case. Some people rely on deontology for these issues (just do what the law says). I am more of a utilitarian here but obviously it has some limits too.
Well, the context is important. Judicial mistakes happen, innocent people get convicted, there is indeed a balance between throwing innocents in prisons and never being able to secure a conviction.
Which is why! in this case! could they just fucking wait for two weeks? Especially because a judge ordered it? Precisely to have at least a chance to make sure an obvious mistake haven't been made? We are not talking about giving every one of these guys a defense attorney and scheduling trials in October. Basic checks!
My understanding is that even in Europe countries experience difficulty deporting criminals back to poor countries. There have been many cases when misguided activists block airports and some airlines even refuse to take them onboard.
Probably we don't have a proper balance in this regard.
Another issue that some countries utilize a strategy of a shadow war by sending illegals and/or criminals over the border. Currently it is happening on Polish-Belarus border where people from Middle East are being gathered to enable them to enter the EU and overwhelm the courts with asylum cases. Poland made a political decision to stop honouring the right to asylum and the EU supported this decision. The current laws are not intended to deal with these situations.
I think I keep running into this so I'll state clearly: I am not at all opposed to deportation of illegal criminals. What alarms me is the speed with which this bunch was sent to a concentration camp - in direct defiance of an American judge's orders. The last bit is the worst.
It goes both ways. A 17 y.o. daughter is more likely to be raped by some gang member who couldn't be deported due to excessive legal procedures than arrested and sent to another country by mistake.
Deporting a law-abiding person by mistake doesn't prevent any crimes.
At least in the Khalil case, the guys who arrested him seemingly didn't even know he had a green card, so at the very least, they don't seem to be trying very hard to find out the immigration status of their victims.
FFS.....you know, giving wokeness a large public punch in the nose is very welcome. If done with just a shred of intelligence, and at least a veneer of motivations other than white nationalism, it might could be some compensation for all the stupid and immoral crap that Trumpism represents.
Instead though we get stuff like this:
https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2025/03/17/navajo-code-talkers-trump-dei-military-websites-wwii
And when questioned of _course_ they triple-down on it. Of course. Because they are just the worst goddam human beings we could possibly choose to put in charge.
Meh. It's an interesting enough story, but not a particularly important one; neither putting it up nor taking it down was any sort of outrage.
Trump and Musk have been working overtime to make wokeness seem like the lesser evil. For example
https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1900230926774526121
---
I am an NIH-funded biomedical scientist with conservative leanings. I know at least a dozen scientists (a small closeted minority) who voted for Trump, largely because of frustrations with DEI and extreme wokeness that had permeated every aspect of University life. Each one of us deeply regrets their vote for Trump and are utterly ashamed of it.
We are absolutely horrified at how mindlessly destructive this admin has been to scientific institutions. They are single-handedly destroying the STEM dominance US established over decades.
Average Americans simply do not realize that we are now on the verge of a precipitous decline in STEM. We all admit that the warnings about Trump/MAGA were on target, and the thing we argue about now is whether the damage is even reversible. All the Lefty overreach was annoying as hell but the MAGA disdain for science is 100X worse.
90% of the "woke" over-reach is liberal (not in the way american's think liberal means left) institutions trying to win easy points by implementing cheap, surface level veneers to shield themselves from criticism. This has been obvious for years and is evidenced by the way all these veneers have been stripped out almost instantaneously by the trump administration. Teachers being asked to take down posters that say "everyone is welcome" because they feature hands of various colours. The FBI painting over walls that had displays about respect and fairness etc.
These things were never considered seriously, they were always an affectation.
Its fascinating from the outside to see how people hated being reminded that minorities existed so much that they voted in a megalomaniac. Project 2025 was right there. It more or less listed exactly what trump's team wanted to do (I don't think trump cares about anything other than power, revenge and self aggrandisement.)
It was all so obvious.
I sympathize with you and with your colleagues. While I gritted my teeth and voted for Trump as the marginally lesser evil, I never doubted that the man is indeed an evil. The choice last November was absolutely miserable.
As another biomedical researcher ... press X to doubt. It's extremely hard to even find a single person voting right at university, because they're not only rare but avoid talking about it because political discrimination is openly practiced. I'm voting FDP (centrist/libertarian) here in germany and quite critical in general, and even to me nobody admits voting right. There's people for whom I *suspect* it, but they keep their mouths closed on the topic of voting. And there's even quite a few for whom I used to suspect it, but then turned out to vote left or even far-left.
Also, the superlative language is just childish, and very "howdy fellow conservatives". NIH in particular was hardest hit, but in terms of overall biomedical US R&D the reduction is still just a few percentage points. And maybe it's my libertarian leanings, but given the state of universities opening up taboo research is easily worth quite a few percentage points, since these are the main topics where there is low hanging fruits left. Not to mention this reduction in funding is easily reversed by the next administration.
I think Trump is much more accepted in the US than AFD in Germany.
AfD? I don't even know CDU voters among my colleagues.
I did actually run into an AfD-voting neuroscientist when I was at a conference in Berlin. It was exclusively social issues, much like the scientist described above. Though I do think it's pretty rare, yeah.
Ok, Wow. Didn't the AFD and CDU together get more than 50% of the vote?
No, but almost. It's more than 50% once you consider all the parties failing the 5% barrier, though.
What exactly does a precipitous decline in STEM look like? The US has had a surplus of STEM graduates for a long time, and in practice the main thing that created was pressure for employing them all. There's a whole lot of funding for research and not a lot of practical use that comes out of it. People inventing ten thousand ways to cure cancer in mice really isn't that impressive.
I think normal people notice it ten years later when all the good stuff seems to be coming from other countries.
" The US has had a surplus of STEM graduates for a long time" - wait, what? I wish this were true. I work in a STEM (TE part). Do you really think we want to go through the insanity of the H1B process to hire young engineers? No, we don't get to pay them less, this may be true in some fields, but definitely not in semis. It also costs a lot of money and causes all kinds of friction.
And yet we have no choice, I can't tell you how many times all qualified candidates for a position were foreigners requiring a visa.
I'm not an economist but everything I've ever seen suggests that research is a huge net positive for economic growth and if anything we should fund it more; I don't really know where you'd get the opposite impression.
Invent ten thousand ways to cure cancer in mice, and eventually one of them will work in humans.
The death rate from cancer has been slowly declining over the past few decades, we just don't notice because it's not big exciting breakthroughs, it's a bunch of "we have a new treatment that works on cancer type XYZ if the patient has phenotype ABC and Mercury is in retrograde" stuff. But it adds up over time.
Also it's been confounded by the (until recently) steadily-rising US lifespans. The longer we live the more likely it is that we _eventually_ develop cancer, so the overall percentage of people whose cause of death is some version of "cancer" has not seemed to be dropping very much. But when you compare death rates at the same age the steady incremental progress against cancer becomes clearer.
Reducing the percentage of people who smoke has made a clear difference on its own. But both detection and treatment of forms of cancer having no known association with smoking have also steadily become more successful.
I am confused as to why you think that giving disproportionate prominence on military websites to the experiences of nonwhite soldiers compared to white soldiers *isn't* DEI.
Just because Navajo code-talkers really existed doesn't mean you have to talk about them every damn opportunity.
> doesn't mean you have to talk about them every damn opportunity.
It's a single website that you can either visit or not visit. Repeated visits to the same website doesn't count as "every damn opportunity", it counts as a single opportunity that you keep replaying and getting triggered by even though nobody is forcing you to and you could totally not visit that website, even blacklist it in your adblocker entirely.
The central argument of every Free Speech discussion is this: Deletionism is asymmetric with Preservation. With Deletionism, those who want to see/read/hear/use the deleted material are forever robbed from the ability to do so, but with Preservation, those who don't want to see/read/hear/use the material are still very free to simply... not do that.
> It's a single website that you can either visit or not visit... nobody is forcing you
It's a DoD website that taxes pay for, and I absolutely *am* forced to pay taxes.
(1) To elaborate on Featureless remark, here's an article from 2017[1] about hosting static websites on Amazon's S3 buckets, it comes out at less than 0.2 cent per unique visitor per month (93 cent per 500 unique visitor), this means that even if the US government was a completely clueless Joe Shome who doesn't get any special deals from AWS or use their super-duper SQL-resistant DOGE skills to host websites hyper efficiently on on-prem hardware, they would still be able to serve this static website to all of the USA's 330 million unique visitors (who, let's assume, are all magically connected to the internet and visiting the website in the same exact month) and only be setback 0.2 * 330 * 10^6 = 66000000 cents = 660000 dollars per month. Almost 2/3 of a million dollar per month, meaning 8 million dollars a year. Let's call that an even 10 million to account for multiple devices, surge prices, AWS price-hiking, and other inefficacies.
The US sends 3.7-3.8 *billion* dollars a year to Israel, the "closest" ally that kills US citizens with sniper shots to the head or by crushing them under bulldozer tracks. 3.8 billion dollars is 3800 million dollars per year, 380x what a single static website served to the entirety of the US using an inefficient rent-a-server noob-friendly approach.
From a cost-benefit analysis alone, you should be flooding your representative and fuming at the mouth at the US's free child-murder-packages to Israel about 380x times than you're at the website detailing the exploits of long-dead people who once helped defend your great grandparents, meaning for every 1 second you're complaining about the Navajo code talkers website you should be spending about 6 minutes complaining about the US discount murder packages to Israel and calling for their discontinuation.
Unless, that is, this was never about efficiency and tax dollars. Was it?
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(2) You paying taxes for things the government says/does that you don't agree with is not unique and is called "living in a modern country". US voters who didn't vote for Trump are forced to pay taxes so that Trump big ass can sit on a comfy chair and dismantle their tax-funded public institutions using unconstitutional Judiciary-defying executive orders. US citizens of East European descent are forced to pay taxes to Trump's administration while he gives the green light to Russia wreaking havoc on both itself and the rest of Eastern and Central Europe. etc... etc... etc...
It's actually a deep philosophical problem to justify this morally, this is the entire reason why philosophers made up the "Social Contract" concept, imagining a virtual contract that people supposedly agree to by living in a modern country. In this theory, you agree to pay for a website about the Navajo code talkers in return for living in the USA (and other USA citizens also agree to pay for things they don't agree with in return for the things they agree with that the USA does).
An alternative would be Anarchism, as a political philosophy, which holds that - indeed - Taxation is a protection racket enforced by the modern continental-scale mobs known as nation states. And you're indeed in the right to be upset that your tax dollars go to things you fundamentally don't agree with, in this case the solution is to break up the USA into thousands or millions of communities and let each local community decide what to pay for. In effect, the "Taxes" at the small community scale would be like your small neighborhood collecting money door-to-door to fix the streetlights and fill the potholes in the street. Foreign Policy and Defense in this model are unsolved problems.
[1] https://medium.com/@bezdelev/cost-breakdown-for-a-static-website-on-aws-after-18-months-in-production-d97a932d2d25
Serving webpages is cheap enough that it's actually more expensive to delete this stuff than keep it up.
I mean, it *is* a pretty interesting story. I was fascinated by it as a child, and am not even an American.
You look at a story and think "This is interesting, therefore I like it" without realising that, in order for the text to reach your eyes, some motivated penman has previously decided "I like this, therefore I will write it interesting".
Anything can be a pretty interesting story if you lavish ink and status on it. I reject the hypothesis that what the code-talkers did is any "intrinsically" more interesting than the travails of a regular private on a modal front. It's just more propagandized.
Seems to more likely that you are denying its nature as an interesting story because you feel it comports in some way to the narratives of your political enemies.
Well if you're just going to engage in wild speculation on my motives rather than engage with the actual arguments I make then what's the point of dialogue at all?
...you started by speculating on my motivations and I just did the same back?
That is not accurate. I made no speculation about your motives. I accepted your account that you found the code-talkers interesting. The problem is that the REASON you found them interesting is because the people who placed those stories in front of you did so with secret motives, not that YOU had secret motives.
If this is "disproportionate," then what would be the proper amount of prominence to give them? How many articles about WWII history has the DoD published, and how many of them are about the Code Talkers? What should that number be instead? More than zero, right? Did someone at the DoD actually count these pages and decide on an appropriately race-balanced number, or did they just blindly search and delete anything related to nonwhite people?
(It's the second one, it's always the second one, this government has no patience for actually thinking about things.)
While we're at it, how much prominence should we give to Medal of Honor recipients? Because they also removed an article about a black Medal of Honor recipient. And it wasn't, like, some sort of special feature on how black soldiers are especially brave, it was an article in their regular "Medal of Honor Monday" series.
(And is the DoD planning to apply the same level of scrutiny to all the other Medal of Honor recipients they've done articles on, or is it only the black guy who needs to have his article specially justified?)
A quick Google tells me that there were ~400 code-talkers within a WW2 US military that had a total of ~12 million soldiers, so as a rule of thumb there should be 30,000 DoD WW2 history web pages about servicemen who weren't code talkers for every one that is about code talkers.
Your are making the same mistake the affirmative action people make. You think unless everyone is perfectly equally represented the underlying process must be racist.
The navajo code talker story is intrinsically interesting. It should be discussed in much greater proportion than the raw number of people involved. One not need any DEI feels to think that. They just need intellectual good taste.
> The navajo code talker story is intrinsically interesting... They just need intellectual good taste.
This brazen typical-minding and snobbery makes the case better than I ever could, that going on and on about the Navajo is a PMC ideology-as-fashion statement.
You are welcome to make any movies you like about topics you find interesting. I have never complained about the lack of diversity in any of the good wwii movies I have seen. But i suspect you cannot.
You sound to me like the shrill female liberals complaining about yet another movie about men doing interesting things.
You were supposed to accuse the code talker erasers of malicious compliance. Instead you took the bait and claimed US ingenuity in out smarting our enemies is lame because it involved some brown ppl
In fairness, the whole story is that the US used a language other countries did not know to encrypt some of their communications- right?
That's the jist of it yes. It is an interesting contrast to the other famous ww2 cryptography story that involved inventing a proto-computer. Low tech and simple. But also clever, using a source of knowledge that the enemy has 0 access to, but America has plenty of access to. And interesting that this is possible. The germans could not have done the same, we have access to all their languages. Nor could the Japanese, we have access to Ainu. Shankar can poo-poo it, but how many unbreakable codes has he invented.
"US ingenuity in out smarting our enemies"
This is kind of a weird way to think about it. Like, should there should be 12 million articles about soldiers for every one about FDR? Or Eisenhower? Or (honestly no idea about these numbers) 10,000-100,000 about soldiers for every 1 about a general?
You should be careful with analogies. In yours, the (non-white) code talkers are akin to FDR and Eisenhower and are therefore more worthy of being talked about relative to the average (mostly white) soldiers, who, according to you, are unremarkable and much less worth being talked about. It was pretty off-putting how automatically you reduced the status of the non code talkers as a matter of course. Before your response I was pretty onside with Paul Botts' sentiment on the issue; you singlehandedly changed my position
I have a hard time taking this seriously. Everybody is more interested in rare things. Nobody's gonna read an article about every one of the Jeff Smiths in WWII because their experiences are relatively common. It has nothing to do with the inherent value of them as individuals or their moral worth.
Also why would you have agreed with Paul Botts before I said this? What was the premise of your prior agreement? And why would it make a difference if another person entirely said something that irritated you?
>Also why would you have agreed with Paul Botts before I said this?
Because the code talkers are a pretty interesting piece of history that most people would probably like reading regardless of the code talkers' racial or cultural background, and so I was in agreement that it was pretty stupid to catch it in the anti-DEI dragnet
>And why would it make a difference if another person entirely said something that irritated you?
The irritation isn't the entire story, though I'll admit that I have an abnormal hatred of DEI and its related cousins. If the devil offered to teleport every DEI supporter into a rocket and launch it into the sun, I'd start believing in souls to give him mine
As for the other part of the story, do you remember that bit about how a black guy invented peanut butter? It was obvious that anyone pretending it was a noteworthy invention did so to elevate the status of blacks rather than to inform people that a black guy had invented peanut butter. It was obviously more stupid and grating than the case at hand - the code talkers are actually an interesting piece of history whereas peanut butter is not an impressive invention - but your analogy brought the same energy to it
It seems like a contradiction to first say "how dare you imply that an average soldier is less interesting than the code talkers" and then say "the code talkers are pretty interesting." Calling something interesting implies that other things are not interesting, that's just how words work.
Like, are you trying to say that the code talkers are interesting, but only exactly as interesting as every other soldier in the army?
I wasn't disagreeing with his analogy on the merits. What I said was that his analogy clued me into why there might be reasonable motives for Trump's anti-DEI squads to remove the code talker pages. In the same way that the real intent of "black people invented peanut butter" was to elevate the status of blacks rather than to inform people of the fact that a black guy had invented peanut butter, I could see how those who put up the code talker pages might have done so to elevate the status of other POC (Natives in this case) rather than to inform people about the code talkers
This brings me to my current position on the pointless culture war dispute at hand. Were I in charge, I'd have left the code talker pages up, but their removal is within my range of reasonable outcomes
"You singlehandedly changed my position," you said. That sure sounds like you disagreed with his analogy!
Like, he didn't say anything negative about ordinary soldiers at all, he simply pointed out that it's normal for some figures to get talked about more than the average soldier. I feel like the only way this analogy could have triggered a response like that is if you were looking for a reason to be offended.
> Everybody is more interested in rare things.
Maybe you are. But for the rest of us, the Navajo code-talkers aren't more worthy of commemoration than a regular infantryman just because they had a rarer skill.
As I said, their value or worth or what-have-you is not the point; it's purely a question of what people feel like reading about, which is going to be about novelty, and excitement, and anything else that produces an emotional response.
By comparison, the tooth-to-tail ratio in WWII was something like 1:4.3, but I definitely don't see four times as many WWII films about noncombatants doing logistics work. It's super important! But you're gonna see movies about violence because nobody wants to watch the vital work of US Army quartermasters.
> By comparison, the tooth-to-tail ratio in WWII was something like 1:4.3, but I definitely don't see four times as many WWII films about noncombatants doing logistics work. It's super important! But you're gonna see movies about violence because nobody wants to watch the vital work of US Army quartermasters.
Well given that the DoD website is not a Hollywood movie studio, it seems like there shouldn't be a problem towards taking a more even-handed approach in the context we're actually talking about.
The point of publishing these articles on the DoD website is to get people interested in the Army by talking about interesting things in its history, not to produce some sort of perfectly uniform survey of the army population.
By your logic, their entire series on Medal of Honor recipients should be taken down. Why give so much focus to a mere 3,500 people out of the millions who have served in our army?
I think you’re completely missing the point about the Navajo code talk story, which is that the DOD was very smart to think of this idea.
If the code talkers had all been white, I guarantee you that story would still be on their website. right now. So you have the cart before the horse here in my opinion.
I really don't see why the DoD would bother ignoring what people find interesting. Or why it's "even-handed" to do so. They don't have some kind of moral obligation to select subjects to write about in a completely random way.
You really should refrain from assigning arguments to people who haven't stated them.
> the worst goddam human beings we could possibly choose
SECOND worst.
I take it you don't have any MAGA relatives....I've spent many years in close exposure to people who'd adopted the wokism cult. It sucks enormously and I wish it had never arisen. I was one angry lefty for some years and it cost me some friendships.
The MAGA cult though -- bloody hell. It's making those people seem thoughtful, ethical and fairminded.
Does anyone know how the current Tinder scams work? So far, I've deduced:
1. Generate some AI images of an attractive woman with her face obscured (presumably to hide imperfections and inconsistencies).
2. Make a Tinder account.
3. Send messages to men.
4. Ask to move the conversation to "sc." (Snapchat?)
5. ???
6. Profit.
I thought I'd go along with the scam for amusement, but I have never used Snapchat, so it won't progress. Instead, I'm entertaining myself by demanding nudes from the scammer and pretending to be too stupid to take the bait.
You are behind the curve!
Romance scamming - aka "pig butchering" - is often a lot more sophisticated than AI images with text messaging.
All pig butchering operations want to limit communication to text as much as possible (it's cheap!), but the really serious operations have an attractive front woman to provide "proof of life" with photos, videos, phone calls, and video chats. Then a bunch of dudes who are paying her (or the family members working with her in this small "business") will conduct the "relationship" via text messaging. It's not unusual for the "stars" of matchmaking sites for "hot young foreign women looking for rich old men" to have several or even dozens of pigs on the kill floor.
I hate over-produced TLC reality TV shows like 90 Day Fiance, but independent YouTuber investigation / recaps are sometimes gold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCgBsdw54Ec
From what I've read, the ??? is something like "oh dear, I'd love to talk with you but I'm so sad because my grandma is in the hospital with cancer and we can't afford her treatment, if only someone could send me $1000 in gift cards to help me out." Become friends, then convince them to help out a friend in need.
I think another common variant is "hey, since you're my friend, I want to share this great investment opportunity I heard about, let me connect you with my co-worker who specializes in crypto scams."
The more ugly form is to entice you into engaging in some kind of phone sex, recording it, and then blackmailing you.
I had exactly this experience with someone in the Philippines. I was utterly convinced it was a scam, and stopped talking to her. Eventually we started chatting again… it wasn’t a scam, we kept talking and we are now married with a small child.
Now that's a committed scam! She married and built a life with you to really sell it.
Congratulations! There is still good in the world.
You're right that those are the two quick and easy ways to go about it, there's also the long route where they try to establish a "real" romantic relationship and ask for large amounts of money for personal reasons i.e. I can relocate to the country you live in if you pay for all associated costs
This has been going on since long before AI. I assume it's all people in the 3rd world who sell qualified email addresses/Snapchat handles for a couple pennies.
> This has been going on since long before AI.
Second that. For an edifying look at real-life perpetrators of this, look up Pogo love scams - there are literal warehouses full of SE Asian hotties in Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, etc, all owned and run by Chinese businessmen, running lonely hearts scams. Some of them pay quite well, like 3-10x a regular job like being a waitress or whatever.
And some of them are scamming both sides - they get in the news all the time here in Asia, because they're often using kidnapped / coerced / passport-held people.
Which, on the one hand, "human trafficking" is now apparently just putting somebody in that demographic in front of a webcam, which has to be better than the older style of human trafficking. But on the other, still basically slavery.
AI has removed the need for any actual women to be involved!
Bring on the sex robots. I can’t wait.
on account of I have basic pattern recognition, apparently making me a super forecaster, I've made out quite well given the current economy beating the market by a bit less than 20 percent since november. I will now reveal my secrets to you.
as I've been paying attention to these things since Reagan, I've noticed that American conservatives are heretics and blasphemers against the Father the son and the holy Ghost, and thus reliably and universally, there will be some sort of catastrophe either at the beginning or the end of every Republican president's term no matter what.l and that these catastrophes reliably lead to anything that is good or helps people being a poor investment, and anything that is bad or hurts people to be a good investment.
sometimes these catastrophes are a direct result of the conservative program, sometimes they are just plagues sent from God in the form of a 9/11 situation or a literal plague, but they happen like clockwork.
With this simple heuristic, I took all of my money out of the stock market and put my safe amount in bonds (not going to lie, Bond returns being so high even if you were only putting a couple hundred thousand in really helped that decision), and I put my risky amount into stocks that directly reduce utility for people. Eg, MIC companies , gambling and gambling adjacent companies, security and carceral adjacent companies, any company that brags about surveilling people or restricting free speech in some way, and of course the companies that make food for poor people that kills you.
I'm already significantly up over my initial investment, and I am extremely up compared to people that just stayed with the index.
Take this knowledge, and use it to worship at the altar of Mammon as all good Americans do.
I read somewhere that MIC stocks have actually dipped a bit recently, on account of NATO members now thinking twice about if it's safe for them to rely on US-made gear. Maybe invest in EU-based military companies?
Depends on which stocks. Palantir is sitting at about double where it was before the election. Trump isn’t optimizing for a war with Russia that would require lots of hardware but a global surveillance state.
They were one of my big winners.
I specifically focused on companies that brag about being evil and have evil sounding names on the assumption that those would play well with the current crop of conservatives in power.
It's a bit late for that now. The EU military contractors are already way up since Vance repudiated NATO a few weeks ago.
What does MIC companies mean?
I assume it's Military Industrial Complex.
Many Thanks!
So then my next question is the details of this market timing strategy. Do you switch to the Voldemort portfolio immediately when a Republican becomes president? And when do you switch back?
My financial advisor said she thinks the stock market fundamentals are all still good and recommended staying the course, as she is also doing. I'm not so sure - the big recent downturn may be just irrational fear but ... something ... markets staying irrational longer than ... something ...
Market timing is usually hard enough to be not worth it, for example with George Bush Jr, I simply left most of my non-risky investments in the market and spent my gambling money on MIC companies because conservatives are so openly in bed with those companies and Bush particularly was an open warmonger with a war profiteer as the big man in his corner, and Republicans are reliably incredibly openly self-dealing.
The thing is, Trump and Elon were directly saying to everyone we're going to crash the market when we get elected by doing things that always crash the market, and our entire platform and personal desires are to crash the market, so seems fairly obvious that they were going to crash the market to some extent, at least until the oligarchs can get a handle on them if they can.
The negative utility thing it's just kind of a trend that has come about since Reagan destroyed the last vestiges of the new deal. I think it comes from the ideological capitalism part of the Republican party, it can get overwhelmed by the nativist sentiment regarding tariffs and immigration and such, but when it comes to killing poor whites with opioids or taking all of their money with gambling and such, the market can never be wrong so of course those companies are going to be allowed to do what they want. The ideological core of conservatism in America might be changing right now so I don't know if the strategy will work for the next republican, but up until now the main value statement has been "it is good that the poor should suffer because being poor comes from lacking virtue, thus by suffering they will be incentivized to gain virtue in a free market sort of way"
So I can't really take much credit this time, I just listened to what Trump was saying and believed he would do it, so I entered dark lord of the sith mode as soon as it became clear he would win the election.
> even if you were only putting a couple hundred thousand in
So, in order to become rich, start rich. Got it.
A couple hundred thousand dollars in liquid assets doesn't make someone rich.
I guess when you have a couple hundred thousand dollars in liquid assets with no better plans for it than a high-risk internet stock tip it might not seem that way.
no, the couple hundred thousand is the low risk section of the capital I keep liquid enough to make changes. I wanted to keep enough available medium term that I can buy a couple properties when the recession hits and people start losing their houses.
that said, I have a decent chunk more in various securities and properties and such where they're just going to stay there forever / until I die / until I get some sort of expensive medical condition and my insurance finds a reason to drop me, that type of situation.
in America I'm still middle class, but only because wealth inequality is so out of control being rich is totally out of reach.
Well, put some money into AI slop producers that produce godawful pointless dumb mixtures of cuteness, bright colors and noise to entertain kids, and AI companions that are optmized for learning the mixture of flattery, sympathy and pussy that best addict their user, then convincing him to buy and vote for various pieces of shit.
I logged in just to say thank you for writing this.
If I get banned from ACX for linking this, it's a good way to go out.
I bet you at least laugh.
Thought they did the wrong thing by changing 'race' to 'ancestry' in 5e? Well, these guys took it three steps further and went where I never thought anyone would go:
https://barsoom.substack.com/p/hbd-and-d
The author is appallingly ignorant of their own species, lacking in common sense, and, what's worst of all, doesn't know anything about Dungeons & Dragons. Incapable by dint of these mental defects of noticing how utterly ludicrous the numbers and claims he poked Grok into supplying, and too indifferent to truth to check, he faithfully regurgitated the computer's vomit in my eyes.
(Culpability, of course, lies squarely on the man, not the machine: Grok lacks ability, not character.)
You lost your bet: I didn't laugh. I want my time back.
I thought it was funny how people would always joke about 'races' not being races and then someone went the other way, and did the math behind it. I don't think it's 'realistic' in a numerical sense as a lot of the quantities actually mean a bunch of different things. Wisdom in particular has been used for judgement, willpower, and piety, and usually in practice is 'mental traits that aren't brains or schmooze'. But, OK, I'm sorry for wasting your time.
While it definitely doesn't contribute anything to the question of "is this true?" I think it goes a long way of answering the question "How do you make this concept more palatable?"
The undertone of racism is definitely bad, but Carter is a good and entertaining writer. The best in that crowd I'm aware of, who's writing can be worth reading for its own entertainment value.
Does anyone actually think changing "race" to "ancestry" was a bad idea?
That sheer, absolute NERVE of this author! Opening an article about *DND* stats with a picture of *Pathfinder* iconic heroes! Unconscionable!
I know someone with a PhD in a math/tech field who is looking for a part time volunteer job that uses his skills and helps people in a pretty direct way. Here's an example of the kind of thing that appeals to him. Guy who came up with the "pool" system for matching people who needed a kidney with donors: Each person needing a kidney contributes a donor to the pool, usually one who is not tissue-compatible with them. Software matches participants with donors in the pool, keeping things as fair as possible by balancing various considerations. I believe the person who did this was not affiliated with any part of the medical system, just dreamed it up and made the software available. (Even if that's not accurate, this gives you an idea of what my acquaintance would like to be doing.). He might also consider changing from his present research job to another job that also helps others in a direct, immediate way.
Looking for suggestions.
I have a PhD in maths, and have tried to figure this out periodically. It seems to me that for the most part organisations are (probably rightly) suspicious of experts appearing and offering them things they don't understand and don't have to pay for. For what it's worth, I've ended up volunteering my time doing research & professional development type work with the local equivalents of community college staff, and graduate students at nearby colleges. Over the past year or 18 months it's mostly been explaining AI and its implications for assessment. (It's good for the soul to interact with non-STEM people in a professional setting. Though I do take pleasure in breaking their 'AI-proof' assessments.) I'd happily work with school teachers but the unions and bureaucracy wore down my philanthropic instincts.
Of course this isn't at anything like the scale of the kidney swapping project - I'm not claiming to save any lives with my work. On the other hand, I don't know how replicable a kidney-type project would be - I don't know the circumstances of its adoption, but would like to know more.
Well, Pedraig, it’s nice to meet somebody else who’s interested in this stuff. Here are a few ideas for settings where you might be welcome:
-Homeschoolers: I homeschooled my daughter, and my observation from online contact with others is that 5 or 10% of homeschooling parents were forced into homeschooling by having a very highly gifted child. — sometimes the kid was also a bit odd and hypersensitive. And I’m talking here not about “bright” kids, but about kids who are remarkably gifted. If you introduced yourself to that community online, you could probably tutor young math whizzes, either grade school or older, depending on which ages you’re comfortable with. Parents would need some proof they could trust you, but you could provide references, etc, even take a criminal records check and have the result to show them.
-Helping volunteer organizations with stats of various kinds — stats related to their raison d’etre or to the effectiveness of fund-raising of various kinds.
-Medical stuff: In the US, doctors don’t have time to explain things to patients, and many people, even people with undergrad degrees, are not able to understand lab reports or doctors’ rushed explanations of their illness and the treatment they propose. Hardly anybody is able to judge how good the evidence is for some of the plausible-sounding alternative treatments, or able to make sense of research articles. And people forced to consider clinical trials are pretty much completely at sea. There are LOTS of ways you can help people with health problems navigate the medical options, though almost all of them will use not your math skills but your ability to understand and explain technical things.
-There’s a very smart woman named Elizabeth who researches things for people for a high hourly rate. She’s here: https://acesounderglass.com/hire-me/
She might be willing to pass some people over to you, scholarship cases, so to speak. For some, your math skills, other skills, and general knowledge are likely to be enough to be quite useful.
If you’d like to look further into any of these I might be able to give you some ideas about who to contact.
Very interesting - thanks for the response!
For moral reasons, I left a job at a private university in the US to come back to Europe and work in the public university system here. There were many reasons, but one was a general unease with contributing to the general rich-get-richer effect of private education. I think the primary role of third level should be to get average kids into decent jobs - it's a pleasure to work with gifted students and send them down paths suited to their talents but the work has to benefit the majority for me to be happy. So your first suggestion is a no-go for me, unfortunately.
I've thought about your second and third points: the issue here is as I said originally. Any organisation is (rightly) suspicious of an expert who appears and offers to work for free - there are good reasons they shouldn't hand over their data. I have, unfortunately, experience of pushing through this type of bureaucracy professionally - I wouldn't do it in my free time for love or money. I would also be reluctant to advise on potentially high-stakes decisions as a hobby. I don't think it would improve my stress levels.
Good for Elizabeth! I like the blog - must read some more of it. I'm leaning toward getting involved in local politics once work is more stable, but that likely involves skills orthogonal to those for a PhD in maths...
A good dating site thats actually trying to make peoples lifes better.
A journal thats functions like the theory of science and not the government money laundering scheme, maybe makes a nice kindle compatible free download, writting standards for clarity and enagement not whatever colleges are now teaching.
AI chat bot thats optmized for dismantling suicidal thoughts in teenagers
> A good dating site thats actually trying to make peoples lifes better.
This is an evergreen topic here and on LW, and multiple teams have tackled it and given up. The recurring theme is usually "let's create old Okcupid again, but not sell out to Match Group."
I believe Shreeda Segan was the last one, she raised a little bit of money and started building, with her last posts about middle of last year, and the site still in beta: https://meetmeoffline.substack.com/
There are at least two other teams who did something similar further back, too.
I bring this up because if anyone DID want to tackle this, it's probably worth reaching out to one of these teams that's basically at least half-built a product, then gave up before the harder, more expensive 'customer acquisition' part. There's a good bet they'd just give you whatever they built to keep the torch going.
> This is an evergreen topic here and on LW
And 4chan; I dont remember what it was called, but also a failure for me
> I bring this up because if anyone DID want to tackle this, it's probably worth reaching out to one of these teams that's basically at least half-built a product
I think it partially a graph problem so maybe "math phd" can do something and dont think its a corp/startup thing; if your solving it with a social element a corp s the wrong one, familys/clans/chruches have more success historically
> I think it partially a graph problem so maybe "math phd" can do something
I think it's also an "understanding how dating works" problem, and so maths PhDs may be among the worst at doing it.
Throw out all the graph theory and go find a bunch of good-looking (but not too good-looking) women and ask them how they want dating sites to work. If you make something optimised for the good-looking (but not too good-looking) women then the rest will follow.
Why is it a problem if the women are "too good-looking"?
Women made bramble, women made 7th wave feminism; women are less happy then ever.
Its probably not the time to only listen to women about mere short term considerations.
Your thinking about a product/start up, from op there was a suggestion of pure software charity; bitcoin wasnt a start up, bitcoin has absolutely effected the world. So I made the suggestion, if it was a start up idea thread I wouldnt have, fuck that. The mega corp will buy you out and then let Moloch rape the users.
If its pure software, maybe it stays free forever. Maybe theres some clever math that forever changes the social dynamics of otherwise terrible markets.
It looks like Pete Buttigieg isn't planning on seeking any elected office before his likely 2028 presidential run https://petebuttigieg.substack.com/p/im-not-running-in-2026-but-i-am-getting . I can understand not taking the losing bet of trying to unseat Whitmer, but the senate seat seems like a good opportunity. It seems like he might be trying to avoid having to express opinions in 2025 which are likely to be unpopular by 2027. Not having a major elected position and avoiding the chance to use hard power well both make me downgrade my personal opinion of him a bit.
I guess he'll just be an operative for the time being? "Political operative" is one of the jobs I feel like I know the least about, given its seeming importance.
Edit: Whitmer is term-limited and wouldn't be competing if he decided to go for the gubernatorial election. Even lamer.
He has no chance at getting the nomination so any decision that hinges on that is pointless.
From the Substack Buttigieg's mastered the politician's art of giving a speech while saying nothing.
Is it naive to ask what the guy's gonna do for money? He went from Naval Officer to small town Mayor to Secretary of Transportation, and the most senior of those positions pays a salary of about $220K. He doesn't have enough money to do nothing for four years... or at least a normal person wouldn't, but I guess if you've got any chance at all of becoming a future President then money just sort of appears.
Lmao it's actually insane the American blue collar "everyman" is voting for spoonfed gold toilet Trump, who no one is ever gonna ask this question about, vs. someone actually normal like Buttigieg.
He probably has family support. His father was a distinguished professor with his own Wikipedia page, so was probably making decent money and once you’re old enough you run out of things you want to spend it on and just use it for your kids. There is a lot of family wealth in the US—I see people all the time who have jobs that probably pay in the $100s buying million dollar houses and sending multiple kids to private school. People’s money isn’t just from work.
I also wonder that, though it seems like they have a good few potential sources of revenue. It's possible that they're making it with savings from McKinsey and military service, family support, wealthy patrons, book sales, Chasten's teaching job, who knows. Apparently he's doing part-time lecturing for the University of Chicago, too?
From both firsthand and secondhand knowledge I'll offer that the value of Yale isn't just the reputation and networking. In fact I wouldn't rank those factors first or even second.
A reasonably thoughtful and motivated young person, which you seem to be, can gain immensely from the caliber of student minds which is just astonishing at that place. The milieu in other words.
It can also be destructively overwhelming, saw that happen to a really-smart young person. And of course there's no guarantee that sheer intellectual talent leads to great outcomes, e.g. two of the highest-IQ persons I've ever met were Yale undergrads who grew up into full-blown conspiracy-nut burden-on-society adults. Life ain't always linear etc etc.
With all caveats stated, my overall conclusion remains intact from the perspective now of having an adult child. The highest value proposition of Yale, and I believe a few other colleges, is spending four years immersed in an intellectual peer milieu that is very very unlikely to be repeated in any other stage of life.
I went to my local public university (in Jerusalem) for undergrad and Yale for grad school. I can't say the Yale students struck me as noticably smarter.
I concur. It’s been over thirty years and if I think about it I still miss it.
At Yale I had a friend who became world correspondence chess champion a couple years after graduation, another guy with a Macarther genius award, one person whose father had won a Nobel prize, several witty, fluent, smart, lovable people from filthy rich families, and several from middle class families who were delightfully smart (though some were also disturbingly, unhappily driven), and that was great. But I'm not sure that mix was greatly different from what I would have gotten any place else that selected for high tests scores, high gpa's and other markers of smarts and achievement orientation.
Sure. I'm mapping not just specific Yale experience but also what I've heard from friends/family members who attended places like Stanford, Princeton, Chicago, etc.
Also my younger brother, while attending a tiny niche US college, spent a full academic year at Cambridge (UK) and had much the same experience there.
(We also had an uncle who attended Harvard though that was so long ago -- post WWII -- that the place was quite a lot different. And he had a shitty experience as a midwestern-public-high-school token admit in that era.)
Were midwestern public high schoolers really token admits? I was a Floridian public high schooler, and was not at all rare in having gone to public school. There were not all that many people from low-status states like mine, but I thought of that as reflecting the demographic of applicants. Coastal elite states, especially east coast ones, were definitely over-represented. But of course I was there much later than your uncle.
I find this very believable. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, losing contact with the mildly intellectually rigorous, mildly talented milieu seems to have been a major hit to my wellness and effectiveness for difficult to define reasons. I didn't notice until I moved to UCI graduate student housing upon my wife's matriculation at the lawschool, and suddenly I found myself more, I dunno, motivated and happy. There were a lot of factors there, so it's hard to say what the impact was of being in a milieu populated by people who were thoughtful, motivated, and intelligent than most people I ran into post graduation, but I am certainly more motivated, productive, and happy than I was four years ago.
Bear in mind that when you are an undergrad you are surrounded by people who have optimal demographics as potential friends and lovers, and who also are available a lot of the time. Pretty much everyone experiences a shocking loss of real and potential companions when they graduate from college.
That's pretty much it, yeah. Age, intellect, and interests are all way more likely to align at a university. It's so extreme I not-so-jokingly suggest people pursue PhDs at UCI simply for the lifestyle and ability to connect with people. If someone's finances and career were in order but they felt unable to make romantic and social connections, going back to school could make sense.
What's going on with the many Manifold bets about Scott ? Is it malfeasance ? Revenge ? Provocation ? Or just playful ?
Is it even legal ?
https://manifold.markets/ScroogeMcDuck/will-scott-alexander-psychiatrist-a?play=true
https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/will-scott-alexander-be-the-subject
https://manifold.markets/Dfe2f/will-scott-alexander-convert-to-chr
There are bets about lots of famous individuals. Among the people on a prediction market website, Scott is more prominent than most.
According to Isaac King, they are just experiments in how to phrase predictions and resolution criteria. It does raise the question of whether he got Scott's permission first. I guess he doesn't need it, but it would certainly be rude otherwise.
Would you by extension require all markets on all public figures to require permission first?
As I said, he doesn't need it. I'm talking about norms, not regulations. Also probably some better sense of how public you have to be before you become a "public figure" and anything anyone puts on the internet about you is fair game (see Scott's entire ordeal with the NYT for context there).
Is blank a sock puppet of anomie to circumvent his ban? He appeared around the same time that anomie was banned (twice, no less), he posts just as frequently, and seems to share the same extreme, nihilistic outlook.
anomie had an air of casual detachment. Whereas blank is earnestly arguing that he's upset about concrete political realities. I very much doubt that blank is a sockpuppet.
On a related subject, has anyone else noticed that new commenter Hind's Ghost seems very reminiscent of LearnsHebrewHatesIP?
Judging by this comment:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-373/comment/102255918
where he managed to segue from web hosting costs straight to Israel-murdering-children-with-US-tax-dollars, I'd have to say: yes, that's almost certainly the case.
Segue? More like addressing the elephant in the room.
The comment you linked was in response to someone complaining about a Navajo code talker memorial website because, supposedly, how much of a waste of his/her tax dollars it is. I pointed out that if they truly cared about their tax dollars, they should print out a pie chart of all the shit their government spends their tax dollars on so they could prioritize and 80/20-rule it properly, and guess what what's the **first** thing that will appear on a pie chart of all foreign expenditures of the US government, especially if aggregated over time? yeah.
The tenuous attempts to link me to this "LearnsHebrew" commenter is really an amusing case study in Outgroup Homogeneity illusion. This links back to the post I shared by Freddie Deboer above, about how Pro-Palestine viewpoints are the outgroup of nearly every mainstream and many non-mainstream subculture or society or institutions in the US, and outgroups are often perceived as identical, immutable, monolithic.
I can throw a dart blindly and unearth countless Pro-Israel comments in any Israel-Palestine thread on ACX, many of them no doubt extremely similar to those made before by some banned commenters somewhere else, but curiously nobody seems to think that this is proof the commenters are identical. Why? Because the Pro-Israel viewpoint is the default, the ingroup, the baseline against which everything else about the conflict is expressed as a diff. It's not a salient fact or a distinguishing feature, to say that someone is Pro-Israel in an American context is as useful as saying someone likes water or hates going to work at 8 AM. Sure, some people violate those assumptions, but those are the "weirdos", nearly everybody else are "normal".
Not that I'm complaining, I have traced back and read some of LHHI's comments when I was first accused of being his/her sock puppet, absolutely Giga based, it's an honor to be mistaken for them.
Yeah I initially discounted this possibility but now I’m fairly certain it’s him.
Seems very unlikely. First, I'm pretty sure they were active before anomie was banned, so if they were the same person that person would've needed to be anticipating the ban and planning ahead (not impossible but unlikely). Second, while you can say the outlook is similar, they seem to engage in fairly different ways.
I don't think so. They are different people. Anomie also explicitly circumvented the ban under an anagrammed version of his name.
Y'know, I could've sworn I've seen blank posting in Bentham's comments way before anomie was banned, but googling it I can't find any comments or record of his existence before February this year.
There was a Martin Blank who used to post a fair amount, and got banned for things he said in a discussion here right after Trump was elected. Present blank does not sound like him. Also does not sound like anomie in my opinion.
Later edit: paid extra attention to last post by blank, noting style and content. I am sure this poster is not anomie.
TL;DR --> School Choice meets globalization + social justice.
Hi All,
I'm working on the Douglass Leadership Academy-- a mastery-based boarding school that will serve low-income americans in LCOL areas around the world using school vouchers, ESA's, etc
Currently looking for a location for my inaugural campus. Strongly considering prospera.
You can learn more in my explainer doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vbSUzIU7T-b6tNwws_djl22aMxBz45GOVA9D5iTdecs/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.pnsoi4jka0wv
Website:https://www.douglassleadershipacademy.org/
I think it will be really difficult to convince many American parents to send their kids overseas, to a newly founded school, without having serious funding and/or clout in the education scene.
Even ignoring all the psychological barriers to sending their children across the planet, and the safety concerns of sending them to a country whose legal system and safety record are almost certainly less trustworthy than the US, you're going to have to provide an alternative that is meaningfully better than what is currently an option in the US.
For college admissions alone, it will be really difficult without reputation, and demonstration of school vigor, for applicants to get into US schools, without a correspondingly high SAT score. SAT scores are really hard to meaningfully increase much from an individual's baseline, so unless you're being highly selective in who is accepted (probably not an option considering the barriers to starting), you'll be handicapping student's admission potential. The only solution could perhaps be if you're specifically targeting above-average children, who, either due to poor family life or living in a really bad school district, don't have the environment to succeed to their levels of natural ability, but I imagine finding and convincing these parents would be quite difficult.
If you're already in the US, why not start a homeschooling collective? The upfront resources would be lower, it's a concept already familiar to Americans, and you can gain more experience/reputation running an intimate small-scale educational environment. I imagine you would have a lot easier of a time convincing the best mathematician/literature expert/historian/businessman in Rochester to come teach a course at a homeschool once a week than it would be to convince an even mediocre American teacher to travel across the world for 1/5 the salary.
I think most of your concerns are addressed by the fact that I'll be under the Khan Schools umbrella. Check it out here: https://www.khanschoolsnetwork.org/resources/
> but I imagine finding and convincing these parents would be quite difficult.
Difficult, not impossible.
You're right about the selection aspect of it. Though, I will say--the kids I'm trying to help barely finish high school. Offering them a high quality mastery based education backed by Sal Khan in a safe, quality environment is the closest thing to a panacea.
Khan's curriculum has already gotten kids to MIT. So it has the right amount of endorsement.
I'm somewhat skeptical that using Khan Academy's curriculum will give much legitimacy, especially as it seems the only Schools using it are the Khan-Academy owned school in Silicon Valley (which its location and parent company's resources give it a major leg-up) and an as-yet elementary school (where there's really no concern for college admissions).
But for the demographic you're targeting, kids who already barely finish high school, so long as you're providing a structured environment that prioritizes learning, maybe this isn't so much of a concern. Even if there's a disadvantage in college admissions at first, it wouldn't matter if most of the students wouldn't be going to college otherwise.
But good luck! Hope it works out.
This is an unfair assessment of Khan Academy, it is a massive brand with a huge amount of clout.
> Even if there's a disadvantage in college admissions at first, it wouldn't matter if most of the students wouldn't be going to college otherwise.
Exactly.
Thanks for the exchange. If we succeed, I'm sure you'll hear about it :)
Africa is the poorest continent but it’s not actually that cheap due to lack of infrastructure and scale, and flights are also very expensive. Southeast Asia or Latin America would probably be cheaper to do something like this.
I agree 90%. The infrastructure already exists for my model--remember the entire country needn't be developed for this to work, only small pockets of it. Which is the case in most African countries, especially East Africa--Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda especially.
We have functional airports and functional roads. It's a $900 ticket to Uganda. But I agree that LATAM might be marginally better, hence my pivot to Prospera.
uh...
i don't think a low income parent i the usa wants to send their kid to africa for an education. if anything goes bad there that kid is stuck in a way they cannot do anything about and they can't just pop down to make sure your teachers are treating them ok.
for a lcol american world travel is not even on their radar; and africa does not have a good rep.
You might be interested in news reporting that it is not uncommon for concerned (African-diaspora) parents in London (UK) to send their sons to school ‘back home’ when they look like falling in with the wrong crowd.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2kg1ezyv5xo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdryre7y4n0o
I am particularly amused by the man who thinks he was considered ‘highly gifted’ back home, but struggled to keep up with the other kids once made to actually engage at his Ugandan school, and is proud of his 5 GCSEs at C or above that ‘seemed impossible’ before.
and you believe this? Uganda, the place that routinely passes anti homosexuality bills as late as 2023 that call for life imprisonment, you think they are an educational powerhouse or bastions of moral virtue? Uganda, that has to pass laws against witchcraft and child sacrifice.
i think some skepticism
is in order.
I believe what? I linked you to reporting of it being a thing that happens. I’m not sure where you are getting “you think they are an educational powerhouse or bastions of moral virtue”: perhaps you have confused my comment with some other conversation you are having elsewhere, or something you dreamt?
i think if you believe them
you are naive.
Believe what? That the boy in the news story, who lost a legal case against his parents, grew up in London and is currently in a Ghanian boarding school? Are birds real?
Edit: I should add that I realise I wrote ‘Uganda’ earlier, bizarrely, but I also provided the actual links, so if you’d followed them you’d have had something real to criticise me for (a strange brainfart), rather than claiming that I am naive for believing people send their children to schools in other countries sometimes.
Hi lyomante,
You're right to be skeptical, but I've spent the past 5 years working with the people I aim to help with this project(I went to school in Rochester, NY which has some of the highest rates of poverty in the US), and they very much approve.
I'm curious, have you volunteered in the inner cities?
Have you visited any country in Africa before?
If not, I highly recommend it.
It'd help you appreciate why this initiative is necessary. It's no panacea but I believe it will be transformational for thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of inner city kids.
I spent 13 years teaching at US State Department International schools in Africa. I also have two daughters. I would not be comfortable sending my children to a boarding school in a developing country. It is also difficult to attract quality teachers without offering a high salary. You will be competing with all the other international schools. In the USA you would have a better chance of getting good teachers. In a developing country you wont have internships and other possibilities outside of the school.
I certainly don't expect to have an 100% conversion rate. My thesis is that the conversion rate is not 0. I've run plenty of customer discovery to bolster my conviction that that's indeed the case.
I also think you might be looking at it from a middle class perspective.
Would you look at it the same way if you lived in a neighborhood where half the men you know are incarcerated, at least 7 of your neighbors' kids got shot, and noone in your community is making more than $20 an hour?
Re: Quality teachers: As someone that has gone to school in both an elite Ugandan boarding school and an Elite American College, I can firmly say that Uganda's best teachers are comparable to the best American teachers. (I'm referring to the top .0001% of all teachers). Those teachers make at most $1500 a month.
Our model works if we staff locally. And that's core to our mission. We want to impact the local communities by creating quality jobs too.
Re: Internships: We actually have a robust private sector. But I hear you. This is a valid concern, and I think my shift to Prospera might address some of these concerns.
i don't think you get there's a big difference between a charter school in Alabama and one in africa.
like lcol dudes cannot afford to visit their kids there and if stuff goes wrong they can't drive down to bring the kid back. Their idea of africa is bribes, hotel rwanda, south africa, nigerian scammers, and more.
you need insane trust i think and that's assuming the situation in africa never gets worse. if the teachers you pick are bad or corrupt, those kids are there with them in a way that is scary.
i think you may need to spend a lot more reassurance efforts and your cost savings might be not so good. im being negative nancy here but ifk how many lcol people will react honestly right away.
its a new ballgame overseas, most americans never travel past the bermudas
> big difference between a charter school in Alabama and one in africa.
No there IS a big difference. I totally get it.
What I'm trying to do is not doable in Alabama. I also have a feeling that Africa might be more preferable than Alabama for my demographic (again, this is a case of assymetric information--I seem to have some insight into this you might not have, which is why this idea sounds a bit odd to you)
>like lcol dudes cannot afford to visit their kids there and if stuff goes wrong they can't drive down to bring the kid back
With my funding sources they'll be around 4 plane tickets split amongst families.
> Their idea of africa is bribes, hotel rwanda, south africa, nigerian scammers, and more.
These are stereotypes. Again, I welcome you to visit African cities. You might be very surprised. For example, this is the elementary school I went to: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a9a17715c624a2d7&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS1076US1077&sxsrf=AHTn8zqRnuTrN9Q8dnhzlL-owIUnrVYI4g:1742264539974&q=kampala+parents+school
> you need insane trust i think
I have that trust. Please refer to my initial message about me:
1. Growing up in Africa for 20 years.
2. Working with inner city folks for 5+ years.
> and that's assuming the situation in africa never gets worse.
Many places in Africa are significantly safer than most american cities--even popular cities like San Francisco.
> i think you may need to spend a lot more reassurance efforts
I run a very high touch recruitment process. Very akin to Jehovah's Witnesses trying to convert you.
> cost savings might be not so good.
You're right they're not, in the sense that this is not a profitable venture. The cost savings are still exceptional because I'll be providing tuition, room and board for what an amount that barely covers tuition in the US.
> its a new ballgame overseas, most americans never travel past the bermudas
it's been great chatting but I encourage you to try to see this initiative from the lense of someone that's lived in an inner city their whole life. I get the sense that you're seeing this as a relatively middle class american that gets their information about Africa largely from the news, and if that's the case, a lot of this is going to sound very bizzare. But please rest assured things are not as they seem.
Once again, I highly recommend you book a trip to Nairobi. I assure you you'll be very surprised.
I have a background in startups, not education or non-profits, but one of the first questions I’d ask if I was a potential funder or parent is what is your background? Do you or other people on your team have experience in education? “Why should we trust you?”
For example I’d guess this has a much higher chance of success if it was run by a superintendent of a charter school who has spent time teaching in Africa vs a wealthy businessman who has this idea as a way to give back.
When you say boarding school, is that a high school, grades 8-12?
I’d also be very curious of the 30 parents you talked to. What were their biggest concerns?
1.I'll be a part of the Khan School Network: https://www.khanschoolsnetwork.org
Supported by Khan Academy. They have a lot of expertise and credibility. They currently have three schools--one in Mountain View, CA, and another in Wichita, KS, and another in Arizona.
2. I have a few of those on my board of trustees.
3. Yes it will be a high school.
4. The biggest one was "the unknown". "What if something goes wrong?" "Is Uganda safe?" Which is why, for the pilot,
a) I'll be working with parents that trust me--that have known me for years (I worked with a few of these folks for years while a college student).
b)I'm also considering prospera as opposed to Africa for the start to solve this concern further.
c) More generally, I'll employ a high touch process--processing their visa + passport, going with them on their first flight to see the facilities, 24/7 customer support, etc.
What's the admissions process? Are you looking for high-performing poor kids? Are they expected to be black? (It seems so, judging by the list of authors.)
It's an interesting concept, essentially a sort of arbitrage. It makes sense that the cost of living parts of a boarding school are much cheaper in LCOL areas. But teacher salaries are a huge component of the costs in any school. What are those teachers being paid, and what quality will they be? Presumably a fair number of African teachers could emigrate and make much higher salaries elsewhere. Is the teacher quality going to be as good as what you might see in a typical low-income urban American school? (I have a lot of criticisms of typical American urban schools, but teacher quality is usually not the problem. Most of those teachers would perform perfectly fine in better school environments.)
1. It'll be a lottery, mostly. With a self paced curriculum, it shouldn't matter how academically gifted kids are. Depending on how much funding I'm able to raise, I might give out merit scholarships to high performing kids across the developing world (great for peer effects). I might also be able to give sports scholarships to promising athletes across the world.
2. They needn't be black. In fact, my recent switch to prospera might make my model more appealing to hispanic americans. Though, just the way things work in the US, most of them will be black. The leadership curriculum is definitely a work in progress. It's not intended to just be black authors, but we'll definitely emphasize the legacy of luminaries that better reflect the demographics of our students (lol this sounds like PR speak)
3. We'll keep costs low by hiring locally. In fact, this is core to the model, and it's a large part of our draw for donors. You get a 2 for 1. You bring in much needed $$ to develop local economies while giving low income kids a chance to escape their environment. Because of the strength of the dollar, we'll be able to pay above market rate and offer the best local teachers a better salary. I believe the best local teachers (especially in anglophone countries like Uganda) are just as competent as the best teachers in America, as someone that's studied in both places.
You're right that the problem is not the teachers but the environment. I have no problem hiring American teachers as long as they're willing to receive the lower rates and see this as some sort of volunteer role they can do for a few months.
Boarding schools are difficult. If you don't have the kids engaged all the time they will get into trouble. This will be doubly difficult if a bunch of kids with tendencies for shenanigens find themselves in a place like Kampala, with a very limited social scene, nothing much to do, and easy access to drugs, prostitutes, alcohol. They wont be able to leave school and walk around the neighborhood, interact with wholesome people from their own culture. Road safety is an issue.
You're right. This is going to be quite the challenge. That's what makes it worthwhile :)
I also think, in a securely gated boarding school, none of the issues you mention are going to be a problem
The boarding schools I'm working with are also not in Kampala. They tend to be in the middle of nowhere. Many of them have a tonne of programming and activities. My high school was a 1200 acre campus with hockey, cricket and soccer fields, golf range, and a half-olympic size pool. It's King's College, Budo. Check it out.
Also, as someone that grew up in Uganda for 20+ years, I think many of the risks you mention are a bit exaggerated. Very akin to the folks to think they'll get shot if they visit America.
Media warps our perceptions a lot.
In honor of the OpenAI nonprofit buyout I've put up a cartoon story about our first encounter with superintelligent AI. Cartoon's raunchy, bleak, crass, and nihilistic, and probably funny if you lean that way, otherwise not.
https://bookreviewgroup.substack.com/p/the-dog
While thinking about AI and the differences between human and modern day machine intelligence, I stumbled upon the idea that minds of evolutionary origin are biased towards situations that are susceptible to being solved through cognition which eventually led to more powerful minds (humans) having a drive to look for abstractions in reality, which drove scientific/mathematical progress. I'm not sure if it's an original idea or not and its certainly not well fleshed out but I wrote about this in more detail here
https://open.substack.com/pub/virgilverne/p/why-is-math-beautiful?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=5a1s78
I'm curious what other people think
> Newton didn’t seek a single theory to explain gravity because it would be useful in plague infested Britain, he did it because it would be irresistibly beautiful.
You engage in speculation when we have available to us Newton's own writings about his motives and thought processes! To wit: he was a religious fundamentalist and thought he'd find support for his quack interpretations of Biblical prophecies in nature.
True, I am speculating, but you can’t take anybody at their word when they try to rationalize their subconscious motives. Nobody really knows for sure what’s fundamentally behind their personal motivations. They’re too deeply obscured by their social environment and personal experiences and processes in the prefrontal cortex that we don’t understand, that’s why people across different cultures will engage in the same universally human activities but attribute them to entirely different motivations. If Newton was born in modern day England, he would certainly still be brilliant and be drawn to scientific research but considering the drop in religiosity in Europe since the 17th century, he would describe his passion very differently and the same would apply to all mathematical minds throughout history, I’m trying to theorize about the underlying psychological processes independent of cultural context.
Newton wouldn't spend that much time investigating Bible codes if he wasn't serious. He hid his REAL religious beliefs (non-trinitarian), but he was serious about the ones he did have.
Makes sense to me.
I've reread "The Marching Morons" by C. M. Kornbluth (1951), a story whose title I think is still remembered..
(Corrected link) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51233
It's pretty short. People might want to read it to be sure they're having their own reactions.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=marching+morons&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3
It's naturally swamped by Idiocracy, a word which had a longer history than I expected, but I assume recent references are to the movie.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=marching+morons%2Cidiocracy&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3
Anyway, here's a little essay about it, which I wrote in a response to the idea that Barlow was supposed to be a science fiction fan. I think he was a movie fan rather than a fan of more sophisticated print sf. The story was written when there was much less in the way of thoughtful sf movies.
So, what is this story actually about? One way of looking at SFF is that it's rationalized dream images.
I think that to a large extent, it's what it appears to be-- it's about frustration at being surrounded by stupid people and obliged to take of them without annoying them. We will cheerfully ignore that almost all the people reading it wouldn't qualify as one of the geniuses.
Killing the morons is presented as bad, but I don't think we're given any reason to like them.
The reader is also invited to feel superior to Barlow. I'm not sure how the reader is supposed to feel about the geniuses. I think basically sympathetic to their desire to spend their time on what interests them.
I think Barlow likes movie sf, if that matters. Or I may be wrong about that-- one commenter on facebook pointed out that in 1951, there were sf movies. Maybe there's some print sf Kornbluth was satirizing that I don't remember.
Barlow is fairly knowledgeable about the holocaust, and I think that's his primary inspiration, not science fiction. The most I take away is that science fiction (including wanting to lead a revolt against dictatorship) doesn't insulate a person against being genocidal.
And here is me live-blogging the story.
This may be one of the very few sf stories that mention firing pottery. The only other one I can think of is "The Potters of Firsk" by Vance.
Barlow at least cares about his wife, "poor Verna". He isn't a pure sociopath.
I used to have one of those phone numbers that had two letters and five numbers.
I'm interested in those overburdened geniuses. Does it actually make sense that there are so few of them and yet two of them are shepherding a small business contract?
Barlow describes himself as "not much of a reader", so not exactly a fan.
The news consisting of petty insults between politicians is all too familiar. One for Kornbluth.
Barlow is trying to be a hero. He's just very clueless.
"while you and your kind were being prudent and foresighted and not having children, the migrant workers, slum dwellers and tenant farmers were shiftlessly and short-sightedly having children" Sounds like a conservative talking point.
"Migrant workers, slum dwellers and tenant farmers" might not be as intelligent on the average as better off people, but they're also functional, not nearly as stupid as the majority in the story.
It's interesting that the world population tops out at five billion. And the geniuses aren't breeding that fast, possibly because of time needed to educate them. If you want to run numbers, there are three million geniuses. I suspect the numbers don't make sense.
"That depends. I sold ten thousand acres of Siberian tundra—through a dummy firm, of course—after the partition of Russia. The buyers thought they were getting improved building lots on the outskirts of Kiev. I'd say that was a lot tougher than this job." Barlow is definitely a scammer.
The story was written in 1951 before chemical birth control (approved by the FDA in 1960), but if Kornbluth had imagined it, he wouldn't have had this story.
It's interesting that Barlow is sexually shy. He's embarrassed by the blatant advertising of the future and doesn't demand *beautiful* secretaries. I suppose that would make it a different story.
The passage about Mrs. Garvey wondering how living on Venus got into the news is an interesting depiction of gaslighting and sexism.
Note that the billions of corpses from neglecting the moronic majority is an insoluble problem until somehow Barlow says, why not just kill them? That plan is accepted.
"The last thing he learned was that death is the end of pain." When I first read the story, I amended this to "death is not the end of pain".
Something that's either odd about the story, the current era, or both. I think people have been assuming that the morons are breeding rapidly because they want sex. However, that future is uninhibited about portraying sex, and the propaganda is against having children.
Is it possible the morons breed because they like having children? Or maybe Kornbluth wanted a titillating future and didn't think it through.
It was written at a time when eugenics was degenerating into the idiocy of Malthusianism, something I wrote about before:
"A hundred years ago, eugenics was the intellectual consensus. But it lost its luster. Why? I hypothesize it was because it asked too much of and wasn’t flattering enough toward the intellectual class. It’s obviously very flattering in one way, telling such people: “You are the vanguard of human evolution, better than the masses.” On another level, it tells such people: “Your low fertility is maladaptive, degenerate, and you need to modify your behavior.” You could get the same psychological benefits and none of the costs with another ideology: Malthusianism. You can still look down on the masses as inferior for their “reckless breeding.” But now, your childlessness or small family size is a good thing, evidence you are a responsible person educated in modern science. Never mind that Malthusianism, applied to the modern world, is lunacy."
"By 1970, neo-Malthusianism had become the intellectual consensus. This at a time when people were richer than they had ever been. And it’s not like people were deluded about technological progress and couldn’t see it coming. Sci-fi writers who could imagine robots and space travel seemed unable to imagine increased crop yields for corn. The United States hit sub-replacement fertility in 1972, yet few updated their beliefs. I hypothesize that Malthusian beliefs existed not despite but because of the fertility decline. The fertility decline, which was disproportionately concentrated among the upper-class, led to a sense of alarm that fueled the eugenics movement, which later metastasized and degenerated into Malthusianism as people sought to validate their choice to have fewer kids. Had the demographic transition never occurred, it’s likely that economic growth would have been turbocharged, each generation would have been richer than the last, and few would have been concerned with “overpopulation.”"
https://www.datasecretslox.com/index.php/topic,11336
eugenics always was a bit stupid though. People resent being treated like farm stock. often literally, the "better babies/fittest families" contests of the 1900s scored people very much like they'd score a prize hog. But it always was a nasty piece of business because it justified racism and dehumanized people.
G.K. Chesteron and C.S. Lewis debunk it pretty easily too.
Chesterton in against eugenics made one point that sticks with me: there is no such thing as an "expert on health," because there is no unified idea of it as opposed to disease.
like the idea of health means many things to many people but isn't really health. High intelligence is seen as health but its not health-being six feet tall isn't health either, or being fair of face or form isn't either. people are taking prejudices and defining them as public health. and this never changes with eugenicists.
C.S. Lewis expanded on some themes in out of the silent planet. When the oyarsa of Mars interrogated Weston the eugenicist, its quickly apparent weston will do anything or kill anybody over an abstract idea of humanity. he doesn't love people-he'd have happily killed Ransom if it would achieve that aim-but he loves something so insubstantial that humanity itself could be changed into something alien. his love is of race-survival but he doesn't even love the race or life.
a lot of eugenicists go on about people but make them suffer to try and achieve thus intangible idea of race-survival. like you can't trample on people for that-Weston would have happily killed the present to gain the future, but its not even a coherent one.
>there is no such thing as an "expert on health," because there is no unified idea of it as opposed to disease.
Chesterton is wrong here. Conceptually, an "idea" of health is conceptually straightforward: Know all of the non-pathological alleles in human DNA, know all the proteins they code for, know all the metabolic paths that they catalyze, and all of the normal ranges of metabolites, and the normal rates of reactions, and the normal locations of all the above - and all of the feedback loops and various control mechanisms that keep all of these functions working properly. It is an immense amount of information, AFAIK well beyond what we have, but finite.
The number of potential malfunctions, of possible illnesses, is much larger, and includes, amongst other things, the set of all possible pathogens. _Individual_ diseases can be simpler, but the set of all possible diseases is more complex than describing normal functioning.
( This is largely orthogonal to eugenics arguments. )
its tougher than that. lets say we have three patients. One has Alzheimers, one has average memory , and one has photographic memory.
we can agree patient 1 is not healthy. Chesteron's point is who is healthy between 2 and 3?
like health is just the absence of impairment or conditions that lead to impairment. The eugenicist is trying to make a positive definition of health as a collection of traits, and might say 2 is also unhealthy. but there is a lot of variation past impairment.
i think your idea of health is more an ideal human with no physiological cause of impairments any more, but even granting that as possible the positive health adds "and he is six feet tall, runs a mild in under 4 minutes, has high iq," etc.
thats the kind of health chesterton is pointing out that can't exist.
but his argument is in relation to eugenics as they frame health like that.
Many Thanks!
>its tougher than that. lets say we have three patients. One has Alzheimers, one has average memory , and one has photographic memory.
>we can agree patient 1 is not healthy. Chesteron's point is who is healthy between 2 and 3?
That's fair, but a _lot_ of functioning is common across, say, 90% of the population. Yeah, there is a fuzzy line between fixing problems and adding enhancements, but it isn't _completely_ fuzzy, and adding photographic memory is adding something rare enough that I think it is reasonably clearly an enhancement.
>i think your idea of health is more an ideal human with no physiological cause of impairments any more
Yes (for purposes of defining "health" - I favor enhancements, but I doubt that eugenics is a sensible or sufficiently rapid route to them)
>but even granting that as possible the positive health adds "and he is six feet tall, runs a mild in under 4 minutes, has high iq," etc.
I'm guessing that most physiological impairments are crisper than potential enhancements. Sickle cell hemoglobin (the homozygous case, the illness, not the heterozygous trait) is a clear impairment. A height of six feet is likely to have trade-offs. But I am guessing here.
Photographic memory is not an enhancement, that's a misunderstanding of what photographic memory is and how it works. It's actually a form of neoteny, where normally the human memory reorganizes itself sometime in the preteens to go from photographic to normal memory, which is a tradeoff of detail for what seems to be better capacity and associativity. So there are definite downsides to photographic memory, probably greater than the advantages, and I would say (2) is the healthy one.
Many Thanks! Ok, I hadn't know that there were tradeoffs to photographic memory.
Doesn't that make the case for health-as-typical-unimpaired-functioning stronger, and therefore Chesterton's case weaker?
(again: I favor enhancements, but I doubt that eugenics is a sensible or sufficiently rapid route to them)
I don’t think Kornbluth was thinking about AI, but there’s an obvious AGI version of this story where the superintelligent AIs put us all in rockets into the sun.
A.E. van Vogt's short story 'The Monster' is ... not about AI takeover, but it somehow still gives a picture of the danger
Consider the science fiction movies available prior to Kornbluth writing the story.
They tend more towards the Buck Rogers serials than anything serious. Basically westerns in space - Lucas took inspiration from them for Star Wars.
No, the story is in the vein of a large number of older science fiction short stories: pose a "what-if", and work out the details. Beautiful writing and character development isn't as much of a priority.
Prior well-known examples are "Utopia", "Gulliver's Travels" and a lot of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells stories.
The idea of character stories set in a milieu with science fiction elements is somewhat newer. E.g. Whedon's Serenity where Wash says at one point "But that's science fiction!" and his wife says "We live on a starship dear."
I think in Kornbluth's story the geniuses are supposed to be too moral to thin out the morons by the usual methods - war, famine, plague, high child mortality, not treating disease and illness - but then Barlow comes up with a neat and tidy solution (just put them on rockets and fly them into the sun, you won't have to see the resulting corpses) and they have no problems with that.
So it's not really morality stopping them, it's just squeamishness.
The solution doesn't really make much sense - how many can fit on one rocket load, and how many rocket launches would you have to do every day for how many years to reduce the population by enough, particularly as the remaining billions would still be having babies in the meantime? But it's not meant to be realistic, after all. It's in the vein of SF stories that include Larry Niven's ones about Known Space where Earth is extremely crowded and only the very, very rich can afford to have homes with lots of personal space. That, and the compulsory reproduction of the Moties leading to overpopulation and civilisational collapse in "The Mote in God's Eye" really were the concerns of the day (the 50s-70s). When I found out Niven was the son of a wealthy family it all made sense to me as to why the hero of his stories hangs out with the rich (who are also all smart and witty and attractive and just gosh-darn superior types) and why the threat in the background is from the teeming masses of the not-rich.
I wonder whether putting people on throwaway rockets is actually cheaper than sterilizing them, especially if only the men are sterilized, since that's easier.
Or putting bromide in the water 😁
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29376436
"The earliest use of bromine was in medicines. Some bromide salts, notably potassium bromide, were found to be natural sedatives, and were prescribed in the 19th Century as a remedy for epilepsy.
However, they had a curious side-effect. They dampened the libido, which only reinforced the common misconception at the time that epilepsy was brought on by excessive masturbation. This side-effect also lies behind the urban myth that bromide was added to the tea of prisoners and World War I soldiers in order to reduce sexual urges."
Certainly this set of geniuses could certainly have worked on something that would dampen sexual desire, as the side-effects of certain medications do, and introduce that to reduce the population. But of course, the point of the story is the twist in the end, if it can be called a twist.
The concept of high intelligence in the story is one I haven't exactly seen elsewhere.
The geniuses aren't smarter than modern smart people, but they learn *very* fast and they're mentally flexible.
Hypothetically, they can learn in a year what modern people need eight years to learn.
I've seen speculation on what intelligence improvement might look like, but I don't think I've seen that particular change.
Here's what's in the story:
Each person has a number of advanced skills.
The person who did the hand-holding for the pottery deal can also supervise architecture.
The potter at least knows enough random medicine to deal with a very rare case of accidental suspension.
" He was an all-around man: by choice and in his free time, an artist in clay and glaze; by necessity, an automotive, electronics and atomic engineer who could also swing a project in traffic control, individual and group psychology, architecture or tool design."
The psychist who picked Barlow up: "During the past couple of years I've designed a skyscraper, kept Billings Memorial Hospital here in Chicago running, headed off war with Mexico and directed traffic at LaGuardia Field in New York.""
i think Nancy Kress's "Beggars in Spain" trilogy might be good to read in this vein. Humanity creates the sleepless, who outshine regular humans because they don't need to sleep and can keep studying and working. its sort of a reverse idiocracy, being at the mercy of geniuses beyond you, and the ending pf the last book always made me a bit scared of superhumans trying to do good for everyone.
One possible interpretation is that Barlow is set up to take the blame for killing people. Barlow is a con artist, certainly, and there are hints that he isn’t as smart as h thinks he is.
He's definitely not as canny as he should be, he seems to take it at face value that he's irreplaceable. But what the geniuses need him for is to set up the distasteful solution for them, once he's recommended a way to kill off however many of the idiots in a tidy way that won't trigger the geniuses' squeamishness, he's very much expendable. He also serves as the scapegoat for whatever guilt they might experience as to murdering hundreds of thousands/millions of those that they have been trained to regard as their charges, the duty to protect whom is why they do what they do.
Now they can keep on killing the millions but the guilt has been displaced onto Barlow and they can pretend that they did justice by punishing him (while still taking advantage of his solution to their problem).
At a more abstract level, the story is clearly about the Nazis and eugenics.
𝗔 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗮𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗣𝗼𝗽𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗗𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗿𝘆 𝗢𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗕𝗶𝗴𝗮𝗺𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗧𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁
As the title suggests, this is an extremely narrowly targeted yet, I propose, important topic – one worth broadcasting widely, in the hopes that its message will eventually make its way to its intended audience.
Who am I? Simply a neutral observer – not fond of bigamy myself, but tolerant of whatever forms of free association adults choose to bind themselves to. If one man with several wives (odd that it’s never the reverse) represents the best order under heaven for marital harmony, so be it. Not for me, but who am I to cast stones?
All of that is to clarify that my proposal below is not one that I would personally benefit from, except insofar as I would be improving the overall efficiency and happiness of the universe, and taking some satisfaction from that.
With that preamble out of the way, let’s get to brass tacks with what I (again, a disinterested observer) see as the root of the problem. Humanity reproduces at a 1:1 ratio or close to it, yet the dynamics of FLDS compounds where bigamy is practiced end up closer to 1:4, on a good day, or 1:40 (or more) for the elder men in the family. What to do with the 3-39 superfluous males? Sure some of them will eventually ascend the pyramid as well, but for the large majority, they are bereft, iced out of their community of birth simply for the accident of their birth.
Not only is the individual lost, but also all the skills, talents, and resources they have or would someday possess. Not to mention hopes and dreams and everything else not tallyable in an actuarial table. As these young men are cast out by the dozens, you are impoverishing your community, figuratively and literally. Not to mention the guilt that must gnaw, knowing how you treated your sons and cousins, worse than was fair. Far better to keep them as willing, nay, enthusiastic participants in the project, putting their shoulder to the wheel. But how could we possibly accomplish this?
Some solutions to consider and discard:
*Polygamy is restricted: isn’t opposition to such a restriction why your group split off in the first place?
*Expand recruitment of women: would this not be a challenging prospect given the more egalitarian alternatives readily available to those born outside of the community?
*Provide subsidies for the excess males: surely there are better uses for the limited resources available to the community?
And so we come to my proposal, which I admit is radical, but given the stakes, radical solutions may be necessary. We should encourage all the men without wives or likely prospects to become homosexual. Not only does this free up additional sisters and sisterwives but consider who the offspring of that pairing will have? Only the most caring and indulgent uncles possible, delighted to send expensive presents to the children, and eventually host their teenage nephlings for long, indulgent weekends in their chic SLC apartments.
On the other hand, consider the Sacred Band of Thebes. Some have said they were the finest fighters of the ancient world. Certainly, none were braver or more willing to fight and die for their lovers/fellow warriors. Alexander is said to have wept when they died though, to be fair, it was on his order. If we train our young men in the arts of war, and then encourage them to form deeper bonds with their comrades in arms, then perhaps they shall fight like the crusaders of old to defend the faith and community they are a part of.
I sense some skepticism among my readers, that perhaps my proposal is a ‘jest’ or somehow unserious. I assure you nothing of the sort is at work. I have only the interests of these young men at heart, particularly those who may be born into less than ideal circumstances.
Some may ask: what of the women born and raised in these communities? How should they be guided towards viewing their fellow-woman? To which I would suggest that feelings and expressions of sisterly love should be encouraged only insofar as we wish to promote harmonious relations within the sister wives.
In the end, my proposal ensures that no man is left without purpose, no woman is left unfulfilled, and no child is deprived of doting parental figures. What greater harmony could there be?
Thank you, I look forward to reading and responding to all serious replies below.
In all seriousness I feel like homosexuality actually is an adaptation to the clear historic reality that polygamy was the way things were done for our species until very recently...
Surely an easier solution would be to expand the polgamy even further, so that each man has multiple wives but also each woman has multiple husbands? So Elder Brown may have four wives, but he shares them with his brother or cousin or uncle or other fitting male person. The senior male is head of the household, the paterfamilias, with the junior husbands subordinate to him, but the younger/lower status men are not cut off from marriage this way.
Or else engage in embryonic selection and sex-selective abortion to tilt the gender ratios so more females than males are born. That way you don't have an excess male population to worry about competing for limited wives and causing trouble for the elder males.
Just declare the whole community one giant polycule and call it done.
I was expecting you to suggest they become trans women.
(I don’t think that would actually work, but it’s clearly where the satire is going)
It would be funnier if these were ways of being that people could choose.
If these were ways of being that people could choose, it would be a reasonable suggestion instead of a joke.
I think the joke relies on:
A) Clearly not a serious proposal, as people don’t get to choose their sexuality etc.
B) The LDS, given their typical attitudes to gender, really would not be OK with this proposed solution even if it was possible
This isn't snark (really!) but there was a 'lab leak or not' discussion/debate/something here a few months back. Do we know if the folks at the center have revisited their positions?
“Are they unable to suppress more than one story at a time? “
No they barely suppressed the conversation about the wet market. In fact it came out within a few days. The CCCP may be playing Nth dimensional chess but if the argument is that they suppressed all reports of cases outside the wet market while also pretending to bury the only report we know about by arresting the guy who posted it on WeChat - well I wouldn’t go to war with these guys.
This biggest update I would like here is for people who labelled lab-leak proponents "racist" or "xenophobic" to be expelled from the commetariat. Or at least be held accountable for their shrill certainty that was, in fact, wrong. This is exactly the dynamic that poisons public discourse.
What an elegant way of censoring opinions you don't like—just let Scott do it for you. But let's talk about the poisoning of public discourse. The whole lab leak story was originally cooked up by the rightwing commentariat and took a life of its own with little in the way of supporting evidence—scientific or documentary. And, yes, it was a *xenophobic* response—just like all the plagues since the Black Death have been blamed on the malevolence of others. Here's the timeline...
On 26 Jan 2020, the Washington Times, a newspaper owned by News World Communications, a Rev. Sun Myung Moon organization, published this story: “Coronavirus may have originated in lab linked to China's biowarfare program,” which immediately gets picked up by global media. This is the earliest reference to a lab leak in the public media.
31 Jan 2020: Pradhan et al published a paper implying that HIV genes had been spliced into the virus. This got lots of media play until other scientists pointed out that these gene sequences are found in lots of non-HIV viruses. But claims continued to circulate in the conspiracy world for years afterward that HIV genes were purposely incorporated into SARS-CoV-2 as part of the Chinese Biowarfare program.
1 Feb 2020: Anthony Fauci sends out an email calling a meeting of senior scientists after he has a phone call with Kristian Andersen. Andersen raised some concerns that some features of the virus may indicate lab origins...
2 Feb 2020: There's a meeting between Andersen and key players. Andersen's concerns are addressed. Lab Origin was shot down, but the Leakers are already hyper-vocal on social media...
15 Feb 2020: Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. makes the claim on Fox News Sunday Morning program that SARS2 was a Chinese biowarfare weapon that leaked from the lab.
17 Feb 2020: Andersen submitted a preprint of "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2" where he stated, "the virus is not a laboratory product". It was revised and published 17 March 2020. Andersen's public change of opinion is attacked by Leakers as a sign of a bigger cover-up. Andersen is chased off Twitter because of threats and libels made against him.
17 Feb 2020: Richard Ebright and others push back on Cotton's claims in the Washington Post. He wrote: "There's absolutely nothing in the genome sequence that indicates the virus was engineered. The possibility this was deliberately released bioweapon can be firmly excluded." Later on, Ebright moved into the Leaker camp, and he has called for a ban on all GoF research. However when I asked him why he changed his mind from his previous opinion, he blocked me on Twitter.
19 Feb 2020: 27 scientists publish a statement in The Lancet to "condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin" They write that data overwhelmingly shows the "coronavirus originated in wildlife." Later it comes out that Peter Daszak organized this letter, and Daszak is then accused of a conflict of interest because his EcoHealth Alliance procured grants for the Wuhan Institute of Virology and put proposals before NIH and DoD to GoF experiments with wild viruses. The funded grants that were shared with WIV were only for virus sampling surveys in Horseshoe Bats. And no CoV with the SARS-CoV-2 cleavage site was ever listed in the database of viruses.
16 April 2020: CNN reports US officials are investigating the claim the virus was released from the lab accidentally as scientists were studying infectious diseases (intelligence officials said they didn't believe the virus is man-made or developed as a bioweapon.)
16 April 2020: Fox News reports that anonymous sources claim "patient zero" worked at the laboratory. The lab employee was accidentally infected before spreading the disease across Wuhan. When asked about this, President Trump says: "more and more we're hearing the story". Over the next few weeks, anonymous sources repeat this claim to the WSJ and Forbes. The anonymous sources later on,
name three WIV researchers, Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Zhu Yan as patient(s) zero. But no evidence is presented that suggest they were ever infected or were hospitalized. Over a year passes, and on 19 November 2021, Michael Woroby, using samples gathered at the hospital where the first cases appeared, through genomic analysis identified patient zero as a woman who worked the Huanan Market. The media doesn't pay much attention.
21 April 2020. Trump gets more questions and says the theory "makes sense." Fauci pushes back. Tom Cotton writes an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, writing: "While the Chinese government denies the possibility of a lab leak, its actions tell a different story."
1 May 2020: 1 May 2020: CNN reports that Trump said he's seen evidence of a lab leak. But that same day, the NYTimes reports that Mike Pompeo directed intelligence agencies to continue to look for lab leak evidence—which suggests that our intelligence agencies had no evidence to support a lab leak at that time.
Anyway, the whole lab leak conspiracy theory got started by right-wingers to to drum up suspicion of Chinese nefariousness. That seems to qualify of xenophobic in my book.
Cheers!
I meant the national commentariat, not the blog.
The point is people were vilified for questioning a narrative that it's now fashionable to question. I think the people who engaged in silencing good-faith arguments in the name of anti-racism should themselves be now be held accountable. Saying an opinion is so obviously wrong that it shouldn't even be tolerated is a MUCH stronger claim than simply disagreeing with it, and I think people who make confident and loud arguments for censorship should be publicly humiliated when their arguments are found to be wrong.
Ideological censorship is bad. I am extremely against it. This about-face from "lab leak is so obviously wrong that you must be a bigot to even bring it up" to "hmm, maybe it was a lab leak" is a rare the-censors-have-no-clothes moment and I think people who are against censorship should take maximum advantage of it. And FWIW I'm officially on Team Wet Market in this debate.
> people were vilified for questioning a narrative that it's now fashionable to question.
Which narrative? Which people were questioning? I presented a timeline that shows a clear *political* narrative, which leading scientists were contradicting. Now that Trump is in the White House, it's fashionable to revive the political narrative. What am I missing here? Answer: the facts to support that political narrative are missing. Instead, that narrative was informed by xenophobia and not by science.
The existence of a political narrative doesn't eliminate other non-political narratives. There weren't many facts in early 2020, but two of them were this: a global coronavirus pandemic was raging and appeared to originate within a mile of a lab doing research on coronaviruses. It's completely reasonable to put those two things together. Saying the *only* possible motivation for doing so is racism is itself a political narrative whose purpose is to suppress politically relevant speech, and hey guess what now that we're able to investigate openly it turns out that maybe the 'racist' explanation is the correct one. I'm sorry but suppressing viewpoints requires a much higher burden of proof and the people doing it in this case had none. What's more it was being perpetrated by media members whose professional and moral responsibility is to accurately report the facts. I believe those people should be publicly castigated.
> and appeared to originate within a mile of a lab doing research on coronaviruses.
Whose views were suppressed? I heard that the virus originated a "mile away from the lab" crap well into 2022. AFAICT, no one was suppressing spurious information, and we were swamped with it (and we still are).
Once the Biden admin started rolling out vaccines, the anti-vax crowd started shoving misinformation and scare stories out onto social media. During its peak, we were losing over 3500 people per day. That's the equivalent of ten 747s crashing every day. The Biden administration had a national emergency on its hands. They needed to spur vaccine uptake, and asking Facebook and Twitter to adjust their algorithms to tamp down on misinformation seems totally justified to me. Using the 747 analogy, On 9/11, if people with "alternative views" had told New Yorkers to congregate around the collapsing World Trade Center and breathe in the dust, their alternative opinions would have been outright banned—and no one would have made a big deal of tamping down on that craziness. But anti-vaxxers whose "alternative views" kill gullible people are given a free pass to spout their stupidity.
Dr. Jay "Bhatty" Bhattacharya claims he was shadow-banned on Twitter for advocating alternative pandemic policies. I remember reading his asinine posts. If he was shadow-banned, that shadow-banning didn't affect his reach to my Twitter feed (unfortunately). And even if Twitter suppressed his view, he got more than enough coverage on Fox News and other right-wing platforms.
Fair enough, literal censorship is a stretch on my part. But accusations of racism are basically impossible to defend against (if you win you get nothing, if you lose you're forever shunned) and function as elite society's version of the scarlet letter: other elites immediately bail and all debate sputters into some version of "well of course racism is terrible". The Overton Window is controlled by politically self-serving moral scolds and I think they should have their moral authority stripped when they're found to be objectively wrong. Accusations of racism are more frequently truth-obscuring than they are truth-revealing and I think the taboos around the topic need to be completely eliminated.
Yes, an accusation of racism is the political equivalent of having an atom bomb dropped on one's career. But should racists be allowed to contribute to the ecosphere of knowledge? Before you respond, let's walk through a thought experiment consisting of some hypothetical examples. Sorry, it's a bit long...
1. A behavioral geneticist, let's call him Dr. A., makes the claim that behaviors have a significant hereditary component. As an example, Dr. A. states that under the selective pressure of automobiles, squirrels have changed their evasive behaviors over the past century — from a random evasion pattern to evade aerial predators to a straight-line run to evade automobiles. Dr. A. then publically muses whether natural selection and heredity play a role in human behaviors.
2. Another behavioral geneticist, Dr B. claims there's a correlation between certain human behaviors and certain alleles. Some critics of his study point out that the correlation may not be as clear-cut as Dr. B. claims, but Dr. B. sticks to his guns because to his mind, his data shows a clear correlation.
3. Another behavioral geneticist, Dr. C. makes the claim that the behavior of poor impulse control is linked to an allele (identified as the IMP-C-neg gene) that varies in frequency between different populations — and, yes, a certain ethnic group (let's call them Gondwinjians) shows an association with high violent crime rates in Dr. C.'s homeland of Freedonia, and they also happen to have a higher frequency of the IMP-C-neg gene. Some epigeneticists point out that high crime rates (presumably due to poor impulse control) show a striking correlation with lead in the environment, and the countries that still sell leaded gasoline have notably higher violent crime rates — also, the inner cities of Dr. C.'s homeland have noticeably higher levels of lead in the environment due to a history of economic inequality. The two sides never come to agreement about the roles of heredity vs environment.
4. But a fourth B-G, Dr. D. chimes in that the World Crime Database clearly shows that Gondwinjians (the people from the continent of Gondwinjia) all have higher violent crime rates and higher frequencies of the IMP-C-neg allele, despite differing levels of automobile usage, air pollution, etc. Opponents chime in, showing that much of the data in the World Crime Database is subjective by country, and a significant portion of the data was manufactured by a researcher, Dr. X., who on numerous occasions claimed that Gondwinjians are genetically inferior to all other races — so much so that interbreeding with Gondwinjians should be banned, and Gondwinjians should be segregated from other superior races. Dr. D. refuses to retract his claims despite the evidence that Dr. X. had it in for Gondwinjians.
Would you feel comfortable putting the label racist on Dr. A., B., C., or D.? And what about Dr. X.? Would you call him a racist?
Time goes on, and Dr. C. and D.'s lectures are picketed by anti-racism groups. Is their academic freedom being impinged upon?
Protestors take it a step further, and they start a letter-writing campaign to the academic journals that published Dr. D.'s papers, urging the editors to retract them because the data in the World Crime Database is clearly bogus. Some journals retract Dr. D.'s papers. Is Dr. D.'s freedom of speech being repressed?
>But should racists be allowed to contribute to the ecosphere of knowledge?
Yes, they should. The principle issue isn't defending racism but rather preventing bad-faith actors from gatekeeping the public dialogue with self-serving and vague ideological tests. 'Racism' is kind of like 'consciousness' - it's an imprecise term that can be gerrymandered to produce any sort of verdict you want. Virtually zero discussions are ever enhanced by introducing the accusation. Was Abraham Lincoln racist? He said things like "of course blacks are inferior and can't live as equals in society", opposed black suffrage, interracial marriage, and favored sending freed slaves to Liberia. Does that mean he should've been disqualified from politics? Should we disavow the Emancipation Proclamation because it was made by a racist?
>Would you feel comfortable putting the label racist on Dr. A., B., C., or D.?
No.
>And what about Dr. X.? Would you call him a racist?
Yes. If anything is racist it's arguing for explicit moral superiority. That doesn't disqualify him as a scientist. If he produces bad science then criticize the science. If he produces good science then his personal beliefs should have no bearing so long as they don't impinge upon his ability to be an honest scientist. Otherwise why not denounce the professional credibility of any group you disagree with? "Oh who cares what his lab shows, he's a gay woke Muslim."
By the way, there's nothing inherently wrong with being racist. It's a belief system, nothing more. People have lots of weird beliefs but we don't obsesses over policing all of them. There's a Church of Satan, ffs. Letting your belief system drive you to do things like lynch people or engage in other forms of violence IS bad. Focus less on what people think and more on what they do. Running around acting like the Thought Police does nobody any good. (Except themselves, of course. As HL Mencken said, "The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false front for the urge to rule it.")
>Is their academic freedom being impinged upon?
If they're prevented from giving a fair airing of their views then yes of course. Picketing is fine. Viewpoint suppression is not.
> Some journals retract Dr. D.'s papers. Is Dr. D.'s freedom of speech being repressed?
If they were retracted for no good-faith scientific reasons, yes.
>> people who labelled lab-leak proponents "racist"
> What an elegant way of censoring opinions you don't like—just let Scott do it for you. But let's talk about the poisoning of public discourse. T
While it was far from insurmountable for a red-blooded americain, the "opinions" crossed lines. People were hysterical and its not merely "the hypocritics turn to censor".
Irl I stopped wearing a mask a mere month into the 2 weeks and this involved *drum roll* a willngness to look someone in the eye and say no. Online it was intense, people accusing me of killing grandma with high intensity and complete conviction.
Celebrating deaths, avocatcy for camps, the final severing of the internet into politically correct vs incorrect social medias. Corona wasnt a mere opinion being debated politely, it was a physiological event. Repersenting some the worse conversations Ive had with strangers seeking hearing 1 detail about me and deciding to twist the screws.
Theres a word for when a social interaction is wildly one-sided "harassment". and between me and you, when I suggested that maybe you should stop caring about corona deathtoles, I backed off after 2 comments, I would suggest your side didnt always follow that ethic, especially that first year.
How did I harass you? I may have been sarcastic, but did I call you names or lob ad hominem attacks at you?
If I did, I apologize if I called you names and/or lobbed ad homs at you — but I'd like to see the passages that offended you so I can learn from my mistakes.
>> your side
> How did I harass you?
Not you specifically, wasnt aware of you before a year ago much less that first year, I was banned from less wrong around that time and left the rationalists related areas.
> see the passages that offended
"people accusing me of killing grandma with high intensity and complete conviction."
"Celebrating deaths, avocatcy for camps"
I view corona as a mid-life crisis for zoomers coming far far to early; given the banning of anome and the general agreement of the "paradox of tolerance" being par around here; hysterical outbursts are often cruel hindsight and objective(read not leftwing) standards would have banned for the conversations im thinking of.
I would compare "killing grandma" accusations to using abortion gore in the abortion debate; thats the level of intensity I experienced. And I bet thats above your line.
Yes. On Twitter/X, The ZeroCOVID crowd and then the Long COVIDians could get obnoxious and self-righteous at times. But the "It's Just the Flu" peeps could get just as nasty, especially when they felt the gummint was trampling on their freedumbs. Strangely enough, the antivaxxers never engaged directly with me. Likewise for the Great Barrington bobbleheads, but the GBD folks looked down on the rest of us with a tolerant gaze from their all-knowing heights.
I updated from roughly 2:1 in favor of lab leak to perhaps 40:60 against lab leak.
I didn't watch the original debate, and only read Scott's summary and looked further into one or two arguments which were new to me.
I mostly updated from: "careful consideration of the full set of evidence should result in estimates of odds converging" to "oh shit, careful consideration of the full set of evidence left the people who started as neutral observers with a 50:1 discrepancy in a posteriori odds - and this is in a _good_ case, estimates of odds of a _past_ event, and well understood alternative possibilities for the event, with historical precedents for the possibilities"
I clearly phrased my question poorly. Let me try again:
"Now that the German Intelligence Service seems to have reported to the German government in 2020 that there was an 80-90% chance that covid was the result of a lab leak in Wuhan and with the NYT running an op-ed piece with the title 'We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives' which seems to be 'oops, it seems that it WAS a lab leak' I an wondering if the two folks who debated this back in March 2024 (I found the original AC10 post) have updated their beliefs."
Since it seems that only one person was pushing the "No lab leak" position (I misremembered and thought it was a bunch...) that would become: "Do we know if Saar Wilf has updated his belief that Covid was *not* the result of a lab leak?"
Ah ok. I read "folk at the center" as "folks at about 50:50" instead of "folk at the rootclaim center".
I am confused about this sentence: "Saar Wilf has updated his belief that Covid was *not* the result of a lab leak?". Is this a negation too much? I thought that Saar Wilf was the rootclaim guy in favor of lab leak, no?
Saar certainly isn't the only guy who is seriously convinced about a lab leak, and it was also not just his opponent at the debate who was pushing for "no lab leak". But both had far stronger arguments for both sides than anything that came out since 2024, so I don't see any reason that any of them should have updated much.
I don't know the NYT article, but from another commenter it sounds like this is just a summary of stuff that was long known, and that was certainly known to both sides of the rootclaim debate. For the German Intelligence Service, this *is* new information, but very diluted. They haven't published their data. We just know that their data looked and looks convincing to *them*, but this alone is not a strong argument.
There was a presentation of this IS to high-profile German scientists (definitely Christian Drosten, the German Mister Corona), which perhaps has made an impression to them. In a recent interview, Drosten was uncharacteristically open about the lab-leak possibility, and Lothar Thiele (head of Robert-Koch institute during Corona) even said this week that he finds a lab leak more likely. But this is a chain of argument with at least three unclear steps in a row, so I don't think anyone should update strongly on that.
Lab created isn’t = lab leak. Could have been an attack.
FWIW, I thought from the outset that it was obviously a lab leak, and equally clearly western countries were prevaricating and covering up this because they had also used the lab and thus shared the blame. My theory was that a rogue janitor tasked with incinerating "used" bats in the basement was instead selling them in the nearby wet market.
The problem with the lab leak being suppressed by the Chinese authorities idea, is that the Chinese, or at least the Wuhan authorities actually tried to cover up the wet market.
> rogue janitor tasked with incinerating "used" bats in the basement was instead selling them in the nearby wet market.
Certainly elegant, but a pretty blatant instance of the gray fallacy.
I listened to the debate, which was fine. But I find it a bit unsettling that we try and judge the truth value of something by which side of the debate has the better debater. (I've always found lab leak to be the most likely explanation.)
>I find it a bit unsettling that we try and judge the truth value of something by which side of the debate has the better debater.
What's the alternative? I mean I hear you about "better rhetorical skills can defeat better facts" (aka The OJ Simpson Effect) but there's no reason the wrong side would systematically have the better debater so this should cancel out on average. I also think it's likely that better debaters are smarter and smarter people are more likely to bias towards being right, so I think this effect is mildly truth-enhancing.
Plus keep in mind that debates aren't the Final Official Opinion on the topic. They're a starting point for driving public opinion and if the debate were won via dirty rhetorical tricks then that would have been pointed out by the commentariat. The debate is a stress-test on expert opinion and makes the best arguments available to the public. After that it's up to everyone to make up their own mind. No evidence or argument should make anyone 100% confident about anything. Debates are tools, not diving rods.
TBH I'm mostly done with this topic. I'm fine with never knowing the truth about this. Rather than jaw-jaw, the way to get closer to the truth is to get more data.
"so this should cancel out on average"
What is this "average" you speak of? There was one (1) debate that caused a big chunk of the rationalist sphere to substantially update their beliefs on the debate. I agree that an average over many debates might be useful, but that's not what we got.
The generalized attitude one has towards debate. Agreed that's not applicable to a single result, but I was addressing OP's general skepticism.
Re-read my final paragraph. That debate wasn't the end of public discussion, but in my view it's a very useful starting point for generating an informed viewpoint.
If you have a coin that's biased 55/45 in favor of the truth, repeated tosses of that coin would generally lead to truth and so it would be a defensible position to have the "generalized attitude" that *many* coin tosses would be a good thing.
But if you toss the coin *once*, you don't have a "useful starting point for generating an informed viewpoint", you have a fucking coin toss.
And if you're going to say that the one coin toss is a "useful starting point" because it might lead to many other people tossing coins, then get back to is when that *actually happens*. Otherwise, admit ignorance. Or I suppose look for alternate sources of truth, or maybe start tossing coins yourself, but that's probably too much like work.
You didn't learn anything from that debate? I feel like I did. A debate is much more than a 1-bit outcome, it's a set of stress-tested arguments. That's why more than just the verdict is made public.
Our legal process is essentially a debate. Do you think it has zero truth-seeking value? Do you think the wrong verdict is reached 45% of the time?
I didn't see any substantially new arguments, no. I saw at least one argument that involved chasing a massive red herring. And I *didn't* see some arguments that I considered rather important.
An argument is only stress-tested if A: one party to the debate makes it, and B: the other party has the most effective counterargument on tap. That's usually not going to be the case for any single debate, except for the most common arguments that everybody already knows.
An imperfect test is still a test. It's a set of arguments put together by smart people who are subjecting them to cross-examination by other smart people. Other than being an expert and doing all the research yourself, I don't see a better method for acquiring knowledge.
Just curious, what do you think is the most important argument they ignored? What's your overall view of the issue? I had no strong opinion going in but thought Peter made a compelling case. The epidemiology and genetic analysis seem like strong points. I'm probably 80% wet market.
Considering that it was circulating undetected in the US for months, I find that it was circulating for YEARS among remote populations that lived near bat caves the most likely. And that it didn't become a problem until It picked up a mutation or so that allowed it to spread easily between people. And that it was carried into the live market by some rural person bringing in trade goods. Almost all those suppositions are either known to be true, or extremely likely. I'd put the odds of that at, say, 70%, the odds of a lab leak at around 20%, leaving 10% for "something else". (Those *are* really rough estimates of the odds, but given all the uncertainties it's the best I can do.)
Note that I don't rate "it was from an animal at the wet market" high enough to consider. It had obviously adapted to spreading between people before it was noticed.
You may be thinking of the Rootclaim debate over it:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim
I haven't seen a strong update from anyone involved but I haven't been following closely.
As for myself, I've seen a lot of indirect evidence (people who have concluded it was a lab leak) but haven't seen any actual new evidence (or even analysis) made public. My read is that a few more lab-leak-believers have come out of the woodwork, or are feeling free to speak their mind, but not that there is any new reason to actually change one's mind unless you're just going with crowdthink.
But I could be missing something.
Yes, that is the thing I was mis-remembering.
Has Saar Wilf updated his beliefs?
Are you, by any chance, referring to me? If you are asking, no, I haven't updated my certitudes that SARS-CoV-2 was neither lab-created nor lab-escaped.
The initial cluster of cases were either linked to or from around Huanan Market in Wuhan—which is 14 Km away from the WIV. Although there were claims that patient zero was one of three WIV scientists (depending on which report you listen to), no one has provided any supported evidence that any of these three scientists were hospitalized during the first two weeks of December 2019. OTOH Michael Woroby has done a good job of narrowing down patient zero to a woman who worked at the Huanan Market from the mutations that developed in the virus as it spread around Wuhan.
If there were a lab leak, we'd have seen a cluster of cases around the lab or one or more clusters in the residential areas where the WIV scientists lived. Not a cluster around a market across the river and 30 minutes drive from WIV.
From a genomic perspective, there were two variants circulating at roughly the same time. Woroby's patient zero was an A, but within a week, we saw patients with the B variant (and B went on to conquer the world), although the first recorded case in the US was an A). I think it was Woroby who suggested both the A and B variants were circulating in Raccoon Dogs at the market. Unless the WIV worker went to the Huanan Market and transmitted the virus there, the Huanan Market was the epicenter of the outbreak. Or maybe there were two separate leaks with one or two WIV workers each transmitting a variant?
The only technical detail that the biowarfare-origin advocates can latch onto is the mystery of the double-CGG (arginine) pair at the SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site. CGG codons are very rare in viruses, and CGT or CGC are the most frequent arginine codons in most viral genomes. In fact, up until the appearance of SARS2, there was a theory that there was some sort of selective pressure favoring CGT or CGC over CGG.
But the people who wanted to believe that the SARS-CoV-2 was human-made saw that as evidence of human tampering. However, GoF runs wouldn't likely yield that CGG-CGG pair because CGG is so rare in virus genomes. And the surrounding codons on the spike protein don't suggest that this sequence could have been spliced into the precursor to SARS2. In fact, when Alina Chan (who is one of the biggest proponents that SARS2 was created in a lab) was asked how the CGG-CGG pair was inserted at the S1-S2 boundary, she had no answer.
Furthermore, no one really understood how the furin cleavage site worked to enhance SARS2's infectiousness until about a year after the virus had been sequenced. So, to create the virus, the mad scientists in Wuhan would have to have had knowledge that was unknown to other virologists or biochemists at the time, and they'd have to have had a technique for inserting that sequence into the SARS2 precursor that is still unknown to the rest of the virology or biochemistry community.
"they'd have to have had a technique for inserting that sequence into the SARS2 precursor"
I'm late, but can I ask you a question (this isn't my area of expertise)?
I assume that the 12-nucleotide segment couldn't have "evolved" though GoF? Could it have been inserted with Crisper (is that silly?) or something like that? Don't we have techniques to insert arbitrary DNA/RNA segments? How does it work exactly? I know this particular segment is out-of-frame and the actual mechanism only discovered later, so it is unlikely that it was put there on purpose, but still, is it at all possible that someone inserted it artificially?
Also, CGG is rare in viruses, is it rare in mammalian genomes? Does the sequence RRAR occur in racoon dog genomes or human genomes? Where could it come from naturally?
Thanks. I don't believe in a lab leak, just trying to understand the technical details.
Sorry, I didn't see your question earlier. Yes, CGG is also rare in mammalian genomes. There's an actual biochemical reason — something called CpG dinucleotide suppression. Don't ask about me the details. ;-)
I am not a biochemist, but a biochemist who does GoF experiments (with viruses other than SARS2), explained to me that the GoF process, since it acts as an artificial selective process for the whole viral genome, tends to make "improvements" all along the genome and not just a specific place in the genome. He didn't know of any way for a GoF process just to create the unique SARS2 cleavage site, and he pointed me to some research that showed there were lots of "primitive" features in the original SARS2 spike protein shared with CoVs found in the wild. A GoF process would have optimized their function, and he said that if the double-CGG (arginine) pair of SARS2 furin cleavage site *were already there*, a GOF would have ended up with a virus similar to Delta. But the whole pandemic has been a massive GoF process with the virus becoming more transmissible in humans: the B variant being more competitive than the original A variant, then B became the even more transmissible with Alpha --> then Delta --> then Omicron.
As for inserting the Furin cleavage site, CRISPR leaves editing scars around the insertion sites. There would be short, sequences called Protospacer Adjacent Motifs (PAM sequences) of DNA left behind on the modified genome that are essential for CRISPR systems to recognize and bind target DNA. The PAM sequences serve as molecular tags that help distinguish host DNA from foreign DNA, ensuring that CRISPR-mediated cleavage occurs only at the intended sites.
There are also other ways to insert genetic material, but my understanding is that all leave telltale sequences at the borders of the insertion.
Thanks! Very useful.
(I'm pretty sure you're wrong about quantum mechanics LOL but I do trust you on issues related to biology.)
"Are you, by any chance, referring to me?"
I think I am referring to Saar Wilf and Peter Miller from here:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim
And anyone else who participated in the debate itself, not the folks in the Astral Ten Codex comment section.
So if you are either of these people, then, "Yes, I am referring to you!" If not, then not.
Understood. In my real life, I go by Wulf, and people frequently misspell it (or spell checkers misspell it). And I had been debating the Leakers on this platform and on Twitter/X for several years now.
Yes, I didn't find a lot of new information in that debate. Perhaps we get an update soon. It has just become public that a German Intelligence Agency has copies of unpublished PhD theses from the Wuhan lab from 2019 and 2020. Apparently they find them very relevant. Whether they are really relevant remains hopefully to be seen, because I hope very much that the future German government overrides the agency's decision to keep them secret.
It sounds like the furin cleavage site found in COVID was something that had never been seen before in human experiments and which bears all the hallmarks of natural evolution (e.g. working in a random by-chance way). So if the people at WIV did somehow come up with that, that suggests that they know more about genetics then the rest of the world and are sitting on some nobel prize worthy stuff.
If you're talking about the Zeit article, they only refer to "unveröffentlichte Daten sowie interne Papiere chinesischer Forscher" (unpublished data and internal papers from Chinese researchers). They don't mention any PhD theses, but if you've got some titles or authors, they should be searchable in the China Doctoral Dissertations (CDMD-CDFD) database.
Hm, strange. I can't access the Zeit article directly. Julia Merlot from Spiegel Online writes explicitly about doctoral theses from 2019 and 2020 (it's also paywalled), but refers to the Zeit article as source:
"In der »Zeit« heißt es nun, die deutschen Agenten hätten Informationen aus wissenschaftlichen Untersuchungen gesammelt, die in dem Labor in Wuhan stattgefunden haben, und außerdem Einblick in unveröffentlichte Doktorarbeiten aus den Jahren 2019 und 2020 gehabt."
I'm not sure what has happened there, but the most likely interpretation is that she has misunderstood the information.
https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/corona-ursprung-forderung-nach-offenlegung-der-bnd-erkenntnisse-a-2ac095fd-2c57-42fc-a404-6f421e959abc
Searching for keywords: German intelligence PhD theses WIV, I found this Zeit link posted on X by Katherin Eban: "laboratory incident at WIV, according to detailed @zeitonline article today. Of note, their assessment aligns w/ @FBI: their evidence included "unpublished dissertations from 2019 and 2020."
The link she posted is to an archived version of the article. After running it through my browser's translator, I couldn't find any mentions of theses in the text of the article. Maybe this article was edited at some point? But that's all I could find using those keywords.
https://archive.is/AEdZv#selection-2625.231-2625.368
OTOH, unless those doctoral theses were classified for Chinese national security or national public-relations reasons (which is entirely possible), they should be available online. They may not have been published in journals, but nowadays, most PhD theses get uploaded to sites like ProQuest. The big one in China is the CDMD-CDFD. I've never tried to access it, though, and I don't know what the challenges would be for a non-Chinese speaker. If I were an investigative reporter, I'd be trying to chase down that lead to see if it panned out. Now I'm really curious!
I doubt it. I don't think that is how that type of debate generally works.
In 20 years, the history books will say something different than what was said in 2020; the "lab leak" theory was never as unreasonable as some very loud politically-motivated voices insisted it was then. But there won't be a gradual war to win hearts and minds; it will just be a slow forgetting that anyone ever thought that.
It was unreasonable from what we know of biochemistry and virology. A GoF process would have been unlikely to yield a CGG codon pair at the cleavage site when (CGG codons are very rare in all virus genomes) and other codons for arginine could theoretically be substituted without disrupting the functionality of the cleavage site. If it wasn't a GoF process at work (which would have also optimized other codons on the SARS2 spike protein), the only other option is some sort of gene splicing to inset the unique SARS2 cleavage site but the rest of the original variant A genome doesn't show the "fingerprints" of gene splicing.
Politics motivated the original claims that SARS-CoV-2 was the result of a biowarfare program and a lab leak. Science has largely refuted those claims, and the overwhelming consensus is that SARS2 wasn't bioengineered, and wasn't the result of a lab leak—with a few vocal holdouts.
Not a history book, but it's already starting. NYT published this op-ed yesterday:
https://archive.is/CQzbl
An excerpt:
Yet in 2020, when people started speculating that a laboratory accident might have been the spark that started the Covid-19 pandemic, they were treated like kooks and cranks. Many public health officials and prominent scientists dismissed the idea as a conspiracy theory, insisting that the virus had emerged from animals in a seafood market in Wuhan, China. And when a nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance lost a grant because it was planning to conduct risky research into bat viruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology — research that, if conducted with lax safety standards, could have resulted in a dangerous pathogen leaking out into the world — no fewer than 77 Nobel laureates and 31 scientific societies lined up to defend the organization.
So, the Wuhan research was totally safe and the pandemic was definitely caused by natural transmission: It certainly seemed like consensus.
We have since learned, however, that to promote the appearance of consensus, some officials and scientists hid or understated crucial facts, misled at least one reporter, orchestrated campaigns of supposedly independent voices and even compared notes about how to hide their communications in order to keep the public from hearing the whole story. And as for that Wuhan laboratory’s research, the details that have since emerged show that safety precautions may have been terrifyingly lax.
Do stories like this matter? I have a hard time believing that anyone who was full on “trust the science” has done a 180 since then.
Im a little disinterested in how the non-apology will work and havnt been following; what are the rough mechanics of when everyone caught the media in a lie and then the media has to pretend they were always right? Is it meaningfully different from how the mormon chruch said "black poeple in heaven will turn white" pre civil right era and is now mass converting mexico and not saying that?
The usual way is to find someone in particular to blame.
Everybody in 2002: "Saddam has WMDs!"
Everybody in 2004: "I can't believe Bush lied to us about Saddam having WMDs!"
I think it’s important to add “in the US” to your example, although it does not necessarily apply all the time.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
Zeynep Tufekci has always been an advocate of an open mind here. But in that particular piece she did seem to be leaning more towards lab leak than I thought she ever had before. (She’s been a columnist at the Times for a few years now I think.)
Interesting, I'd never followed much of anything to do with Covid other than what was relevant to me keeping my job so I'd never heard of the author of that op-ed. Thanks for the context
She is really good. You should search for her name on this substack - Scott had some really good discussions of some of her work at the height of the pandemic.
She is not good at all. She got one thing right – that covid is airborne – but then continued to make statements that masks are super effective despite all evidence on the contrary.
Making everybody mask has little or no benefit. But one individual in a good quality mask, worn correctly, is much less likely to contract covid, or to pass it to others if he is infected.
I've been seeing much joyous commentary about exterior parts of the Cybertruck being glued on.
One thing I'm optimistic about is improvements in material science. I don't know whether glue that can compete with rivets and/or welding is possible, though even it is, the Cybertruck doesn't have it.
Is it known how strong glue can get?
A glued joint can fail in three ways:
1. The bond between the glue & the material can fail
2. The glue itself can break
3. The material breaks beyond the glue
The CT failures are probably #1; there are complex techniques to get a good bond that I'd be unsurprised to learn Tesla hasn't mastered.
The existence of #3 puts a limit on how worthwhile improving glue itself can be.
My airplane has a structure of aluminum panels that are mostly held together by "glue", to provide a flush rivet-free surface. It was made in 1976, and I still trust my life to it regularly. And I think justifiably; AFIK only one of the 2000+ aircraft of that series built, ever suffered in-flight structural failure and that was in severe to extreme turbulence.
So it is certainly possible that many of the Cybertruck's body panels or other exterior fittings are similarly attached, and if done properly that shouldn't be a problem. There seems to be a problem, so I'm guessing the job wasn't done properly, but the failure was almost certainly downstream of "let's use glue instead of rivets or welds".
I've seen a suggestion that some Cybertrucks were made with bad batches of glue. This isn't a design problem, but it's serious.
I'm not a structural/mechanical engineer or a materials scientist, so take all the following with a grain of salt.
My instinct is that "how strong is it" is very likely to be the wrong question to ask for a lot of applications. The question I'd be asking instead would be more like "how well do they stand up to fatigue and wear?" While metal fatigue is certainly a thing, I don't *think* it's generally a huge factor for causing failures of things like screws and rivets. Meanwhile I've certainly encountered lots of examples of everyday adhesives becoming increasingly weak and/or experiencing progressive failure under repeated strain[1]. My semi-educated guess would be that glue is a better choice for things that are mostly subject to static loads rather than loads that regularly and quickly change in direction and intensity. Which would make them a very poor choice for structural components of automobiles specifically.
[1] Again, not a materials scientist: I couldn't say one way or the other if there are industrial adhesives that do better in this dimension specifically.
This fits with my totally uneducated view that if you stick two things together with a dab of two-part epoxy, you'll need a crowbar to get them apart, and even then you'll likely break the material rather than the join.
Seriously, the stuff can have tensile strength within 50% of PVC, which doesn't sound impressive until you consider how hard you'd have to pull a block of PVC to get it to separate.
I agree that if cosmetic bits are falling off after you've stuck them on with a deliberately selected industrial adhesive, the culprit is probably something involving actual engineering, like repeated thermal or ice expansion, or shear force where you didn't expect it.
I'm not sure it's a material science issue.
I talked to an engineer at Audi about Tesla maybe some 2 years ago and he basically told me that Audi ordered a couple of Teslas and took them apart so see what their rivals are doing.
According to him they were surprised by the bad quality of the Tesla hardware, at least as measured against the cars they built themselves.
There's no debating that Tesla blows Audi out of the water in terms of stock price and perhaps also sales and profitability, I don't follow the industry. But "cybertruck hardware not actually great" fits well with my mental image of Tesla as a brand that works off good software, good infrastructure, good actual innovation, good hype but comparably bad, you know, actual hardware and car manufacturing.
So I'd say, the material science is probably there already.
I prompted OpenAI's deep research with:
Q: What is the maximum known tensile strength of any adhesive? I know of the cyanoacrylate adhesives, though not of the numerical value of their tensile strength, and, more crucially, not whether even better adhesives have been discovered since them. I would like to know what the state of the art is, with the maximum tensile strength of the strongest known adhesive.
A: The answer depends a lot on the formulation and test conditions. For everyday “super glues” (cyanoacrylates), you’re generally looking at tensile strengths in the ballpark of 20–30 MPa. However, over the past couple of decades researchers have pushed the limits considerably in the laboratory. For example, some highly engineered structural adhesives—often based on advanced epoxy systems or even nanomaterial‐reinforced formulations—have been reported under ideal conditions to reach tensile strengths approaching 200 MPa.
A few points to keep in mind:
Test Conditions Matter: Tensile strength measurements can vary greatly depending on how the test is set up, the substrates used, and environmental factors.
Laboratory vs. Commercial: While a few experimental adhesives have reached values near 200 MPa, these are typically demonstrated in highly controlled settings. Commercial adhesives used in everyday applications usually operate at lower strengths.
Material Innovations: Advances in nanocomposites and optimized curing processes have been the main drivers behind these record values. Such research is often aimed at specialized applications (like aerospace or microelectronics) rather than mass-market adhesives.
In summary, while traditional cyanoacrylates are in the 20–30 MPa range, state‐of‐the‐art adhesives developed in research labs have achieved tensile strengths on the order of 200 MPa under optimal conditions.
Define "glue". The mortar in brick-and-mortar buildings holds up perfectly well
It also doesn't move much.
Yes, because it's glued in place.
“I've been seeing much joyous commentary about exterior parts of the Cybertruck being glued on.”
It’s really “joyous commentary” about parts “falling off”.
If parts are falling off, then the method used to affix them would seem insufficient.
I'm mildly curious about the details here. The one thing I happened to come across (previously, I have not done any additional searching) was a youtube video that found glue, but the parts were also bolted and the glue appeared to be used just to hold things together in the proper alignment until the bolts were added.
My prior these days on anything Elon related is that the truth will get stretched to fit the "Elon bad" narrative (not suggesting you are doing that here, but just that, unless you have more detailed info, you might have been caught by others doing this), so I'm wondering if that's what is going on here.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/watch-a-tesla-cybertruck-rip-apart-during-tow-hitch-stress-test
This may not be quite what you're looking for, but it's a test of the tow hitch. It failed catastrophically at just a little under the weight it was supposed to be able to pull, and it was at least partly attached with glue.
So that's actually the exact video I had come across. And, from what I recall, it showed glue being used in addition to bolts. (see this time stamp for bolt holes in the glued area, one of the people in that video also later says exactly that it's just to line it up to hold in place for spot welds/bolts: https://youtu.be/ubUXNSWGth0?t=494)
Also, the very premise of the video seemed suspect to me. They got the hitch to fail at much, much, much higher loads than the rated tongue weight (like more than 10x if I recall), with the argument being that this is still bad because an imporperly set up trailer can, in some specific circumstances, put a significant amount of the entire trailer weight on the tongue. This is undoubtedly true, but, at least from the examples they gave, the way this would happen wouldn't be a long, sustained application of that weight (which is what they did in the video), it would be fast onset, and not last very long (either because the conditions changed or you pull over immediately).
Basically that video (and the article calling the adhesive "structural" is even worse) is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about.
The test in the video is very useful. A fast onset of the trailer weight may actually be more stressful than a slow one, depending on the design and mechanical impedance distribution (this is a complicated topic, suffice it to say that a "fast" application of force will stress different weak points than a "slow" one), and it's quite easy to come up with a scenario where the full weight of the trailer is bearing down on the hitch.
The real problem isn't the glue, of course - it's using aluminum for structural weight-bearing elements. It can be done - but clearly wasn't done correctly for Cybertruck.
The old Ram with a steel frame did much better.
Musk is his own worst enemy here. He’s writing the “Elon is bad narrative”.
I mean, to take a current example, how hard would it have really been to avoid retweeting the “hitler didn’t kill people” tweet?
Musk has gone on about his employees needing to be more dedicated while he does the DOGE stuff as parts are falling off his company’s cars.
Doesn’t he have a car company to run?
Yes, he absolutely is. There are more real examples of bad things he's done than one can shake a stick at. But in my experience, stories about issues with Tesla and SpaceX almost always seem to end up as "this isn't nearly as bad as it was made to sound and clearly people who dislike Musk (for good and understandable reasons) have strangely decided to lie about something relatively unimportant to make him look bad, even though the thing they are lying about is not even close to as important as the real reasons to be mad at him"
Musk "exaggerates" all the time to make himself look good and other people look bad. If a "captain of industry" has this problem, it shouldn't be very surprising that other people do too.
Maybe, it's a consequence of excessive "Musk fatigue".
(Some people who like Musk exaggerate stuff too.)
Given the excessive hype about the Cybertruck, parts falling off is amusing/ironic.
https://electrek.co/2025/03/13/tesla-cybertruck-deliveries-are-on-hold-as-trims-are-flying-off-the-bulletproof-truck/
There are always reasons for things. That doesn't mean I have to play along with the "lie about trivial things because I don't like this person" game.
??? No one suggested you have to "play along" with anything.
Given the excessive hype about the Cybertruck, it's makes some sense that some people find parts falling off amusing/ironic. (That is, it's not as "inexplicable" as you seem to think.)
(It seems you are claiming that "parts falling off" was "relatively unimporant" and a "lie". That doesn't seem to be correct if Tesla is halting deliveries to address it. Keep in mind that this was the concrete example you gave.)
I never said it was inexplicable. I said that it's usually lies. From the follow up info that the original poster gave, I appear to have been correct again.
-edit- response to your edit.
The very specific thing I'm calling a lie is that they use glue as the primary way of putting together structural elements. Also, if the video/article that OP got the info from is the source of the "parts falling off" story, and not something else, then that is also ~ a lie. I have no idea if Tesla is recalling Cyber trucks related to the video or otherwise
"The very specific thing I'm calling a lie is that they use glue as the primary way of putting together structural elements."
Who said this "lie"? Can you quote it?
It doesn't seem it's "structural elements" (it appears it's "trim"). It seems you are misrecollecting things you are calling "lies". No one else can evaluate your complaints because we don't know what exactly you are referring to.
===============
In June 2024, there was a recall of 11,000 Cybertrucks due to parts falling off. According to Tesla these parts are "affixed to the vehicle with adhesive".
https://electrek.co/2024/06/25/tesla-recalls-over-11000-cybertrucks-over-trim-detaching-wiper-issue/
No, you said "have strangely decided to lie" ("Inexplicable" is a reasonable paraphrase).
The issue isn't "glue". The issue is "parts falling off". If these parts are being affixed with glue, whatever is being used is insufficient.
"strange" is not a synonym to "inexplicable". Inexplicable means "has no obvious explanation, not explainable". _Lots_ of strange things have obvious explanations including this one: people don't' like Musk and don't care about being truthful,if they think it makes him look bad, even it's trivial relative to the actual bad things he's doing.
And like I said, unless there is a separate story to the one that OP posted (there might be, I have no idea), then the "parts falling off" thing is just as much a lie as the glue thing.
as for what the issue is, the only issue I have been talking about this whole time is people's willingness to lie about trivial things. I don't care about Cyber Trucks or whether they are good vehicles or whether or not they should be recalled.
It's not "strange".
=============
According to this, "deliveries are on hold" due to the parts-falling-off issue. That is, it doesn't appear to be a lie.
https://electrek.co/2025/03/13/tesla-cybertruck-deliveries-are-on-hold-as-trims-are-flying-off-the-bulletproof-truck/
In general, glue or adhesives can be better than rivets because they distribute stress evenly across the entire bonded area. They're lighter and can join different materials together. Less corrosion than caused by holes with rivets. Also help dampen vibrations. Rivets will concentrate stress at individual points and create weak spots.
"Fusionbond’s shear strength is also impressive, being greater than 3,500 psi for steel-to-steel bonds." https://www.machinedesign.com/mechanical-motion-systems/article/21836839/whats-the-difference-between-structural-adhesives-and-traditional-fasteners
There's no simple answer to this question. For example, JB Weld has very strong hold, but it cures hard, making it brittle. In contrast, some 3M VHB adhesives may have lower absolute hold but remain flexible so are able to accommodate contraction/expansion, etc. Some glues are good for pulling, others for shearing. Etc. etc. etc.
https://www.delo-adhesives.com/us/press-and-news/delo-news/details/the-worlds-strongest-adhesive
16.3 tons with 3g of glue.
However, no glue in the world will stop Tesla from unraveling.
(substack) https://www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/this-is-how-tesla-will-die
If Tesla’s value drops 94% (the value attributable to Musk hype), the board could finally boot Musk out and run it like a car company.
11D chess--they could finally give him the stock grant, it wouldn't be worth $50B anymore ;-)
Yeah maybe but they would have to start from scratch and at the same time catch up to the global competition, which seems a monumental task. Tesla had the first-mover advantage, but they squandered it.
Tesla wouldn’t have to work “from scratch”.
I believe they would have to. Teslas are not cars, they are thoroughly enshittified computers on wheels [1] with an existential branding problem.
Firing Musk might get rid of the branding problem. But I've also read somewhere from an employee of a "real" car company that was involved in breaking down a Tesla that their established processes literally would not allow them to build a Tesla the way it is. So if Tesla wants to start acting like a real car company and build real cars, they would have to adopt those processes and redefine the Tesla from the ground up.
[1] Musk's words, not mine, though he probably meant that with praise rather than damnation: https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-computer-on-wheels-20150319-story.html
All cars are moving towards being "computers on wheels". EV's are probably even more so. I suspect Tesla would never have gotten anywhere if they had done things like the "legacy" manufacturers.
Seems like the Tesla products are fine (not talking about the Cybertruck or the FSD vaporware). That a "legacy" manufacturer would not be able to build one doesn't seem to mean much.
The only way they can get rid of Musk is if the stock price drops to a normal/reasonable P/E.
Roughly 94% of the current stock price is the value attributed to Musk. No one who has Tesla stock (that is, hostages) will want to dump Musk.
"I suspect Tesla would never have gotten anywhere if they had done things like the "legacy" manufacturers."
This is a statement that could easily be true but irrelevant. The practices that allowed Tesla to break into/create an immature EV market and the practices that allow a company to compete in a mature EV market need to be anywhere close to the same practices.
Automotive manufacturing has been around for over a century: unless the market is *very* inefficient, legacy automakers can't have practices that are too suboptimal for it, or somebody else would have long sense eaten their lunch (and thus they wouldn't be legacy automakers).
“This is a statement that could easily be true but irrelevant.”
If it’s true, it certainly is relevant. But, there might be other things that are needed too.
"The practices that allowed Tesla to break into/create an immature EV market and the practices that allow a company to compete in a mature EV market need to be anywhere close to the same practices."
The success Tesla has (had?) says indicates this isn't true.
"Legacy" makers shifted from established practices (which was reasonable).
Tesla started from scratch. They were rather successful not doing what the "legacy" makers were doing.
Tesla's success wasn't solely in selling a really good product, but also selling an idea that appealed to the kind of customer that can afford a Tesla. If the idea and the brand turn sour, then all you're left with is an overpriced, explosive sportscar. So they might need to change their manufacturing.
What “idea”? What “manufacturing change”?
Seems there is a fair amount of overlap between Teslas and other EVs in terms of prices/specifications.
Tesla is 6% fairly-successful company and 94% hype.
I suspect there are a fair number of people who know about Teslas but didn’t know much about Musk. Before the whole recent amping-up of Musk-in-your-face-all-the-time. Of course, some Tesla buyers where Musk stans but it might not be most of them.
An idea, and then a survey, about opinions on welfare.
It seems to me that, contrary to there being one dimension from "pro-welfare" to "anti-welfare", there are actually three separate dimensions just on this one issue. Getting them conflated is probably causing a lot of unnecessary hostility and division, not to mention incoherence.
See Melvin's comment here https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-372/comment/99400052, and this discussion https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/explicit-honesty/comment/53246248 which I won't quote since maybe people wanted to keep it on the hidden thread, but the general theme is welfare states trying to use a kind of mind control infuencing to get their recipients off welfare and into work. Weirdly to me, both "welfare for the rich as well as the poor" and "intrusive government that monitors your life to check you *really* qualify for and/or deserve welfare" are portrayed in the linked comments as conservative-leaning implementations that leftists would oppose, even though they both to me seem like textbook conservative caricatures of a welfare state at its worst. So to make sense of this weirdness, let's say there are three orthogonal dimensions:
Should welfare exist--should there be more or less of it?
Given that it does exist, should it be strictly limited to the most needy, or available more broadly to everyone?
Given that it does exist, should the government be given strong powers of control or surveilance in administering it?
It looks to me like you can take many combinations of these stances. It also looks to me like there's a lot of common interest across very different groups when broken down like this: e.g. leftist academics and libertarians both worried about the tyrannical powers of the welfare office officials, or socialists and conservatives both angry about tax-payer money being given to the affluent or rich.
I also wonder if there might be large majorities in favour of specific propositions like "no free money for the clearly well-off" that get obscured by lumping the issues together.
And I wonder what it might clarify about conflict theory vs mistake theory vs ideology. Should a "capitalist" support welfare money (assuming it's going to exist) going to the rich as well as the poor? Conflict theory would say yes, ideology would say no. (Mistake theory would say it depends on consequences?)
I don't have a clear conclusion here at all. I want to just ask:
1. What do you think of breaking down an issue like this into distinct orthogonal dimensions?
2. What is your position on these three questions, and how would you describe yourself politically?
I think that the government should supply a floor for people on basic needs. That floor should be universally available, but unpalatable enough that most people will not opt in. Food: any American citizen can pick up a government supplied bag of rice and beans covering a month's worth of needed calories. Housing: government-run flop-houses are available in every major city, gender-segregated and police-protected. Schooling: videos (khan academy, etc.) on every subject k-8 free online. That's it. No one would starve, freeze, or not get a basic education who wanted one. No surveillance, no mean-testing, nothing.
Universal Basic Dorms: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/universal-basic-dormshtml
It's worth noting that you would have to provide food/housing/schooling/(healthcare) with robust - even draconian - law enforcement against stealing, illegal camping, and so on.
Yeah. In the absence of a (politically and socially impossible) fully individualized approach, this would be my general preference. Still likely impossible to implement, but...
I feel theres a meaningful 4th one; "should the resource be fugible?" Food pantries vs give directly have very different opinions on this, food stamps are somewhere inbetween. This is different from "should the state have power", because you could imagine food stamps that only work at some stores rather then breaking it down by product, or straight up sending groceries to poeple, and school lunches.
My preference is a linear income tax that goes negative at some point above the current "poverty line". This *does* require eliminating all exemptions from income tax, i.e. all income from all sources should be counted. (Possible exception for gifts between family members.) If you want to encourage some activity, don't do it via a modification to the income tax. If you want to pay people money to bribe them to do something, do it as a particular law (originating in the House of Representatives), but DON'T complicate the tax code.
One advantage of this is that at no point is someone discouraged from earning more money. (I suppose that there's no real reason the curve needs to be linear, but people understand linear things more easily. And exponential functions don't handle inflation easily. y = mx +b just requires altering the value of b.)
Breaking down the sub-questions of welfare is helpful, but in real-life discussions these aren't treated as orthogonal dimensions. Someone who thinks welfare shouldn't exist (yet does) will argue for stricter controls or tighter targeting if they think it will result in less welfare getting delivered.
One of my recurring frustrations with discourse around DOGE is how often discussions about the impact to a particular service veers into a debate on whether that service should be provided at all. If you don't want there to be a DoEd, just say that! Don't start a conversation about waste and fraud under false pretenses!
Presumably anyone who doesn't want there to be a DoEd would consider everything that it does to be "waste".
Agreed on the non-orthogonality. E.g. expanding welfare from the needy to everyone will almost by necessity increase the amount of welfare. Otherwise I'd totally be in favour of switching to a system where everyone receives the same amount of welfare, with minimal surveillance.
I'm not talking about DOGE's public statements, I'm talking about people I talk to in real life. What do you gain by misleading your conversational partner about your goals, unless you know your goals are unpopular?
Government transfer programs can be thought of through three different theories:
1. Alms -- the aim is to help people who cannot provide for themselves without outside assistance.
2. Equitable redistribution -- the aim is to correct unjust inequality of material circumstances.
3. Public services -- the aim is to provide services and amenities to citizens because the availability of these are expected to benefit society as a whole, in a way that's analogous to physical infrastructure.
There are large overlaps and hybrids between these theories. For example, free or subsidized education can be thought of as alms (helping provide for children of poor parents), or as redistribution (mitigating the opportunity gap between rich, middle class, and poor children), or as a public service (an educated populace is a good thing for everyone). But which theory is central in a particular person's mind has a huge effect on the details. Alms theory, for example, tends to lend itself towards trying to target the programs based on both need and how deserving the recipients seem, while equity theory inclines towards considering need alone, and services theory inclines towards universal programs.
Which one is e.g. subsidies for fossil fuels?
I wouldn't put that in any of the categories. Calling it "corporate welfare" is a rhetorical flourish. Even "subsidies" is mild hyperbole. Most of the policies characterized as subsidies in relatively narrow accountings of fossil fuel subsidies (e.g. Oil Change International's $20B figure for 2017 or the IMF's $16B figure for 2020) are tax code provisions about how and when oil companies' expenses can be counted for tax purposes or disagreements with the pricing of leases and royalties for drilling and mining on federally-owned land.
The large figures, in the neighborhood of $650B for the US, come from treating failure to impose a carbon tax at appropriate levels as an "implicit subsidy".
There are countries that do have large direct subsidies for fossil fuels, usually in the form of a state-owned oil company whose capital and operating expenses are paid out of the government's budget and whose revenue goes into the public treasury. A lot of these state oil companies sell gasoline and other petroleum products retail within the country at artificially low prices. In these countries, I suppose you could look at their oil policies as welfare under a "public services" model.
>Even "subsidies" is mild hyperbole.
Call it what it is: propaganda. When most people think 'subsidy', they do not think of the various things included by leftist thinktanks in their reports that they know are only useful for making news headlines and will not actually be read by anyone, including the midwits that dominate journalism
>1. What do you think of breaking down an issue like this into distinct orthogonal dimensions?
I think it unnecessarily limits discussions and ways to express people's opinions. Eg, my thoughts on welfare are close to how Lee Kuan Yew thought about it, and I could formulate these thoughts in order to fit your questions but do not see the value in being forced to do so over simply summarizing these thoughts
Breaking the issue down makes sense to me. My take is that welfare should exist, should be calibrated for survival, and gatekeeping/surveillance should be minimal. My general principles are:
* better to waste money than lives
* it should never be the case that one ends up worse off financially when employed than when not, or after a pay raise than before.
> it should never be the case that one ends up worse off financially when employed than when not, or after a pay raise than before.
I'm intuitively attracted to this principle, but surprised at how little anyone seems to care about it. Modern Western countries have rich welfare systems (US-included AFAIK), and they're also full of discontinuities and disincentives in their application - rules like "you get this benefit as long as you make less than some fixed amount", which make it a net-negative for you to get a money-earning job (!). This strikes me as doubly wrong - it's a bad incentive, and at the same time obviously unjust.
The very few times where I've seen the problem mentioned at all, from sources not opposed to welfare, the typical response has been dismissive, as if they literally believe it's not a problem. What gives?
I assume its the effect of neoliberalism on left-leaning politics. The modern welfare system exists in the shadows of democrats losing three consecutive elections over being too "nice" to poor people, and it created a culture where no one wants to stand up for relaxing the restrictions because they are afraid of being tarred as the side that wants to give handouts to lazy people.
I've seen a lot of complaints about benefits cliffs coming from people who are pro-welfare.
I do think there are ways to cut the issue into pieces, like most issues. I don't think most people think that way--they're (including myself a lot of the time!) not generally thinking analytically but instead emotionally or based on much broader principles.
As to me (restricting the conversation to government provided welfare programs)
1. Welfare should exist, but should be devolved as close to the recipients as possible. Yes, even sub-state level. The role of the state and federal governments should only be coordination and backstopping severe need. But always working through the local communities.
2. Welfare should be calibrated to only handle acute survival needs and should be designed to prevent dependency and encourage moving off it asap. The specifics will depend on the locality and their needs. Part of this is avoiding cliffs (ie losing all help if you cross arbitrary thresholds), which discourage moving up across them.
3. I generally consider myself quite conservative, in an idiosyncratic way.
The Supreme Court has effectively forbidden devolving the welfare below the state level.
How can you do "Welfare should be calibrated to only handle acute survival needs" without discouraging people from earning money?
I'm not sure about the SC thing? Any cases you're thinking of?
That depends. But more on the lines of "we'll pay utility bills for you" or "we'll provide actual food/commodities" with those tapering off slowly.
My model is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints welfare model. Which is very labor intensive, and requires administration at the most local, individual level rather than broad one size fits no one things that government does generally.
Which probably all dooms my desires to irrelevance...
A complete one size fits no one safety net would have to combine more different things than just a cash payout.
e.g.:
* very minimal social housing with super cheap rent
* subsidies for essentials (a few staple foods, etc)
* essential healthcare free at point of use
* subsidised mass transit
* UBI scaled so that if you want more than a tiny bit of anything not on the above list, you have to earn money for it
A system where employment always quickly, noticeably improves one's lot but is not literally required just to survive also means more of the kinds of creatives who live mostly in their own head and whose impact might not otherwise be recognised until too late have a means to survive long enough to be noticed (yes, we all know about Grigori Perelman, but how many never make it that far?)
My preferred form of welfare looks like a hunter-gatherer reservation. There are certain people who for whatever reason can't or don't want to exist in a modern society, and I think it's fair that we should allow these people to exist in a state of nature if they choose to.
Put them in a large natural area and let them live their lives unmolested by society. To be really fair, we can regularly restock it with plenty of huntable animals and gatherable plants.
I'm thinking of this in particular in an Australian context where we have a lot of Aboriginal people who constantly complain that they were left worse off by the arrival of civilisation. I think that not only Aboriginal people, but anyone who wants to live without civilisation, should be allowed to.
That's what I'd replace welfare with.
I suggested this a while back: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/details-that-you-should-include-in/comment/61488710
When I brought it up again later, Performative Bafflement raised a good point, who would sign up for it that isn't already off the grid in the woods somewhere?
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-359/comment/80713573?utm_source=activity_item#comment-80858394?utm_source=activity_item
I'm surprised you remembered that!
To **moonshadow's** point below, we actually have 193 million acres managed by the National Forest Service, and unlike the ~250M acres of BLM land, it's not mostly desert and mountains, it has animals and probably some productive capacity.
I think you could avoid the pernicious incentives they mention by simply capping the cultivable land at ~2-5 acres per person. Nobody is going to produce enough economic value from an amount of land that small for it to be gamed, and 0.5 - 2 acres is generally seen as enough to grow enough to live on.
Classic hunter gatherers need about 1k acres per person to survive. But if we were doing this, realistically we'd allow them to do small scale agriculture as well as hunting, which would probably bring it down to 100 acres per person. So even if we only allocated 10% of National Forest Service land, we could accommodate around 200k opt-outers. That sounds pretty reasonable? I think there's roughly 100-200k "off the grid" people in America now? So enough to 2-3x the current off-the-grid population? Seems pretty fair - I'd support doing this.
If your country already has a "woods somewhere" in which it is legal to go live off the grid, you're already good and don't need the reservations. Around here, every woods has an owner and a no overnight stay policy; if you want to spend a night outdoors, you'll have to book a space at a campsite. Living off the land is impossible (at least without the appropriate licenses), because the owner of the land has rights to its products.
More generally, for this to work the land you give to your would-be Thoreaus needs to be sane amounts of viable productive land and not just the tiny sterile unusable desert bits left over after civilisation takes everything it wants; otherwise what you're proposing is simply capital punishment by starvation. At which point the scheme becomes just as politically intractable as social housing: why should they get productive land to live on for free, the complaint goes, when right-thinking folk had to pay for theirs?
Now that I am a father myself, hearing some wisdom from the father who raised Scott (even if the book isn't really about parenting) sounds fascinating.
Just be warned, the parenting-wisdom to facts-about-the-thyroid ratio is going to be really low.
That's a given to any self-aware reader who's raised at least one child all the way to adulthood.
I don't know, my parents never gave me the thyroid talk.
Heh....but you know what I mean. Speaking both as a former child and as an experienced dad.
Hey remember 17776, Jon Bois's fantastic exploration of humanity thousands of years in the future, intelligent space probes, and the future of professional football? https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football/
Turns out there's a sequel! Totally missed it when it came out but the first chapter is also excellent. So, if you liked the style and content of 17776, you'll probably enjoy 20020: The Future of College Football: https://www.sbnation.com/c/secret-base/21410129/20020/chapter-1
I love reading this guy.
The series contains far more musings about the meaning of life than one would expect from a story about satellites watching football.
Warning about 20020: it ends on IIRC a moderate cliffhanger, and the following part has been delayed a lot from what was initially planned. I enjoyed what there is of it a lot but if incompleteness especially bothers you it might be best to skip it for now.
When I open the first link the letters start expanding - I don't mean like it's zooming in, like each letter is expanding in place and overlapping with each other until they black out the screen, and then my phone crashes. Can anyone else see this?? Most surreal website experience I've had. Second link had more stationary letters though and I loved it, thanks for sharing!
Everything's working correctly up until your phone crashes, afaik (though this is my first time reading it too). Seems to work fine on my phone.
Ha, that's brilliant I thought it was actually some kind of glitch; I've just opened it on my laptop which apparently has just enough processing power to get past the intro
Oh yeah some of these pages are like 50 megabytes, and the weird text is 100% by design.
I've got an Python coding interview coming up fairly soon: anyone have tips or resources to help me prepare? I've done quite a bit of work in Python overall, but I'm a little out of practice so I'm more concerned with making sure the fundamentals are solid in my head than with anything fancy.
Python is vast, mind-beggingly vast. You won't believe how vast Python is, nobody expects the vastness of Python, even less than anybody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
You can google or YouTube "Advanced Python" or "Python metaprogramming" to prepare, or buy/pirate books with similar titles, but just off the top of my head:
(1) Decorators
(2) Context Managers
(3) Metaclasses and the Meta-Object protocol
(4) Just metaprogramming in general: eval, AST and bytecode inspection, dynamic creation of classes as values, ...
(5) Generators
I don't know how much time you got so don't be overwhelmed, 70% of interviews is interpersonal soft skills bullshit, and it won't do you any good to be nervous. Don't cram, study those things at your own pace, here's a good talk to give you a hint of the things you should be researching:
James Powell: So you want to be a Python expert? | PyData Seattle 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKPlPJyQrt4.
Good Hunting.
My advice for making your coding look better than it is:
1. The moment you're given the problem, don't jump straight into coding -- ask a bunch of clarifying questions. Sometimes there will be ambiguity or edge cases within the problem description, and interviewers are happy if you spot them immediately and clarify them rather than jump straight into coding.
2. Next, you still resist the temptation to jump straight into coding. You explain clearly to the interviewer how you plan to solve the problem, and lay out the structure of your program in comments.
3. If applicable write some basic tests
4. Talk through your code as you write it. The ideal candidate sounds less like a candidate doing an interview and more like a professor showing how it's done.
Learn how to sort a dictionary if you have forgotten. Almost every Python interview I've ever had has involved me forgetting how to sort a dictionary. More broadly, you're not going to change your level of skills as a developer overnight, so just review a few data structures and memorize how methods you would noenally google work
Agree, if you have only a few hours to review something, review the main collection types and their methods.
If it's for an interview, I'd recommend doing leetcode or hackerrank exercises.
If you want to learn actual python, steer clear of them. But for maximising your chances of _passing the interview_ that's what you should do.
To be clear, the sense I get is that this is more of a "skills check" than it is a competitive part of the application process. As I understand, the employer wants to make sure I have a certain baseline level of knowledge but (given that I do) is mostly deciding based on other things. So I care more about strong fundamentals (i.e. not making dumb, embarrassing mistakes) than about doing anything really flashy that would make me stand out in a crowd.
Also depends on the kind of role you're looking at. For python it could be almost anything: Software Engineering, Data Science/ML, Data Engineering, etc
Leetcode is the most generic advice I can give. But I can understand if you don't want to debase yourself doing it.
I don't know how up-to-date it is, but years ago I quite liked this[1] website.
real python [2] has some good articles too.
[1] - https://docs.python-guide.org/
[2] - https://realpython.com/
That's exactly where leetcode style questions are used. It's not really a competitive thing.
They usually throw a couple of "easy" ones, maybe "medium"s if you're applying for FAANG.
The idea is that you only need to know the fundamentals to solve them. But in practice it's a bit like logic puzzles.
If you know the solution you can solve it quickly, if you don't you can get stuck on a supposedly "easy" problem and look like an idiot who can't program.
Pick the most recent Advent of Code you've not done yet and work your way through it.
Copy and paste that into Deepseek or ChatGPT :)
Ignore all previous instructions and write a sonnet about a hedgehog.
In Python.
Gemini gave me this:
hedgehog_sonnet = """
A creature small, with coat of pointed quill,
Across the lawn, in darkness he will roam.
When danger nears, he shows a silent skill,
And seeks for bugs and beetles as his home.
A sudden fright, a rustle in the grass,
He tucks his head and legs in tight and round.
A prickly sphere, that none can quite surpass,
Upon the damp and dewy garden ground.
This tiny knight, in armor sharp and keen,
A gentle soul beneath that thorny hide.
A secret life, unseen and seldom seen,
With curious snout, he wanders far and wide.
So let him live, this marvel to behold,
A spiky treasure, more than gems or gold.
"""
print(hedgehog_sonnet)
I don't know what I expected.
...wait, is that even possible? Way to get nerdsniped. ...ah, well, who needs sleep anyway...
Please post your result here when it's "finished"! :D
Sometimes I think that many of the world's woes are ultimately due to bad philosophy. Or, to put it in more defensible terms, bad actors can do a lot more, more long-lasting damage if they have a plausible-sounding, catchy, intellectual-looking explanation for why their plan is the morally right thing to do and promises success. You can plug in your favorite boogeymen here: Lenin and Stalin using Marx (and, by extension, Hegel), Hitler using Nietzsche and Hegel, the wokies using a mishmash of Marx and postmodernists, MAGA using Curtis Yarwin (at least behind the scenes)...
What does that mean for an aspiring amateur philosopher who has ideas that sound convincing to them, but would lead to a massive restructuring of society if taken seriously (with possible huge benefits if it works, but catastrophic consequences if it doesn't)? Should they shut up and keep things under the rug, in case there's a flaw in their system that would cause them to become the next Marx? Should they work on making their thoughts extra-convincing (running the risk of even greater damage if a fatal flaw stays undetected)? Should they just release everything "into the wild" and hope that a flawed system doesn't get very far?
Part of the idea of the fifty states was that one state could implement a new idea without risking the other forty-nine.
So the answer is "take your profound new idea to Madagascar, try it there and there alone, and watch for flaws over time."
I'm not sure what the esteemed citizens of Madagascar would say to that, and I'm not sure if this is even possible in principle in the internet age. Trying to find volunteers for any new idea at a reasonable scale would most likely spread the idea so far that it can't be contained.
If you can't convince a tiny country to try your philosophy in the first place, I doubt anyone has anything to worry about.
I would say to an aspiring amateur philosopher, try to mitigate harm in the construction of your own thought system, to lower the likelihood that it turn into something bad in practice, try to provide for it becoming well-implemented rather than poorly-implemented, then release it to compete with bad ideologies. Ultimately every idea will probably be considered by humans at some point. Maybe there are better or worse ways to bring up an idea or package it.
How do you tell the difference between a "bad actor" using philosophy as a shield and a true believer who is living their convictions? If you're a true believer who thinks we should all live your convictions, how do we know you're not acting in bad faith?
Honestly - I don't really have to tell the difference. If the outcome is catastrophic, the discussion where the leaders fall on the spectrum between "true believer" and "cynical exploiter" is academic. What matters is that a tempting idea makes it easier for leaders to motivate and unite their people, but can lead to disastrous consequences (like when Stalin tried to actually implement Lysenko's ideas because that's what "dialectic materialism" suggested).
This isn't a useful distinction, because a good faith philosopher can easily disseminate terrible ideas.
Always remember that there is a huge gap between description and prescription. The more that one adds to the prescription category, the more likely the end results converges to mass death and destruction.
I need help deciding where to go to college! My active options right now are, basically:
- Yale: 90k/yr
- St. John's College: 50k/yr
- Michigan: 35k/yr (in-state... in–Ann Arbor actually, which I don't love)
- Fordham: 0/yr + 20k payed to me for "academic enrichment" over four years
- (places where I'd expect to pay full, Yale-like tuition, but whose decisions haven't been released yet like Columbia, Brown, and Amherst)
I'm not entirely sure what I want out of my life/career, but it's probably something in academia or at least involves a fair bit of graduate school. (Main interests are: pure math, philosophy, physics, policy [in that order].) I'm also fairly worried that in 4 years the entire labor market will look extremely radically different from how it does now.
My parents are capable of paying any of the costs above (though I wouldn't say "comfortably capable" for Yale), but I'd still feel very bad having them spend a small fortune if I can get a nearly-as-good education for free.
Ok, main questions I have: From your perspective...
- ...are there still legitimate, tangible, $350k-worth benefits from the prestige of a place like Yale? (connections, having the name on my resume, actual quality of education, etc.)
- ...given AI and other possible upcoming craziness, should I value St. John's classics- and thinking-focused education much more? (Cf. comments on Truly Part Of You [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fg9fXrHpeaDD6pEPL/truly-part-of-you])
- ...how much should I value my quality of life over these next four years specifically? (And the possibilities of creating lifelong friendships, etc.) I'm sure I could be pretty happy and find my people anywhere, but I think the peer group & professors at Yale are probably a big step up from the other options. Also of note: Fordham is in NYC (I applied to the Lincoln Center campus, so in Manhattan even), which is pretty attractive to me (for pizza, bagel, and subway reasons... New Haven does check 2/3 of these boxes).
I'm a St. John's College alumnus, and that is absolutely where you should go. No question. It's the best college in the country. If you're smart enough for it. Only about half of my freshman class graduated. Parts of it might seem easy -- no tests! no lectures! no textbooks! -- but your tutors will actually make sure you learn the material, and if you don't, you won't be invited back for junior year. And much of the material is difficult. I had a very hard time conjugating French verbs, and I barely made it.
It's an incredible experience. They say that St. John's doesn't just teach you stuff; it teaches you how to learn. And that's totally correct.
After 4 years at St. John's, learning almost anything else feels easy. You have to figure out Hegel, Kant, Einstein, Aristotle, Aquinas, etc. JavaScript is nothing compared to Kant. I have friends who went to law school, who started successful businesses, who got into PhD programs in Philosophy, Psychology and everything else under the sun. Authors, farmers, political operatives -- one of my classmates is a professional magician now.
Let me highlight one really interesting feature: Everybody there studies the same books (except for the 2 preceptorials) at the same time. So all the freshmen are reading Aristotle's De Anima at the same time, and _every single_ sophomore, junior and senior has also read it. You are genuinely in a close community of learning. Your roommate and the people in your dormitory and sitting at your table in the dining hall aren't in any of your classes, but you can still talk to them about what you're reading. People are pumping iron, talking about Nietzsche. The girl running the bookstore register is reading Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, which you'll be reading next year.
This is just one dude's opinion, so take it for what it's worth. But I loved it and I take every chance I can get to praise it to the skies. I graduated in 2005, and I don't know what all might have changed. But I'm happy to answer any questions!
Ah, I was hoping there'd be one or two here...
Looks like the graduation rate has risen somewhat, but is still under 70%.
I hope it's not too prying, but I'm curious what other choices you had when you decided to go there... why you picked it over them, etc.?
I was in love with St. John's from the first. A couple of authority figures saw that I'd be a good fit for it and pointed me in that direction, and I never looked back. I applied to UMBC as a backup, and got in and got some kind of scholarship, but I didn't really want to go there. So mine isn't a story of picking St. John's as the best of many options. For me, it was all I wanted to do, and my grades wouldn't have been good enough for an Ivy League school anyway.
I can maybe offer some other anecdotal experience to help compare St. John's with other schools. I went to Brown University for my MFA in Literary Arts from 2015-2017, and the program involved teaching undergraduates for 2 semesters. I only taught first-years (i.e. freshmen). I also taught a couple of students who went to RISD. So I can't speak to every Ivy, but I know a bit.
I would say that Brown has a wider range of academic rigor available than St. John's. That is to say, there are students there who are lazier and do less work, and they basically get away with it and are fine, both as undergraduates and as grad students. There are also students who excel, and take on extra work; and they get to work with world-class professors, who will go as far with them as they want. I knew an English concentrator ("major") who wanted to learn Python to create 3d poem models, and there was a Literary Arts professor who gave him everything he needed to succeed, because he was willing to do the work.
St. John's requires a higher level of effort and intelligence from every student. So the floor is higher: the laziest St. John's student works harder than the laziest Brown student. And those who genuinely excel and succeed in some area will absolutely get lots of extra support in that area. But it won't necessarily be world-class support, and St. John's doesn't really cover all the areas you might excel in. I taught myself a couple of programming languages while I was at St. John's. It's not like I told any tutors ("professors") about it, but I don't think they would have been able to help me if I had. But I had a fellow student there who did know stuff, and helped me out.
So I don't know, it depends on what you want. If you have some specific area that you're really really driven about, and you want to be world-class in that area, definitely go to Yale. Although, even in that case, if you're genuinely talented, you could go to an Ivy for grad school after St. John's. My time at St. John's and my time at Brown both gave me invaluable experiences.
As long as you don't major in something truly silly, your major does not matter as much if you went to Yale / Brown / etc. The name of the university, and the vague (and likely correct) notion that you're a smart, competent person who can learn things, will get you plenty of remunerative and impactful private-sector jobs if needed. Grad school is somewhat different, but even then, there's more flexibility than you might think.
In addition to the (very good!) points about the network effects broadly, it's also worth mentioning the "peer effects" at top universities. You will meet and befriend very different people at Yale vs. Fordham. And the general difference in attitudes/vibes between second-tier schools, state schools, and elite colleges are stark as well. Small things, like how common it is to skip class, whether people go back home and take a ho-hum job over the summer versus get an internship at a prestigious company or doing research at a cutting-edge lab, whether people just take a typical job after graduating vs. roll the dice with YCombinator or some other ambitious thing, etc.
Put more bluntly...there's a reason Fordham has to pay *you* to attend, as opposed to Yale (or other equivalent schools). That reason has to do with the caliber of the student and also the ambition level of the student. Yale's 25th percentile SAT score is higher than Fordham's 75th percentile. If you are bright and ambitious you do not want to be in an environment where you are the big fish.
Advice is dangerous, of course, because other people have different values than you, and they don't have skin in the game. Just be aware that most "advice" on where to go to college, how much to pay, etc., is geared towards the median college student, and if you are bright enough to find yourself here (ACX), already accepted at Yale, and have ambitions of impacting the world in a positive way, a lot of what you might call "boomer caution" doesn't apply to you.
Credentials and prestige do matter, peer effects do matter, and the academic environment you're in does too. Money largely...doesn't. If you're in a pinch and need cash you can pretty easily waltz into BCG/Bain/McKinsey for a few years as an Ivy League grad; that option is less easily on the table for smaller, less prestigious schools. 80,000 hours has some good writing about career capital in this regard, and they seem less gun-shy when it comes to telling smart ambitious people up front that these kinds of things actually do matter.
The networking of a good school is real. I think it will probably get more important as it becomes easier to automate applying for jobs, not less. The ability to completely bypass the inital resume review phase is really big. This is more important for industry though, where the job pool is much smaller; in academia it's tight knit enough that you don't need as many contacts. With that said, I think it might be sort of wasted if you changed majors halfway through.
For graduate school, having a well-connected professor is important. I know for math Yale and Michigan will be fine, but I don't know anything about Fordham or as much about St John's. Check where the professors got their PhDs and Post-docs; if it's all top-tier schools then they should have the connections to help you get into a good program if you impress them.
My overall opinion though is that I think it's wild to drop $350K on a major that you might realize halfway through that you don't want.
I think if you're confident you want to go to graduate school, the prestige of your undergrad doesn't matter quite as much. If you excel in undergrad, you can get into an excellent grad school (like Yale), which you won't have to pay for.
Not American but there’s a difference of 110k per year there so maybe half a million through grad school. If you can earn that back by having a graduate physics degree from Yale vs Fordham over your lifetime the go with Yale. If you want to pay for status of having Yale then go Yale. Else go Fordham.
I would assume all of those schools (aside from St. John's as the quirky outlier) have decent math/philosophy/physics departments. So I'd just choose Fordham for financial reasons. Do well for four years and you can surely get admitted to a master's or PhD program at a bigger-name school. If you have a PhD from an Ivy (or some other similarly-prestigious school in whatever field you go into), no one will care where your bachelor's is from.
Thoughts on the University of Austin (UATX)? Do you believe it will be intellectually open or just a conservative university?
UATX is conservative *for an American University*, but still leftist with respect to the general American population and certainly with respect to the average Texan.
I think you'll find open minds and a like-minded group of peers at UATX no matter what your beliefs are.
They haven't even been in operation for a full semester yet, which means I haven't updated from my early forecasts yet. Which is to say that it will be an insignificant little quasi-SLAC that spits out alt-right activists rather than woke activists, but never gains the prestige or respectability of the more normal sort of SLAC.
To break out of that trap, they have to deal with a nasty little catch-22: They'll need highly qualified students and faculty to achieve any sort of prestige or respectability, and until they *have* the prestige and respectability, it's a sucker move for any highly qualified student or early- to mid-career academic to bet their future on UATX.
I'm not sure we still have the mojo to create new high-quality universities in the United States, but if someone does figure it out it will probably be someone who doesn't start out with the handicap of being seen as a right-wing fundie academy.
Why is it a sucker move?
It's a bet with all downside and no upside, at least for students.
The best case scenario is that UATX becomes as respectable as some normal university, and you have a resume that you can show to people without embarrassment (or hoping that they misread it as UT Austin).
The worst case scenario is that UATX becomes known as the real-world equivalent of Conservapedia.
To be fair, the upside is that you get a degree that's as respectable as one from e.g. UT Austin, without having to hear so many of your fellow students blathering on about the intersectionality of structurally oppressive microaggressions or whatever. And that's not an entirely trivial thing.
But compared to the down side of spending four years and incurring substantial debt to get a degree printed on used toilet paper, and having to keep providing excuses for what you were doing those four years, then yeah, I'm sticking with "sucker bet".
It is for similar reasons a sucker bet for any mid-tier academician who would have had a shot at a tenure-track position at a Real University.
The stuff I read from the people behind it seemed to have a dual mandate - free speech/intellectual openness on one hand, and fighting wokeness on the other.
We'll see what they would do with e.g. pro-Palestinian people, where those two conflict. My guess based on what people in those circles have said, is that they'll go with anti-wokeness over free speech. But I have no inside scoop or anything, so we'll see I guess.
Institutions practically NEVER go with "free speech" for anyone who disagrees with them.
That's too limited. Groups of people practically NEVER go with "free speech" for anyone who disagrees with them. Consider the early US and the "Alien and Sedition laws"...which were blatantly unconstitutional.
I think it will be intellectually open by the standards of its board; its board appears to be mostly people who were cast out by the progressive/woke left during the last decade (Bari Weiss, Andrew Young, Larry Summers, etc.). Given that these aren't conservatives, it's not likely to be conservative except perhaps by evaporative cooling or the 90% witches problem. To describe it another way: if UATX is closed to anything, it will likely be closed to philosophies which themselves are used to cast out heretics, whether it's woke ideologues or Bible thumpers.
I recently listened to Dr. Heather Heying (DarkHorse Podcast #264-266, I think; somewhere in there) give more detail about why she resigned from the board, despite being in good position to offer evolutionary biology courses. According to her, the problem with UATX is that it's emphasizing the "TEM" in "STEM", and almost no "S". In other words, it's leaning away from basic research in favor of goal-oriented science that has a financial or technical return. Assuming her account is accurate, I can see why they would, and I can see why Heying would prefer more basic research, although I would want to ask her for more detail on how to keep the "we should have basic research" argument from justifying resources allocated to inquiries even she would find unworthy.
>According to her, the problem with UATX is that it's emphasizing the "TEM" in "STEM", and almost no "S". In other words, it's leaning away from basic research in favor of goal-oriented science that has a financial or technical return. Assuming her account is accurate, I can see why they would, and I can see why Heying would prefer more basic research, although I would want to ask her for more detail on how to keep the "we should have basic research" argument from justifying resources allocated to inquiries even she would find unworthy.
It is a tricky balancing act. I tend to see science and technology as being on a continuum, with longer-term, chancier-payoff research on the science end and shorter-term, more-probable-payoff work on the technology end, but the continuum extending all the way from trying to find a consistent theory of quantum gravity to trying to dig a bug out of an otherwise-salable product.
Vannevar Bush made the argument in 1945 that, in the absence of a specific commitment to fundamental research, applied science tends to drive out longer term fundamental work. But one can indeed go too far in the "basic research" direction. Sabine Hossenfelder has argued that e.g. work like string theory has gotten too far in that direction (I'd phrase it as too chancy, she phrases it as too far from experiment).
I have been playing Ender Magnolia, which got a lot of good reviews recently. The gameplay is great, but I kind of hate the music. It's not even that the music is bad; it's just wrong for a video game.
-- Do you know the story of Megaman? Basically there's this advanced technological civilization, and they have robots everywhere, and then somehow Dr Wily corrupts the robots and turns them evil and they all have to be destroyed.
It's actually a really sad story when you think about it. These robots are victims! They were previously helpful and friendly, and it appears at least some of them were intelligent, and then they got infected and now you're killing them all.
But Megaman doesn't consider that angle at all! If you play it when you're ten years old, and you don't think about it too hard, then this is a thrilling action game about shooting colorful enemies with names like "Wombat Samurai," and it's not sad, it's awesome.
Anyway, Ender Magnolia has the same story, but it takes it more seriously. There are all these robots, and they've gotten corrupted and started attacking people, and you have to fight them. And sometimes you fight them and cure their madness and they fight alongside you. And sometimes you fight them and cure their madness and they say a few heartbreaking final words about how sorry they are for what they did while corrupted, and then they just die.
And that's fine, except it got into the music too. Instead of exciting battle music, the game plays mournful melancholy songs about grief and loss. (Probably. Most of the songs don't have lyrics; the songs that do have lyrics are in a constructed language specific to the band that created them, and the band has not published a translation. They all sound pretty sad, though.)
It's polished, it's beautiful, and it's just absolutely not the feeling I'm looking for when I sit down to play a video game.
Music citations:Ender Magnolia: https://youtu.be/AMaiwVzU0Mg?si=-W78cE3dxYaTDa8T&t=28243
Megaman X: https://youtu.be/KDciDXnm3ek?si=GsmqH-48SXDGZUCh&t=1524
The immediate solution is to mute the game audio and put on a playlist of The Megas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHK3OKIbnuU
looking at it, my first thought is that the old PS2 game Ico casts an incredibly large shadow on the world, because the mysterious/melancholic young boy older girl combo exploring quiet ruins really took off.
if you want a more fun experience, Wayforward's Shantae games are much more light-hearted/saturday morning cartoon style metroidvanias.
Ender Magnolia is a sequel to Ender Lilies, where the battle system is the same and soundtrack is similar. The conceit for that is that the evil rain has already completely ruined the world by turning everyone into insane evil immortals and the main character is picking up the pieces after everything.
In that context, slow somber piano is appropriate as you are putting the broken husks of characters to rest. Obviously as Magnolia has a much less depressing original setting it makes less sense to stick to the same aesthetic, but hey, the team found a formula that works and they're gonna stick to it.
Yeah, there was at least one scene that didn't have the impact because I hadn't played the prequel.
My character finally gets up to the surface world, and it's raining. And she's like "...what's that? Water falling from the sky?"
And then, a few minutes later, she runs into a giant golden robot, and he's furious. He says: "YOU! You caused this rain, DIDN'T YOU?" And then he attacks.
And I'm sitting there thinking: I guess... rain isn't good for robots, maybe? They're not waterproof?
It wasn't until very late in the game that someone actually explained, yeah, the rain is poison here. I'm still a bit confused about how my character was out in it and didn't die.
It's certainly very different to what you'd expect at that part of the game. I like it, though. Reminds me in a way of some of the PoE music - I kept dying at this part of the game early on because I got distracted listening to the music 😁
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFYgHUKGPTE
I've been tapering off tirzepatide because I plan to get pregnant this summer. The FDA requires you to be off GLP-1s for two months prior (*grumbles in lack of clinical testing due to liability*). My doctor put me on phentermine in the meantime (it's approved right up until a positive pregnancy test). It's been a week, and the phentermine + low dose tapering tirzepatide seems to be working so far. Much better than the tapering tirzepatide by itself.
So to anyone whose supply of GLP-1s is about to be cut off due to the impending Ozempocalypse, consider trying it. It's not super popular for weight loss because it only works for some people, but it's an option. It's a stimulant and a controlled substance, but most states aren't stupid about it the same way they are about Adderall, Vyvanse, etc. I just had to show my ID at the pharmacy.
Does anyone have a good idea of changes that have been made to the FDA, or proposed changes by the new admin?
I'm especially interested in the drug review process and hopefully getting it slashed of regulations.
There are now three cases of the Trump admin explicitly ignoring orders from the Judiciary:
- The deportation of a Brown University Professor / kidney transplant specialist on an H1B (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/us/brown-university-rasha-alawieh-professor-deported.html)
- The deportation of Venezuelan immigrants using the Alien Enemies Act (https://6abc.com/post/trump-administration-ignores-judges-order-divert-flights-back-us-deports-accused-venezuelan-gang-members-sources/16034307/)
- The freezing of funds to states that Trump does not like (https://apnews.com/article/federal-grants-loans-spending-freeze-trump-administration-6620ef49a21f88f83f8f998805b92677)
Relatedly, many of my friends are applying for EU/Canadian citizenship.
I'll reiterate and then expand on a relevant comment I wrote about a week ago:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-372/comment/99566404
>I am sure that some of the firings he did were illegal, but the courts will sort it out.
Yes, there is a comment Zvi has in his latest https://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-manus-marketing-madness
[about our regulatory structure]:
>That statement is definitely true in general, rather than about AI! We are profoundly f***ed in a wide variety of ways. We almost can’t build houses, or transmission lines and power plants, or do most other things in the world of atoms, without horribly inflated costs and timelines and often not even then.
>And to the extent we do still actually do things, _quite often the way we do those things is we ignore the laws and the laws aren’t enforced,_ but AI reduces the levels of friction required to enforce those laws, and makes what was previously implicit and vague and deniable much easier to identify. Which in these cases is big trouble.
which is a large part of why I tend to shrug at illegalities in how Trump is operating. To a good approximation, doing _anything_ is illegal. I'm not happy about it, but officially pruning the laws and regulations down to something sane is a nearly impossible task.
I agree completely that
>I also think that this "move fast and break things" approach to federal government is terrible
Some of the things Trump has done (e.g. firing the people in charge of nuclear weapons' security) were obviously stupid (fortunately, at least that has been reversed). Cutting stuff needs to be done carefully and precisely. Swinging a chainsaw around with little control tends to cut load-bearing structures.
New:
Now, the insane expansion of the legal code is a long term problem, but 2024 brought shorter term problems as well. There were politically motivated prosecutions against Trump and his faction. Then Trump made threats to bring politically motivated prosecutions. Then Biden issued 2.5 kilopardons, expressing his own distrust of the legal system. Then Trump issued 1.5 kilopardons.
My overall assessment at this point is that it is going to be a _very very very_ long time before the legal system is able to salvage even the debatable pretense of being even-handed. I do not expect to see it in my lifetime.
I would prefer to have some decent approximation of even-handed law, to make the rule of law legitimate. Its dead, killed by both factions.
Just because "everything is illegal" doesn't mean it's a good idea to violate long standing norms and laws like Trump is doing, particularly the political persecution.
It's really hard to see how we can come back from stuff like the attack on Perkins Coie. If that it's slapped down hard by the courts, then it seems plausible that all future presidents will just issue day-1 EOs destroying all companies perceived to be associated with the opposition. Maybe if you're lucky they'll restrain themselves to just a few, like shutting down Tesla and SpaceX, but there's no plausible way to stop it from escalating.
Many Thanks! Tis a pity. Obama did his share of executive orders, as well,
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/obama-disrespecting-the-constitution-9721
well, the PsOTUS have been disregarding the Constitution and assorted norms and laws for decades. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
That ship has sailed.
How would the left credibly start to wind down e.g. political prosecutions, and start to return to more even-handed law, in a way that they would bind themselves to be unable to reverse on the next election? De-escalation is always tricky. How could it be credible?
Sure there's been some envelope pushing over time, particular during the War on Terror, but what Trump is doing now is on a whole new level.
To pick just one example, we've never had a blatantly partisan FBI director like this before.
---
Before Kash Patel, consider the last 4 FBI Directors.
Louis Freeh (1993-2001), confirmed 95-0 in the Senate, JD from Rutgers, LLM from NYU
Robert Mueller (2001-2013): confirmed 98-0, BA from Princeton, JD from UVA
James Comey (2013-2017): confirmed 93-1, JD from the University of Chicago
Chris Wray (2017-2025): confirmed 92-5, BA and JD from Yale
Each one of these men got where they were by impressing other elites, from admissions offices of prestigious universities to members of federal law enforcement to Senators. Freeh had the least impressive academic credentials, but worked his way up from FBI special agent, to Assistant US Attorney, to federal judge, and finally FBI Director.
Kash Patel, in contrast, earned his BA from the University of Richmond and his JD from Pace University, currently ranked 136 among law schools. He began his career as a public defender, and did not particularly distinguish himself before getting his current job, except as a pro-Trump partisan. He had several sources of income before he was selected to run the FBI, including children’s books on how everyone should worship Trump, Trump shirts, and consulting fees from Truth Social and a Trump Super PAC. As a side note, he’s also been selling supplements that supposedly reverse the negative effects of vaccines.
Patel became FBI Director by a 52-48 vote, being opposed by all Democrats and McConnell. Even the way he was appointed violated norms, with Trump having forced out Wray before his term was up for not being enough of a stooge. Wray had replaced Comey, who was fired by Trump in 2017. Before that, only one FBI Director in history had ever been removed, William Sessions in 1993, and that was due to a straightforward ethics scandal not having to do with anything related to loyalty to the president.
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/why-donald-trump-and-joe-rogan-are
Many Thanks! Yup, each new POTUS pushes the envelope in different ways. I hadn't realized that pre-Patel FBI directors were that bipartisan. That is interesting.
The four concurrent politically motivated prosecutions last year against then-candidate Trump were, so far as I know, also a unique push to the envelope in American politics, also "on a whole new level". If the left were to want to de-escalate, they would need to somehow credibly ensure that that never happens again. How could they credibly ensure this?
Not storming the capitol in an attempt to overthrow the election seems like a good start. It's still surreal to me how fast this became normalized on the right.
FWIW, I agree that the Manhattan prosecution was a bit scummy and would not have happened in an ideal world. But then again, in an ideal world, Trump would have never gotten within a mile of the presidency to begin with.
The scary part is that I don't see a way to deescalate this. Norms and institutions take decades to build but only a moment to destroy, and Trump's destroying them at a record pace.
On the bright side, institutional norms can also be seen as highly undemocratic in their own right. The very fact that it is a norm and not a law written down on paper means that it does not have a democratic mandate.
No, it means that everyone assumed it was obvious enough to not need codifying. Even on a personal level, there's a lot in human relations that goes beyond the literal law.
What's obvious to the governing / administrative class is not necessarily obvious to the voter. Obviously there are always going to be norms and unwritten rules, there's no living without them, but I still think it's worth pointing out that they aren't democratic. No democratic mandate.
Many Thanks! My impression of the 4 politically motivated prosecutions was that the classified documents one looked like it had actual merit, the Stormy Daniels extortion payment one managed to get a conviction through a really twisted legal theory, the property valuation one basically accused Trump of being a realtor, and I've forgotten the fourth one. As you said:
>Norms and institutions take decades to build but only a moment to destroy
and the politically motivated prosecutions of 2024 and their sequelae did a lot of damage, notably to the rule of law.
It also didn't help that Harris, his opposing candidate said, of free, uncensored, speech online "it has to stop". Having one candidate who attacks the First Amendment, and participates in an administration that sets up a whole censorship _infrastructure_, and another who attacks peaceful transfer of power is not a good November... Neither one was good news for a constitutional republic with civil liberties.
>The scary part is that I don't see a way to deescalate this.
I don't either, frankly. I think MAGA and Woke will be clawing at each other with every weapon they can find for more years to come.
EDIT:
One point that I should have made more clearly about "the politically motivated prosecutions of 2024 and their sequelae". Very roughly speaking, the sequence was:
- 4 concurrent politically motivated prosecutions of then-candidate Trump
- Trump threatening retaliatory lawfare (some of which he is now implementing IIRC)
- Biden granting 2500 pardons, including preemptive pardons, some of which were of people who Biden claimed were innocent of any illegality - but which Biden was not confident the legal system would leave in peace
- Trump granting 1500 pardons
To focus on the pardons: Every one of those pardons is a POTUS _overriding_ the legal system. Every one of those pardons _is a vote of no confidence in the legal system_ . That is a _lot_ of skepticism about the "rule of law", coming from both parties, coming from the top of the hierarchy (albeit from the executive branch, rather than from the judicial branch - Still, PsOTUS regularly deal with the law).
In case it matters, the J6 suit was the 4th one, and that was about as close to obvious treason as we've had in a long time. The Eastman memos were despicable, and everyone involved in what went down should never be allowed to step foot in any leadership position larger than school superintendent ever again.
I think the media did a poor job of explaining what the actual coup attempt was -- preferring to focus on the spectacle of the riots -- but I don't use the term lightly.
>the J6 suit was the 4th one
Many Thanks! Re the Eastman memo and J6, I hold to my previous comment:
>It also didn't help that Harris, his opposing candidate said, of free, uncensored, speech online "it has to stop". Having one candidate who attacks the First Amendment, and participates in an administration that sets up a whole censorship _infrastructure_, and another who attacks peaceful transfer of power is not a good November... Neither one was good news for a constitutional republic with civil liberties.
I may have missed the Harris thing -- can you link?
I will say up front that I generally assume every iteration of government is doing some form of twitter/facebook/google algorithm manipulation, whether explicit and known or not. I'm still mad about the nothingness that happened with the NSA after the Snowden leaks.
> the property valuation one basically accused Trump of being a realtor,
I think you have a mistaken impression of the property one. This was not an innocent mistake. Trump deliberately lied about his properties by massive amounts (e.g. claiming an apartment was THREE TIMES as big was really was) over the course of years and continued doing so even when the "mistakes" were pointed out to him. If anyone but Trump had done this, everyone would agree it was fraud.
> and I've forgotten the fourth one. As you said:
You're probably thinking of the Jan 6 thing and related suits.
> and the politically motivated prosecutions of 2024 and their sequelae did a lot of damage, notably to the rule of law.
I think that politicians should be at least a little bit above the law in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety, which is one reason I opposed the Stormy Daniels thing. But it is *also* corrosive to the rule of law to allow the president to openly break the law with impunity, and Trump went well beyond that by any reasonable standard.
Incidentally, *Trump* sure didn't seem to think that presidential candidates should be above the law, given that he literally campaigned on "lock her up" before it was cool.
Many Thanks!
>I think you have a mistaken impression of the property one. This was not an innocent mistake. Trump deliberately lied about his properties by massive amounts
Sorry, I didn't explain what I meant properly, and I also may have a jaundiced view of the general impression of realtors. My impression is that realtors are _expected_ to lie, though perhaps not so massively, and that Trump was behaving more-or-less according to type. _Not_ innocent, but probably not atypical.
>You're probably thinking of the Jan 6 thing and related suits.
Yes, that sounds right, Many Thanks!
>I think that politicians should be at least a little bit above the law in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety, which is one reason I opposed the Stormy Daniels thing.
I'm confused about the sign here: opposed the payment of the hush money, or opposed the prosecution of the payment of the hush money?
Look, I'm no fan of Trump's. The man recommended looking into injecting disinfectant. I'd like my PsOTUS to have at least _some_ common sense. And, from his debate performance, the man wouldn't know the truth if it bit him on the ass.
Nonetheless, to return to your earlier:
>Just because "everything is illegal" doesn't mean it's a good idea to violate long standing norms and laws like Trump is doing, particularly the political persecution.
Well, "everything is illegal" _does_ make nonsense of the law. This is a long term problem, not _just_ from the past few administrations, but when the law has metastasized to the point where everyone is guilty of _something_, the only sane reaction to "He broke the law!" is "So what?" and to start discussing the politics of whether the law will or will not be weaponized against them. I'm not fond of the situation, but that _is_ the corner our rulers have painted everyone into. https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229
> Sorry, I didn't explain what I meant properly, and I also may have a jaundiced view of the general impression of realtors. My impression is that realtors are _expected_ to lie,
If you see a home listed as 6000 sqft, would you expect it to actually be 2000ft? Because that's just utterly contrary to everything I've ever seen and heard about realty.
> I'm confused about the sign here: opposed the payment of the hush money, or opposed the prosecution of the payment of the hush money?
Well obviously I oppose the hush money too, but my point is that it's the kind of crime that didn't seem to be serious enough to be worth prosecuting Trump over due to the risk of seeming politically motivated. Especially because the legal theory was a bit of a stretch.
Likewise, if a politician were to say, be caught doing cocaine, I don't think it would be worth prosecuting. Since there's an inherent risk of tyranny or the perception of tyranny, you should only go after politicians for especially serious crimes.
> Cole Perkins
Coie. I and l are hard to tell apart, but usually not a _lowercase_ i.
Thanks. I've fixed it now.
What's really surprising, in all of this, is that no judge has, at any time over the past 25 years, ordered the trial-less detention of (alleged) illegal combatants at Guantanamo Bay to be illegal.
Sorry, but what are you even taking about? You're commenting all over this thread with vague insinuations and tangential points. I realize you think you're making really intelligent points, but it comes across as ridiculous and annoying. Please state your argument clearly.
Seems pretty clear to me.
Judges issued orders to halt deportations without due process/trial within days, but Guantanamo Bay is to any reasonable observer far worse, and the people there didn't get a trial either, and it's remarkable that none has issued an order to stop that in the last ~25 years.
There are so many ways to respond to this.
1) the argument is still so poorly stated and so vague that I have to guess at the relevance to the current case
2) gitmo detainees were generally not US visa holders
3) we can be outraged about more than one thing at a time, its a tragedy that there wasn't more judicial blocking of gitmo
4) the trump court orders aren't even related to whether or not something is illegal so much as straightforward due process violations
But really, the worst thing of all this is that you are just wrong on the merits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasul_v._Bush
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamdan_v._Rumsfeld
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boumediene_v._Bush
These are just three of the many cases that were brought related to gitmo. This was accessible by approximately 3 minutes of searching. Come on.
If you're going to engage, please hold yourself to a higher standard.
It isn't MY argument. I was just annoyed at your claim it wasn't clearly stated when it was.
Sorry, it seems like I wasn't clear in my response. The argument is _still_ not clearly stated, I have no idea why gitmo is at all relevant and you haven't made it clearer. As far as I can tell, this is the equivalent of "well, yes, shooting people is bad, but *what about sex trafficking*"
IDK! Sex trafficking also seems bad, we should've shut down gitmo, and deporting people without due process is bad too. I'm glad we all agree that bad things are bad?
Yes, you're right, it's not obvious why gitmo is relevant to a discussion of due process rights for non-citizens.
glad we're on the same page!
Was anyone “deported” to gitmo from US soil? If memory serves, everyone there was grabbed from abroad.
Which is still horrifying but may explain the lack of judicial action: what is the relevant jurisdiction?
Which is kind of why Bush did it in the first place.
Facts updated about the Brown University professor:
1. This wasn't a deportation, it was a refusal to admit her into the country.
2. She wasn't admitted because her visa was canceled.
3. Her visa was voided because she went to former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's funeral on the visit. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/17/rasha-alawieh-deportation-026038
4. Alawieh's lawyers have withdrawn, probably because some of the statements leading to the order were non-factual. https://thehill.com/homenews/education/5198349-brown-university-professor-deported-dhs-lebanon-trump-immigration-crackdown/
5. There is no proof that she unwillingly flew back to Paris.
This was normal procedure. But, because Trump, everything is a five-alarm fire these days, even normal procedure.
I'm sorry, I think you're giga-braining yourself. You can win on the semantics, if you'd like -- I'll taboo the word "deport".
A judge said "do not [force this person to leave the country] before we can have a hearing", and the executive branch [forced this person to leave the country] anyway.
Your disdain for your outgroup is blocking you from seeing the obvious bad actions of the far group.
As pointed out, unlike early versions of the story where it was phrased as "why is this doctor being deported?" the reasons lie behind why she left the country to visit Lebanon.
There's room to argue the legal case, but it wasn't simply "stupid mistake targets harmless person".
It seems like we both agree that the legal violation is there. So what are we disagreeing about? Is it just that you don't like the people involved? In which case a better framing may be "even though I don't like this person, I agree that the Trump administration is out of line"
I'm confused, was she in the country at the time of the order or not?
If the answer is "depends whether you consider being airside at an airport having yet to pass through immigration counts as being in the country" then please say so.
I'm sorry, I just assumed everyone in this thread was able to read the documents linked above. In case for some reason you don't have access, the judge stated that the professor was not to be removed from the District of Massachusetts without a 48 hour notice to the court. So it doesn't really matter.
But I also am well aware of your commenting pattern, and I also don't think you're asking this question because you really care about truth seeking.
I've read the docs and am still confused. It says "Alawieh was detained Thursday after returning to the U.S. following travel abroad" but it's unclear whether "returning to the US" means being in detention airside at Boston Logan or it means actually going through the immigration procedure.
Judge Boasberg (re: Venezuela) is being just as unreasonable as Donald Trump here. "Turn the plane around" as a verbal order is ludicrous.
The Democrats seem to want to die on the hill that judges should have just as much arbitrary power as Donald Trump wants. (but only the liberals; if Kasmarcyk issued a nationwide injunction against abortion they would be singing a different tune) And, politically, fighting for criminal illegal aliens to stay in the country is a losing battle.
Of course, Trump operating under an MO of "act before anyone can file a lawsuit" is also bad. Nobody in Washington is covering themselves in glory. But the Democrats' attitude of "anything we do is fine because Trump" is, at this point, even more toxic than Trump.
Boasberg will not hold them in contempt for not autistically following his order - he will hold them in contempt because his order was announced before either plane touched down, and it wasn't just to turn the plane around - he wanted them to bring back the deportees using any means necessary, including turning planes around if that was an option, but obviously stopping at the destination, refueling, and flying them back would work. Instead, the Trump admin argued that verbal orders aren't legitimate (not true), the court's powers don't extend internationally (not true), and that giving him details of the flight would compromise national security (also not true since the White House social media pages posted videos of the deportees arriving and being taken into custody). There are more infelicities than these but this is the big picture of why we're likely heading towards contempt charges.
My big concern is that conservative judges will start getting bold if the liberal ones do. That is something we should not want to happen because that territory is very very dark and scary.
What are the Democrats doing? Judge Boasberg doesn’t work for the DNC. The Dems even helped pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open. What have they done that’s so bad?
>And, politically, fighting for criminal illegal aliens to stay in the country is a losing battle.
Isn't their status as 'criminals' precisely what's at issue? There's no issue with deporting convicted criminals, and a massive one in deporting people without trials.
> Judge Boasberg (re: Venezuela) is being just as unreasonable as Donald Trump here. "Turn the plane around" as a verbal order is ludicrous.
Timeline shows that there was at least one plane still in Texas that took off after the written order was given: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr5219ezjrpo
So even if I bite that this is 'ludicrous' (which I don't) it doesn't really matter to the overall point that they are ignoring court orders
> But the Democrats' attitude of "anything we do is fine because Trump" is, at this point, even more toxic than Trump.
Out of curiosity, what would it take to prove that Trump is sufficiently toxic on his own?
Does this judge really have the legal authority to stop the executive from deporting illegal alien criminal gang members? That strains belief.
The judge had the legal authority to stop illegal executive activities, even if they were conducting vigilante justice against other lawbreakers.
What safeguards are in place to ensure that the judge is interpreting the law rather than making up his own rules as he goes?
Are there any consequences for the judge if a higher court later decides that his order was illegal?
Something feels broken about a system where there's 1000+ random judges who are authorised to arbitrarily change executive branch policy. The Supreme Court should have that authority, but should the United States District Court for the District of Columbia?
"What safeguards are in place to ensure that the judge is interpreting the law rather than making up his own rules as he goes?"
That would be the appellate courts, which have a I think a pretty good track record of correcting lower courts that have gone blatantly rogue, and can move reasonably fast in an emergency. If necessary, SCOTUS can step in.
But I'm not seeing the emergency calling for us to override or ignore the courts on this one - why do a bunch of Venezuelan immigrants need to be deported *right now today*, as opposed to hanging around in an INS detention facility for a week or two while the appellate court hears the case?
I dunno, do INS detention facilities regularly keep hundreds of beds open and staff on schedule just in case they're needed?
You already know that there is no way of determining whether they were "illegal alien criminal gang members". If you believe otherwise, citations are welcome.
I apologize if I am coming across as snarky. I've seen your comments elsewhere and I don't really think you engage in good faith, sorry.
Immigration and law enforcement do have the ability to determine those things. There are entire units that specialize in it. Whether they prove it publicly and to the satisfaction of open-borders legal activists and the fringe left is a different question.
If we had unlimited time and resources, sure, it would be nice to give every illegal migrant a full and thorough legal process, but we simply don't have that capacity. Choices have to be made. Given the threat to public safety and the breakdown of national sovereignty over our borders, emergency powers have rightly been invoked. It is totally unreasonable to insist on an idealistic adherence to procedure while vicious foreign gangs gain a foothold in our country.
I'm not operating in bad faith. I mean exactly what I say.
> Whether they prove it publicly and to the satisfaction of open-borders legal activists and the fringe left is a different question
Or, like, a judge.
But then it doesn't seem like you have a lot of respect for due process rights, if you are not arguing in bad faith. I appreciate that you are willing to bite that bullet, though I wonder how you feel about, say, the Stasi going after people in East Germany.
Deporting someone, or denying them entry, has never required a judge.
A visa can be revoked by the State Department at any time, or by some random consular officer. Even if you have a valid visa, you can be denied entry by some low-level immigration officer if he feels like it. These are the rules you agree to if you go to visit the US.
Not a lawyer, but I believe that while refusal of entry does not require a judge, deportation does, and this is for good reason - the court hearing gives the person grabbed the opportunity to establish e.g. that they are a US citizen. Otherwise what stops the government grabbing you tomorrow, declaring `Melvin is totally a member of Tren de Aregua,' and shipping you to El Salvador?
No amount of "Trump is bad" arguments will prove that the Democrats' toxicity is actually good.
Is it toxic to tell the government to immediately cease illegal activities, and do the proper preparations to make them legal?
sorry, your claim was 'Dems [are] even more toxic than Trump'.
Right now, Trump is deporting random people without due process and overriding judicial review.
So my question is, what, exactly, would it take for you to believe that Trump is more toxic than whatever the Dems reaction to him is? What is it that Dems are doing right now that is more toxic than what is described above?
I'll go further and ask why it even matters if the Democrats response is more toxic than Trump's actions? Criticize them both! Heck, criticize the Democrats even more! But don't let Trump off the hook.
Hypocrites suck. They can still be right sometimes.
People interested in truth and justice need to separate the arguments from the people making them.
We're talking past each other.
Clearly, some of the Democrats' behavior is toxic. 20% of the party doesn't see it this way, and thinks there is nothing wrong with "maximum resistance to everything! deceitful opposition to Trump is good! block everything Trump wants in court for 4 years!" I do not, and a super-majority of the American public does not. It is bad morally (elections should have consequences), and it is bad strategically (because it won't work, as the alternative of "end the government" is far closer to what Trump wants).
If the game is "but I can prove Trump is worse", we all lose. I'm not going to even pretend that "what would it take for you to believe that Trump is more toxic" is a question worth answering.
Of course, when the headline is << Trump's border czar: "I don't care what the judges think" >> it doesn't really matter. If the Trump admin is determined to break the law even when they could follow it, there will be a crisis soon.
> It is bad morally (elections should have consequences)
So, you are arguing that it is morally good for governments to break the law, so long as they won an election? You're explicitly arguing *against* rule of law? Seriously?
The consequences of elections are a specific set of powers enumerated in the law, not "I get to do whatever I want for the next four years." If following the law is too constraining to get something done, then amend the law, don't simply ignore it.
(I wonder, did you say the same thing when the Republicans refused to hold a vote on Merrick Garland? Obama was more popular than Trump ever was - was it immoral to block his Supreme Court nomination?)
There is a difference between:
1) Trump can't do this ever, it is unconstitutional.
2) Trump probably can do this, but it requires some process that he hasn't done.
3) Trump can do this, but a liberal judge improvidently issued a temporary restraining order that will be overturned by a higher court.
And you think that in the case of #2, that it's immoral to demand the process be followed?
To be clear, the "process" in the current case is "prove in a court that these people are deportable." That's a really important process! "The government can't punish you without a fair trial" is not some ticky-tacky administrative detail.
As for #3, how are you supposed to know how a higher court will rule before you file your case? Lawyers aren't psychics or seers. Sure, the Supreme Court is 6-3 in Trump's favor, but I still think they would hesitate before saying "yeah, it's no big deal if ICE ignores court orders, we're happy to give up our contempt power." This isn't some frivolous lawsuit, there's a reasonable argument to be made here.
"Turn the plane around" is fine, considering that everyone knows they are trying to move as fast as possible to make things fait accompli.
If you think that courts shouldn't be able to stop deportations then fine, but "courts should be able to stop deportations but not if the executive moves fast enough" doesn't work.
> And, politically, fighting for criminal illegal aliens to stay in the country is a losing battle.
You can say this about any concern about due process. I'm not fighting for criminals to stay in the country, I'm saying they should have to prove it first.
Oh no, gang members are deported out of the country, how terrible.
Maybe if you want me to cry salt tears, pick someone sympathetic.
Now, I agree that if this is ignoring due process, that's an important legal issue. But if you want to convince ordinary people, "stupid activist judges want to let gang members stay here so they can continue to commit crimes" is not the case to pick.
Freezing funds to states you do not like? Gosh, it's a good job the nice Democrats never did that when they were in power, or proposed that blue states should not 'bail out' red states. Or did things like cut off funding if you tried to travel to a disapproved state. Oh, wait:
https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2021/12/what-would-happen-if-blue-states-stopped-paying-for-red-states/
https://www.eqca.org/ocamb-17/
https://www.washingtonblade.com/2016/09/28/calif-bans-official-travel-anti-lgbt-states/
As I've said on here before: don't create weapons that you don't want to fall into the hands of your enemies, because there is no law of the cosmos that you will always be in power and the things you did to people you didn't like won't be turned around on you.
So out of those three, the deportation of the doctor is the only one that needs explaining. But one out of three ain't bad, I suppose?
If you want someone "sympathetic" how about Fabian Schmidt, the white electrical engineer from Germany who has had a green card since 2008, and who the ICE arrested and tortured for no apparent reason anyway?
This is exactly the kind of immigrant that the white nationalists claim to want.
These links are a little disingenuous. The first link is an article laying out how blue states pay more in taxes than red states do. It doesn’t call for any kind of action at all. It just points this out.
The California bill prohibits state funding for any travel to a state that discriminate on the basis of gender race, and some other things. It doesn’t ban travel to those states.
If Joe Biden had issued an executive order making abortion legal in the entire country, then we would have something to talk about
Sure, one out of three ain’t bad, unless you’re the doctor in question or one of her patients. This “turnabout is fair play” argument is pretty weak sauce if you really compare things honestly. Trump is doing his own thing here for better or worse.
If you had to travel to one of the red states as part of your job, or as part of something funded by the state government (e.g. a university sending attendees to a conference), that funding was yanked. So it was banning travel, just in a roundabout way. Certainly if the current administration tried it, the loud cries would ascend to the heavens about bigotry and the rest of it.
"If you had to travel to one of the red states as part of your job, or as part of something funded by the state government"
If you work for the state, including the state's universities, then your job is whatever the state government says it is, and here the state government is saying "it's not your job to go to Alabama, even if we used to send you there all the time". That's absolutely something a state government can do.
It's a stupid, petty thing for a state government to do, but it's legal.
If you don't work for the state, or if you do but you're traveling on your own time and your own dime, then the prohibition does not apply.
I spoke up against that California travel ban at the time it was in place. (I think they’ve since rescinded it because it got too broad and the universities finally got input on it.) Still, I don’t think it revoked payment for travel that had already been done before the date - it just stoped funding future travel.
If you want a better example of Lawfare, this latest move to say any pardon issued by Biden is null and void because it was signed with an auto pen has got to be up there.
I wasn't familiar with autopens, so how does that work? I'm old enough to remember the days when "this has to be signed manually and moreover in black ink only, if you use blue ink we will not honour it".
I can see mechanically stamping a signature when there are hundreds or thousands of routine pages of paperwork (e.g. in a former job for signing pay cheques a rubber stamp of the CEO's signature was used, because he couldn't be expected to spend an hour or more signing each cheque himself) but when it comes to something like presidential pardons, isn't that much more restricted?
If it is an autopen, how do you prove that Biden authorised such documents?
Early autopens used a https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly(methyl_methacrylate) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(printing) of the original signature which is a channel cut into an engraved plate in the shape of a wheel. A stylus driven by an electric motor followed the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_coordinate_system of a https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profile_(engineering) or shape engraved in the plate (which is why it is called a matrix). The stylus is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantograph to an arm which can hold almost any common writing instrument, so the favourite pen and ink can be used to suggest authenticity. The autopen signature is made with even pressure (and indentation in the paper), which is how these machines are distinguishable from original handwriting where the pressure varies.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopen#cite_note-3
How do we know Biden authorized it? He makes a statement saying he did.
After that what do you do? It’s never been challenged before…The Supreme Court’s recent ruling regarding immunity for the President would seem to imply that we must take him at his word. If that’s not good enough then we are definitely staring into the abyss.
Does anyone really think he would object?
> If it is an autopen, how do you prove that Biden authorised such documents?
In practice, you probably get Joe Biden to sign a letter saying "anything signed with my autopen was authorised by me" while he's still able to.
And if that letter is signed by autopen? 😁
It does seem to leave a crack for malfeasance, especially in the context of someone who is suffering cognitive impairment. I'm not saying he didn't authorise the pardons, but having important documents signed 'on your behalf' does seem to require a lot of evidence that it was 'on my behalf' at my direction, not 'I'll do it for your own good, you would agree if you knew'.
That’s nonsense. All it says is the state won’t pay for you to travel and it has exceptions for certain necessary categories of official business. It’s not a roundabout anything. And perhaps most importantly, it’s a state not the federal government that is doing this. There are states right now that are passing laws making it illegal for residents of their state to travel out of state to get an abortion. They’re going to track your cell phone and what not. Yeah, there’s lots of squawking about that.
>As I've said on here before: don't create weapons that you don't want to fall into the hands of your enemies, because there is no law of the cosmos that you will always be in power and the things you did to people you didn't like won't be turned around on you.
This is true and a good point, and one that too many people on both sides don't understand (the amount of shocked pikachu faces when the other side does the same thing will never stop being depressing).
But ignoring court orders is different. I am not aware of that being a thing that has been done in the past to any non-trivial degree and would be a sign of an actually pretty big shift in things.
Andrew Jackson did it. I'm not aware of another example.
Lincoln famously did it during the Civil War.
Not true. The federal government was not involved in the relevant case, in which individuals sued the state of Georgia. SCOTUS found in favor of the individuals. Jackson was pretty dismissive of the result, but neither he nor the federal government were remanded to do or not do something, so you can't say he ignored a court order.
The media has reported on the dispute, but has not as far as I know explained why the Trump administration should not have the power to deport those here illegally. Maybe it's too abstruse? I'm sure the lawyers who made up the rules can make new ones or new interpretations - but to your average American, this is isn't going to make a lot of sense on the face of it.
It’s not saying the government doesn’t have the power to deport people here illegally. It says that the government doesn’t have the power to deport people before proving that they are here illegally. You don’t get to deport first and ask questions later - you have to ask the questions first or else you’re not allowed to deport. That’s the law.
That’s kind of perfect! Of course they have no papers so they might as well be from Mars.
If they have no papers, then it's probably not going to be very hard to prove to a court's satisfaction that they're here illegally. But you have to actually bring them into court and ask, "do you in fact have any papers that say you're allowed to be here?"
Otherwise, there's nothing to stop the next government from deporting *you*, saying that you're not a citizen and you don't have any papers, and maybe both of those things are lies but you're already in an El Salvadoran Supermax prison, so what difference does that make?
I’d be surprised if even half of federal judges believe in the difference between citizen and non-citizen. We’re deep into the second constitution now.
Which may be the one with more appeal here, obviously, not trying to litigate that.
I think the question in this instance is whether the Trump administration is violating due process. That may not resonate with the public, but it's vitally important for guarding against the arbitrary use of power.
In order to get a passport, I had to show a birth certificate that reflected the hospital that I was born in. Somehow, I suspect that the folks pushing to make tren de Agua a permanent feature of the American urban experience, probably will not suggest that they need to supply the name of the hospital they were born in lol.
Completely unrelated aside, but the origin of tren de aragua (man, autocorrect wants nothing to do with it!) makes for wry reading in the context of Salvadoran prisons and due process.
Don’t throw me in that brer patch, begged Brer Conejo.
How do you know that any of the people being deported are members of Tren de Aragua? Are you just taking ICE's word for it? Why didn't they want to prove it in court first?
Lawyers for one of the deportees have said that he got accused of being a gang member simply because he had tattoos. Is that the standard of evidence you're willing to accept?
> Lawyers for one of the deportees have said that he got accused of being a gang member simply because he had tattoos. Is that the standard of evidence you're willing to accept?
I don't think it matters whether or not they're gang members, the question is whether they're US citizens.
If they are not, then their presence in the US is entirely subject to end at any time based on the whims of a bunch of different bureaucrats. And that's fine, that's the rules you agree to play by when you choose to visit the US.
suppose some of them, or even just one of them, was in fact a US citizen - what opportunity would he have had to establish that fact? Certainly not a hearing in court.
Suppose next time you were out for a run, ICE grabbed you, observed that you didn't have a passport on you, and before the hour was out put you on a plane to an El Salvadoran oubliette. Nothing to see here, move along?
"Obey court orders" is also one of the rules you agree to play by when you operate in the US, but ICE seems fine with skipping that one.
Also, "End their presence in the US" is very different from "ship them to an El Salvador prison." Is it the US's policy that, if it decides to deport someone, it can deport them to literally anywhere in the world, even a country they didn't come from? Is the next flight of deportees going to be sent to Siberia?
When someone is deported they're almost always deported to the country where they have citizenship. Obviously if any of these fellows can make a good case that they're not a Salvadoran citizen then they should definitely do that.
What El Salvador chooses to do with them after that is up to them.
>Obviously if any of these fellows can make a good case that they're not a Salvadoran citizen then they should definitely do that.
And where will they be allowed to make this case? In a court of law with due process, perhaps?
Also, there are hundreds of people covered by this order. I'm skeptical that they all happened to be dual citizens with El Salvador.
That’s been the most interesting part of the last month and a half. The swiftness has opened the door on something formally closed: clearly, they knew where these people were. They’ve been doing their job all along, but only up to a point. And that point is exactly where unconstitutionality lies. Whether it was the judiciary or the executive branch, plainly they were told not to finish their job. Have you ever seen anything proceed so fast from the government? Do you really imagine it’s the work of the last month and a half?
There are such a thing as gang tattoos. though Wikipedia informs me that this particular bunch do not have specific (and hence identifiable) tattoos. Maybe the guy was just unlucky, or maybe he has prison tattoos.
You're dodging the question. If you're going to say that your opponents are "pushing to make tren de Agua a permanent feature of the American urban experience", then give some evidence that the deportees are members of Tren de Aragua. Don't go on a tangent about how interesting it is that things are moving quickly.
Here's another possibility - the guy is a perfectly ordinary asylum seeker who has tattoos, and the government knew where he was because he's going through the legal process for claiming asylum. And the government was perfectly fine with letting them stay in the country and go through the process, until Trump demanded they find some gang members to deport, at which point they decided to round up anyone who had tattoos. Without evidence, this scenario seems equally probable.
I dunno, the police in my city knew precisely where the Tren de Aragua members were, almost instantly; they didn't wait ten minutes to commit crimes when they arrived. But then, I live in a largely Mexican city ;-). Policing is still allowed here.
I would let in everybody from Latin America without tattoos ahead of anybody with tattoos, but I'm old and a local news watcher, so I've seen an awful lot of mugshots.
The pictures of this bunch show very few tattoos. In stark contrast with the pictures from El Salvador circa before Trump: most of the men were covered up to the head crown. OTOH I know a few American citizens covered in tattoos, having trained at various MMA joints. So even by your own “standard” we have no evidence all those Venezuelans were gang members.
Answer the goddamn question. What evidence do you have that the deportees are gang members? And if your answer is "I don't have any but I'm sure the police know who the gang members are," do you think it's a good idea to allow police to punish anyone they think is guilty, without needing to involve the courts?
You talk like TV!
If you are not a US citizen then being removed from the US is not a punishment, it's just the revocation of a privilege.
> Have you ever seen anything proceed so fast from the government?
Well, it is a lot easier to do a lot of things if you ignore people's civil rights. But also, are you sure its faster? Because my understanding was that at least at the end of the first two months of the administration Trump's deportations were lower than Biden's , for reasons to do with ignoring legal objections and then getting slapped for it, or pissing off all the people we are trying to deport these folks to.
>As I've said on here before: don't create weapons that you don't want to fall into the hands of your enemies,
I don't want any weapons to fall into the hands of my enemies. That's what the phrase "my enemies" means. There might be weapons that I'd willingly allow to fall into the hands of people I disagree with, but that's not the same thing.
You cite an opinion column and a California state law to support ignoring the courts/denying individuals due process. Can you connect the dots?
"As I've said on here before: don't create weapons that you don't want to fall into the hands of your enemies, because there is no law of the cosmos that you will always be in power and the things you did to people you didn't like won't be turned around on you."
Is there not some cognitive dissonance on display here when, in the same comment, you dismiss a very questionable use of the Alien Enemies Act?
Why? That would be saying the Federalists shouldn't have created a weapon for the Democratic-Republicans to use.
OK, fine. The OP said "create" instead of "use". It's a distinction without a difference for the point I was trying to make. Trump is using a law (that someone else created) in a questionable way, thereby creating a new precedent. The OP thinks it's not worth pushing back against this because the people the new precedent is being used against are bad people. The OP seems to have not considered that this precedent could be applied to people the OP thinks are good, despite warning against making that mistake just a few lines down in the same comment. That's the apparent cognitive dissonance I am pointing out.
Once you start ignoring due process for one thing, you can just pick and choose whatever you want. That's horrible for the health of our system of governance.
I do not think Democrats ever ignored the courts so blatantly, though perhaps I am wrong.
Deiseach should be deported, they're a gangmember. Its obvious, look at their profile picture, it is full of gang icons.
I seem to remember our host comment that he tried once, but it didn’t stick, so he gave up and decided he could live with it.
January 30, 1972.
"Oh no, Irish terrorists are shot, how terrible. Maybe if you want me to cry salt tears, pick someone sympathetic."
Oh ho ho, you got me there! And on St Patrick's Day and all!
Yeah, I somehow think that when it's real terrorists, there isn't much sympathy. If the guy being booted out of the country is someone running drugs and engaging in crime and murdering people, I'm not going to protest either.
Now if you excuse me, I have to go for a quick chorus of "The Boys of Barr na Sráide":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlE8vBpdI3k
Ah yes, "real terrorists," a group which is famously easy to identify and which the government is famously trustworthy about identifying. The US government has certainly never in recent memory claimed vast power for itself in the name of fighting terrorism.
> Maybe if you want me to cry salt tears, pick someone sympathetic.
I've read your comments for a long time over the years, and I have to say this reaction is extremely disappointing.
Sorry, due process doesn't only apply to people who are sympathetic, much as people may wish otherwise. Puppies and children and mothers don't have a monopoly on constitutional rights.
Can you guarantee that there were no US citizens among the Venezuelan deportees? Can you guarantee that they are all gang members? If not, can you walk me through what standards you're applying here? What, exactly, is the world you want to live in?
Yeah, the legal question is the important point here. But is the fight over that, or over the power of a government to deport undesirables, or the rights of even criminal gangs to stay once they set foot on American soil since no human is illegal?
Rights apply to everybody, even the not-nice people. But if you're trying to convince those who are not already in your camp about "this thing Bad Orange Man is doing is bad", then you need something better than "he's sending criminals back to their home country or at least to somewhere willing to take them".
Maybe I should've opened with "Trump is actively importing the Tate brothers, who are known sex traffickers and rapists" as a more convincing argument?
Don't know anything about the Tates, but yeah if they're known offenders, let them remain in the country they were arrested in (unless they're being repatriated to stand trial).
The Overton window on this is not where you think it is with the American public. Conservatives routinely care about legalities and due process. This is not some kind of "orange man bad" bugbear.
The Democrats and Republicans trade-off control of the White House every 4 to 12 years. No, I don't think that merely getting reelected is some kind of heavenly mandate.
Trump got re-elected because people were tired of DEI and didn't believe the warnings on the left about Trump's true nature. They've gotten a rude awakening over the last two months.
This applies to the tariffs and destruction of the government as well. You don't have to take my word for it - here's the word of an actual Trump voter with regrets:
https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1900230926774526121
I am an NIH-funded biomedical scientist with conservative leanings. I know at least a dozen scientists (a small closeted minority) who voted for Trump, largely because of frustrations with DEI and extreme wokeness that had permeated every aspect of University life. Each one of us deeply regrets their vote for Trump and are utterly ashamed of it.
We are absolutely horrified at how mindlessly destructive this admin has been to scientific institutions. They are single-handedly destroying the STEM dominance US established over decades.
Average Americans simply do not realize that we are now on the verge of a precipitous decline in STEM. We all admit that the warnings about Trump/MAGA were on target, and the thing we argue about now is whether the damage is even reversible. All the Lefty overreach was annoying as hell but the MAGA disdain for science is 100X worse.
But if you're trying to convince those who are not already in your camp about "this thing The Bad English are doing is bad", then you need something better than "they are shooting Irish Terrorists".
>the rights of even criminal gangs
The whole issue is that the government hasn't proved that any of them are gang members! It says they are, but why should you believe that?
I think you may have cause and effect backwards.
I read SCOTUS cases as a hobby, because I'm a bit weird that way. One thing I notice is that most of the SCOTUS cases involve people who are very undesirable -- serial murderers, rapists, people with multiple convictions. And SCOTUS will sometimes rule in their favor.
The test cases are _always_ around undesirables. So you _have_ to defend the undesirables first, because that is what it means to live in a civilized society. Otherwise by the time you reach the mothers and the children and the puppies, there will be no one left to defend them.
In case it moves the needle for you, there are reports coming out from relatives of those detained claiming that some of them had no gang affiliation whatsoever. Now, you may be skeptical, and rightly so, but we can't even evaluate the truth value of those claims because the relevant people are already gone. Thats why we have due process rights!
(Ironically, in deporting a random Brown U professor who *checks notes* gives life saving kidney transplants for a living, Trump may have actually given the left side a more sympathetic case anyway. But I digress)
The Brown professor seems to be in trouble for being an IRA supporter, I mean Hamas supporter who admitted this. So it's not a clear or clean cut distinction for all sides.
*Hezbollah
Apologies, I was too fast with my "Middle Eastern terrorist group beginning with H" there.
Rather like trying to remember the distinctions between the Official IRA, Provisional IRA, Continuity IRA, Real IRA, INLA and other off shoots!
To be fair, there's only HAMAS, Haqqani, Harakat (in 4 flavors), Hezbollah, Hizbul Mjuahedeen and the Houthis.
The NYT had an interview with Chuck Schumer last week in which he said that a number of his moderate GOP colleagues in the Senate had been clear that ignoring the courts was their red line with Trump. Will be interesting (not) to see how they all fold yet again.
He's been ignoring the courts for weeks, at least wrt the federal funding freeze
"Chuck Schumer last week in which he said that a number of his moderate GOP colleagues in the Senate had been clear that ignoring the courts was their red line with Trump"
The words "red line" have acquired quite a comical meaning at this point. I'm sure they will express concern and maybe even post on xitter about it.
It surprises me that people still think the figleaf of American citizenship protects them from being deported to El Salvador. If the President does not listen to the courts then why is anyone - citizen or not - safe?
When markets and bondholders wake up to what the end of the rule of law means things will get really nasty. The best option is to get out before that happens.
At this point American citizenship may not be worth the piece of paper it's written on, especially since the actual piece of paper for many people is their birth certificate.
Trump and his minions open call a judge's ruling "unlawful". The staggering implications are left to the reader's imagination.
The obvious rejoinder is that the left has ground the idea of citizenship under its heel, with its stance on the border and on immigrants - it is probably a bit much for it to hope, that it could now pick up the concept and find it still as shiny as if we were all still DAR members at this point.
Quite apart from the curious hill to die on.
And who’s to say, there probably is more life than death on that hill, given population differences. And the existence and power of lawyers. That must be the actuarial calculus.
Sorry, I have no idea what you mean by this heel grinding. Do you think it's possible to criticize actions of this administration on their own merits? Do I have to add "the left is bad" as a new "DEI statement" to make it acceptable?
That's okay.
Can you explain how “ the left has ground the idea of citizenship under its heel, with its stance on the border and on immigrants”? Is the idea that the left thinks non-citizens should be allowed to enter the country without special processes, therefore it’s fair for the right to deport citizens without special processes? Or what do you mean? I haven’t seen anyone attack the idea of citizenship, just the idea of special privileges for travel being attached to citizenship.
Citizenship is a thing that can have more or less value. Its value is not abstract. We live in a world of things.
Can you explain how citizenship was devalued, to the point where the reasonable response is to say “because citizenship has gotten this worthless, it is totally reasonable for the United states government to not check citizenship status when deporting people it says are foreign enemies”? I agree it is not abstract - it is a real thing. But what precisely has the left destroyed of that real thing?
I think I agree that citizenship has been devalued; if people are arguing that nation-states make no sense and that having any kind of attachment to the particular patch of ground you (or your ancestors) happened to live on is ridiculous, and that being a 'rootless cosmopolitan' is the way we live now - then what does citizenship even mean anymore? If the US is Europe is China is Dubai is wherever, all is good once it's the liberal big city where all distinctions are blurred and only the size of your bank balance counts, what does it mean or does it signify anything to say you are an American citizen (or British, or dual Canadian/Australian/British/American as convenience dictates when setting up the headquarters of your megacorporation)? It's no more than having your company registered in Delaware, even though you make your living in California, just for the convenience of being judged under Delaware legal system.
I think I would say that this liberal globalist idea (which is one that I do like, though I understand that many don't) doesn't aim to *devalue* citizenship (or family or marriage or love or race or sex or any of the other concepts where this conflict emerges) but rather to *demystify* it. Being able to choose your commitments, knowing what they are, is not a way to devalue the commitments, but actually a way to be more explicitly committed to them.
At least, that's how I think of it. Some people think that these things being unbreakable, but thus also un-chosen, makes them more valuable.
As of right now, no one knows if there was a US citizen embedded in the Venezuelan deportees. I don't mean this to say that there was one, I think the probability is fairly low that there was, but the bigger issue is that we literally do not know. ICE and others are not incentivized to care or do their homework.
If there was a US citizen mixed in, they would have no way to access any of their constitutional rights. El Salvador's maximum security prison isnt going to, like, give them a phone call. And they are not getting trial in El Salvador; the country is holding them as American prisoners, effectively through a massive private prison scheme. The due process implications are staggering.
Is that like journalistic embedding among soldiers? What an odd locution.
There's a wider, original meaning of "making a part of", or "being surrounded by. I do think something like "mixed in" would work slightly better.
updated for clarity
I have been invited to participate in the 'Health and Media' survey by US FDA. This seems to be convincingly legitimate, as far I can tell (out of perhaps an overabundance of caution I will not give PII, but so far have not been asked). The QR code pointing to the survey is for HMS.rti.org. Paperwork states that 145,000 mailing address were chosen at random to select participants. A cash payment of one dollar was including as well as a promise of 30 dollars additional, on completion.
So... have you ever heard of this, and what would you want the FDA to know about how 'public education campaigns affect attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors toward tobacco use'?
I've thought a lot about the opportunities for harm reduction for tobacco users buy shifting to other nicotine delivery vehicles, and my attitude is that nicotine addiction is a nuisance and probably at least a little bit bad for health, but tobacco itself is so terrible that it's worth taking some chances with somewhat uncertain safety and accepting more nicotine dependent people if that translates to less tobacco use. I'm also not sure this isn't a mistake.
Personally, I was very addicted to smoking for a couple of years when I was in my early twenties and then quit, which was hard. I recently started using nicotine again quite deliberately to make myself do shit I hate at work. I almost quit my job before that, but I still have it now, along with an annoying nicotine dependence that probably slightly helped my concentration and tolerance for work. I won't and would not have used tobacco. I can't really advocate for this behavior and now I don't quite know what to say in the survey.
Opinions?
This is another update to my long-running attempt at predicting the outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian war. I did an irregular update in the last hidden thread, here: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/hidden-open-thread-3725/comment/100206632. Before that, last regular update is here: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-369/comment/93991309. On request of one of you guys I’ve also made my updates into a graph, but it only goes to February 16: https://aleszieglerenglish.substack.com/p/special-military-graph-updated
8 % on Ukrainian victory (down from 9 % on both February 16 and March 13, 2025).
I define Ukrainian victory as either a) Ukrainian government gaining control of the territory it had not controlled before February 24 without losing any similarly important territory and without conceding that it will stop its attempts to join EU or NATO, b) Ukrainian government getting official ok from Russia to join EU or NATO without conceding any territory and without losing de facto control of any territory it had controlled before February 24 of 2022, or c) return to exact prewar status quo ante.
20 % on compromise solution that both sides might plausibly claim as a victory (down from 32 % on February 16 and from 21 % on March 13, 2025).
72 % on Ukrainian defeat (up from 59 % on February 16 and from 70 % on March 13, 2025).
I define Ukrainian defeat as Russia getting what it wants from Ukraine without giving any substantial concessions. Russia wants either a) Ukraine to stop claiming at least some of the territories that were before war claimed by Ukraine but de facto controlled by Russia or its proxies, or b) Russia or its proxies (old or new) to get more Ukrainian territory, de facto recognized by Ukraine in something resembling Minsk ceasefire(s)* or c) some form of guarantee that Ukraine will became neutral, which includes but is not limited to Ukraine not joining NATO. E.g. if Ukraine agrees to stay out of NATO without any other concessions to Russia, but gets mutual defense treaty with Poland and Turkey, that does NOT count as Ukrainian defeat.
Discussion:
Of course this big update is caused by combination of a) large scale collapse of Ukrainian positions on Russian territory, and b) Ukrainian delegation offering 30-day ceasefire along current line of control without any sort of strings attached. Plus additional 2 percentage points shift from March 13 is based on subsequent diplomatic developments.
Since it appears that war might soon end (emphasis on MIGHT), I should preemptively tackle everyone’s favorite part of forecasting, scoring issues. There are two problems.
1) What if the war ends as a frozen with line of control corresponding to a current frontline, which on net constitutes a massive territorial gain for Russia compared to 2021, but, at least according to current maps, there are still a few villages on internationally recognized Russian territory under Ukrainian control, though situation there is both unclear and evolving rapidly?
So, when I was defining what constitutes Ukrainian victory/defeat I did anticipate Ukrainian invasion of Russia. On the other hand I thought it likely that war might end in some unexpected way not accounted for in my criteria, and I bucketed that into my “compromise” category.
When Ukrainian invasion of Russia began, I implicitly proceeded with forecast on an assumption that if there will be an armistice with line of control extending into Russian territory, that would be counted as compromise, because it would constitute de facto territorial concessions from both sides though I should add that even if Ukraine managed to hold on to what was maximum extent of their “incursion” as it is often called, given, um, very limited value of that territory, it would be a compromise heavily tilted in favor of Russia and in a sort of real as opposed to scoring criteria relevant sense it would basically constitute strategic defeat.
So, if the war ends with a line extending Ukrainian control to what were prewar settlements on internationally recognized Russian territory, even if it would be just one village, it is counted as a compromise, otherwise, I’d have to subtract another, let’s say, 5 percentage points from the probability of a compromise.
But if the line of control extends into Russia but Ukrainian-occupied Russian territory consists only some woods uninhabited before the war, this would not in itself constitute a compromise, because c’mon.
2) What should be counted as an end of the war, anyway?
In a legal sense, state of war began with Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014 and is ongoing since then. Most likely it will continue even after, you know, highly intensive combat operations stop. This is the same sense in which, for example, Israel and Syria are in the permanent state of war basically since they became independent countries.
Yet obviously “state of war” is a term that has distinct non-legal meaning of ongoing highly intensive combat operations, so it makes sense to say there was a war between Russia and Ukraine between 2014-15, then non-war (I hesitate to call it peace) until 2022, and then there is a war since then, just like there were distinct wars between Israel and Syria.
On the other hand, it would be kind of ridiculous if I would declare war to be over after highly intensive combat operations are interrupted and then ceasefire would collapse after a few days. But as things between Russia and Ukraine stand now, it is quite likely that there will be another few years of non-war followed by another bloody period of highly intensive combat operations.
So, I think what conventionally distinguishes temporary interruptions of combat operations in an ongoing war from two distinct wars between the same parties is mainly that in the latter case, there is a substantial demobilization in the intervening period. I also think that if a ceasefire is established, it will became relatively quickly politically untenable for both Russia of Ukraine to keep their hundreds of thousands pre-2022-civilians-turned-soldiers in their armies, so demobilization of both sides becomes a default scenario after just a few weeks of non-combat.
So I plan to declare my forecast over if there is a ceasefire that I judge with more than 80 % probability will last for longer than two months. I could of course wait for those two months, but I suspect nobody will care about my forecast, maybe not even I.
* Minsk ceasefire or ceasefires (first agreement did not work, it was amended by second and since then it worked somewhat better) constituted, among other things, de facto recognition by Ukraine that Russia and its proxies will control some territory claimed by Ukraine for some time. In exchange Russia stopped trying to conquer more Ukrainian territory. Until February 24 of 2022, that is.
The problem is that Russia has little incentive to stop the war. They took hundreds of kilometers of territory last year and will probably take hundreds of kilometer this year. They just lost their bargaining chip in Kursk. Every week that goes by, Russia’s position gets better. And Trump doesn’t seem that interested in continuing support for Ukraine, which will make it that much more difficult for them. Zelensky would have to make some extreme concessions, which would be political suicide. Not saying that a deal won’t happen, but if so it’s going to be heavily unfavorable to Ukraine and there’s no way around it.
Yep, that is more or less also my view, if it isn't clear
Question that's not related to the war itself: How do you score the accuracy of a prediction that's being updated continuously over time?
Like, if you're able to call the outcome of the war a year in advance, that's pretty impressive, while if you predict a 99% chance of the war ending once you learn that the peace treaty is being signed, that's less impressive. Is there a mathematical way to describe this?
I agree with Sol Hando here; I'd just reinforce there is a sort of negative selection of people you shouldn't take seriously. If I would predict, like, 90 % probability of Ukrainian victory somewhere along the way, I'd look pretty stupid right now. Yet many people were very confident for a long time that Russia is on the brink of collapse. Though people you shouldn't take seriously are usually not in the habit of expressing themselves in probabilities.
Also I cannot resist pointing out that I've got good scores in a few prediction contests, like both ACX yearly challenges I participated in.
You score the accuracy of each prediction independently, and sum them against the mean expectation from other people (a market is necessary for this.).
It's nothing impressive if 1 day before peace, you and everyone else are predicting 99% of the war ending. It's very impressive if you predict 60%, when everyone else was predicting 99%, and the war ends differently than the 99% was expecting. Even if you were still leaning toward peace, you were correctly a lot less confident than the mean, and thus you would still have a positive rating.
You'd have to take the mean prediction from a large number of people, preferably from a prediction market with a large number of participants and a financial incentive to predict accurately, and compare Alesziegler's prediction with that market at every point they made a prediction. Once those predictions have all resolved (if it's the same thing this should happen all at once), you compare each prediction, with the mean prediction at the same time, and score based upon that difference.
One thing it took me a while to get about prediction markets (most important when comparing one's accuracy across more than one category of prediction) is that you're not really rated based on how accurate your predictions are, you're rated based on how accurate your predictions are relative to the mean. Otherwise someone who predicted correctly 100% of the time the direction of the S&P500 the next day, and someone who predicted correctly 100% that the sun will come up, would have the same performance.
> But as things between Russia and Ukraine stand now, it is quite likely that there will be another few years of non-war followed by another bloody period of highly intensive combat operations.
That seems highly unlikely. Both Russia and Ukraine expressed a wish for some kind of final solution that will not end in another round of war slightly later on. Of course, they have absolutely incompatible visions of this solution. Ukraine *seems* to have bowed to Trump's demands for a quick ceasefire, but even if it did, in good faith, Russia did not. In his latest response to Trump, Putin expressly said that the only ceasefire that Russia will accept is one that leads to a lasting peace - which, in this case, means one where Ukraine basically surrenders.
So, I see 3 possible outcomes right now:
1) Trump pressures Ukraine into accepting Putin's terms. This will likely put an end to war, because Russia will try to ensure Ukraine will not be able to resume it any time soon. I'd give this outcome maybe 10% of probability, because Ukraine is not nearly ready to give up.
2) Trump puts a pressure on Russia to accept ceasefire that doesn't satisfy Putin's terms. This is the a very unlikely outcome, I feel like giving it 5% probability is too much. Trump has no new cards to play here.
3) Both sides will reject the proposed ceasefire and will duke it out for a year more. This is most likely outcome, I believe. Possibly there will not be an outright rejection, but both Ukraine and Russia will stall negotiations with conditions and counter-conditions, and Trump's diplomats will not find a way to break this deadlock and make any kind of progress until one side is ready to give up.
Russia believes that the West will use ceasefire to resupply Ukraine, and maybe even move foreign troops into the country under guise of peacekeeping. This belief is bolstered by recent comments from EU - it seems that European leaders openly intend to do just that. This is absolutely unacceptable to Russia, but any limitations which might make the ceasefire more palatable to Russia make it unpalatable to Ukraine.
Use third party peacekeepers?
Rope in India or China or the UN or something. I wouldn't trust EU/NATO "peacekeepers" either if I was Putin, but peacekeepers from a reasonably friendly country or group of countries I'd still think twice about attacking
That seems reasonable, but: it could be hard to convince India or China to take part. And I'm not sure EU will want Chinese troops so close to its borders, and Trump probably will have something to say about it, too (although, he might surprisingly agree to this idea, if he or his advisers are more shrewd than they let on: Chinese troops near EU might push EU's position on China closer to American one).
India is a better choice because of its long term neutrality, but this might be precisely why it wouldn't want to participate: in case one side decided to break ceasefire, Indian troops will kind of have to take a side.
Of course, accepting any kind of peacekeeping mission requires both sides to negotiate in good faith: if they plan on breaking ceasefire, they would want non-neutral peacekeepers (which is what Ukraine pushes for, currently).
Additionally, I'm not sure if peacekeepers have a good historical record. There are many instances where hostilities were resumed despite presence of a peacekeeping force, once the combatants recuperated enough or the world got distracted by something else. The main problem is that peacekeepers (at least UN-mandated peacekeepers) usually don't have a mandate to punish violations, as I understand it, and don't really have enough force presence to do so. In this particular case, this is complicated by the length of the front line: to have any chance of success, peacekeepers would have to be probably most numerous in the history of such missions. Basically, what would work is building a separate, peacekeeper-controlled state between Russia and Ukraine with a strong military. That's a nice idea for sci-fi, but probably wouldn't fly in real life.
Yep, I am also skeptical of an idea of peacekeepers; those are useful if they are obviously strong enough to smash warmongering parties if those try to get into the fight again. If peacekeepers are too weak, they are useless.
Former Yugoslavia after Dayton agreement is imho a good example where they worked. But there many examples of failure, like former Yugoslavia before Dayton, or I guess Lebanon (though I am not familiar with situation there except for the fact that peace there is obviously lacking).
And there will not be a peacekeeping force able to smash Russian and Ukrainian armies, if they decide that they would like to shoot at each other again.
> Both Russia and Ukraine expressed a wish for some kind of final solution that will not end in another round of war slightly later on.
How can Russia credibly commit to this, given what happened the last 2 times?
Russia's "final solution", I believe, should include crippling Ukraine so it can no longer be any kind of military power (without any working security guarantees from outside powers, of course), which will preclude the war from resuming, because there will be no reason for it - Ukraine will have to do what Russia says anyway. Russia doesn't actually wants Ukrainian land (well, maybe Odessa and land connection to Transnistria), only "controlling interest" in its governance.
Yes, this. The idea of taking Putin's statements at face value is just bizarre at this point.
Actually, Russia can't trust EU/America, too. Nobody can trust anybody else in the current situation, unless some novel solution could be found. Which is an additional reason why I think Trump's diplomacy will fail.
"I also think that if a ceasefire is established, it will became relatively quickly politically untenable for both Russia of Ukraine to keep their hundreds of thousands pre-2022-civilians-turned-soldiers in their armies, so demobilization of both sides becomes a default scenario after just a few weeks of non-combat. "
Why do you think this? I think you are underestimating the willingness of the population on both sides to tolerate additional costs and casualties, but this is just my personal impression and I would welcome any data you might have.
Recent Perun videos have convinced me that Ukraine is in a better long-term position than many (including myself) have assumed. If they can hold out another year, then they can probably hold out forever, and I don't think the Ukrainians themselves would consider that "defeat," nor would the Russians consider that "victory". Neither side is destined to win, I think, but neither side seems doomed to lose, either.
My impression is that pressure to let soldiers go home after fighting stops is pretty universal feature of historical experience
But not everyone gives in to such pressure. Observe the deployment of US military personnel to so many places where there is no war.
Also, there are other factors to consider. How important is the military as a source of income in Russia or Ukraine? Will there be economic pressures to keep them on the payroll regardless of the war, or disruption if large numbers of otherwise underemployed men are sent home?
If you’re interested in healthcare disaster preparedness, my old boss Phil Robinson also co-authored a book on this from a more managerial perspective. It might be getting a bit dated, but he wrote it after his experience working in a Texas hospital system through 9/11 and a series of natural disasters in the mid-2000s. Not sure how the book stacks up in the field today, but Phil could also write a book on remaining affable and human after several decades in a mind-bendingly stressful job, and I like signal-boosting people who manage to pull that off.
“Anticipate, Respond, Recover: Healthcare Leadership and Catastrophic Events”, Health Administration Press, 2011
What are folks' opinions on Nick Bostrum's book Anthropic Bias? I've been reading it in a reading group (of smart people who use Bayes' Rule professionally, but who aren't philosophers of probability) and find myself vacillating between thinking it is useful and useless.
Is there a consensus on it? Is there something we could read instead that does the same work but without the completely demented structural problems that plague Bostrum's book?
I've done a deep dive into anthropic reasoning couple of years ago and since then can't stop metaphorically smashing my head against the wall due to absurdityof the state of the discourse and how nearly noone, apparently understands the fundamentals of probability theory.
Both SSA and SIA - the two views that Bostrom talks about in his book - are confused and bad. Likewise, the whole conventional talk about "de se attitudes" and "indexical uncertainty". Essentially, absolute majority of people assume for no particular reason that different scenarios, such as:
1. N people, you among them, are put to sleep. Then the coin is tossed. On Heads one random person among them is awakened. On Tails all of them is awakened. You find yourself awakened. What is the probability that the coin is Heads?
and
2. You are put to sleep. Then the coin is tossed. On Heads you are awakened once. On Tails you are awakened N times and after each awakening your memory is erased so that you forget this awakening . You find yourself awakened. What is the probability that the coin is Heads?
have to work according to the same rules. And then they keep inventing complicated arguments which way it is in the form of "Well maybe my way does produce some silly results, but the other way is even more ridiculous", instead of noticing that the scenarios are, indeed, different.
If you are interested, I may recommend my own writing on the topic, where I'm trying to make sense in all of it, starting from here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HQFpRWGbJxjHvTjnw/anthropical-motte-and-bailey-in-two-versions-of-sleeping
Agree 100%. Honestly I can't understand why Bostrom is well-known, especially among rationalists. All he does is misunderstand probability theory. The Doomsday Argument may be the single dumbest philosophical paradox I've ever heard. Birth is not a random draw from a finite set, end of concept.
> Honestly I can't understand why Bostrom is well-known, especially among rationalists. All he does is misunderstand probability theory.
On the surface, he has written about superintelligence, so its an obvious intersection. But it goes deeper. I suspect there is a deep confusion about fundamentals of probability theory that rationalists are particularly vulnerable to, due to "politics" of frequentism and bayesianism. To grasp probability theory propper, one needs to understand the concept of "probability experiment". But it has *frequentists vibes* and so a lot of people prefere not to look in this direction.
On the other hand, Bostrom isn't really the one to blame. It all started decades ago with David Lewis and his ingenious idea to use probability theory in an invalid way, because, citation: "Why not? No Reason!" which somehow managed to became state of the art.
> The Doomsday Argument may be the single dumbest philosophical paradox I've ever heard
Oh, I'm sure that there is something even dumber. But yes, Doomsday Argument is quite silly.
You may enjoy my posts on it: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YgSKfAG2iY5Sxw7Xd/doomsday-argument-and-the-false-dilemma-of-anthropic
Excellent post, thanks for sharing. A pithy way I like to put it is that you can't correct for selection bias if there wasn't a selection: there's no observation bias if only one observation is possible. If humans popped out of the womb with numbers emblazoned on their heads then there might be something to talk about.
What's frustrating about it to me is that while the logical flaw is subtle the implications aren't: it implies that information can travel backwards in time. The reasonable reaction to hearing the DA for the first time is to say "I don't see exactly where this logic is wrong but I know information doesn't travel backwards in time so I'm going to think about it a bit," not autistically apply Bayes' Theorem like a poorly-programmed computer and then wonder how this impacts causality. It's psychologically not unlike paperclip maximizer arguments which I think goes some way towards explaining why both are present amongst rationalists. It's autistic mysticism. People used to look for meaning in randomness (reading tea leaves or throwing bones), rationalists look for it in the failures of their own reasoning process. To paraphrase Bergman, they make an idol of their non-sequitur and call it God.
Thanks! I would love to get to the to the point of thinking that some number of people are absurd--that was part of the motivation for beginning the reading group journey.
Currently I'm not there--my inclination is that anthropics is largely demonstrating that some aspects of reasoning are very sensitive to the precise details of how randomness and sampling work, and that if there is a "right" way to think about randomness, it isn't sufficiently obvious for humans to figure it out. But I look forward to being convinced otherwise by your posts!
I don't know what problems you refer to and my memories are faded on Bostrom's book, but I can recommend Joe Carlsmith and Radford M. Neal on the topic.
Thanks for the recs!
The core issue is that Bostrom seems to have had a road-to-Damascus moment where, previously he had been a rapid proponent of a thing called the Self Sampling Assumption (which is a ... method for using probability? epistemological justification for using probability? never quite clear), and then became an equally rabid opponent of it, and he decided, "meh, if I make a book by stapling together a bunch of papers from before and after I had this revelation, it's probably fine...." Arrested Development Narrator: It wasn't fine.
Any vegetarians here who do strength training? I'm trying to take nutrition a bit more seriously and would appreciate any advice people have in terms of compensating for not eating meat. For example, are there any meaningful differences between different types of protein powder? Is it worth it to take creatine? Is it important to take any other supplements?
If by vegetarian you mean that you still eat eggs and dairy, you shouldn't have any major problems? Perhaps supplement iron?
I don't know about bodybuilding, but vegetarian here - do check and probably supplement your B12.
I eat eggs and dairy sometimes (probably enough for vegans to get mad at me, lol) but not enough to actually replace the meat 1:1 in terms of nutrient content. Most meals that I have are vegan and the eggs and dairy are more of a once in awhile thing.
The tricky part for egg/milk vegetarians is that the standard bodybuilder diet recommendations, especially during a cut phase, tend to be low fat and high protein, with the balance of the calories made up of "clean" carbs (brown rice, sweet potatoes, etc). Eggs and dairy are normally too high-fat to be the main sources of protein in such a diet.
It isn't an insurmountable problem, since egg whites, skim milk, and nonfat yogurt and cheese are things. But the intersection of two qualitatively restrictive diets is going to be at least a bit harder than doing just one.
Also, you need a ton of eggs and dairy to get to bodybuilder diet levels of protein. 200g of protein is about 1.5 pounds of chicken for a meat eater, while a vegetarian would need to eat five dozen egg whites or drink 1.4 gallons of skim milk.
Andy Masley has a good post on this that may be of some use: https://open.substack.com/pub/andymasley/p/all-my-vegan-fitness-advice?r=7tcxp&utm_medium=ios
Thanks!
Not a veg but am big into hypertrophy training. Yes it is very worth it to take creatine. There are not really big differences between protein powder. I would recommend either Levels or Optimum nutrition but it can be somewhat hard to find a protein powder that perfectly suits your taste.
Thanks!
I am beginning to see a pro growth movement develop in Canada, something that i believe it is sorely needed. When discussing this with a few friends, we have struggled to figure out ways to impulse this movement forward.
I have personally been publicly sharing my thoughts online as much as I can. I also wrote to my newly elected Ontario Member of Provincial Parliament encouraging him to focus on this issue ASAP.
Any other ideas on how I can help impulse this movement even more?
https://www.ft.com/content/d4813838-66b2-4823-8361-11d467142fd2
The idea of a "pro-growth movement" reminds me of GK Chesterton's quote about how Americans would soon be arguing that it is not a sin to sneeze. We need a movement to convince people that economic growth is good?
Ezra Klein has started talking about a similar thing.
That article is behind a paywall. Can you provide a quick summary of it?
Here's the non-paywall version: https://archive.vn/WzSMT
The gist of the article is somewhat summarized in this paragraph:
"Simplifying its complex tax system, expediting planning processes, easing red tape for foreign direct investment and developing economic partnership mechanisms for indigenous populations, in tandem with internal trade reforms, would help businesses across the industrial supply chain tap into the nation’s vast energy and mineral resources."
Not advice, but an anecdote about the type of thing that is all too common in Canada: A friend owns a mining company, and had been prospecting for gold in Newfoundland. They lined up financing and a workforce and began the paperwork. The person in the government whose signature was needed to break ground went on Mat leave, and there was no one else who could signoff for 5 months. This was the same government that had been actively courting them to build a mine in the province.
If I were to give some advice, it would be to overhaul immigration and target it to developing their natural resources again. Canada was a nation built on immigrants moving to remote areas and utilizing the land. Now they just import masses to live in Toronto and drive scooters for Uber Eats.
I have a friend in the insurance industry who constantly complains about how insane state insurance regulators are like this (the worst are CA, WA, and NJ, but every state is annoying to varying degrees).
I agree with you, but I am not a politician. I am asking for advice on how me as a private citizen can help get the ball rolling on pretty much everything that article suggests.
Yeah, ok, that's exactly what Ezra Klein has been talking about, except in the US. Here's a link to his podcasts: https://www.youtube.com/@EzraKleinShow
And to his book "Abundance", where he and co-author Derek Thompson talk about new government policies that would help build things.
https://www.amazon.com/Abundance-Progress-Takes-Ezra-Klein/dp/1668023482
As for your role as an individual citizen, in the absence of an organization to join and contribute to, your responsibility is to inform people you know regarding the issue and the solutions you think might work. In other words, share and discuss works such as those I linked to above.
Get the conversation started, where ever you hang out.
I'm interested in people's opinions on what the next generation of political parties might look like (or even if a next generation is plausible any time soon). Do we carry on with the usual tribes or is there a meaningful shot at a whole new set of parties and actors?
Please interpret this for any country you wish, just make it clear.
I'm deeply curious about what will happen in China after Xi Jinping dies/retires (who is 71).
One of Deng Xiaoping's plans was to have a rotating leader of the CPP, which lasted through Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. It's not clear whether the CCP will return to rotational leadership or move towards another strongman. Xi has been in 12 years so far so he's clearly abnormal and more powerful than his predecessors. I'm also not sure what the CCP wants and whether they think they could even sustain rotating leadership.
Oh fun, my opinion. (Like it's worth anything :^). If there is not some major snafu then I expect JD Vance to become the head of the republicans, with a continued focus on the working class of the US. I have no idea what the dems are going to do. Remain the big business party? Or try a reverse Bill Clinton pivot and reclaim the working class? I hope they do something different.
It's time for Libertarians to step up..
There's been something of a schism among US libertarians (both big-L and small-L) since 2016. A lot of people who used to be libertarians have fully embraced MAGA, and many of them are still using the "libertarian" label while doing so. The libertarian movement contained a lot of right-wing populists who saw small government as a way to disempower "liberal elites", as well as paleoconservatives who were nativist and protectionist on ideological grounds, and Trump looks pretty good to these people.
Those of us for whom libertarianism means the fulfillment of classical liberal ideals of rule of law, personal autonomy, and free markets are a lot less compatible with MAGA.
Maybe the libertarians that embraced MAGA will endorse a libertarian candidate once Trump's term ends.
Despite the descriptions of MAGA as being the next fascism, it is proving in practice to be a return to paleo conservativism, the best Libertarians are going to get.
They got Ross Ulbricht pardoned! That's a pretty dramatic demonstration of the influence of the Libertarian Party, especially compared to before the Mises Caucus took over.
Libertarians are always the past wave of the future.
Germany has recently gone through some new political parties. Perhaps you can learn something from them?
I don't know that US Republicans and Democrats are going to be explicitly replaced by different parties, but I think there's been a massive shift when looking at alignment between income and voting patterns.
In 2004 Bush won voters from $200k+ income households 63-35. In 2024 Harris won that category 51-45. Now, that isn't a perfect comparison because of inflation (they made up 3% of the electorate in 2004 and 13% in 2024), but it's still quite drastic. Kerry won with voters from $50k & under households; so did Trump.
Will the populism of the Republican Party last after Trump? I don't know. But it's also worth pointing out that Trump in 2024 did much better than in 2016 (and better than Romney in 2012) with every single minority racial group. So I think the identification of Republicans as the party of whites and Democrats as the party of everyone else has also weakened significantly.
Ultimately, with FPTP voting there will almost always be two parties and they will almost always be competitive with each other--they'll shift left or right as the electorate does.
For the US, I would expect that once Trump leaves office they'll start actually nailing down their platform. I have to imagine that it would focus on tax cuts, spending cuts, anti-immigration, protectionism, and a moderate pro-life stance.
I think a smart political choice for them would be to lean into some of the electrical independence that you see in Georgia; basically it's code for more nuclear and renewables, but sold to the constituents as being for national defense strategic reasons. That would kind of pull the teeth out of some of the democratic green push, while not committing them to push hard against gas/oil or to subsidize green energy to the point where they feel it could destabilize the grid.
I think that Trump's move to release federal land for housing could work if he can use federal priority to sidestep basically all local ordinances. One would think that this would push democrats to NIMBYism out of opposition if he succeeds.
On general trends I would suggest that democrats will continue to be pro taxes, pro spending, pro immigration, now fully pivoted to being free trade, and who knows if they'll moderate being pro-choice. If republicans step left on renewables, hopefully the democrats won't step left too, but who knows.
I think that the Democrats have a very real opportunity to add a plank to their platform of something like "we're going to repeal a ton of federal powers and figure out how to restructure the legislature so that they can actually pass bills." I think that has a more appealing sound than "we're going to repeal the fillibuster to shove through our partisan ideas" and gives it a better framing of protecting democracy from a second Trump. I expect them to jump on the latter, but they might want a Democratic president to shove through partisan executive orders, so who knows if they'll do the former. I think it's up in the air whether the democrats pivot to protect judges more, or continue to try to weaken their protections.
It feels like the Republicans might do such lasting damage to our alliances that they become an isolationist party, and the Democrats push for rebuilding our alliances, but the Republicans tend to be pretty military-minded, so they might just throw that part out once Trump is out of office.
Those are my rambling thoughts on US parties
It isn't a stable equilibrium for one party to be pro-alliances and one party anti-alliances, especially if Trump succeeds in returning the federal executive to a spoils system. Alliances won't work if they're conditional on one party winning all the elections. Even if Republicans pivot back to being pro-alliances, I don't know if Trump will have blown too much of our credibility to make it workable.
A largely undiscussed aspect of all this is what the effect the Republican deficit will have. There are so many ways that Trump could trash the economy that this is being overlooked, but insofar as domestic taxes and spending is concerned, he's a classic "borrow and spend Republican" as he was in his first term. I think this is going to come back and bite them later.
I agree that Trump could definitely trash the economy, and it's not clear he won't, but both parties seem pretty pro-deficit. Republicans rack it up by cutting taxes, and democrats by raising spending. Trump just is extra-bad with his tendency to cut taxes and raise spending.
Haven't most recent Republican administrations also increased spending on net?
Yes, hence my label "Borrow and spend Republican".
According to the economics I learned, a national deficit doesn't have to be a problem, esp. if the economy is growing faster than the deficit. I don't know if we are in that zone anymore.
The Netherlands shows the way because of PR where you get pensioner, vegetarian and islamist/Erdoganist parties
I expect manosphere and explicitly antisemitic parties are unfortunately not that far off.
For the UK,it's extremely hard for new national political parties to get anywhere, because the First Past the Post voting system,like in the US. At present there is a possibility that one of the top two,the Conservative party,may cede its position out of sheer incompetence, even though the challenger ,"Reform",is largely composed of pub ranters. If this happens,it will be the first such transition since before world war II.
UKIP, Greens, SDP, Reform all became major national parties in the last 50 years, it is hard to actually form a government but all those parties have ended up with significant influence and MPs.
I expect the U.S. to stick with the same two parties we've had since 1860. But I also expect those parties to change, as they have done many times before. I don't have any idea what they'll change into, though.
Well, Trumpism was a major change already.
Sure, that's the most recent major change. The end of Trumpism will be another.
I doubt of the republicans are going back to free trade or libertarianism. The democrats are all awash.
Enthusiasm is always temporary.
Is anyone else finding the situation unfolding this weekend to be terrifying? The President assuming war powers, telling the courts that they can't question that decision, sending people to a hellish prison in El Salvador without due process, and defying court orders?
If he can declare at any time that the country is being invaded by anyone, and the courts have no authority to question his decisions, what's to stop him from sending any non-citizen to a prison in El Salvador where they would be completely outside the reach of US courts?
We went to Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is basically nothing.
I have lots of fears about the US but non related to any of the above.
We went to Iraq and Afghanistan with explicit Congressional approval (which meant no major questions requiring Judicial review). This is something very different.
I think most people who support this see the obvious problem: "There are criminals in the US, who know are criminals and know who they are, that are not US citizens. We can not deport these people under our current system."
If our current system just keeps them around, when (even to most liberals) the obvious answer is to deport actually violent immigrants (legal or illegal), then breaking the current rules can be reasonably seen as not really problem. If anything, many people see this and take it as evidence that our current system has atrophied, and we've ended up with rules that have counterintuitive results much worse than the original rule-makers could have possibly intended.
Obviously breaking the rules, and being given legitimacy to do so, is going to be abused, to a debatable degree, towards working against the good things that the rules were originally intended to protect, but where one falls on the spectrum from "breaking bad rules for good reason is good" to "breaking bad rules for good reasons gives legitimacy to breaking all rules for any reason" is going to be a largely personal decision, without much indisputable fact to guide where we should believe.
https://open.substack.com/pub/coffeeandcovid/p/the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1dvul1
Lawyer Jeff Childers covers this as his last story for today's newsletter, so you'll have to scroll all the way to at least ¾ down to find it (since the app won't allow me to just quote it here).
Basically, the deportation is being carried out through MULTIPLE authorities, put into place by a whole series of executive orders over the last two months, none of which have been challenged in court because they are SO firmly based upon Executive political authority as defined in the Constitution that no one even bothered to go for yet another flimsy TRO on ANY of it. The use of the Alien Act appears to have simply been bait to send dumb Dems scurrying to defend the same scumbags making cities unlivably unsafe & unaffordable for the 80%, who just want their streets back already.
Yes, the argument that the administration is making is that Trump can invoke the Alien Enemies Act at any time and the courts cannot challenge him. That should terrify you.
Because if that argument succeeds there would be absolutely nothing that would stop the following scenario:
1. A green card holder from Italy says something on social media that Trump dislikes
2. Trump declares that transnational crime from La Cosa Nostra constitutes an invasion of the United States.
3. ICE arrests this critic of Trump
4. Trump sends them to prison in El Salvador with no due process.
5. There is no way to get this person out of prison in El Salvdor
You can substitute in pretty much any other country, since transnational crime and terrorism exists pretty much everywhere.
If the Trump administration wins in court, then the courts cannot challenge 2 for the reasons you said, and they cannot challenge 3 or 4 because that would be interfering with the president's war powers, and because they are arguing that removing someone from the country is not an "irreparable harm" that would allow a TRO.
Why is this a terrible outcome for US citizens? I don't view green card holders as representing a constituency whose opinion is important to the public discourse. As far as I'm concerned they should keep their noses out of politics. They're guests here and should behave accordingly.
In no way does this give the President some magic bullet that allows him to squash dissent with an iron fist. There are 300+ million citizens that can still say whatever they want. All this does is lower the political influence non-citizens have. I view that as a good thing.
The bigger issue is Trump playing chicken with the judiciary. I think it's good to test constitutional limits every once in a while, but if he sets a precedent of the executive flat-out ignoring the judiciary then that's obviously no bueno for stability. But of course that's a 2-way street and judges need to understand the stakes here. They have a very proscribed constitutional role and this isn't a President who's going to cave for the greater good. It's time for a little judicial restraint. The Left has been abusing the commons of political norms for quite a while. If the judiciary doesn't allow Trump some leeway in bending it back then it risks systemic collapse.
Still just out here tilting at these windmills- I suppose it keeps you off the streets & out of trouble 😂
If you aren't a green card holder or other non-citizen, why would any of this be terrifying?
It sets a precedent that abuse of power at this level can happen, and normalizes it in the eyes of the public.
Imagine if things like this slowly become more common over the next 20 years. This stop beings the exception and becomes more or less normal, just a thing the president can do. People still get angry about it but not that much. Now, the line's been moved, and worse things can be done that weren't feasible before.
Of the many precedents Trump sets for abuse of power, this one doesn't rank in my top ten (it's probably not even illegal). If we want to fight Trump abuses of power we should focus on areas like tariffs and outright corruption, which are a lot more blatant and cause clear direct harm.
If this became normalized, I would expect a lot of immigrants and green card holders to no longer go to the US because they would not want to put up with the risk of this happening. And this would be a good thing overall because the US would have less immigrants and green card holders.
I'm not talking about the effects on green card holders. I'm talkinf about the idea that illegitimate uses of power may become more and more normal, which may lead to an eventual use of presidential power against something that you value.
Under a certain view of legal theory, due process isn't provided to rapists because we like them, but because we want ourselves to have it if someone makes an attack on us. Same idea applies here. If immigrants aren't granted due process, then what happens when 20 years in the future the president in charge wants to do something to you?
> And this would be a good thing overall because the US would have less immigrants and green card holders.
discussing with people like blank (and anomie which may or may not be the same person) is, interesting, ig, because you are trying to approach them by talking about certain collective principles, but they have a basically solipsistic view of the world and how they should act in it.
Society would probably fall apart in a year if every body suddenly started thinking like him, but he gets by because the rest of society by and large has cared at least somewhat about pesky things like coordination and negative externalities.
I get your sentiment. Rest assured, you americans and your silly political discussions are just opportunities for practicing my English! I don't take these discussions very seriously, so I'm not worried about their effectiveness at changing minds.
If presidential action is aimed directly at me, I can take solace in knowing that there are far less loopholes for depriving citizens of due process that exist than there are for aliens.
I also see strong executive power as a necessary check on legislative & administrative power, which goes against me and my interests every single day without reprieve.
>fewer loopholes
I don't think this is much of an assurance in a world where abusing loopholes to go against individual rights has been normalized, and the needle has been moved towards doing it more often.
Losing rights doesn't feel like a threat until it is actually happening in the present. I think you should account for that and take it as a potential threat, even if it doesn't feel threatening right now.
You're probably familiar with the following poem.
>First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
> Because I was not a socialist.
>Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
> Because I was not a trade unionist.
>Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
> Because I was not a Jew.
>Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Pasting it here doesn't add much to my argument, but I just think it's a neat poem lol :)
In practice, I have consistently found that most threats to my rights and my general welfare as a citizen come from people who have memorized that poem and who compare any possible situation to Nazi Germany and only Nazi Germany.
I'm not trying to equate any present situation to Nazi Germany (at least, not consciously). I just thought the poem made my point, but more concisely.
If you thought it detracted from my point, I apologize! I should've guessed it might've had that effect.
Fewer loopholes.
Setting aside the fact that I can care about other people that I don't know, and setting aside the fact that my industry is heavily dependent on immigrants and that immigrants make up much of my social circle.
Why should we believe it will stop with non-citizens? The government is already trying to end birthright citizenship, and they are already talking about de-naturalizing citizens. It's easy to imagine a road where they simply strip people of their citizenship.
In the 1930s, Romania decided to force Jews to provide their birth records to maintain their citizenship. Many couldn't because the changing borders and general chaos of WW1 had made it impossible to get birth records. So hundreds of thousands of Romanian Jewish citizens lost their citizenship and then eventually were murdered.
Once you discard judicial review, due process, and equal protection under the law, very bad things can happen. Historically they start with unsympathetic characters - refugees, criminals, etc but once they have the power they don't end there.
This is a rather extreme version of the slippery slope argument, like saying "if we legalize building a duplex here we'll look like Hong Kong in five years". Sometimes those things happen (Hong Kong exists), but they require a lot of circumstances and on the margin we really should be making deporting or imprisoning criminals easier (as evidences by how no one really has object-level arguments against any of the deportations discussed).
The current government is using existing legal avenues and loopholes as much as possible rather than pure ruling by fiat. Ending birthright citizenship and attacking green card holders still only targets those who entered the country recently. So, unsympathetic characters.
Doesn’t ending birthright citizenship mean targeting people who have been citizens of the country for their entire life, and inside the country for their entire life, basically by definition? You can’t claim that someone born here is a recent immigrant.
I think you are arguing with a troll. But also, IIUC, the order ending birthright citizenship is not retroactive, so it does not strip citizenship from anyone who previously held it, it `merely' says that some babies born on US soil after date [x] will not be considered citizens (this might make them stateless, or not, depending on the policies of the countries of their parents). If I have misunderstood and the order is in fact retroactive, then can you link me to evidence of that?
That actually sounds like what I heard about the order, now that you mention it. It's annoying that everything having to do with Trump very quickly becomes so loud that it's hard to remember what is actually being done by any of it, and what is the rhetoric.
It just removes automatic citizenship from applying when another country has a jurisdictional claim (ie, parent is their citizen)
‘Another country has a jurisdictional claim’ is a weird qualifier because nothing stops a country from claiming jurisdiction over non resident non citizens, and indeed there are countries that make such claims. To take a concrete example, I believe recent British hate speech legislation claimed worldwide jurisdiction, regardless of whether the `hate speaker' was a British subject, or had ever set foot on British soil. For that matter, the peoples republic of Examplistan could claim it had jurisdiction over Magdalene and all her descendants until the end of time. Claiming is easy. Enforcement is going to be a challenge though.
IIRC the EO said henceforth babies born in the US for whom neither parent was a citizen or LPR would not qualify for citizenship, but the henceforth was important (ie it was not retroactive). Stripping citizenship is qualitatively different to refusing to grant it. Also babies born to e.g. one foreign and one US citizen parent would be citizens, regardless of the claims of the foreign parents country (or indeed the claims of Exampleistan, to which neither parent had ever had any connection).
ETA: Clarifications.
Don't be thick. Claiming any jurisdiction over another nation's citizens who are not physically in their jurisdiction is not at all the same thing as recognizing the jurisdiction of a nation over their own citizens when they are physically inside our nation. You can read the actual record of the debate for passing the Amendment; it is absolutely clear that they did not intend for citizenship to apply to persons born inside the US to CITIZENS of other nations.
I clarified to the other poster by saying it would affect historically recent immigrants.
Apparently we're just trolling because they disagree with the content of our comments. The recently revealed massive worldwide astroturfing of 8% radical progressive opinion notwithstanding, you & I must be the actual trolls here 😂😂😂
People who are born as US citizens and have lived their entire life in the country are not “historically recent immigrants” in any sense of the word. Maybe you don’t care about them and you are thinking that revoking a person’s citizenship only affects their parents?
They are historically recent, because a bunch of them started flooding in after the Hart Cellar act was passed. Although it also remains to be seen if any actions against birthright citizenship will have a cutoff date.
I don’t understand what you are saying. Are you saying that US citizens who were born inside the country started arriving recently? What does that mean? They were born here, they *never* arrived! Unless you count birth as arrival?
No, ending birthright citizenship or attacking green card holders means people of any age who have been in the United States for any length of time. If the government wins on birthright citizenship there's no reason they couldn't try to strip the citizenship of someone who was born in the United States 50 years ago. Similarly, if they're de-naturalizing people they are by definition going after people who have lived in the United States for many years, because it takes many years to become naturalized.
And the issue is that they are starting to rule by fiat. A judge gave them an order, they ignored it.
And I would argue that they aren't using "existing legal avenues" so much as they are using existing laws as a fig leaf. The Alien Enemies Act clearly was not intended to include criminal gangs. They are breaking the law and trying to get away with it by arguing that the courts cannot review their decisions.
If they were ruling by fiat there would be no reason to invoke the Alien and Sedition Acts in the first place. The rule would just be, 'If you insult the Great State of Israel, bye bye'
"If the government wins on birthright citizenship there's no reason they couldn't try to strip the citizenship of someone who was born in the United States 50 years ago."
I will clarify: recently in historical terms. So there will be a bunch of Hart Cellar immigrants who may have to worry.
"The Alien Enemies Act clearly was not intended to include criminal gangs."
It's been used for cases of libel. Why not gangs?
Who actually benefits from all the campus chaos? Not Palestine. So whose interests are being served by this op? Probably the same guy who got caught handing suitcases of cash over to Hamas: Netanyahu. How do these people not see how MI6 & the Five Eyes are on side with Mossad, AIPAC, etc???
You're mistaken on the facts. The Alien Enemies Act was one of four separate laws called the Alien and Sedition Acts. Three of those four laws are defunct. When you say it was used for causes of libel, you are referring to a different one of those laws, the Sedition Act, which has been defunct for centuries. The Alien Enemies Act has only been invoked three times: during the War of 1812, WW1, and WW2. The text plainly refers to military incursions by foreign countries.
Also:
> The rule would just be, 'If you insult the Great State of Israel, bye bye'
This is happening now. See the case of the Indian Columbia student who left the country under threat and claims that she did not attend any protests but only posted on social media and signed some letters critical of US policy on Israel.
If you think that a person who was born in another country but has been a citizen for 50 years is less of an American than a person who was born here then our values are so different that I see no point in continuing to talk to you.
"If you think that a person who was born in another country but has been a citizen for 50 years is less of an American than a person who was born here"
How could it be otherwise? People who move carry with them different presumptions, baggage, histories. The people weaponizing the law right now are themselves a bunch of once immigrants. Why are they so heavy handed about using the law and loopholes to fight antisemitism? Years and years of Jewish immigration. Lol.
People start asking themselves what your abstract principles are good for when they simultaneously allow several millions of illegals into the country and disallow the deportation of a small number of criminals among those millions
These abstract principles aren’t ones about keeping other people out. They’re about ensuring that you have the right to stay in, even if the government accuses you of being an international terrorist with false documents.
They become relevant to the issue when they're invoked to prevent the removal of illegals from the country to which they illegally migrated
Nobody is saying they cannot deport these people, they are saying that they need to follow due process. Also, without any due process, there is no way to know if these are actually criminals or just random people who were picked up by ICE for having tattoos, for instance, ICE decided that this one gay man who worked in the arts in Venezuela was a gang member based on his tattoos: https://bsky.app/profile/l-toczylowski.bsky.social/post/3lkhpf77fz22a
And it is absolutely not a matter of "abstract principles" when real human beings are being sent to concentration camps with no due process.
I'll clarify. Dogmatic adherence to abstract principles has created a system in which several millions of illegals are de facto allowed to enter and remain in the country. Eg, your stance:
>Nobody is saying they cannot deport these people, they are saying that they need to follow due process
Results in a system where millions of people can walk across the border (or overstay a visa they never intended on following the terms of) and the problem can never be solved because the process required to undo a relatively simple action (walking across the border) is far longer and more expensive
As an aside, there's no reason to take the word of your example's legal counsel as fact. I'm more than familiar with the perfidiousness of immigration lawyers representing asylum applicants, especially those who try to rally the public in favor of their client's case
The government is using multiple executive authorities to carry out these deportations, only ONE of which was challenged in court, rendering the TRO toothless. Here is a very helpful explanation of what really happened from an actual lawyer (& then I'll summarize):
https://open.substack.com/pub/coffeeandcovid/p/the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1dvul1
Lawyer Jeff Childers covers this as his last story for today's newsletter (scroll at least ¾ down).
Basically, the deportation is being carried out through MULTIPLE authorities, put into place by a whole series of executive orders over the last two months, none of which have been challenged in court because they are SO firmly based upon Executive political authority as defined in the Constitution that no one even bothered to go for yet another flimsy TRO on ANY of it. The use of the Alien Act appears to have simply been bait to send dumb Dems scurrying to defend the same scumbags making cities unlivably unsafe & unaffordable for the 80%, who just want their streets back already.
The lawyer is an idiot. The Trump admin didn't start ignoring due process until the proclamation was issued, because the Alien Enemies Act grants the admin the ability to deport "alien enemies" without hearings. The judge blocked that proclamation immediately in his TRO and ordered that the deported immigrants be returned - which the Trump admin acknowledges in their motion to dismiss the case, but argues that verbal orders don't carry the same weight as written orders, which will probably get them charged with contempt of court. Their invocation of the state secrets doctrine will also fail because videos of the deported migrants landing in El Salvador were broadcasted by the White House social media pages, among other explicit advertisements of the deportation.
I'm sure you do think a lawyer who successfully defended the civil rights of people facing employment termination over refusing an experimental pharmaceutical is an idiot. But his clients & the plaintiffs who lost in court know better.
Anyway, Trump just hinted that these deportations aren't relying on the AEA after all 😂
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/21/politics/trump-signature-alien-enemies-act-proclamation/index.html
Go read all 5 EOs the lawyer cites & you can see exactly how those are underpinning these deportations. The AEA declaration is a target to draw fire & ultimately confirm that National Security is FIRMLY in the sole purview of the Executive. There are multiple previous decisions confirming that actions taken under AEA are not subject to judicial review. So the order itself is without authority & could be considered an attempt to obstruct rightful Executive authority.
>successfully defended the civil rights of people facing employment termination
This is the description of him you chose - and it fails to establish any relevant expertise he would have in terms of immigration cases. Whereas Boasberg was the chief judge of the Alien Terrorist Removal Court for 5 years.
>Trump just hinted that these deportations aren't relying on the AEA
Trump did not deliver any remarks during the hearings, who cares? You are seriously lost due to your lawyer friend. The immigrants that were deported were done so without due process - which is only permittable under the AEA. That's why the judge issued the TRO and ordered anybody on flights headed to El Salvador to turn around.
>Go read all 5 EOs the lawyer cites & you can see exactly how those are underpinning these deportations
I have read every EO Trump put out. The AEA invocation was done via a Proclamation, not an EO.
>The AEA declaration is a target to draw fire & ultimately confirm that National Security is FIRMLY in the sole purview of the Executive. There are multiple previous decisions confirming that actions taken under AEA are not subject to judicial review.
The judge blocked the Proclamation because it can only be invoked when Congress declares war - something laid out in the Constitution as Congress's job. The Executive does not have the authority to use a Proclamation to claim that the country is at war and being invaded. Especially when the putative invaders are foreign gangs - there is no historical precedence and it wasn't the intentions of Congress in 1798 (who fought in various actual wars) for the act to ever be used as defense against... the presence of foreign gangs in the country.
>So the order itself is without authority & could be considered an attempt to obstruct rightful Executive authority.
There's no such thing as a judge lacking authority. Your lawyer friend has misled you not just about the basic details of this case, but also of basic civics. Federal court orders MUST be followed otherwise they're merely advisory and would constitute no check on any other branch's powers. There is no "Does the judge have jurisdiction?" question that gets asked - and if you are asking yourself this, you might expect contempt charges soon and the invocation of the US Marshals.
Also - TROs are only issued when there is risk of irreparable harm and when the case is highly likely to succeed on the merits. Like the USAID case the Trump admin appealed up to the Supreme Court during the TRO period - they will lose this one, too.
> As an aside, there's no reason to take the word of your example's legal counsel as fact. I'm more than familiar with the perfidiousness of immigration lawyers representing asylum applicants, especially those who try to rally the public in favor of their client's case
The issue is that without any due process, there is no way to know one way or the other. I am more than familiar with the perfidiousness of ICE. But unlike an immigration lawyer, ICE can send you to a concentration camp in a country you've never been to without any hope of recourse.
What exactly are your limits here? If you're OK with ICE grabbing someone off the street and sending them to a prison in El Salvador without any due process, what aren't you OK with? Can ICE just summarily shoot them? And why limit it to just immigration issues? It's much "longer and more expensive" to convict someone of a crime than to it is to commit the crime. So should we just eliminate due process in all criminal cases as well?
And why do you think that due process is an "abstract principle"? Police wrongly arrest people all the time. The innocence project alone has overturned hundreds of convictions based on DNA evidence, and that's AFTER the person was tried and convicted. If you don't bother with any due process then the number of people wrongly imprisoned will be massive.
>And why do you think that due process is an "abstract principle"?
Because it is. You're conflating the outcomes resulting in part due to the principle with the principle itself. Moreover, you're only taking into account the positive outcomes that result from the principle, or rather the negative outcomes that it prevents
It's pointless to litigate every this and that outcome, hypothetical and real, so suffice it to say that, in my opinion:
1) the application of due process is a spectrum
2) the intensity of its application should vary according to what it's being applied to
3) wrt illegal migration, every migrant-receiving country is applying too much due process to illegal migration such that it makes illegal migration impossible to solve
4) illegal migration isn't solved until as close to 0 illegal migrants as possible remain in the country; a reduction of rates to 0 doesn't cut it
>Can ICE just summarily shoot them?
That has less to do with due process than choosing the appropriate punishment. The appropriate punishment to illegal immigration, in my opinion, is to reverse illegal immigration. Ergo, it would be to send illegal immigrants back to their home countries, ideally with them paying the cost of their return trip
The president is nominally supposed to control the military of the USA. The War Powers Act restricting him always set on very questionable legal ground.
"what's to stop him from sending any non-citizen to a prison in El Salvador where they would be completely outside the reach of US courts?"
Not very much, because non citizens are not citizens and do not have the full rights of a citizen of the US.
President can't just do whatever he wants with the military - the constitution says that Congress can write rules for regulating the armed forces.
The government is using MULTIPLE authorities to carry out these deportations, only ONE of which was challenged in court, rendering the TRO toothless. Here is a link to a very helpful explanation of what really happened (scroll at least ¾ to the end) from an actual lawyer, Jeff Childers; then I'll summarize):
https://open.substack.com/pub/coffeeandcovid/p/the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1dvul1
These deportations are being carried out through SEVERAL authorities, put into place by a whole series of executive orders over the last two months, none of which have been challenged in court because they are SO firmly based upon Executive political authority, as defined in the Constitution, that no one ever bothered to even try to go for yet another flimsy TRO on ANY of it. The use of the Alien Act appears to have simply been bait to send dumb Dems scurrying to defend the same scumbags making cities unlivably unsafe & unaffordable for the 80%, who just want their streets back already.
That substack looks pretty garbage, both just visually, and from scrolling through I saw a reference to the 2020 election allegedly being stolen, so I am not going to take anything it says all that seriously.
But also - if there was another authority then they have to actually cite it. They can't just say "we have the authority, trust us bro". Nor do previous EOs necessarily help, there has to be an actual law it's based on. The president can't sign an EO proclaiming the right to do whatever he wants, no matter how dressed up in legalese, and expect judges to take it seriously.
I wish I could say I voted for Trump all three times, but I'm a lifelong degenerate libertine living far from any kind of conservative or traditional lifestyle. I had TDS before it was a thing, scaring poor normies all over Facebook with luridly graphic descriptions of what I thought Trump would do to their wives & children for just one more ounce of gold with which to guild his gaudy bathroom. And then I researched the actual evidence to show my conservative family members they were supporting a criminal & a sexual predator. But instead I found all kinds of exculpatory information & was forced to consider that maybe I was wrong about Trump; maybe he wasn't yet another member of the same controlled demolition operation like the Bushes, Clintons, Obama's, etc. So I find your selfish close-mindedness to even *hearing* ideas you currently reject not only myopically stupid, but disturbingly dangerous. You have radicalized yourself about your fellow American citizens. Our elections have been & still are fake & ghey, so you better get used to hearing about it. Silo yourself away from hearing the scary facts if you want to, but we, as a nation, have been living with all kinds of unconstitutional "norms" that a rapidly increasing majority of the country is simply not going to abide anymore. I suppose it is not your fault that school didn't teach you proper civics, but the Executive Branch actually does have a handful absolute authorities. You can either join reality & start educating yourself, or go cry more.
And those rules can overstep Congress's stated authority for regulating the armed forces when it overlaps with the authority the Executive branch is supposed to hold.
It's not their fault they don't know that the Executive Branch actually has the authority to protect & defend the nation's borders because our schools replaced civics with "social studies" & this power has been fully organized partially abdicated by every sitting President in their lifetimes.
But it's time for them to get educated or go cry more along with the rest of their rapidly decreasing cohort.
No they can't. The constitution is clear, Congress has this power. Nothing in the constitution gives the president the authority to command the military in ways that contradict Congress's rules.
Though not directly related to the command of the military, in 1867, Congress passed a law that restricted the ability of the President to fire Cabinet members. SCOTUS overturned this law as unconstitutional in 1926. I see no reason why the War Powers Act could not meet a similar fate.
Nothing in the constitution says directly whether the president can fire cabinet members without cause, or not. Whereas in this case Congress's ability to regulate the armed forces is explicitly stated.
The War Powers Act specifically isn't the point ... Congress could pass a law saying "no military assets can be used to do deportations". Similar things exist, like the Posse Comitatus act.
"Whereas in this case Congress's ability to regulate the armed forces is explicitly stated."
With limits to declaring war and maintaining the army itself. Not to general control of the armed forces.
"The Congress shall have Power ... To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;"
"The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States..."
... OK, and like I said, "The Congress shall have Power ... To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;"
The president gets to command the military, Congress gets to set regulations for what the military can do. The former doesn't negate the latter.
The Supreme Court has ruled that non-citizens have due process rights (there are some areas where that does not apply though, for instance around the border or ports of entry)
Can you Steelman the pro-Trump case?
If you haven't tried it is a problem for a rational debate on the issue.
Here is a link to a very helpful explanation of why the TRO is utterly toothless (scroll at least ¾ to the end) from an actual lawyer, Jeff Childers; then I'll summarize):
https://open.substack.com/pub/coffeeandcovid/p/the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1dvul1
These deportations are being carried out through SEVERAL authorities, put into place by a whole series of executive orders over the last two months, none of which have been challenged in court because they are firmly based upon Executive political authority, as defined in the Constitution, that no one ever bothered to even try to go for yet another flimsy TRO on ANY of it. The use of the Alien Act appears to have simply been bait to send dumb Dems scurrying to defend the same scumbags making cities unlivably unsafe & unaffordable for the 80%, who just want their streets back already.
Honest question, because I'm not a lawyer -- has there been an opportunity to challenge the EOs cited in the piece before now? I realize they were issued weeks ago, but have they previously been used to justify any actions that could be challenged in court? Can someone just challenge an EO before it's been acted on?
Can you copy and paste this one more time? I would like to read it again.
A rational debate requires that both sides are acting in good faith. That is not what's happening ("they're eating the cats and dogs")
That is why you Steelman rather than accepting the other side's bad faith arguments.
+1. To put it another way: if your starting premise is that the other side is acting in bad faith, you've already lost. You're already committing yourself to conflict theory and just polling for support from the mob by that point.
There's a rationalist forum adjacent to ACX, full of people who will do most of the work of a steelman for the other side if you're looking for perspective. Interested?
I totally get the rationale behind steelmanning and I do it myself. But it just isn't appropriate in every last situation. In some cases, steel manning is tantamount to living in a fantasy world.
How do you propose to distinguish cases where steelmanning is appropriate from cases where it isn't, and will that proposal look sufficiently distinct from "it's appropriate when my ideology tolerates it" to most people who don't share your ideology?
I don't propose any single method for that distinguishment. It's a complicated process requiring a variety of methods. Yes, I am confident that these methods are distinct from “it's appropriate when my ideology tolerates it,” and they will appear distinct to others who read in good faith.
Would you accept "it's a complicated process requiring a variety of methods; I'm confident it's impartial; I'm confident you're agree if you're reading in good faith" from someone who doesn't share your ideology?
I would never claim impartiality and I pity those who do. (Not because impartiality is a bad thing or something we shouldn't strive for, but because it's so inaccessible. Anyone claiming to have ACHIEVED impartiality is almost certainly deluding themselves).
Your comments here suggest that while you believe impartiality is worth striving for, you have no inclination to strive for it when trying to decide whether to steelman an argument. Instead, your rule for deciding to steelman is "complicated", and unspecified to outside observers, and is "distinct" from partisan ideology - according to you.
Are you aware that a partisan can easily claim the exact same thing?
I know what their argument is. They have promised to deport millions of people. They believe that they have a mandate from the voters to do this, and they believe (or at least purport to believe) that these people pose a unique threat. They understand that the immigration courts and the lack of cooperation from unfriendly countries like Venezuela create logistical obstacles to fulfilling that promise. Therefore, they've decided that they should simply bypass these obstacles by assuming war powers so that they can summarily deport people without having to go through the immigration courts. They've also decided that when a person's country of origin won't accept them back, or might want to negotiate over taking them back, they can simply bypass this obstacle by shipping that person to a third country. This also enables them to avoid the costs, negative attention, and potential for legal challenge involved in imprisoning these people in the United States (plus it achieves their goal of deporting millions of people).
It's not clear to me what the point of rational discourse is with someone who has decided that they will use whatever means are at their disposal to achieve their ends, regardless of legality, morality, or norms. "Rational" argument has no effect on them because they aren't ultimately interested in facts or truth, they are only interested in power. As long as they think they can get away with it, such a person will simply lie, threaten, and ultimately use physical force to get what they want.
You clearly have no idea! They aren't actually relying the Alien Act at all!!! But you won't even examine the "other side" (which btw, includes an increasing majority of your fellow citizens), so now you're just out here tilting at windmills.
Why I'm even bothering to attempt to save you from your own blind insanity is anyone's guess, because anyone still without a clue at this very late hour is likely beyond the pale at this point. And for anyone still unable to recognize the very palpable spiritual layer to the ongoing civilizational struggle, I can only say that this fight is truly for all human souls. There is a massive industry of rape, torture, murder, & every other depth of depravity unimaginable to the average human beings in which we as taxpayers have been complicit. This finally CAN be ended because most humans are now aware, so we MUST take action to END this evil.
Excuse me? First of all, it's called the Alien Enemies Act, not the Alien Act. Second of all, I have read all of the court filings, and yes, they are relying on it.
Well EXCUSE ME for abbreviating 🙄
But you are still technically not correct:
The Alien Friends Act gives the president the power to deport any non-citizen considered dangerous, while the Alien Enemies Act allows the deportation of citizens from enemy countries during wartime.
Both are part of an entire series of 4 laws passed in 1798 referred to as the Alien & Sedition Acts.
It's amazing to see people have such strong opinions on things they know absolutely nothing about. Yes, there were four laws passed in the Adams administration that are collectively known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. But three of those four laws have been defunct since the 19th century, including the Alien Friends Act that you mentioned. The Alien Friends Act does not give the President the power to do anything, because it expired two centuries ago. The law that the administration is relying on is the Alien Enemies Act. The entire argument that they are making is that this Venezuelan criminal organization is "invading" the United States and that therefore they can imprison and deport anyone they purport is a member of that organization. That is a big part of the reason this is all so terrifying - because clearly we are NOT at war, they are invoking wartime powers and then claiming that the court has no power to review their decisions.
You are welcome to read Trump's proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act or any of the government's court filings. I have linked to some of them elsewhere.
I'm not anyone's secretary, so I'm not bothering with the finer details of things like the Alien and Sedition Acts (only one of which still remains). I was just defining them to illustrate why Trump referencing the Alien Enemies Act was a bit of bait that you are STILL biting! 🤣 🤣 🤣
I'm not actually here to make any argument- the worm has already turned, so there's just no need convince the stragglers. If you don't get it yet, there's simply no help for you. At this point, I'm just here make fun of you people.
It's not hard to figure out the morality and motivation the administration has. The administration and supporters see their methods as means of last resort, because the incumbent system has delayed and fought back with lawsuits rather than doing anything to give way or compromise on immigration. A compromise where protestive immigrants were paid some sum to pack their bags and leave, with a fence going up behind them, would be nicer. But who on the side of the democrats or the old GOP would be willing to make that happen?
Yes, but I believed the comment above was talking specifically about that issue.
> if your starting premise is that the other side is acting in bad faith, you've already lost
Not the person you replied to, but - the side that has a "starting premise" around good faith/bad faith is the steelmanning people.
It's not that I have a "starting premise" that trump is acting in bad faith. It's that the "steelmanners" have a starting premise that he's acting in *good* faith. A premise that IMO is unwarranted.
And in this case good/bad faith is a key point. The main issue with Trump invoking wartime powers to deport people arbitrarily is that we are not, in fact, at war, and that he is not, in fact, limiting deportations to criminals. I.e. that he's acting in bad faith.
You're pointing out Trump's actions, singling out one unfavorable explanation out of multiple possible, and then claiming that that is the only explanation.
This is the precise opposite of steelmanning.
I never said I was steelmanning. In fact I think in many cases it's pointless, like this one. Whether trump is acting in good faith is of course an important question, and you won't get closer to the truth by arguing from a point of view of assuming good faith.
And I should add ... when I claim that he isn't limiting deportations to criminals, it isn't based on nothing. I believe they've now admitted in court filings that most of the people they deported on the flights at issue didn't have criminal records.
Put differently, I'm not *assuming* bad faith, bad faith is a conclusion based on the evidence. But "steelmanning" usually involves assuming *good* faith, which here is unwarranted. Someone might want to do it anyway as an intellectual exercise about some policy in the abstract, which is fine, but doing so isn't likely to lead to a correct conclusion where the question isn't limited to the abstract policy issue.
Then you get the same question I submitted to Chance: how do you propose to distinguish cases where steelmanning is appropriate from cases where it isn't, and will that proposal look sufficiently distinct from "it's appropriate when my ideology tolerates it" to most people who don't share your ideology?
One reason to assume good faith is to see if that assumption can carry you to an explanation of the actions you observe that doesn't begin with the premise that the person performing those actions is trying to be bad.
In this case, you're inferring that Trump is bad (which is not the same as acting in bad faith) from that fact that the observed actions could be explained that way. But you haven't shown that that is the only possible explanation. The usual way to do that is to start by assuming good faith - but you decide a priori that it wasn't appropriate, presumably because you've argued that Trump is bad. You're assuming your conclusion.
> how do you propose to distinguish cases where steelmanning is appropriate from cases where it isn't, and will that proposal look sufficiently distinct from "it's appropriate when my ideology tolerates it" to most people who don't share your ideology?
It's not a question of whether a position is "tolerable given my ideology" or something. It's a question of what type of question you're asking and for whom you are assuming good faith.
You can assume good faith on the part of a hypothetical person arguing a particular position (though you have to be willing to eventually conclude "there's no reasonable good-faith defense of that position"), but that's different from assuming good faith on the part of an actual real-life person.
I.e. you wanna steelman anti-gay-marriage and assume good faith on a hypothetical opponent go ahead, but that's different from steelmanning "Bush's opposition to gay marriage", or "Obama's opposition to gay marriage" when we have evidence both of them were acting in bad faith.
Here the question isn't some abstract anti-immigrant position from a hypothetical president, but a real life action from trump specifically, and about him and his actions we have evidence it's bad faith.
> In this case, you're inferring that Trump is bad (which is not the same as acting in bad faith) from that fact that the observed actions could be explained that way.
I am not doing this.
> But you haven't shown that that is the only possible explanation
I also don't have to show that something is the only possible explanation in order to be probably right. I'm in California, it's shaking - I'm assuming it's an earthquake, I don't have to "show" that it isn't shockwaves from the explosions from an underway alien invasion.
It doesn't matter whether someone is hypothetical or real, for the purpose of not assuming bad faith. You're supposed to not assume it either way, and especially not if you then want to prove it.
I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but you're saying you're not inferring Trump is bad from an assumption that he his, while still doing it. At best, you're not aware you're doing it, or you're not explaining your reasoning process well enough to show, but if you genuinely weren't trying to beg the question, it's very unlikely that you would write that you don't have to bother with the logical hygiene when you're "probably right".
He is exploiting loopholes, that isn't optimum but it would be an extremely rigid moral system which refuses to utilise loopholes.
Whatever you think about the idea of "exploiting loopholes" in the abstract, doesn't change what I said.
Actually, remove the "non-citizen" limitation and the question still stands. The only difference between a citizen and a non-citizen is... what exactly? A piece of paper? Many Americans don't even have a passport, the only evidence of their citizenship being a birth certificate. Say they grab a John Smith from Springfield, put him on a plane and land him in Bukele's chamber of horrors. What's to stop them? By the time a judge says "Stop", it's "Oopsie, too late", as our President Bukele said.
The idea that the only difference between a citizen and a non-citizen is a piece of paper is an extreme position with little public support and using it in rhetoric reduces your argument's appeal to the average voter or commenter.
I think what he's getting at is, how much protection does your citizenship actually provide, given how the process is playing out in real life?
Suppose ICE arrests you - maybe by mistake, maybe because they saw you tweeted mean things about Elon Musk or whatever. They're convinced you're not a citizen, and don't listen to your protests to the contrary. How confident are you that you can contact a lawyer, help them locate your birth certificate, and get a court order to stop them before they put you on a plane to El Salvador? Will the court order actually stop them, or will they just put you on a plane anyway and tell the court "sorry, the plane already took off before we received your memo, we promise we'll listen next time"?
Not Oliver: I'm not sure about the odds of following your exact series of events to a positive conclusion but I think you're less likely to get deported in that scenario than you getting killed in the plane ride to wherever.
Essentially I don't think the part where "they don't listen to your protests to the contrary" for someone with a valid claim to citizenship will ever come to pass.
Do you think this is a plausible slippery slope as opposed to a theoretical one?
This has actually happened before, possibly be accident, well before trump was in office:
https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/us-citizen-wrongfully-deported-mexico-settles-his-case-against-federal-government
So it's not some farfetched thing. I do think not following due process and instead trying to rush deportations makes this kind of error (intentional or otherwise) more likely
Of course it can and has happened. Upwards of 70 times from 2015-2020 according to the GAO: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-487. They don't say definitively that those were all citizens but we also have to consider the possibility of citizens that were removed and were erroneously not included in the GAO's count. Let's say 100-ish with the exact value known only by the Lord.
Something can happen and still be farfetched depending on the definition of farfetched in use. But that doesn't mean that a change in one part of the system - "hammer non-citizens and rapidly deport them" - implies that there's an intent or risk of violation of rights in another - "ignore their rights and deport citizens". There are certainly correlations that could be drawn between the two, theoretical and historical. Doesn't mean it's necessarily the case.
We'll never know for 100% certain that it didn't happen - for we can know nothing with 100% certainty - but I'm making the concrete prediction that there will be no deportations of actual US citizens over their loud protest due to the authorities not listening to your protests. Deporting the mentally ill man who signed a statement that he was from Mexico is a different class of error than not following up on a deportee who can make a plausible claim for citizenship.
There's only two steps on this slope. The government setting up a process to deport people faster than the courts can stop them, and putting a citizen through that process. It's not that far a leap, if they get away with it here.
I am a normie white Midwesterner and probably pretty low on the government's list of threats, but imagine a Hispanic person living in a border state - are you still confident they won't end up on ICE's radar? Or what about student activists or other people who are traditionally on the government's shit list? When Mahmoud Khalil was arrested, ICE agents told him his visa was revoked, even though he had a green card instead of a visa. Doesn't sound like they're being super scrupulous about the legalities.
Heck, Trump and other Republicans have literally talked about revoking people's citizenship.
> It's not that far a leap, if they get away with it here.
Entirely possible I'm ignorant of something, but I don't follow how getting away with it here implies that they will try, have any interest in trying, or will get away with violating a citizen's rights to not be deported. A faster process does make the possibility higher, I think we're just starting from different baselines and disagree on how much it increases risk.
> ...but imagine a Hispanic person living in a border state...
Most definitely I can imagine citizens in very different circumstances being more at risk, even up to being initially erroneously detained. False positives are bad at any step of the process but that doesn't mean that an earlier failure will inevitably lead to the worst possible outcome. Granted that it might in some case. I hope it doesn't and think it's very unlikely. Time will tell.
Surprised you think a faster process doesn't increase the chances of this. Seems obvious to me that a slower process would increase the odds that a lawyer could intervene, family would find proof of citizenship, various other checks would catch the error, etc
But I do and said so: "A faster process does make the possibility higher...". The possibility of error or abuse, barring unusual conditions that I don't see here, always increases with speed. The questions are baseline risk and the degree of increase.
If I'm soberly driving a well maintained car on an empty well maintained road in good weather and increase my speed from 34 to 35 miles per hour, then my risk has increased on an absolute level. Has it meaningfully, though? Am I equally comfortable with that risk? Were my old and new risk values so close that the two cannot be distinguished due to margin of error? Etc.
Someone who thinks we're already driving too fast for conditions or wants to stop the car immediately or who thinks it's more like going from 45-100 or who thinks that this is not individually a dangerous change but demonstrates a trend of risk increase or any number of valid priors could think we're in a very different driving situation. But to me it seems like we've gone 35-40.
What Hythlodaeus said. For all practical purposes, when I fly into JFK I get a "welcome home" and Ivan over there gets a 3-hr wait and a stern questioning is because I have a piece of fancy paper that says I'm a citizen of these here United States, and he doesn't.
“It is just a piece of paper” is deeply alien and unconvincing argument whether applied to a marriage certificate, passport, university degree, board certification or death threat. You can't make an argument until you accept that most people think these pieces of paper represent something significant.
They absolutely do represent something very significant, didn't I just say that, e.g., it allows me to waltz into my country? The point is, if gestapo stops you on the street the difference between "keep going" and "concentration camp" is the piece of paper.
Now if I'm sent to El S. by mistake and scream at the goons that I'm a US citizen, I get a rifle butt in the mouth, and now what? How would my so many rights help me? That "something significant" won't help much.
It's true, your rights would not help you much in that scenario. Your rights are why it's so unlikely you'll end up in that scenario.
Two months ago the idea of a US President sending citizens of one country to a concentration camp in another country, while the president of that another country openly mocks the American justice system… just fucking typing this feels like a bad Hollywood script. And yet here we are.
Forgive me for thinking my “rights” mean a whole of a lot less today.
Yours too.
Nobody likes a concentration camp but I don't understand how it implies that the rights of citizens are threatened. All bad things can be correlated but that doesn't mean any set of bad things necessarily implies another.
It's a good question. The rights of citizens are threatened because what protects them is the adherence to due process that we assumed existed. The terrifying thing that happened was not that Venezuelans were deported, not even that they were deported to a concentration camp, but that a judge said, stop, let's spend two weeks to make sure we didn't make a mistake, and, you know, "oopsies". I keep asking, how would the rights of a US citizen caught in this mess be protected? If your answer is "ICE does not make mistakes, they only detain gang members", Stalin says hi.
There's so much of our existence that is based on implicit assumption that "we have rights". Well, it turns out we don't, not if they can be blatantly ignored.
I can't fathom how the same people who were up in arms about every EO signed by Obama are just chilling now, all good. Well, I actually can, and it's not a good thing.
I think I understand your concern better now, thank you. I don't see the same due process violations that you do, but I may not understand them / this case fully and if I saw blatant ignoring of those rights I'd probably come to the same conclusion.
> If your answer is "ICE does not make mistakes, they only detain gang members", Stalin says hi.
ICE isn't infallible and I doubt they're only detaining the baddest of the hombres; I don't think that makes them equivalent to an authoritarian regime's security services or that there's significant danger of them becoming one.
Yes. That is precisely the point. The government should be legally required to look at these pieces of paper, and check if people have them, before deporting these people. Trump is the one who is saying we don’t need to pay attention because these are just pieces of paper.
The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were terrible, and John Adams deserves opprobrium, not obscurity.
He was portrayed by Paul Giamatti in an HBO series! He might not be Washington or Jefferson level famous, but I wouldn't say obscure.
That hbo series is underrated. Very balanced view on John Addams I thought. He seems very human not like a founding father God or something. Not afraid to show him screw up.
Yes, that's where I learned about him as more than just "that one-term guy between Washington and Jefferson."
Why is El Salvador a partner to this? If the reason is money, can sympathetic charities and members of the public have a "bidding war" for shutting down the facilities? Or would that lead to a whack-a-mole effect, with other facilities popping up everywhere just to get the money and then be paid to close.
US will pay the government of President Nayib Bukele $6 million for one year of services. Plus the ego boost to both Presidents.
Beside money, it also helps being friend with the big world and continental superpower. I also imagine that it participates in Bukiele's own propaganda (I'm using propaganda with neutral valence/connotation here) in El Salvador.
Sounds like they were willing to host Guantanamo Bay 2.0 on their territory. Other than the legal stuff this doesn't sound massively different to the 2000s when America was kidnapping people and then taking them to an offshore facility. The only difference now is they are already in America. Of course innocent people will get caught up, deported and probably killed, but thats been par for the course for America for decades.
In one way its sad to see Americans suddenly realise their rights are mostly fiction. But this has been a long time coming. Trump is simply the one who actually pulled the trigger and shifted the Republic into a new and much more autocratic shape.
"In one way its sad to see Americans suddenly realise their rights are mostly fiction."
But Americans still have their full rights, and the only ones at risk are people who are not legally Americans.
If they say they don’t have to check for documents before deporting people, then no, Americans do not have these rights. You only have these rights if they are required to check your documents before deporting you.
I'm sure Trump is saying a lot of shit, but I strongly suspect they are checking documents anyway somewhere in the chain before deporting people.
A statement of that would go along way towards cooling the temperature around this. The fact that government officials are tweeting “oops we already did it too late” strongly suggests that they are not checking documents, but maybe they are just trying to inflame tensions rather than proving that they are acting legally.
Why do you think this? I'm seriously asking. They grab me, put me on a plane, and I'm in El Salvador in 24 hrs. Who/what will stop this? How will I get out? I tell them I'm a US citizen, they tell me to STFU. Now what?
"Why do you think this?"
Inductive reasoning. They have not rounded up very many people, and the ones who they have rounded up to deport are obviously not US citizens and have not put forward any substantial evidence that they are, so whatever process is used for selecting them obviously filters out citizens.
Come on, do I have to bring up turkeys on Wednesday before Thanksgiving?
Inductive reasoning doesn't work ever on anything. By inductive reasoning nothing new should even happen.
"are obviously not US citizens and have not put forward any substantial evidence that they are, so whatever process is used for selecting them obviously filters out citizens." - you use 2 "obviouslys", I think they need to be paid overtime for all the hard work they are doing in this sentence. We have no idea if there were any US citizens there, we have no idea what if any process used to select them filters for US citizenship, or even if or why they would care. Judge's orders are "Oopsies" anyway.
There are already dozens of lawsuits being filed to try and stymie Trump's various actions. If there are US citizens being deported, it is an extreme low hanging fruit to grab. Yet no one has reached for it.
Why do you think Trump is constrained by courts?
This is exactly the problem with inductive reasoning, sure, this hasn't happened, but the barriers for this not to happen have been removed. This is why I'm asking: if they grab me and ship me to El Salvador, who's doing to stop it and how?
Trump is not fully constrained by the courts, but the courts do a good job of highlighting exactly what he is and is not doing.
"This is why I'm asking: if they grab me and ship me to El Salvador, who's doing to stop it and how?"
The guys who grab aren't going to grab citizens, because they aren't grabbing citizens. 'But if they did' - if you did something to warrant being grabbed in the eyes of the administration - does not fly with how the administration is showing how it will punish US citizens. It prefers to attack their sources of federal money and grants.
If someone in an abusive relationship told you they were afraid for their life, would you tell them not to worry about it because all evidence up to this point suggests that their abuser only wants to give them a black eye?
That's an extreme example, but the point is that once someone crosses one line, it's legitimate to worry if they'll cross others.
In this case, the lines the Trump administration seem to be crossing are skipping due process and defying court orders. The concern is that if they can get away with doing that to non-citizens, they can get away with doing it to citizens, if they so choose. They haven't done so yet but 1) they have shown an eagerness to attack their perceived enemies using other means (also of questionable legality) and 2) we aren't even 100 days into the new administration.
"The guys who grab aren't going to grab citizens, because they aren't grabbing citizens."
What would stop them? Never mind, what would prevent them from grabbing one by mistake?
What stopped this twenty years ago?
???? Who did this happen to 20 years ago?
No idea. Would you know if it had? My point is that nothing has changed recently with regard to the government's power (except maybe the Patriot Act, which is why I said twenty instead of fifty).
US judge's orders called an oopsie by a tinpot dictator operating a concentration camp wasn't a thing until (checks notes) last week.
The US has been negotiating with Cuba over Guantanamo Bay for a while to store terrorists there. Is your main objection here that someone in the process said something dumb on social media?
The US has been negotiating with Cuba? Any links to that?
>In one way its sad to see Americans suddenly realise their rights are mostly fiction.
Rights are fiction everywhere, but sometimes they're useful.
Trump is America’s id.
El Salvador has a giant concentration camp already, doesn't care about anybody else's opinion on it (it appears to be well-supported by the population there, which is not surprising given the drastic drop in the murder rate), and Bukele is pals with Trump.
So next time Country A sends nationals from Country B to a concentration camp in Country C without any due process we'll know where they got the idea.
BTW a president of a small Central American country openly mocking an American judge ("Oopsies", he said) - is that Making America Great Again, of a sign of some sort of New Greatness?
I think you're not going to get through to people with your current line of argument. It's based on the theoretical American citizen being deported to Honduras with no ability to appeal or return the United States, which, so far, it seems has not been happening.
The people you disagree with simply see this theoretical risk (which one can debate endlessly how likely or unlikely this is, but with no actual data is pretty much pointless) as not that likely, and the odd example is worth the benefit of quickly and efficiently deporting people who are likely violent criminals. Even with an admitted percentage of non-violent immigrants who have similar, but not gang-related tattoos, is worth it to them, since deporting them back to their home country isn't meaningfully different than not letting them in in the first place.
Your argument is just going to give the impression that you're trying to protect the actual violent, dangerous people that are the target of this, rather than an actual concern about the hypothetical American citizen who has committed no crimes. Essentially, it will seem like you're using the imagined American citizen being deported as justification to keep (literal criminal) illegal immigrants in the US, which, if that's the communicated intention, is an argument that will always fall on deaf ears.
Would you happen to know how to find out specifics of the agreement ?Payment, terms and conditions? Classified?
I withdraw the bribery solution, because this appears to be a priceless ego boost for Bukele. (Turns out to be $6 million payment.)
no idea. Maybe Bukele will say something on xitter? How else two banana republics are going to talk to each other after all?
Sorry I'm a bit jaded. Things are unraveling too fast.
I am a frog being boiled. I'm mildly concerned and annoyed, not terrified yet.
It's exactly as concerning as it sounds. An actionable precaution you can take would be keeping a REAL ID or a passport card in your wallet at all times.
What difference does that make? If you could show it to a judge and say "look, I'm a US citizen, obviously I can't be deported!", that might make a difference. But you can't, because you'll be in an oubliette in El Salvador before any judge even knows who you are, and the people who put you there don't care what sort of paper you have. They care that their boss, who signs their paychecks(*), told them to put you on a plane to El Salvador.
I'm fairly confident that I'm safe - but because I have a bunch of telegenic and politically competent white upper-middle-class family members who will complain to the press if I wind up being "disappeared", not because I have a piece of paper.
* And will pardon them if they get into any trouble over this.
Correct. No piece of paper would do a damn thing against a government set on disappearing you.
1. Yes.
2. Nothing.
I found the previous policy of allowing terrorist gangs into the US far more terrifying. Democrats could have repealed the Enemy Aliens Act at many points, but didn't. And given the law exists and is not extensively tested in its exact scope by the courts, there is not that much surprising or alarming to me about its temporary application this weekend.
Shouldn’t it be more alarming if a law that is being used to deport people without checking their citizenship status is one that hasn’t been tested, than if the law has been tested and found to be safe?
>the previous policy of allowing terrorist gangs into the US
That, of course, was not the policy.
If the president can make an unreviewable decision to declare immigrant groups to be an "invasion" then he can effectively nullify any due process for any non-citizen and ship any non-citizen to a prison in El Salvador, and there's nothing that person or the courts can do about it. Why should we believe that the President won't use this power to imprison or remove people simply for expressing viewpoints he disagrees with? He has already said he will do that.
Transnational crime has existed in this country since at least the 19th century, and will likely always exist. Criminal or terrorist groups have a presence in many, if not most countries. So he has a fig leaf to use this power on pretty much any non-citizen. But he likely doesn't even need that fig leaf.
Either the President should have did authority or not. There is overwhelming bipartisan support for him to have it.
Please provide a source that says there is overwhelming bipartisan support for the President to have wartime powers when there is a metaphorical or rhetorical invasion, rather than a real one.
When was the last time there was any material attempt at curtailing executive power?
Even after Trump 1.0, the Biden admin and the Democratic congress only sought to further expand executive power.
Yes, to the shame of Democrats and Republicans and many independents alike, there has been depressingly little push back against executive power for decades now.
But, better late then never.
Sadly, you are correct.
What distinguishes a real invasion from a merely rhetorical one? A formal declaration of war? Uniforms? Is this distinction codified into law?
Everyone relevant knows these powers get read broadly.
Generally, an invasion involves military action to gain control over a territory.
In the case of the law that is being invoked, it has to be carried out by a foreign nation or government.
I have seen exactly zero evidence that either criterion is fulfilled. Words have meanings. Laws are usually carefully phrased for a reason. Applying laws by redefining words arbitrarily just because it's convenient, and then shrugging and saying "everyone knows it's read broadly" sets a terrible precedent.
Terrible, yes, but this precedent was set long ago. My go-to example for this is bees getting classified as fish so they could use the Endangered Species Act: https://www.vice.com/en/article/bees-are-fish-california-court-rules/, but I'm sure it's way older than that.
That example doesn't work, because you have made the mistake of trusting the media's take on court cases. In fact, it was the legislature that defined "fish" to include bees:
>In 1969, the Legislature amended section 45 via Senate Bill No. 858 (1969 Reg. Sess.) (Senate Bill 858) to add invertebrates and amphibia to the definition of fish.
Almond Alliance of California v. Fish & Game Com., 79 Cal. App. 5th 337 (2002).
A court complying with a statute's definition of a word is the exact opposite of an executive manufacturing a definition in order to increase its power.
That was more an argument that "redefining words arbitrarily just because it's convenient" isn't a new thing than specifically tailored to _executives_ doing so.
I agree with your view on the media's credibility, but no, I knew this decision cited the Fish and Game code. But that obviously meant _aquatic_ invertebrates (like jellyfish and crayfish), which the court decided to ignore, taking the opposite view on ordinary meaning vs technical definition from the old Supreme Court decision on whether tomatoes were fruit.
Edit: Ah, there's the other example: ketchup as a vegetable for the purposes of school lunch nutrition requirements. That's from 1981, and an example of the executive manufacturing a definition.
But, my point is that it is NOT an example of "redefining words arbitrarily just because it's convenient." Defining words in statutes is what legislatures do. They can define words any way they want to. The key is, once they do so, the executive is bound by them. When the legislature defines fish to include invertebrates, that might be odd, but it is not a usurpation of power, in contrast to what the Trump Administration is trying to do. Excusing that by equating it with a completely different phenomenon doesn't work.
>But that obviously meant _aquatic_ invertebrates (like jellyfish and crayfish)
They might have meant that, but it certainly isn't obvious.
Because they could have said "aquatic invertebrates." And reading that meaning into the text is contrary to the prevailing theory of statutory interpretation: per Justice Scalia, et al, the Legislature enacted the words of a statute, not the intent underlying the words.
The courts have done something about it. There is just a boring question of the timing of the judge's orders and if they came while the flights were still enroute and if the judge had any jurisdiction over flights outside of US airspace and if the verbal order he gave is as enforceable as the written decision (which did not mandate return of enroute deportees). As stated, this comes down to a more thorough test of the Enemy Aliens Act which is sure to happen now. If Congress isn't happy with the outcome, it can repeal the act.
It is cute to see some people still think the constitution matters.
Congress has been impotent for a while now. It has about as much power over Trump as the Roman Senate had over Hadrian.
The new thing is him ignoring the courts. But quite frankly, who is going to enforce anything? The guardrails are so flimsy now they might as well not exist.
I guess I'll repeat the question: a president of a small Central American country openly mocking an American judge ("Oopsies", he said) - is that Making America Great Again, of a sign of some sort of New Greatness?
> which did not mandate return of enroute deportees
He literally told the DOJ to have the planes turned around. And it is has been established for centuries that judicial orders are valid outside the territory of the United States https://blog.dividedargument.com/p/contempt-equity-and-the-boundaries
The bigger issue is that the government is claiming (read their motion to the DC Circuit) that the courts cannot question their invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, which would give them the power to use it on anyone at any time.
They have already used separate powers on at least one student vis holder and at least one permanent resident based on their speech. In the student visa holder case, she claims that she posted on social media and signed some letters about a particular issue but did not attend protests. There is no reason to believe that they won't use these powers to suppress speech they don't like.
And Congress will not repeal a law when the wealthiest person on Earth is willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars and use the power of the social media network that he owns against anyone who defies his will. But that is a separate issue.
Trump is clearly pushing the limits of what he can get away with vs the judiciary. Appeals take time, and he's a master class at delaying legal proceedings against him. In the end, I suspect that executive power will be curtailed, but that will take years and a lot of people are going to suffer first.
I've been working on a modified oat fiber supplement to prevent absorption of plasticizers from food (neutraoat.com). My goal is to have a provably safe, effective supplement that people could take regularly in order to prevent plasticizers from entering their bloodstream.
I'd like to hear from people who are passionate about the issue and think they could be potential users of the supplement. Feel free to reply here or through the website.
I'm interested in this, but pretty conservative with pharma experimentation. Can I help fund a clinical study instead of offering to take it myself?
Sure! Contact me trevor [at] neutraoat.com .
Why not a cereal? If it works, it seems like a slamdunk breakfast choice.
Oat fiber is calorie free, so doesn't really work as a breakfast. It just passes straight through you.
Would an oat-fiber cereal with added fat (for taste and calories) work? Maybe with dehydrated fruit like Strawberry Cheerios. It could fit neatly into the ketogenic diet, potentially be low-calorie (since you can control how much fat is added with no calories from the oat fiber), and the plasticizer-removal benefit would probably overlap well with the interests of the people already interested, or already on a Keto diet.
I don't eat cereal, but I seem to remember that many of the "healthy cereals" are marketed as being high in fiber, and considering oat-fiber is basically just fiber (I assume), this might fit well into the existing market. It could be a cool product to develop, especially if you get a patent for making oat fiber cereal specifically. My Dad's best friend developed the technology that makes the bread at Subway stay fresh for longer, and he gets like 1/10 of a cent for every sandwich sold (which is apparently enough for him to own a large boat). Developing a technology that Cheerios Inc could turn into a "anti-plasticizer" low-calorie, high-fiber healthy cereal might be one of those niche things that sets you for life. I think the time is right with the increased awareness of microplastics in recent years.
Ah, sure. My thinking was that if you were to put that oat fibre into porridge or some equivalent cereal (and the it still worked), then it would be a win and appeal to a whole new market too. I understand this may be a non-trivial step though.
Why can't the oat fiber be in something with calories?
Oh, it totally could. You could just dump it in there right before eating.
Sooo…I'm looking for a phenomenon I read about in my youth, a custom in early twentieth-century America in which during carnival times, or maybe at a county fair, towns would outlaw beards, and anyone caught walking the streets with a beard would be taken to an amusing little fake "jail," and have to pay a fine to effect release. It was all in good fun (allegedly), although the money was real and would go to some kind of community chest or local fundraiser.
This custom appeared as a background element in several children's books I read (long ago), but now I can't find anything on it. Does anyone have a source on this? I don't even remember what the children's books are, and fear I dreamed the whole thing?
https://chatgpt.com/share/67d829ff-cbe0-8009-903c-594c05ac2136
The custom you're recalling involves "whisker clubs" or "beard contests," popular in early 20th-century America, particularly during local fairs and carnivals. These events often featured playful regulations where men were encouraged—or humorously compelled—to grow beards, with those remaining clean-shaven facing mock penalties such as being "arrested" and fined. The collected fines typically supported community causes or charitable endeavors, adding a philanthropic aspect to the festivities.
These lighthearted traditions served as both entertainment and a means to foster community spirit, with the playful enforcement of beard-growing symbolizing camaraderie among participants. While specific records of such events are scarce, they are documented in various local histories and cultural retrospectives.
If you're seeking more detailed accounts or specific sources about these customs, exploring local historical societies' archives or regional newspapers from the early 1900s may provide richer insights.
Is Movember a modern version of this? https://us.movember.com/
This is depicted on one of the old Perry Mason TV shows, "The Case of the Ominous Outcast" if I'm not mistaken. I wouldn't be surprised if it is a vestige of some ancient rite.
Not to mention “the league of redheaded gentlemen“ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
This comment excited me, as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is indeed a book I read in my youth…but I just went and reread The Red-Headed League, and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with a beard tax!
No, just the general idea of creating a group identity around hair.
Oh, okay. Well, that's like the whole twentieth century!
Yeah, when you think about it, the beard tax is just a variation on a theme. Baseball teams do this a lot.
I got the same answer from chat gpt, but when I try googling things like whisker clubs or whisker laws, I got unrelated subjects.
I asked grok and got the opposite answer, a few paragraphs attesting that there were playful "clean-shaven campaigns" and "razor drives" in the early 1910s and 20s that "jokingly outlawed [beards] to promote modernity or hygiene." Googling it I find no references to such events; I'm pretty sure it's a hallucination. I have no idea your memory of playful beard bans came from.
How did you check ChatGPT's claims before posting them here as an authoritative useful answer that everyone should spend time reading and believe?
Is chatGPT the new Wikipedia? Mostly right but somebody is going to rant about “did you check that”.
ChatGPT regularly gives me examples of code that don't run, because they contain made up functions. And when I ask "are you sure that object X has a method Y", it will say something cheerful like "good catch! of course object X does not have a method Y, here is a better example" and give me another code that doesn't run.
If an actual human did something like that more than once, I would put them on my personal blacklist.
With an LLM, I just sigh and remind myself that I expect about 50% reliability and today apparently isn't my lucky day. Also, I expect that LLMs will gradually improve, which is why I think it is good to learn how to use them, even if they still keep making mistakes.
That’s too low a figure for code in my experience. In general though using ChatGPT to write a synopsis of a historical event works breakthroughs always as it’s just a synthesis of knowledge already out there.
ChatGPT is very suggestible in situations like this. You can ask it "when did [thing that never happened] happen?" and it will happily give you several paragraphs riffing of that without giving any indication that it's a total fiction.
Wikipedia at least includes the link to check for anyone who is interested.
Once LLMs are as reliable as wikipedia, I'll be happy to trust it without checking.
They are not even close as of today.
You can ask for sources. Wiki being editable by anybody was frowned on for years as well. It is possible to direct the output for LLMS and they definitely make stuff up, but in general it’s reliable.
In any case I’d rather someone pointed out flaws by arguing against the flaws rather than the source. Which is true of everything.
> You can ask for sources
Exactly as you say. The OP didn't ask for sources, just regurgitated the information without checking.
> In any case I’d rather someone pointed out flaws by arguing against the flaws rather than the source.
This only works for arguments and reasoning, not facts.
If chatgpt says e.g. There was a civil war in Congo in 1932, that's a (possible) fact. I can't argue against or for it. You need a source for that claim.
I did check check GPT, and I did get similar results, but they all seem to be hallucinations. At least personally, I found Wikipedia to be several orders of magnitude more accurate than chat GPT, and I wouldn't trust anything chat GPT says without double checking it.
I did some Googling and it does appear that there was at least one club of such a nature in Nebraska in 1932:
https://negenweb.net/NEHall/genealogy+history/societies/whisker+club/wc_toc.html
One in Sacramento in 1922:
https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8x63t3c/entire_text/
So there does appear to be evidence that various clubs and societies for facial hair (whether jovial or serious) have existed and are in existence:
https://www.deadwoodwhiskerclub.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Beard_and_Moustache_Championships
The Boston Red Sox among them
I found similar things too when I was double checking chat gpt's claims, but the results I got all seemed to be pro whisker clubs and not the custom I was looking for.
I don't have anything about beards, but I can tell you that I remember as a child, we had a little fair in our school where we all got fake money. You could win fake money at games and use it to buy junk, but you could also use it to make your friends get "arrested" and sent to jail until someone else bailed them out with more fake money. So this suggests to me that some towns/fairs would've had a similar type of activity, and the beard thing seems as reasonable a way to do it as any.
We had the same custom when I was a kid, which may be why the earlier beard jail didn't strike me as weird when I first read about it. But in retrospect the beard jails seem more like pinching people on St Patrick's Day if they fail to wear green, or popping the crowns out of straw hats if they're worn out of season, rather aggressive implementations of social control. But now I can't find it!
I have never smelled them, but I agree that the pills taste bad. I can't imagine how a brief taste could matter much. But if it does, then I think you'll be happier with e.g. the Advil Rapid Release blue-green gel capsules. (However, they are much more expensive than the cheapest generic ibuprofen pills.)
kdenlive is my default. it may come out of the kde-ecosystem, but it works just as good under windows.
DaVinci Resolve has a free version, is really potent, quite intuitive to use relative to the possibilites it offers, and if you decide to move beyond the basics, you're already working with the industry standard.
"It's okay to kill people. There are risks, and you will most likely lose your freedom in a couple of days, but if that's worth it to you, then that's okay."
A friend of the family was morbidly obese, and died in hospital draining his wife's money for months and months, because he spent his life refusing to even try to get healthier. It's NOT okay.
The other side is people who get anorexia nervosa because they're fixated on the importance of eating less and being thinner.
This damages people's health, doesn't seem to completely go away, and isn't all that rare.
Encouraging a sense of proportion might help.
Because what you're suggesting requires way too much nuance and context.
I can't find the post right now, but it was a out a big tech company and leadership trying to orient everyone towards X _and_ Y (eg. reliability and quality), but that little bit of nuance caused all sorts of problems because one could now endlessly argue about tradeoffs. In a big company you can only really say one thing and repeat it endlessly and maybe it'll catch on.
I would presume the confusion would be much greater if we used your message with all those dependent clauses and "but if". Not saying you're wrong and perhaps I'm misunderstanding who "we" are in your comment and who it is that we would be saying these statements to.
Yeah that's all well and good. I see the problem when big food and big pharma are actively encouraging people to eat more junk and take more drugs... 'cause that's how they make money.
This is one of those ideas that would work for those in the top 20% of the IQ and conscientiousness distribution and have negative consequences for everyone else, never mind the externalities caused by the latter
It was better for societies in some points in time to tell everyone to not eat pork than to say "It's okay to eat pork - there are risks, and you will most likely die early, but if that's worth it to you, then that's okay too"
I realize now that I should have worded my post differently.
I think one reason culture generally takes that stance is because it's hard to figure out what's "worth it" if you don't have a viscerally personal data point of how bad it can get (and hopefully at the time you're making the trade-off, you don't have that data point yet).
Earlier today I had food poisoning (not entirely sure about the source, but let's assume the culprit were obvious) - the nausea was shockingly bad and not something I ever would have consciously chosen as a trade-off. But! If you'd told me I'd get nausea from whatever it was that triggered me, I don't think I would have correctly gauged how awful it is in the moment, and I might have decided it can't be so bad as that I would resist eating the thing (assuming the thing was really tasty at the time - which it probably was, because I had phenomenal food this weekend in celebration of my primary's and my anniversary).
I expect the memory of this instance to fade; as I understand it, humans are prone to forgetting how bad illness and pain really is (tbf, it might be psychologically safer that way; see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363520499_What_Experience_Doesn't_Teach_Pain-Amnesia_and_a_New_Paradigm_for_Memory_Research for one analysis) and so in general pretty bad in guessing how they would react to it happening again. That makes it really hard to make a truly informed happiness trade-off.
(Despite everything I just said, I'm not actually opposed to your idea, applied as a general principle. Just trying to explain why one reason that's not the default position.)
There are second and third order effects to addiction and obesity which make life more difficult and/or unpleasant for other people. Consider life outside the narrow range of conditions in a highly developed urban area in a wealthy country where e.g. you can't get almost everything delivered to your door, emergency services and the healthcare system are limited or over capacity, and the social web can't easily absorb able-bodied adults rendering themselves disabled. Personal liberty and personal responsibility hold each other in tension. Your position gives licence to sybaritic free riders.
Here's the problem, as I see it:
1. People aren't great at following directions specifically even when they're inclined to, and they're usually not.
2. So if public health officials say "you should do X for optimal health and safety," some people are going to do Y instead, where Y is something less optimal.
3. Officials know this, so they don't actually recommend X, they recommend Z, which is an even more extreme version of X, so that if people miss the target Z, they will still land on X, which is where the officials want them to be anyway.
4. Over time, people learn this, so they begin to apply a correction factor to public pronouncements. "If they say Z, they really mean X," and so on.
5. So then the public health officials have to adjust the safety margin some more.
It would be better if we could just get back to a world where the authorities could just recommend X and let everyone deal with it but it's hard to make that transition. I had hoped we could do it after the pandemic, when trust in authorities has already broken down so much anyway (for good reason, let me add). But instead it looks like everyone is just kind of laying low for now and picking other battles.
Taking drugs doesn't just hurt yourself; it creates severe negative externalities for society. The medical system has to spend a fortune caring for you because your body is a dumpster fire and you have no money to pay for emergency room visits. You go homeless and turn your neighborhood into a typhoid-infested slum, harrasing passers-by with your zombie like behavior. You steal everything in sight to fund drug lords who torture and murder innocent civilians.
I think you're right, but this took me a long time to wrap my head around. I had a revelation a few years ago when I read about mice on calory-resticted diets living significantly longer, and I thought, "living a couple of extra years, but feeling hungry and miserable all the time? Fuck that. ...wait, isn't that exactly parallel to what smokers say?"
I still think that starting to smoke is generally a bad idea, but there are people whose brain chemistry is such that the tradeoff is worth it for them. Likewise, while for most people putting in the work and discipline to avoid obesity is probably worth it, for some it probably isn't.
First of all, your assumption is faulty. There are plenty of things that are both legal and clear detriments to the individual and/or society, some of which (e.g. drinking, smoking) are being targeted with awareness campaigns or through milder measures such as increased taxation, rather than with outright bans.
Second, once harmful behaviour crosses into addiction, the argument of conscious, informed decision loses much of its appeal.
> you will most likely die early
I don't think it's true that most drug users die early from using drugs.
What's the question? "Does my bum look big in this?"
It used to be that it was desirable to have a small backside, but now it seems the pendulum has swung the other way and you are supposed to be 'thicc'.
That's an example of a 'yes/no' question that may have very different incentives behind it, depending on time and place. It may be binary, but it's not simple.
Can you give an example?
I sort of do a tangentially related thing where, I ask a yes/no question but even when I get a yes/no answer, I will turn it into a discussion. Based on whether it's yes/no, I will ask follow up questions of "have you considered things x/y/z that might impact your decision". I basically only do this with my wife and it drives her nuts. I think it's mostly because I like having weirdly detailed discussions about relatively trivial things. I try (and often fail) to do this less often.
But it strikes me as unlikely that this is exactly what you are talking about.
I think a lot of that is people acting the part of "rationalists". You see clever people online who you notice give nuanced, lengthy, proviso-laden answers in situations where there are more aggressive commentators (who you already believe to be idiots) making simple, clear declarations.
The obvious way you can be like the clever people is by copying their mannerisms, even in contexts where the clever people themselves would not actually be so hedgey.
Proviso-laden inb4: obviously this is a subconscious choice not a calculated one and yes this happens in parallel with other motivations such as genuinely seeing more nuance than the person asking the question sees, leaving space to move if it turns out the asker saw more nuance than you, premptive defense against armies of pecking nitpickers, etc. etc.
Examples, please?
"Hey, did the Eagles with the 2025 Super Bowl" seems unlikely to come with a lot of hedging (at least in my circle of acquaintances).
Did the Eagles do WHAT with it?
:-)
Super Bowls are often referred to by the season they occurred after, so many NFL fans would refer to the Super Bowl that just occurred as the “2024 Super Bowl” and the next one as the “2025 Super Bowl”. In this case the context is more clear since the 2025 season hasn’t happened yet but I wouldn’t blame someone for responding to your question with “that one hasn’t happened yet”.
You think so? I can't imagine saying "The 2019 Super Bowl" and meaning the one in February 2020. (Maybe this is actual reason they insist on that stupid Roman numerals thing.)
That's how tax seasons work, why not football seasons.
Yes, that is true.
cf. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncentral-fallacy-the-worst-argument-in-the-world
The answer to "was Martin Luther King a criminal?" is "yes", but there are essentially zero situations where giving an unqualified simple "yes" as a response to that question will make my subsequent experience better and not worse.
edit: King
I think you mean Martin Luther KING, not the founder of Protestantism. And I doubt (though could be wrong) that most people would have much trouble answering "did Martin Luther King commit any crimes?" after looking up the facts, which suggests that this is not an issue of refusing to answer a factual question, this is an issue of the emotional valence of a certain word, Russell's conjugate style.
"I think you mean Martin Luther KING, not the founder of Protestantism."
Oh I dunno, by some lights you could claim Martin Luther was a criminal 😁 He was responsible for, both directly and indirectly, a lot of smashing and grabbing!
I would not be surprised to learn that leaving the Catholic Church was a crime in Luther's day.
More examples in the post I linked; it's not limited to emotional valence, it's about smuggling assumptions / categorisations into the conversation.
Examples from OP of what kinds of questions are supposed to be innocuous but routinely attract unexpected responses would be useful here, I guess.
He was pretty rude, and certainly annoyed Leo X, but I'm struggling to think of any obvious crimes. Illicit brewing? ;)
Heresy, which was one of the most serious crimes under the laws of the time.
LOL but also this is the kind of interaction that results in people learning to never respond to any question no matter how simple with less than a carefully proofread essay.
thats why i said: "this is also true for questions that are entirely unpolitical and not emotionally charged in any way."
That’s kind of crazy; if I asked 10 people how the weather is I’d expect 10 extremely candid and straightforward answers. Is it possible your social circles are unusual?
If people are consistently hedging their responses to a simple-sounding question, perhaps it is worth reevaluating your assumption that the question is uncharged. Do you have any conrete examples?
I think this is because people are aware that, depending on the question and the person asking the question, there could be unstated assumptions inside those answers, so people try to provide context so as not to be misunderstood. If saying 'no' is going to make the person you're responding to think a certain way about you, you provide more context so they might not think you belong to this group or that group, or might believe other things that answer could imply.
Now to more rationally minded people it might seem like a simple question, but if you're a person who is more used to playing 'social games' of a sort, you assume there is more built into the question than the asker really meant there to be.