My latest paper about ChatGPT: Does ChatGPT Understand the Concept of Tragedy? Symbolic AI & Neural Nets
Abstract: Tragedy is an abstract concept. David Hays proposed that abstract concepts can be metalingually defined. A term, such as tragedy, can be given its meaning by a pattern over a string of words. By using a cognitive network to define tragedy Brian Phillips investigated that computationally. In this paper I have taken Brian Phillips’ definition and presented it to ChatGPT in six different trials, where each trial also included a short story. Three stories satisfied the definition and three did not. ChatGPT was asked to indicate whether or not the story satisfied the definition it was given. It was correct in each case.
Anyone else find it weird how OpenAI goes to frankly absurd lengths to be "unbiased" (including flat out lying about certain sensitive topics), presumably to avoid pissing off the wrong people and getting negative attention for OpenAI and its services. But then, the CEO of OpenAI has as his twitter bio a symbol of his ethnoreligious identity, which he set this as in the midst of one of the bloodiest and brutal ethnoreligious conflicts in modern history, one which is amongst the most sensitive political topics in the world right now. Really gets the noggin joggin.
Has anyone else noticed Google Doc's autocorrect get much more aggressive and stupider recently?
Previously, it would just attempt to correct mispellings or grammar errors. Sometimes it would get one wrong, but for the most part it was ok, and it would never attempt to apply the same correction more than once if you backspaced and changed it back. However, perhaps a few weeks ago, it got a lot more aggressive and also stupider, and now frequently makes changes that aren't even gramatically correct.
For example, when I was writing just now, in the space of one paragraph, it changed the "worn" to "worms" in "However, there were also small holes worn", and it changed "I applied" to "I apple".
Furthermore, it no longer gives up if you undo its correction. I've seen it apply the exact same (mis)correction three or more times when I backspace and fix the "correction".
Does anyone here know what's going on here? I'm curious what people on Google Docs would say about this.
That sounds like they're using LLMs now, did you enable some newfangled Google AI or anything?
You can turn off spelling autocorrection under Tools and then Preferences. I don't know why anyone would want it enabled in the first place. Just git gud.
I've rejected every AI related prompt I've seen, but that wouldn't stop them from releasing a new model under the hood. What I'm really wondering is *why* they would move to a new model that's so clearly inferior.
As for disabling it, the correction actually is helpful sometimes, especially the old version.
He's an update on the kid-prompted, generative-AI-generated, smart-phone distributed kiddie porn saga at Beverly Hills middle school. Five of the 16 perps (err students )involved have been expelled under a stipulated agreement with the parents of the perps (so the parents have accepted the expulsion and they won't legally challenge the school district). It's unclear what if anything is going to happen to the other 11 perps (err students) involved.
The county DA and BHPD are still investigating, so criminal charges could still be filed. But... "California’s laws against possessing child pornography and sharing nonconsensual nude pictures do not specifically apply to AI-generated images, which legal experts say would pose a problem for prosecutors."
It's unclear if the parents of the victims of this AI-generated classmate porn will sue the parents of the perps or the school district.
It occurs to me that Facebook has implemented some sort of machine-learning mechanism to identify and prevent photos of nude people from being posted (my photographer friends call it the Facebook "titty filter"). Why can't these generative AI systems prevent the production of images of nudes? I wonder how much usage of these apps is porn-related — and these apps want to avoid restrictions because that would impact some of their potential future revenue streams.
Walk & Talk: We usually have an hour-long walk and talk after the meeting starts. Two mini-malls with hot takeout food are readily accessible nearby. Search for Gelson's or Pavilions in the zip code 92660.
Share a Surprise: Tell the group about something unexpected that changed your perspective on the universe.
Future Direction Ideas: Contribute ideas for the group's future direction, including topics, meeting types, activities, etc.
AI deep fakes are already starting to influence and distort the political discourse. I fear we're too focused on the human extinction scenarios to see the immediate threats of generative AI...
I don't think it has been established that "deepfakes" are significantly influencing or distorting the political discourse, except about AI of course. Yes, there are deepfakes about e.g. the Gaza War, but do deepfakes of suffering Palestinian moppets do anything that real but mislabeled photos of suffering Syrian moppets wasn't already doing?
Lies have always been part of the political discourse, and the craftsmanship of the lies is of disturbingly little relevance. Too many people just want to be lied to.
I am a somewhat intelligent person -- I once measured with a 143 IQ, which seems a fair number to capture how I qualitatively think of my intelligence. Is there any fast path to a decently paying job the way "learn to code" was 10 years ago?
I am looking to pivot in my career. I have been unemployed several months and, for reasons I don't understand (market saturation?), no one is responding to my seemingly perfectly qualified applications to roles in line with my previous job.
Are you over forty and applying for tech jobs? Don't rule out age discrimination. It's a real thing in Silicon Valley (though HR people will never admit it).
I am near 40 and "in tech" but I work in marketing. My sense is that age discrimination is not really a factor at my age just yet (though I realize within engineering it might be)
My reply would be that "learn to code" is still relevant if you are highly intelligent. I've been working in software and hiring developers for many years, and the money is still very good relative to what you have to learn. The simplest path in my opinion is learning a basic backend language (golang is hot) and SQL. This will give you the flexibility to contribute in many areas, and you will grow in pay and responsibility because you will learn much faster than others. Average software people I work with are nowhere near 140+ IQ.
To make it concrete: How old was the oldest person you have hired for an entry-level developer position? (I guess the job title would be "junior developer"?)
Thanks for asking this, that's a relevant question I didn't even consider in all this. In some ways in my mind I'm still 22, but I am not even close to 22 and people will take that into account when evaluating me.
Definitely if you are just getting started. A solid reputation for delivering results will counter it to a certain extent, but yeah, you will run into "I just don't think you will fit in with our team beyond a certain age.
Also, if you're not necessarily looking to pivot your career but more frustrated by the job market, I can recommend looking for employment with jails, prisons, and mental institutions. While prison guards and nurses comes to mind, these are large institutions with lots of administrative, legal, and technical staff that are often desperate for talent.
Most positions will involve some prisoner/patient interaction, it's hard to avoid, but it's a solid way to get work, especially if you're looking for the stability of long-term civil service. It's a great way to do 1-2 years and then you're in and the civil service becomes so much easier.
Actuary can be an option. Passing one or two exams is often sufficient to get a job. You'd generally be expected to keep passing exams, which would generally come with pay increases.
Thank you for your response. That is a good option -- any sort of career with a standardized test as the only barrier to entry would probably be good for me, I will look into that
In every organization I've been in, there's an endless demand for dashboards because managers and executives don't understand any other way to take advantage of all the data they've collected. This is problematic because, well, writing SQL code is simple as far as coding goes but it still requires that weird brain thing that let's you code all day, so there's a solid barrier to entry. Lot's of really smart people just can't do it. And anyone who can write SQL competently tries to move on to better things pretty fast. So there's always demand.
If you can do it, look for data analyst, business intelligence developer, etc roles.
Also...man, hiring practices became insanely dysfunctional over the past 5 years. It honestly feels like a dating app now in terms of rejection rates and dysfunction. HR genuinely has no idea how to handle the flow of applicants so they put in a bunch of bad filters, many of which filter out good applicants, and...I dunno what drives it but it's a mess.
I can't -- my original post was probably unclear, I can't code at all.
I mentioned coding because 10 years ago my impression was an intelligent and dedicated individual could learn to code relatively quickly and outside a university setting and get a decent job. I assume the ship had sailed on that because of AI and the massive growth of CS majors. I was wondering if any comparable skill now exists for a near-term pivot.
But if you're saying that's SQL by itself, then I will look into it... I can handle all day drudgery and career plateaus.
Anyone who's actually *good* at coding would still easily get a high paying job, as far as I can tell, and AI is a nonfactor and likely to remain so. But your age probably forecloses that route.
I would recommend to learn SQL first, then Python. In Python, maybe focus on working with a database (whichever database, not important) and parsing text. Maybe create one program that reads some text files and writes some data read from them into a database, and another program that creates text files containing some reports from the database. At that moment, there should exist an IT job you are qualified to get as a junior developer.
Regardless of AI, human intelligence will probably remain a bottleneck for some time. Someone needs to talk to the AI after all, and many people suck at communicating.
"Learn to code" is probably still your best bet. It's not as easy as it was ten years ago, but still easier than anything else.
Your other best bet is probably to stick with your existing career and wait for the job market to improve (while doing Uber Eats or whatever it takes to keep money coming in).
OpenAI just put out a blog post which includes releasing an email chain involving Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Ilya Sutskever, regarding Scott's SSC post "Should AI be Open?" https://openai.com/blog/openai-elon-musk
Someone sent the post to Musk, who forwarded it to Altman, Sutskever, and Brockman. Sutskever's reply:
> The article is concerned with a hard takeoff scenario: if a hard takeoff occurs, and a safe AI is harder to build than an unsafe one, then by opensorucing everything, we make it easy for someone unscrupulous with access to overwhelming amount of hardware to build an unsafe AI, which will experience a hard takeoff.
> As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it's totally OK to not share the science (even though sharing everything is definitely the right strategy in the short and possibly medium term for recruitment purposes).
To which Musk posted "Yup". Musk's agreement with Sutskever's rebuttal to Scott's article is now a major point in the lawsuit, which I find interesting.
Would removing restrictive zoning temporarily raise the cost of buying land or a house? My intuition is that by removing restrictive zoning, you are increasing the set of things that can be done with the land, including options that could be more profitable for the land owner than, say, a single family home. I would think that this should raise the price of buying land/a house, at least until increased construction raises the supply and drives down the price.
This guy (below) argues that Drum, by focusing on raw housing supply numbers is obscuring the real cause of high housing prices even in markets with surplus housing. He blames the demise of low-tier mortgage lenders — so I gather only wealthier people can get into the market, keeping prices high.
I don't have any skin in this argument, but I don't think I've heard a good explanation for why free market supply and demand doesn't seem to be working in the housing market — especially when there's a surplus of housing available.
> I don't have any skin in this argument, but I don't think I've heard a good explanation for why free market supply and demand doesn't seem to be working in the housing market — especially when there's a surplus of housing available.
The reason is because the US effectively made it impossible to build new housing in many markets starting in the 70s, with California hit worse than anywhere, creating an extreme shortage of housing. It's only now that the political tide is just barely starting to turn in favor of legalizing housing construction, but that's still too little, too late.
It's a bit like the reason why the "free market" fails to fix generic drugs being too expensive.
Except that it's a myth that there's a shortage of housing in US! The US ranks *1st out of 41 OECD countries* with "Dwellings with basic facilities" per capita, and *2nd out of the 41 countries* for "Rooms per person". But we're 9th out of 41 on what we spend on housing.
And according to one of the Kevin Drum links I posted above, in 2022 California had something like about 108% of the housing it needs for its population. Roughly on par with the rest of the US.
What we have is a shortage of inexpensive housing. So, why isn't the free market working?
We don't have a shortage of inexpensive housing, we have a shortage of people wanting to live in the cheap cities. Because our expensive cool cities are *really* cool, and the American Dream is that anyone can aspire to that level of coolness.
Of course, part of coolness is exclusivity, so don't expect the cool cities to allow crass commercial real-estate developers to ruin the vibe by putting up lots of cheap housing for the masses. If you care about that sort of thing, plenty of the cheap cities are still trying to grow.
Incidentally, even the Idiosyncratic Whisk post that you yourself linked to explains this and convincingly shows how the housing shortage is driving people out of the most dynamic cities in a hsitorically unprecedented fashion.
There's clearly a shortage of housing in the places that people actually want to live. For example, noone can say with a straight face that SF has enough housing.
Is there though? I just went online and there are >1300 homes for sale in SF at this time. This includes 1 bedroom condos, townhouses, standalones, and mansions. About a thousand of those listed for sale are 3 bdrm or less. Of course, the median list price for a 2 bedroom 2 bath house is about 1.4 million dollars — which seems low to me for SF, because Zillow says my dinky suburban bungalow across the bay is worth that much. Obviously most housing is out of reach of people considered low income — and In San Francisco a person earning less than $105,000/year is considered low income. Anyway, it doesn't really look like there's a shortage of housing per se, just a shortage of housing that a family starting out can afford.
Transactions happening is not proof of a lack of supply. In the absence of artificial price caps, lack of supply compared to demand usually manifests as extreme price increases, which is exactly what happened and is happening. That's how markets work.
I'd recommend checking out some of the links I posted, as well as your own Whisk post.
Econ 101 suggests that upzoning will quickly increase the price of an acre of land or a detached single-family house, because buyers will be competing with investors who now want to put a duplex or whatever on the same spot. It will also, not quite so quickly, decrease the price of other forms of housing like apartments, condominiums, and halves of duplexes.
I still think induced demand is a thing, and building more apartments will (in desirable areas) eventually raise the price of apartments too.
Your denser, more populous city will soak up an even greater share of the economic activity of your country, making it an even more attractive place to live (in the sense that you can't possibly get a job anywhere else).
That can't increase prices unless the increased demand is supralinear, e.g. if having twice as many people living in your city makes three times as many people want to live there at a given price point. Otherwise, doubling the number of apartments may mean 1.8 times as many people want to live in your city at the old rates, and 20% of the new apartments are going to be empty unless the prices go down.
And I have a hard time seeing what the highly supralinear mechanisms that are going to drive this alleged effect are. Part of what makes a city desirable is geographic and not density-dependent. Oakland's position on the SF bay makes it the best place to make lots of money by unloading container ships, which depends on the size of the CONUS and Pacific Rim markets but not on the number of people in Oakland. Part of it is artificial but still not density-dependent. The US Federal Government plops down a finite amount of bureaucracy in and around the District of Columbia, and thus a finite opportunity for bureaucrats and for baristas selling overpriced coffee for bureaucrats, again independent of local population or density.
And part of it is density dependent, but I think mostly linear at the outset and sublinear at the margin. Going from two nice restaurants to four makes your town twice as appealing to hardcore foodies, but going from 200 to 400 only modestly shifts the quality distribution experienced by people who are only ever going to eat at a hundred of them.
I'm not seeing the highly supralinear density-driven demand that's going to overshadow the fixed and sublinear demands to drive a net price increase. The prices might not come down as much as you'd naively expect in the fixed-demand case, but they will come down relative to what would have happened if you hadn't built any new housing.
Curious as to peoples’ thoughts on this paper about electoral competition and electoral systems. Would a Condorcet-consistent electoral system solve the problem of hyper-polarized politics? Is it realistic to get this implemented?
I'm not impressed. I'm no fan of FPTP either, but theorizing that the voting system is what's driving polarization misses the mark. There's been a rise in populism around the world, not just the U.S. And as best I can tell, it represents a backlash against globalism and a backlash against institutions that operate outside the scope of democracy, such as the European Union. Putting goldilocks centrists in power *might* have been useful a decade or two ago. But currently, centrists will be seen as just another lapdog. Elections aren't about policy, they're about trust. And there's a severe lack of trust, not only in leaders, but in institutions.
> Would a Condorcet-consistent electoral system solve the problem of hyper-polarized politics?
No.
> Is it realistic to get this implemented?
No.
The chance for this country to change course has passed decades ago. Even if it was remotely possible to implement such a massive change to the electoral system, it wouldn't change the underlying cultural issues responsible for this mess. Democracy isn't going to stop anyone. The people will get what they want, one way or another.
I can't tell how they think this would work. It looks like it moves votes down the list of the second-highest top candidate's vote. But it's a two party system; if the second-highest loses, it's because the highest has the majority, and the other votes aren't going to overcome that. Barring that, it looks like it has the fail state of pushing votes ever farther down the list; with stiff competition between 1 and 2, 2's votes go to 3, which push 1's votes to 4, which puts 3's votes to 5, who wins by dint of votes not having any further lower to sink. So now everyone loses.
It also seems to disincentivize people from dropping out, which means more money and time spent on losing campaigns whose main hope is gaming the trickledown system.
I stopped around page 11, do they mention other countries who use the system and/or are less polarized? If not, I would say they haven't looked into the problem enough.
Condorcet methods have the property that if there is one candidate who beats all of the other candidates in head to head races, then that candidate is the winner. This is generally going to be a centerist candidate who beats candidates to his/her left in a head to head matchup because people on the right prefer him/her to candidates further left, and similarly beats candidates to his right in a head to head matchup because he is preferred by people on his left to candidates who are further to the right.
You can describe the election of a centerist candidate as “everybody loses” because a compromise candidate doesn't give anyone exactly what they want. But if you believe that democracy depends on compromise to function, then a system that elects centerists is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Say what you will about journalism, but this is pretty scummy. It also seems weird that they're doing this *now* rather than back when Wordle was actually popular.
Funny timing indeed - about two weeks ago I decided to move away from Google as much as was reasonably practical, so started doing my regular online word games (Wordle, Quordle, and Canuckle) on Duck Duck Go instead. I was a bit dismayed to see that my scores for all three games had been reset.
I played the games for a few days, and then decided to quit them.
I can only hope the NYT doesn't go after KenKen and Nerdle.
This is a thought-provoking and profound piece that touches on some big questions about human civilization, values, technology and the future. I’ll do my best to provide a high-level summary of the key points, but I would encourage you to read the full article if you have a chance, as it contains a lot of nuance and insight that is hard to capture in a short summary.
The central idea is that there are powerful forces and incentives that push civilization towards bad outcomes, even when no individual wants those outcomes. The author frames this in terms of a “Moloch” figure that demands sacrifice and bad behavior.
Some key examples of these “multipolar traps” that are discussed:
* Arms races between nations
* Competitive dynamics between firms that lead to poor treatment of workers and damage to the environment
* Evolved biological incentives that no longer serve our values
* Ideological and political races to the bottom
The concerning thing is that as technology grows more powerful, the potential danger of these traps increases. Advanced technologies could lead to terrible outcomes if not very carefully managed.
The author suggests the only way out is to create a singleton superintelligent AI that is imbued with human values and has the power to prevent these destructive forces. This is an ambitious but perilous proposal.
The article covers these ideas in much more depth, with vivid examples and poetic language. While heavy and sobering, it is a rewarding read for those interested in the trajectory of human civilization. The ideas are speculative but the core concerns seem important to grapple with. I’d recommend reading it in full if these topics interest you and you can find the time.
I also asked Claude to give me a description of Moloch for Midjourney and got:
> A towering, menacing bronze idol with the head of a bull, seated on a throne of gears, industrial machinery, and weapons. The idol has fiery eyes and smoke pouring from its nostrils. Thousands of tiny human figures are gathered around the base of the throne, some worshipping the idol, others being crushed by the gears or cast into flames. The scene is set against a bleak, dystopian cityscape with smokestacks and brutalist buildings looming in the background under an ominous red sky.
That's a fun piece of steampunk graphic art, but it's at least three lightyear steps away from the actual meaning of Moloch in Ginsberg's poem, Howl. Moloch for Ginsberg was the cultural conformity of the 1950s that labeled rebel artists crazy, forced them into mental institutions, and drove them to suicide. It wasn't a screed against technology or the future threats to civilization. And BTW, I think Scott got it wrong, too. Here's the original poem. Give it a read...
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
Entirely uncontroversial author Abigail Shrier is doing the promo rounds again, talking about her new book, Bad Therapy.
The main thesis being that we (as a society) are promoting and causing mental health issues in our kids by being too proactive in our approach. Putting too much focus on mental health, having under-qualified teachers, social workers and school counselors frequently screen them or ask them about mental health, preemptively putting kids in therapy when something sad happens, pathologizing and medicalizing the experience of being a teenager, etc. etc. has iatrogenic effects. In many cases it does the exact opposite of what it’s intended to do: making kids more depressed, fragile, and traumatized.
It all sounds very commonsensical but also pop-sciency. On one hand it meshes well with ideas and observations put forward by people like Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge, and with stats and trends like the one about antidepressants shared by Beowulf888 further down here. On the other hand, I don’t expect everyone to agree. If they did, I don’t see how it would be a growing problem.
So, does anyone here have perspectives on how seriously a parent should take this?
My question is: is this a real cultural phenomenon, or is it perceived to be a cultural phenomenon but isn't real? Though I was briefly a jr high school science teacher 40 years ago, I don't have much interaction with kids anymore. So I don't know if kids are actually more f*cked up today than they were 40 years ago. NB: I worked in an upper-middle-class ghetto, and my students certainly seemed f*cked up back then!
And I never found talk therapy to be particularly helpful — until I got so pissed off at my therapist for telling me how messed up my life was, that I quit therapy and decided to see if I could figure out how to handle my bouts of depression on my own (not that I'm recommending other people do this). But I probably sound like an old fart: "I used to walk ten miles to school in the snow uphill both ways without SSRIs!"
Anyway, there that NORC survey that's been done every year since the early that asks people to rank themselves as very happy, moderately happy, or not very happy (I love those precise quantifiable terms! #snarkasm). It hasn't shown much variation until COVID came along. Then it swung back to the long-term average post-pandemic. It seems like we should take a page from Bhutan's playbook and we should be running detailed happiness surveys. After all the US was founded on the ideas of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — but we as a nation have never tried to quantify our gross national happiness. ;-)
Well, it's hard to make the claim that people aren't feeling what they say they're feeling – especially if they're acting as though it is true – so it has to be some kind of "real", whatever that means. If suicide and hospitalization rates are dramatically up among teens (as reported), it comes across as a bit dismissive to tell them they're "not *really* depressed … not like back in my day". 😉 But it matters how they got that way, whether by iatrogenic therapy, social contagion, screen time, or a broader culture that romanticizes/fetishizes mental health issues.
I second your suggestion that we follow Bhutan's lead and start measuring more of what we care about.
While I'm very happy to have made the StoryGirl laugh, I'm even more happy to have inspired a reference to Douglas Adams. Small things like that make my day.
I have been reading the book and largely agree with the premise (that any treatment powerful enough to help people is also powerful enough to hurt them, yet we are pretty blase about this risk with so-called mental health). The questionable moral-panicky valence for me is the focus on children: there is plenty of evidence that therapy does not work period, so why the focus on kids in particular?
There are also plenty of examples of questionable practices in therapy that would never fly in other medicalized professions. The therapy industry seems to want the freedom to operate with the same business practices and "methodological creativity" as alternative healing, and yet also wants the authority and social power that comes with being designated as a science-based medicine; the current situation is what happens when they try to have it both ways. That IMHO is a way better thesis for an investigative journalist to explore, not the old "but think of the children!" angle. But I know that wouldn't sell as many books.
That’s interesting. Both the idea that if it’s powerful enough to help, it’s powerful enough to hurt (as so many talk about therapy as an unmitigated good), and the tension in wanting both “methodological creativity” and science-backed authority.
It does seem to me like the mental health crisis is hitting our children particularly bad, and I assume they are more impressionable and vulnerable to bad therapy, so don’t share much of your skepticism about that.
I'm a psychologist and agree with you that a lot of what is called therapy is ineffective, and some is outright silly or dangerous. What are the so-called treatments that you see as especially awful?
I do think, though, that the there is much less flakiness in children's treatment. A lot of what kids get from school-based therapist is pretty practical and directly connected to the identified problem: social skills training, techniques for controlling angry outbursts, stuff like that. School-based psychologists also give teachers advice on how to manage difficult students, generally little behavioral plans that would work well if implemented carefully, but that teachers are generally to preoccupied with other things to carry through with carefully.
I don't know whether you are including psychopharm in your condemnation of mental health treatment of children. As a psychologist I can't prescribe drugs. But my general knowledge about the common psych drugs isn't bad, and I worry about SSRI's, especially, being prescribed so freely to kids. I mean, you're tweaking a brain that's actively developing very rapidly. It does not seem far-fetched to me that an SSRI interferes in subtle ways with brain development. Adults on these drugs very commonly experience weight gain, decreased interest in sex, difficulty with sexual performance, and emotional blunting. Sometimes the sexual side effects never go away after the person stops the drug. Who knows that the long-term effects of the drugs are on kids' emotional aliveness, developing sexuality and metabolism?
And something I observe in both adults and kids is that once people commit to these drugs as a helpful agent at the time they begin them, a very high proportion of them never come off. Often this is because both patients and doctor have a fear that things will deteriorate without the drug. Another reason is that patients are generally not informed about withdrawal syndromes, and of the importance of tapering off slowly to avoid the unpleasant effects of fast withdrawal. So those that do decide to try getting off the drug often just stop it cold turkey on their own, experience a bunch of highly unpleasant withdrawal symptoms, and conclude that they have just had a taste of how hellish life without the drug would be.
Oops didn't see the original question. My completely uninformed opinion is that most therapy neither hurts nor helps, but it is expensive and it has definite risks if you get an actually bad/unethical therapist (e.g., you don't want the therapist to abuse your kid). So it's probably not worth the money unless you really need it (e.g., if your kid has noticeable behavioral/developmental issues) and if you do want a therapist for your kid, find someone who is extremely high-quality (PhD or NP or MD) who will be honest with you if they feel the treatment isn't doing much.
Also for better or worse, I was simultaneously finishing reading a book on brainwashing and it basically concluded that it's very hard to convince people--including children--of things they don't already believe. Shrier is essentially worried that therapy is brainwashing kids, and I think that fear is unfounded in the research.
I’m actually not super-worried about my own kids, but am surprised and worried about how fragile, anxious, stressed, etc. *a lot* of other kids I know seem to be. I’m surprised at how many of them I’d think might benefit from therapy. But if bad therapy and its offshoots throughout the system are a significant part of the problem, I no longer know what they need.
One thing I've noticed is that kids are swamped with homework these days. I'm shocked by the amount of hours my friends' kids put in after school. Subjectively, it seems like — school plus homework — they're working 60-hour-plus weeks pursuing academic achievement. That *can't* be healthy. I was the class of 77 from the Dazed and Confused generation, and I could usually finish my homework during study hall. And I spent most of my after-school hours avoiding chores and roaming the woods around my house. Oh, I remember my life during school hours was filled with social angst, but in retrospect, my life was pretty stress-free. And as a teacher, I didn't give much homework (mid 80s). I'd say the academic road for kids these days is lot rougher.
Yes I have been apart of several research projects involving youth wellness, and it's ridiculous that adults are jumping to therapy--another structured activity--when the main problems facing kids seems to be extreme overscheduling. Instead of adding an hour of therapy to a packed week, I wish most parents would 1) subtract 1-2 time commitments kids already have, 2) set high standards of behavior for the few things that are truly important, and 3) then leave them alone and let them fail at a few things. Based on the most current information I've seen, the last thing kids need these days is more supervised time sitting in a closed room with an adult.
Yes, the part about school counselors is dumb and I think is meant to appeal to conservative parents who are already distrustful of their local public schools. If you don't like your school, you probably won't like what the school counselor has to say, but if you do generally like your school, then it's unlikely you'll have a problem based on the counselor alone.
There is compelling evidence that therapy can damage already vulnerable and victimized populations (e.g., instigating PTSD symptoms where there were none before, reinforcing disordered eating in someone who was already at risk for an eating disorder, calling authorities on a passively suicidal person and escalating their crisis). But overall, the larger problem with therapy IMO seems to be less that it is harmful, and more that it is exploitative in the same way alternative medicine is--it's expensive and not that effective.
Thanks. I find it interesting that you say it’s common wisdom that therapy is hurting people. I expect it’s true that it can hurt, but I still hear a lot of people talk about therapy as though it can only be good, and that it would benefit everyone, on par with something like physical exercise.
Tell me again how AI is so bloody wonderful, I dare you.
Another Irish company has decided that AI is the way to go for customer service. I'm currently tussling with it because it cannot understand my query. It is plainly running off a script and is even stupider than an ordinary human. It redirects me to the website, I've been on the website and the solution to my query is not there. It's not a technical issue or fault. The thing cannot understand English or think or do anything that an ordinary, average human could understand in five seconds.
Bah, humbug. And this is what is going to rule the sevagram?
It's digital fascism -- all the rage. You have two options, theoretically, Option A, and Option B. Option B, however is a dead link. So, you actually have only one "option". Welcome to Diversity. Technology is like a birthday every day for authoritarians. Check the robotic help page. Eventually, you'll end up back on the home page, your query disdained.
With the traditional phone menus, I've heard that swearing a lot helps get you connected to a human. Don't know if that works for AI chatbots as well or not.
By the way, somebody on this thread's asking for info about traditional Irish St. Patrick's Day foods. You of course are uniquely qualified to answer. I hope the truth isn't that the Irish just eat fucking Cheetos like everyone else does these days.
I saw and answered! We don't yet have Cheetos in the shops, but they might be introduced - there are some American groceries making inroads.
Mostly we drink and eat a big dinner that isn't much different from normal dinners. The media style sections try and give fancy cosmopolitan versions of the 'bacon and cabbage dish' (e..g bacon and orzo. Orzo????) but really it's just a half-hearted day of celebration. It's falling on Sunday this year, which means that the Bank Holiday will be on Monday 18th. Some people will get the day off, others will get extra pay for working the day or can take a day off in lieu later.
"If you qualify for public holiday benefit, you are entitled to one of the following:
A paid day off on the public holiday
An additional day of annual leave
An additional day's pay
A paid day off within a month of the public holiday"
The way it works for my ISP is that if you loudly say swearwords, it detects you are angry and transfers you to a human. It might be worth a try for you too.
And don't pussyfoot around, Deiseach. Start right in with the worst swears you've ever heard. It's the perfect setting to experiment with saying things like 'motherfucker.' You won't be distressing another human being, and it's possible that the more and viler swears you employ the quicker you get passed to someone with a pulse.
I asked for a human and after a bit of "I don't understand" did get passed on to a real person.
Honestly, though, the worries about super-competent paperclipper AI? I wish! What we're getting are hallucination bots that don't know how many fingers make five and are working off limited scripts because companies hope they'll be free labour as opposed to paying even low-cost overseas call centre labour. I do think the future of AI is less "giant brain setting public policy for government and the economy, post-scarcity utopia on the way" and more "annoying non-human pretending to be human 'help' where you never again interact with a real person and customer service is accepted to be very poor but there's no point switching providers since they all use AI bots now".
Antidepressant usage among younger age cohorts is way up. I'll let the Results and Conclusions of this paper speak for themselves...
"RESULTS
Between January 2016 and December 2022, the monthly antidepressant dispensing rate increased 66.3%, from 2575.9 to 4284.8. Before March 2020, this rate increased by 17.0 per month (95% confidence interval: 15.2 to 18.8). The COVID-19 outbreak was not associated with a level change but was associated with a slope increase of 10.8 per month (95% confidence interval: 4.9 to 16.7). The monthly antidepressant dispensing rate increased 63.5% faster from March 2020 onwards compared with beforehand. In subgroup analyses, this rate increased 129.6% and 56.5% faster from March 2020 onwards compared with beforehand among females aged 12 to 17 years and 18 to 25 years, respectively. In contrast, the outbreak was associated with a level decrease among males aged 12 to 17 years and was not associated with a level or slope change among males aged 18 to 25 years."
"CONCLUSIONS
Antidepressant dispensing to adolescents and young adults was rising before the COVID-19 outbreak and rose 63.5% faster afterward. This change was driven by increased antidepressant dispensing to females and occurred despite decreased dispensing to male adolescents."
Earlier down thread I engaged with a user named FLWAB, regardless of what's the actual point we were debating, I behaved like an asshole. Some of this is due to (as perceived by me) unfairness on FLWAB's part, and some of it is emotional volatility on my part because the topic we were discussing relates to morality, and is important to me, and it's all too easy to appear heartless and cruel by speaking a certain way, and I perceived FLAWB to be heartless and cruel. FLWAB also attacked my objectivity and accused me of manipulation in what I perceived to be a personal attack.
This comment is:
(1) A public apology to FLWAB: I'm sorry I was an asshole. And I'm sorry about a more dismissive apology that I made in the comments that didn't properly acknowledge me being an asshole in the comments before it.
(2) A pledge to be more careful next time
(3) A promise conditional on FLWAB accepting my Apology, I will refrain from commenting for a number of Open Threads they choose, not exceeding 7 Open Threads
(4) A promise conditional on FLWAB accepting my Apology, I will watch/read a source sympathetic to their views of their choosing provided it doesn't exceed 100 page or 150 minutes
(5) A promise conditional on FLWAB accepting my Apology, I will delete my comments down thread if they so choose
I wish to apologize myself for my comment "Lying is not honest", as it was a swipe without commentary or discussion attached to it and falls short of my standards and the standards of the blog. I too was experiencing some "emotional volatility" around this discussion, and I was more heated then I should have been.
I appreciate your pledge to be more careful. Feel free to comment on Open Threads, I don't need you to refrain. You don't have to delete the comments either, it's good for others to be able to read our exchange and come to their own conclusions. Though I don't mind you deleting your comments if that's what you want to do.
I didn't see the original discussion and have no other context but from what I've seen here, this is one of the most mature and reasonable resolutions to a conflict I've ever seen on the internet. I am genuinely shook. Props to both of you.
BTW, if this is a new account for the user formally known as LearnsHebrewHatesIsrael, did you see Scott's note in the main body of this open thread? https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-317
The one about unbanning and Substack's trash backend? Yes, I did. But I had already made a new account (with new email, etc...), so I saw no reason to bother Scott with what's already - for all intents and purposes - a solved problem. Scott also mentioned he identified another case on his own, that case could be my old account, now with no one at the wheel.
> formally known as LearnsHebrewHatesIsrael
Typo, but I smirked at the mental image of this being my *formal name*, the one I have on my ID and in job interviews. Insert "Dad why is my sister's name" meme.
For what it's worth, I changed the spicy name before I got banned, I'm too lazy to inspect the actual email log of the old account right now, but there was a significant (> 1 month) separation between the name change and the ban. This account's name is identical to the latest name of the old one.
Too bad we're not allowed to upvote comments. I'd upvote this one — because of your willingness to update your opinion — which can be rather rare event in this community of strong-minded people. Other than your 4-yr-old nephew crack I didn't think you were being particularly assholish in your responses — but maybe I missed something further up the thread. I'll be curious how FLWAB responds, but I don't think you need to beat yourself up over that exchange.
You're right, it's quite rare on here for either of the people who are debating something to change their minds -- and that doesn't seem to me like a great sign about the functioning of this group. I read in a reliable source that the Yale Political Union's regular debates have an unusual norm: It's expected that in a fair number of debates one participant will "break" the other -- that is, change the other's mind about the issue under debate. The broken debater then concedes that he or she has been convinced of the opposing point of view. Both breaking the opponent and being broken are valued, and people who have broken others but never been broken are generally less admired.
That seems to me like an excellent norm, and I wish I knew how to move this group more in that direction. All I can think of is highlighting posts where it occurs, or posts like LearnsHebrewHatesIP's present one, which actually is not about changed opinion but an apology for communication style. Still, the latter is in the right ball park. I know that when I'm in debate mode, I am driven by a desire to win and my processing the other person's points consists almost entirely of thinking about how to refute them. There is an irritability there, and a lack of interest in the other, that is a muted version of the desire to attack and humiliate. Amp things up a little, and I'll start craving to be sarcastic. And of course in this state very little of my mind is available to consider the possibility that my opponent is right.
Seems to me that rationalism doesn't take on this problem, where a person's failure to think well comes not from ignorance of. principles of clear and fair-minded thinking, but from emotional investment in maintaining one's views and triumphing in a conflict.
A long time ago I think folks tried to make this mindset explicit through the virtue of humility, but nobody talks about it that way anymore. Now they talk about humility in terms of feeling gratitude, there but for the grace of god, etc., all of which is nice but entirely different. [EDIT: cut out a bunch of crap.]
Working in Silicon Valley I've encountered a lot of *very* smart people. These are people who (I would guess) are at least two standard deviations above median IQ. But I've noticed that most are intellectually lazy about subjects outside their core training. Being smarter than average, they're used to being right in their core disciplines, and because of that, they often assume they're right when they step outside core competencies. It's a Dunning-Kruger Syndrome for smart people. But when challenged to support their opinions they often flail and get combative, because they have little experience with being challenged.
These are very hyperfocused people. I think it's because modern academia promotes career-focused learning at the expense of creative thinking. There's a vast world of knowledge out there that they've never explored, and there are all sorts of modes of reasoning—philosophy, logic and the study of reasoning, the history and philosophy of science, statistics, rhetoric, etc. that they're unable to bring to bear when faced with a question outside the comfort zone of their core specialty.
These people are all over academia as well and I think it's for the reason you describe. When some is (legitimately) smart and spends most of their time being correct about the subject they're an expert in, it's VERY easy to think that that translates to other areas of expertise.
They provide an excellent example of the importance of not only raw intellect or a deep knowledge base, but the right mental framework if you want to increase your chances of being right about things. A healthy sense of humility, an ability to detach your ego or your sense of self as a "smart person", and a willingness to face each new problem with the mentality of a beginner.
Yes! And the manifestation of their Dunning-Kruger that really gets to me is that they seem unconcerned that their decisions will have huge impacts on aspects of life that they are ignorant about and in some cases constitutionally dumb about as well: The impact on people of screen time itself, and of all the destructive things that can happen on a screen -- deception, cruelty, persuasion, infection by toxic fads and lies, seduction by the fake and heartless. And then there's the immense power the big tech companies have, which may one day soon exceed that of elected government. And then of course there's motherfucking AI, which seems very promising for speeding up things like medical research, but seems guaranteed to totally enshittify the Internet and give all kinds of powerful tools to crooks, and addict a bunch of people to plastic sex partners, plastic friends, plastic advisors, plastic versions of self.
My god, if I was even going to take on something as novel as helping refuges settling in the US I'd be bingeing on info about their country, the problems of refugees, what constitutes good help and what doesn't -- and I already work in a helping profession. These entitled Silicon Valley fools have more power over what happens in the next 50 years than any other group, and they're like "what, me worry?"
"I think it's because modern academia promotes career-focused learning at the expense of creative thinking. "
All the complaining about "why do I have to do these stupid gen ed modules for my course?" This is why! It's trying to expose people to topics outside the core degree you ae going for, so the non-STEM people have to do something STEM flavoured, and the STEM people have to do something humanities flavoured.
Even if you end up with "Shakespeare is over-rated", you should at least come to it from "yeah well we did a play and three poems" and not from "going by statistical analysis of global population over three hundred years, how likely is it that Best Playwright was born then and not now?"
Even if you think Shakespeare is overrated, you'll probably find some writer you love -- Shaw? Twain? Alexander Pope? Oscar Wilde? Dickens? I have low points where I feel like 95% of ACX thinks that Dr. Who, The Ring Trilogy and Star Trek are the greatest pieces of fiction our species has produced. Or possibly that they are the ONLY pieces, FML.
Ah now, I wouldn't put it as high as 95%. 45% maybe, the rest of us think Tolkien or Brandon Sanderson are the peak of human cultural achievement and shape up to fight the Fantasy Wars over that (not a Sanderson person myself) 😀
What is the low point is the general attitude of the STEM types (not all!) that the humanities have no value, that if you must read then read non-fiction (but a podcast is better and when AI can précis and directly feed the bullet points into your brain best of all), and all that arty-farty stuff is just timewasting by people too midwit to get a decent job being productive contributors and drivers of the economy creating apps to sell advertising.
BTW, I don't have any opinion on the numbers you two were arguing over. I admit that I'm avoiding reading much about the conflict because it seems like the leadership of both sides is behaving in ways that have and will maximize the suffering of innocents. Even a simple opinion like the one I just expressed is like stepping into a minefield, but that's my personal opinion and I can see why people supporting either side of the conflict would have very different opinions from mine. Anything I say is just adds to the noise.
So after watching Epic Rap Battle's "Ivan the Terrible vs Alexander the Great", it struck me that modern-day politicians might get tagged with titles like "The Great" or "The Terrible" in the history books. Does anybody have any guesses as to who'll get what?
In my headcanon, I like to imagine a movie where Rocky Balboa, the Italian Stallion faces an MMA match of cosmic proportions against Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the Science Bison.
I don't think so, since the introduction of family names has made most names unique. I can only think of one exception, and I'm guessing they'll just be called "George Bush the Older/Younger".
This requires a little setup so bear with me. I'll get on topic in a moment.
I'm pretty familiar with American presidents because my small home town named most of its streets after them.
There was also a lot of mostly friendly rivalry between neighboring small towns so someone from one of those rivals once told me how one time, long ago, a horse died on McKinley Ave in my city.
According to my rival's story the police dragged the horse around the corner to Hayes Street because they couldn't spell McKinley for their report.
We are more likely to remember Bill Clinton *now* than wear Eisenhower, because most of us literally *can* remember President Bill Clinton and only Joe Biden can still remember President Dwight Eisenhower.
But when living memory fades, we remember Abraham Lincoln and, without googling, how many of the five presidents before and after Lincoln can you name with confidence?
Right; they both got to be President because they commanded the Army in an enormously consequential and uncertain war. We remember both as great generals who became Presidents, not as great Presidents. And we will remember them long after the Bill Clintons of their day have faded to the level of Jeopardy trivia questions.
Yeah, his actual presidency was pretty in-memorable. So if he does get remembered it will be more in an "oh yeah, he happened to become president later" sense.
Oh, come on, do you think we'll forget Consort of the First Empress? Do you have so little faith in Hillary that you don't think she'll manage to become First Female Ever? 😁
I am still on my journey exploring Aldous Huxley's writing, this week slowly reading my way through Heaven and Hell. I was very surprised to find out he articulated the idea that our minds are inhabited by some quasi-independant entities, which we should catalogue and study "the way a zoologist studies animals found on a new continent". I wrote a short essay on this (https://valentinsocial.substack.com/p/aldous-huxley-on-the-exploration). I keep getting fascinated by his ability to write in a way which makes you feel like you are being told some galaxy-brain concepts, even when it's something super simple, like the fact that colors are more vivid while on mescaline
His last words were “LSD, 100 micrograms I.M.”1, which he wrote in a note to his wife, asking her to inject him with the psychedelic drug. She did so twice before he passed away. He also said “Let us be kinder to one another” before he died.
Regarding the stereotype that the Dutch are direct and the British highly indirect: if there is truth to it, what are the historical reasons why it is supposed to have evolved?
The best answer is probably "it's unknowable and random" like Rappatoni's, but that's no fun so allow me to speculate wildly.
The main social difference between the English and the Dutch (I know the question was about Britain but I'll focus on England in particular) is that England has historically been dominated by the upper class whereas the Dutch have been dominated by middle class merchant types ever since the 1600s.
Indirectness is an upper class virtue, it enables people to communicate in shibboleths that ensure everyone present is of the proper class. You can't just go round saying "Could you please pass the port?", you have to say "Do you know the Bishop of Norwich?"
Directness is a middle class virtue, it's hardy and practical and boring and it's a style you can communicate in without spending your formative years in etiquette training. And of course it signals that you're hardy and practical and not at all like those effete upper class types.
Thank you. But in some ways England seems no less egalitarian than other European countries, so how did the upper class get to dictate more of culture in England than the Dutch did (I understand you say you are speculating wildly, but I guess the upper class shaping of culture is still a well-accepted fact)?
As a native speaker of British English who knows beginners Japanese .. the politeness forms in Japanese are the part of the language I find hardest to get, while acknowledging that Br. English speakers use polite forms of English a lot.
(E.. using. -kun forms when speaking to one of your students feels kind of wrong to a Br. English speaker, for surely teacher speaking to student is one of those contexts where polite speech is expected...)
But (and I am guessing without knowing a bit of Japanese) the British rules are presumably more intuition-guided than hard-coded almost like a syntax? I mean, one tests your memory and your ability to be faithful to it, the other your ability to pick up some psychological dynamics and innovate various optimizations?
cf. Horace Underwood, Introduction to the Spoken Korean Language (1914):
"It is important that he address servants and attendants in low terms, and speak of himself in higher terms ; while in the presence of officials and men of high rank, he must always speak of himself in low terms and address them in the highest forms. While this in theory is so contrary to the Christian idea, in practise in Korea it is almost a necessity, unless one desires to be considered entirely ignorant of both language and propriety."
Re: japanese. Pretty sure it's not about politeness, it's about hierarchy. The teacher has the senior role and the student has the junior role. When everyone observes their obligations according to their positions in the hierarchy, society will be harmonious. Or at least, that's the theory.
So while British English does have different registers of politeness, the rules for when you can get away with using them are way different from Japanese.
Yeah but like, I doubt teachers think of themselves as "getting away with" being impolite. Rather, there's a certain noblesse oblige that comes with being in a position of authority.
I mean, are you gesturing at calling the students -san? or is there a more polite equivalent of -kun that i'm unaware of.
The meter seems fine to me? It's a "ta-tumpty" rhythm, if you'll excuse my ignorant way of putting things. I know there are markings for long and short feet but I'm just putting in capitals the 'long' ones/emphaisis and the breaks are for syllables:
Tom KILLI-grew's wife, that HOLL-and fine flower
At the SIGHT of this SIGNIOR did FART and belch SOUR
Having lived in both countries, I think it is impossible to deny that this is true.
As for the causes: I think societies drifting around randomly in the space of possible etiquette norms until they fall into some attractor state is fully sufficient to explain such differences.
Also, the national stereotypes themselves, once people become aware of them, may become self-fulfilling prophecies. Ie. people from nation X live in ways reflecting the stereotype Y, because at some level they are aware that that's how you're expected to act when you're X.
Scott has written a few times about Land Value Tax, the benefits of which seem overwhelming. Last year, CA Assembly member Alex Lee introduced a bill to study the potential impact of a LVT in California. That's a good sign, but even in an optimistic case it seems like adoption would be lightyears away in spite of the glowing cost-benefit profile.
Has anyone discussed the idea of getting a California proposition on the ballot to implement LVT? According to Ballotpedia, such a proposition was on the ballot over 100 years ago -- in 1918 -- and was crushed by 50 points. Getting a proposition on the ballot is no easy feat (I think it requires something like 500K signatures IIRC?) but could be an interesting angle if it sputters in the legislature.
Something land value tax proponents never seem to answer is how the tax would raise enough revenue to significantly alter the dynamics of government finance. All the land in California has a value of [$3.9 trillion](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-10/the-real-role-of-land-values-in-the-united-states) (or maybe as low as $2.6 trillion of unimproved land value) compared to total California state and local tax revenue of [$630 billion](https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/projects/state-fiscal-briefs/california). That means you're looking at a 16—24% land value tax, just to get out of state and local taxes (everyone would still have to pay federal taxes, which of course is where the most tax is). It's actually even worse than than, because who would pay for an asset that will get taxed away in the next few years? So an LVT would cause land values to drop, meaning you need an even higher tax rate to break even.
Do you think Californians who spent 30 years paying off a mortgage would vote for a tax that would tax away their home in 2–6 years? Even if it freed them of other income, property, and sales taxes? I can't imagine it.
I share your concern about how to raise enough revenue with just LVT. It doesn't seem realistic to replace all CA state taxes with just a LVT.
I have a factual correction though: when you list California state and local tax revenue, that includes federal transfers as well (see your urban.org link). Calculating from the per capita numbers provided (divide total $630.7 billion by total per capita $16,114 to get ~39 million residents, then multiply by per capita federal transfer of $3,670) this means that the $630.7 billion total includes $143.6 billion in money that is transferred from the federal government, not extracted in taxes from Californians by the state of California directly.
That leaves $487 billion that California collects directly from Californians. This changes your % calculations to 12.5% to 18.7% LVT needed.
Also, charges are a part of overall state revenue, and they include things like city water, city sewer, etc. Unless your proposal plans to also provide free water/sewer/etc. for everyone, most of those charges don't need to be covered by a LVT. Eyeballing the chart, that's roughly $2200 per capita, for $86 billion. That brings the total amount of taxes that California collects to around $401 billion, giving you percentages of 10.2% to 15.4% LVT. (I read off the chart, so we don't have 3 digits of precision anymore, if we ever did).
Instead of trying to replace the entire CA tax revenue, if this were to leave other taxes in place and just restructure the property tax portion that currently collects ~$2000 per capita for $78.3 Billion total, that would only require a 2% to 3% LVT, which might be feasible.
Now if California were to cut some governmental spending they wouldn't need as much tax revenue overall, but that might be even less feasible than implementing LVT in the first place :)
On the other hand, no more other taxes! No more filling out income tax forms, no more sales tax math, no more weird hidden taxes, no more fees tacked on to everything. It all gets paid in one place, through mortgages and rent. (In theory, not even any liquor taxes. But it would be tempting for stores to break out the LVT portion of their prices.)
If only it were that easy, but I see no reason to think state governments (especially in California?) wouldn't slap on "levies" instead of "taxes" to raise money for worthy causes. Homelessness seems to be a sink for that, for example; $12 billion in 2022:
Maybe shops wouldn't deduct sales tax any more, but they'd just put that onto the shelf price because "hey, people are used to paying this price for a gallon of milk and now we don't have to turn the sales tax over to the government, why would we just give away money we could keep?"
A LVT would already have an impact on the price level of goods given that firms require land for most outputs and value ads. Whether that would be more or less than sales tax is a little ambiguous.
Regular property tax taxes the land value AND the value of improvements on the land, like buildings. This means that if I want to improve my home by adding a bedroom, or replacing the roof, that can make my property tax increase. This disincentivizes improving properties. That’s bad.
Land value tax just taxes the land value. That means if everybody else fixes up their houses making the area I live nicer, my land value tax will increase (as the land value portion of my property tax does under normal property tax). But I can fix up my own house without worrying about it increasing my own tax.
Extend this to commercial and industrial properties, and those benefits of building and improving things increase. That’s the theory anyway, the Wikipedia and some of the previous Georgist posts around these part go into more detail.
Isn't that a disincentive, though? If I fix up my house, it won't jack up the value of my land and hence my tax. But if everyone fixes up their houses, then it will do so. So we all have a strong incentive to prevent *anyone* starting to fix up their house, because that might lead to a chain reaction of "well it was okay for Bob, so I'll do it, and that won't affect LVT" and then everyone does it and the LVT goes up.
I get the idea of taxing land in desirable locations lying idle because property developers would prefer to wait for the value to go up and then sell on the plot, rather than do anything with it. But at the same time, if your LVT goes up because now you *have* developed the land, what is my incentive to make it productive, or at least to make it productive in a way that pushes up my tax? If I run a meth lab on it, that brings *down* property values and decreases my LVT accordingly, but do we want lots of meth labs on otherwise empty plots?
I think taxing large scale developers for building up land banks and hoarding land is a good idea, but I'm not so sure about "well we could pull down this house and build a pharma plant here in theory at least, so if you're not willing to pull down your house and build a pharma plant, we'll tax the life out of you".
I only get to decide what I do with my own land, I don't get to decide how my neighbor uses their land. The main ways that we formally influence what neighbors do with their lands are through zoning and and Homeowners Associations (HOAs). HOA rules are aimed at making things "nicer", albeit for sometimes questionable definitions of "nicer", but none intend to bring down property values. Nobody wants their neighbors house to be a meth lab, even if it would bring down their taxes, so I'm not concerned about HOAs here (any more than normal, I'm not a fan generally).
Zoning is the thorny issue and where you have a point. The traditional Georgist response is that land value tax (LVT) will fix zoning over time, as LVT revenue is tied to overall land value, leading to upzoning to generate more government revenue. Personally, I'm not convinced. I don't think zoning issues get significantly worse with LVT, but I don't see them improving. I do think it likely that some landowners will lobby to restrict zoning outside of their own properties to keep their own taxes low, while improving their own properties to charge large rents to their tenants. If other landowners lobby similarly it might cancel out, but large rich landowners could dominate.
Side note: I don't see how we realistically move from current property taxes to LVT in the USA/UK/Ireland considering the size of government it would have to support, how entrenched the current system is, and the many investments people have made throughout society based on the established systems. I can just imagine a world where different taxation norms were established in the first place: https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/singapore-economic-prosperity-through (standard Singapore caveats apply: it's very small, too authoritarian for my tastes, etc.)
"The traditional Georgist response is that land value tax (LVT) will fix zoning over time, as LVT revenue is tied to overall land value, leading to upzoning to generate more government revenue. "
Hmmmm. I think the traditional/original Georgist view was formed with "there are plots of land in city locations that are vacant and which could be developed into productive factories or workplaces instead of being held as a store of increasing value" as the case. I don't think they really contemplated housing, outside of "okay instead of a lead paint factory, turn this vacant lot into apartment block", or private property.
The thing is, today we *don't* want lead paint factories in the middle of the city, and "upzoning to create more government revenue" sounds a hell of a lot like eminent domain, which has not always been a shining success:
Not sure about the official Georgist line on how LVT affects zoning, but I'm skeptical that land use behavior would meaningfully change. It's plausible LVT could incentivize more restrictive zoning: the financial impact of nearby nuisances should be capitalized into the assessed value of the land, not the improvement. So property value would be more sensitive to nuisances under LVT (since you're only taking into account land value and ignoring improvement value), so you can expect property owners advocate for even more exclusionary zoning.
But I don't think property owners take land use positions on the basis of property taxes; they seem to make them on the basis of property value alone. Financially undiversified homeowners are rabid about their property values and advocate for e.g., exclusionary zoning to (in theory) keep those values elevated even though it should lead to higher property taxes (proviso that this doesn't really apply in CA because of Prop 13).
Assuming this dynamic stays the same under LVT, you would still see property owners engaging in property value-maximizing behavior (even if that behavior is also property tax-maximizing), and I don't see why that behavior would change depending on the the taxation regime.
"Traditional" was a bad word choice. What I meant was "standard", as I've seen it as a response to this concern. I've never been convinced by it myself.
I do think it's important to note where high tax differs from eminent domain: no central government authority is making decisions about the actual use of the land. If you can afford the tax, you can stay. If not, you can sell. Whoever buys it either has the wealth to afford the tax, or they can attempt to profit from the property enough to afford the tax. This same thing is already true of existing property taxes, so the question with LVT is how severe in magnitude it is.
I know that LVT at a rate that forces property sales is similar, but importantly the government isn't choosing anybody specific to sell any specific property, nor are they choosing who acquires the property. This doesn't ensure that the land gets used well, but it can avoid some of those failure modes of eminent domain abuse that you linked.
Thanks for that pdf link by the way, great (horrible) stuff.
I think the idea is that the disincentive of higher LVT is directly compensated by the incentive of living in a nicer neighborhood.
> if your LVT goes up because now you *have* developed the land, what is my incentive to make it productive, or at least to make it productive in a way that pushes up my tax? If I run a meth lab on it, that brings *down* property values and decreases my LVT accordingly
LVT doesn't scale with your own improvements though? One of us is confused. Maybe both of us.
I very probably am confused about the whole thing. But if LVT is based on the perceived value of the land in the neighbourhood due to its desirability as a place to live, I'm pretty sure an active meth lab with cops busting in every week, lines of junkies, and the kinds of citizens who operate meth labs all hanging round is not going to raise the perceived desirability of living in this neighbourhood, hence property prices decrease for everyone, hence land + property values go down and LVT goes down.
oh, so it's about 2nd-order effects being reflected back onto the property. Yeah, I guess that's a fair point. Although somehow, I have a hard time imagining that the effects will be strong enough to incentivize meth labs (steel factories, etc) in practice.
I understand but is it a big problem? How many kitchens are not being remodeled and sunrooms not added, golf courses turned into housing/commercial areas because it will bump up the property tax on the improvement compared to the Hell a person must go through to get permissions to improve property. It's the SCALE I meant by "how." Not to mention having to go through hundreds of thousands of properties valuing the improvements, registering them on every real estate transaction. I can't see the juice being worth the squeeze.
I’m not sure I follow: the typical property tax system already sends assessors around to “hundreds of thousands of properties valuing the improvements, registering them on every real estate transaction”.
Anyway, I’m not some Georgist prophet. Whether it’s worth the upheaval that overhauling our current property tax system would entail I couldn’t tell you. I am convinced a land value tax would be an improvement, as it would help mitigate rent-seeking behavior and doesn’t introduce the same deadweight losses that typical property tax does. An alternate world where society had grown up with land value tax would be better in those ways.
Yes. Note that this is also the case under typical property tax systems, which also tax land value. Just the magnitude of the effect has changed a bit.
Similarly, your neighbors can vote to improve the local parks, and vote to raise your tax rate to pay for it.
> The Alameda County Democratic Central Committee is a deep down ballot race. They are large, misunderstood contests that often include virtual unknowns vying for the right to volunteer the first Wednesday night of every month to the Democratic cause.
> Understanding the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee might be easier if you just view them as the Alameda County Democratic Party, one of 58 franchises within the California Democratic Party.
> What is their role? To fundraise and support their endorsed candidates. In years past, the fundraising aspect was a weak point, but unexploited simply because Alameda County has one-party rule. But within the party there has been internal threats to the progressive majority on the central committee by business-friendly moderates in the Tri-Valley and Fremont.
> Compounding the schism was Pamela Price and her push to win control of the central committee as far back as her first run for Alameda County district attorney in 2018. The plan worked. In 2020, Price spent heavily to help herself and a slate of candidates win seats on the central committee.
...
> To underscore Price’s control of the central committee, the chaos followed an attempt to allocate up to $10,000 to the campaign opposing Price’s recall. As a central committee member, Price voted for the allocation.
> The central committee election this March is essentially about younger progressives moving the local party further left and experienced elected officials aiming for a return to the status quo.
"But within the party there has been internal threats to the progressive majority on the central committee by business-friendly moderates in the Tri-Valley and Fremont."
skybrian, warn a person before you drop such blood-curdling terror on them! Business-friendly moderates, oh my! An internal threat to the progressives! Well I guess it is time for some Nazi-punching, then? 😁
Though I can't make out are they for or agin' the younger progressives moving the party leftward? I was amused by the bit about the "schism" - golly gosh, politician behaves like politician, who'd a thunk? Reminds me of the throat-cutting and back-stabbing within a local political party round these parts about twenty or more years ago, when they preferred to claw one another's eyes out over turf wars (the votes in this area belong to *me*, you don't canvass round here!) than fight the opposition.
EDIT: Okay, I read the link, and if you're not an unfortunate voter in Alameda County, it's great entertainment, and the post seems to be anti- the leftward move. Mind you, if you want to oppose the progressives you've got your job cut out for you, because every second group seems to be named some flavour of progressive.
You've got the PPP (People Powered Progressives) party which, even better, is Pamela Price's PPP. Somebody give me the kabbalist rundown on all those Ps.
And in the blue (or other red) corner, squaring off against the PPP are the Climate Labour Progressives! The clash of the lustrum, PPP vs CLP!
Not forgetting in another district, the Pragmatic Progressives. But their measly two Ps lack the heft and grandeur of the 3-5 Ps for Pamela's party, so will they be able to beat them back?
I suspect that this reporter is trying very hard to avoid taking sides because he wants to keep talking to all the local politicians and he wants them to subscribe. (You can tell from the name of the Substack - it’s an *insider’s* newsletter.) So, it’s not so helpful for people coming in cold, but it’s useful to know what the sides are. Looking at the ballot, I had no idea what’s going on. Why am I voting on this?
Weird that these sides can be described (by this reporter anyway) as either for or against Pamela Price. Is that really a thing? How did that happen?
I’d rather read something more conceptual, but I’ll take what I can get.
I have been posting on Substack a subtle but I think important distinction about how we should be thinking about central bank macroeconomic management. The difference is that instead of thinking about managing aggregate supply and demand (implicitly as if the economy were one good produce with one input -- undifferentiated labor -- and therefor only one relative price, the real wage) we should think about the central bank as facilitating adjustments in relative prices among goods and differentiated labor in response to shocks that affect sectors differently. The "facilitation" is critical because all prices do not adjust at the same speed and some are downwardly sticky. This has implications for the average target rate of inflation that a central bank sets to facilitate "Brownian movement shocks" as well as how "flexible" it should be in engineering over target inflation the face of extraordinary shocks requiring extraordinary movements in relative prices.
I am seeking comments on these ideas, ideally on the Substack posts themselves or here if anyone is so moved.
Here are my questions for Scott regarding parenthood.
• What are your thoughts about school nowadays? Have they changed since a couple years ago?
• Have you read *Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids* and which parts do you agree with or disagree with?
• How are you going to try to affect which influences they end up under? Presumably you're going to limit and supervise device usage during the younger years, and then eventually give up and hope for the best.
• Are you going to make a big budget for individual tutoring? That was one of the things that stood out to me about the childhoods of Marcus Aurelius and John von Neumann, and which seems underrated.
• Are you going to prioritize social parallax, and if so, how? (In the sense of moving between multiple social groups, so as to see them all from different perspectives.)
3. I don't know. Some friends on my street have set up a home schooling co-op. I worry I'm going to end up sending the kids there by inertia. It's probably not worth hiring individual tutors when they're (eg) 6, so maybe I'll start by sending them there, then try to get tutors once they're good enough at things (and good enough at paying attention) for that to be worth it? Although a local seven-year old is benefitting a lot from math tutoring, so I don't know.
4. I'm not sure what you mean by this and haven't thought about it. I don't know if I have deep access to enough different social groups to make this work. Some of my wife's relatives are farmers in Texas, and I'd like for the kids to spend some time on their farm to learn what different lifestyles are like
5. Some of these seem pretty wrong to me; others depend on implementation; others seem downstream of having the sort of kid for whom this would be a good idea.
You're probably better off sending them to the local homeschooling, if it's still around when they're old enough, then when they're old enough for mainstream school have a look at what's available and how much it makes you go "yeah, maybe" to "ahhhhh, no!!!!!".
Wait until they show aptitudes or areas of improvement before getting into tutoring/grinds.
Several years ago, I read an article claiming that the 5G technology used in the US broadcasts on the same frequency as the Doppler radar used for weather prediction, and that this would make forecasts less accurate [something something] climate change [something something] Donald Trump. Did anything come of this, or was it entirely made up?
Question - does anyone know what foods are traditional for St. Patrick's Day in Ireland? Especially finger foods? My mother and I are doing coffee hour for our church that Sunday, and wanted to do something a bit more than dying everything green.
Traditionally in Ireland for St Patrick's Day, you go out to Sunday Mass with a wilting bunch of shamrock on your label (or, if very fancy and citified, a shop-bought badge generally along the lines of a harp and the national flag), then have the mid-day meal ("dinner" if you're a country person) of bacon (NOT corned beef), cabbage and floury spuds* (not too different from general Sunday dinners) then head off to stand on a street corner in the rain and wind (it's March in Ireland, what other weather do you expect?) to watch a parade. Then home for the tea at six o'clock and watch the national evening news which gives a roundup of the parades throughout the country.
For the Big City like Dublin, they usually get a few American marching bands turning up. Or any vaguely famous American with some Irish ancestry, who gets captured and forced to drink a pint of Guinness:
We don't really have a traditional cuisine for the day, apart from drinking (ahem). No national dessert like the Italians, with zeppole for St Joseph's Day:
As for finger foods - well. Not so much, either. What we *do* have are plenty of cups of strong tae (yes, spelled like that for the pronunciation), with soda bread (brown or white) slathered with butter, and/or things like buns and sponge cakes for the fanciness. Barm brack is for Hallowe'en, otherwise I'd recommend that. Mostly, because it comes in the middle of Lent, it was a relaxation of fasting rules so people ate the meats they couldn't eat other Lenten days, which is why it's heavy on the "alcohol and lumps of pig" and less so on the cucumber sandwiches 😁
Well, that's my childhood there, what the whippersnappers of today do for Lá le Pádraig I have no idea. The tourist bods in this country have tried making it an entire week, again mostly in Dublin, and it may or may not be successful in enticing people to visit and spend money.
Lemme have a look to see what they've lined up for "St Patrick's Festival 15-18 March 2024":
Hmmm. I dunno, I think I'll stick with the "milk churn on a float pulled by a tractor", myself.
Dyeing things green is *not* traditional Irish, so you're doing well to avoid that. I really would suggest tea, coffee, bread and jam and buns and tarts:
Our national broadcaster, with the fancy 'notions!' recipes for those too sophisticated to dig their own shamrock off a ditch and stand there getting pneumonia cheering on the local hurling team on the float pulled by a tractor:
*Ooh! Turn your potatoes into colcannon (mashed potatoes with cabbage or kale mixed through) or champ (mashed potatoes with chopped up onions or scallions)!
Did Ireland pick up the colier's meal, pasties? They were originally Cornish? A good pasty was and still is always in demand in my old iron mining town.
What do tarts mean in context? I'm familiar with that in a French context (custard, fresh fruit, sugar glaze) and a medieval context (meat, cheese, and egg pies, or two out of three, usually ordinary pie sized) but I have no idea what it means in a modern Irish context. The Odlums recipes have one full sized sweet tart and the small ones are called tartlets, so I'm guessing full size and sweet?
The cupcakes looked maybe doable, though decidedly green. Likely to come out just fine baked the day before though, which is a plus. Baked things for breakfast are always tricky. Or we might just do shamrock cut-out cookies; we have a good recipe for those, and it's a metaphor for the trinity.
Ah, right! We mean things like apple tart, which would be apple pie in America. You can add things like cloves to the tart (the version I know) or spices like nutmeg and cinnamon, depending on taste.
Another Odlum's recipe, but they leave out the spices (no idea why); traditionally served with custard or cream (not even whipped cream, just pour some cream over it):
Hi folks, I was wondering if someone might have advice on this purchase. What are best practices in buying a used car?
How do I find out if the price quoted for a used car by a seller is a good price?
I went to carfax.com and checked out reports of accidents or damage (whatever involved a police report will show up), and how many owners there were. No accidents, one owner only. Looks good.
It is a Toyota Camry.
I don't know a mechanic in the city to take it to, to get it checked out.
Thank you! Is there a way to find an honest car mechanic, who can check the car to see if there are obvious problems at least?
This is anywhere in the SF Bay area.
I've had terrible experiences with bad mechanics ruining cars, and hiding that, in the past. Or at least, the next mechanic I'd take to would say "oh yeah, that other place clearly did not do the right thing. So you have this engine leak". I can't tell which one is fibbing.
I was very impressed; in particular, I wasn't sure Chalamet was going to be able to pull off Muad'Dib and Kwizatz Haderach as well as he did Paul Atreides. But he did, and everyone else did fine or better than fine with their roles, and the cinematography was fantastic. I used to consider the 1984 "Dune" to be at least useful as a visualization even if it was an abysmal adaptation; now even that visualization is dead to me.
And I agreed with almost all of the cuts and changes made in the name of cinematic expediency, except:
Pbzcyrgryl vairegvat gur svany fprar bs gur abiry vf Whfg Cynva Jebat. Vg'f bar guvat gb tvir Punav zber ntrapl guna fur unq va gur bevtvany, juvpu fur qvq jryy, ohg gung ntrapl unf gb yrnq ure gb nccebkvzngryl gur fnzr fcnpr. Guvf jnf yvxr Crgre Wnpxfba zneelvat Nentbea bss gb Rbjla orpnhfr fur jnf n orggre zngpu - fur jnf, ohg gung'f abg jung Gbyxvra jebgr naq vg'f abg n gevivny zbqvsvpngvba.
Ivyyrarhir vf cynaavat gb znxr n guveq zbivr. Vs gung'f tbvat gb or onfrq ba gur obbxf, gura ur'f tbvat gb unir gb erhavgr Cnhy naq Punav fb jung'f gur cbvag bs uvf raqvat guvf fgbel jvgu gurz grzcbenevyl rfgenatrq? Naq vs gur rcbalzbhf "Puvyqera bs Qhar" nera'g Cnhy naq Punav'f, gura ur'f abg rira gelvat gb nqncg Ureoreg nal zber naq V jnag abguvat zber gb qb jvgu vg.
V guvax gung gur jubyr guvat jvgu Punav vf whfg Ivyyrarhir tbvat ernyyl unz ba gur zrffntr bs "Cnhy naq Wrffvpn ner ONQ, gurfr ner gur ONQ THLF, ybbx, rira Mraqnln qvfnccebirf bs jung gurl ner qbvat". Lbh xabj, vs Wrffvpn pbagvahbhfyl fcbhgvat bss nobhg znavchyngvat gur Serzra vagb qbvat gur Ngervqrf snzvyl ovqqvat naq Cnhy trggvat n jubyr onq-thl fbhaqgenpx cerprrqvat gur ragel vagb gur Serzra pvepyr gb pynvz uvf ebyr nf gur Zrffvnu be tbvat "Jr'er yvgrenyyl gur Unexbaaraf" jnfa'g rabhtu. Pyrneyl gur jrnxrfg cneg bs gur zbivr sbe zr nf jryy, gurl fubhyq unir cnerq qbja ba nyy gung naq nqqrq n ybatre fprar bs Cnhy gnxvat gur Jngre bs Yvsr.
V qba'g guvax vg'f tbvat gb nssrpg Qhar Zrffvnu n ybg gubhtu, V guvax vg'f pyrne gung Cnhy naq Punav ner tbvat gb trg onpx gbtrgure ng yrnfg ybat rabhtu gb trg gur onovrf fgnegrq.
Vs Ivyyrarhir jrer gelvat gb cnvag Cnhy nf na bhgevtug ivyynva, V qba'g guvax ur'q unir bcrarq gur qhbybtl jvgu Punav zbabybthvat nobhg ubj nal Serzra jub pna qevir gur Rivy Rzcver bss Neenxvf jvyy trg shyy "Evtug Fvqr bs Uvfgbel naq gur Frggyre/Pbybavny Aneengvir" fgnghf, naq gura tbar bhg bs uvf jnl gb fubj Cnhy orpbzvat naq orpbzvat npprcgrq nf n Serzra orsber qevivat gur Rivy Rzcver bss Neenxvf.
Nyfb, cebonoyl jbhyqa'g unir ercrngrqyl uvtuyvtugrq Cnhy'f eryhpgnapr gb tb Shyy Wvunq ba nppbhag bs gur pbfg, juvyr univat Wrffvpn, Thearl, naq lrf Punav urefrys or gur barf qevivat Cnhy gb tb Fbhgu naq yrnq gur Wvunq. Naq cebonoyl gevrq gb fubj Cnhy'f npgvbaf univat ng yrnfg *fbzr* hacyrnfnag pbafrdhraprf, gubhtu gung'f tbvat gb or gbhtu jvgu gur renfher bs Neenxvf'f ragver aba-Serzra cbchyngvba (qrnq Unexbaaraf naq Fneqnhxne qba'g pbhag nf hacyrnfnag pbafrdhraprf).
Wrffvpn, pbzrf bss ybbxvat fbeg bs ivyynvavfu, be creuncf nagvurebvp, va Ivyyrarhir'f gryyvat. Cnhy trgf cerggl zhpu gur pynffvp Ureb'f Wbhearl, raqvat ng na rzbgvbany, gnpgvpny, naq zbeny uvtu cbvag. Vs ur trgf gb znxr n guveq zbivr, naq vf ng nyy snvgushy gb gur obbxf, *gura* fbzr bs gur fuvar jvyy pbzr bss Cnhy.
I'm not gonna rot13 the comment because I haven't seen the movie yet but I'm amused by the fact that I could decode this one in my head just from the punctuation and the context. Glad to hear he did a good job, I thought the black-and-white scenes in the trailer were a bit weird.
Do you think it's worth doing IVF to select for genes to potentially increase IQ at this point in time? Or is the risk/cost still not worth the benefit? Do any companies even offer this sort of thing yet?
I looked into doing this for a while and had a few conversations with Jonathan Anomaly about it. In general: I think this is a good thing. It is quite expensive, and IVF is non-trivial for the female involved as well if it's not otherwise necessary. But the benefits really are there for select populations.
Those most similar to the reference population (which draws in large part from the UK Biobank GWAS studies). I was assured that it worked well for Ashkenazi as well.
If you have the money for IVF, it's definitely worth it. People of European ancestry can already get +3-7 IQ points, plus reduction in many different disease risks.
>Ability to detect embryo IQ is limited, and optimizing for this in particular will probably only gain you <1 - 3 IQ points (higher numbers for more embryos).
>Gwern has done some calculations and finds that with ten embryos (a near-best-case scenario of what you're likely to get from egg extraction) and modern (as of 2016) polygenic scoring technology, you could get on average +3 IQ points by implanting the smartest. If polygenic scoring technology reached the limits of its potential (might happen within a decade or two) you could get +9 IQ points.
The 1-3 point range was outdated when Scott's post was published. Gwern's wasn't, but the predictors have improved significantly since 2016.
As far as the difference between 5 and 6 points, the predictors have gone from ~0.11 variance explained to 0.16 variance explained, hence the additional increase.
There's been some good articles about envy on Substack. Rob Henderson had a good review of the book "Sadly, Porn" a while ago. But when I re-watched the older version of "The Razor's Edge" an adaptation of Somerset Maugham's novel, I was blown away by its portrayal of envy. My review here: https://falsechoices.substack.com/p/old-stories-the-razors-edge BTW, it's free to watch on YT.
The 1946 version of the Razor's Edge or the 1984 Bill Murray version?
Edit: I had a look at your post and gather you are referring to the earlier version. I've seen Bill Murray's take a couple time and don't recall it touching on envy in particular. The thing about the Murray version that tickles me the most is the callback in a pivotal line to the profound classic 'Meatballs', "It just doesn't matter." I'm joking about Meatballs being profound of course but in his version the 'RE' it does speak to a strong element of Eastern thought.
I'll have to check out the Tyrone Power version now. Free on YouTube now? I've never tried to watch a feature length movie in the app.
It had its moments. I thought the 'Pass the soap bishop' and the "It just doesn't matter" lines were good. I've read that Murray really wanted to do the film and only agreed to appear in "Ghost Busters" if he could do "The Razor's Edge".
Of course Bill Murray loves to be a goofball. He is part owner of the minor league team, The Saint Paul Saints. He likes to throw out the season opening pitch by tossing the ball over the safety netting backstop behind the catcher.
He works as a ticket taker at some home games but I haven't run into him yet.
What percent of income is OK to pay for the substack subscription? I feel like $10 is kinda too much for me to pay each month, but like $2.5 is too little. (I'm not poor, but that's by Russian standarts, plus we have some problems with money transfers).
The percentage of income you should pay for something is however much you feel is worth (and can get away with convincing the seller of).
As a throwaway estimate, 0.1% (1/1000) of your income is very much a miniscule amount to pay for anything, Substack or not. So if your monthly income is greater than 10K dollars, then $10 is always fair whatever you're buying (as long as it's not utterly useless or worse). Moving up or down from this baseline will depend on how much you're careful with money and how much you perceive the thing you're paying for to be beneficial or rewarding.
Incredibly unlikely, Josquin is late. There are definitely a lot of funny cantigas, but by joke song do you mean one framed around a joke? In that case we start running out of secular texts when you get early enough but my guess is you can find jokes in the troubadour and trouvere material, though I don’t know them as well. The motet on the wonders of I-think-Paris might also qualify depending on your idea of a joke. (“Fresh strawberries!”)
Or to summarize - I don’t know the pre-1501 repertoire as well but I would be shocked. Humor is universal, and there is certainly humor in poetry well before that.
> The motet on the wonders of I-think-Paris might also qualify depending on your idea of a joke. (“Fresh strawberries!”)
Are you thinking of “The Cries of London”, probably the Orlando Gibbons rather than the Thomas Weelkes (I think the Gibbons more prominently features ‘ripe strawberries’, from memory)?
No, this is one of the 3-part motets - you know, the ones with two complex lines and one simple one interweaving with different texts, like Pucilete, often the third line is in Latin? You know. Although IIRC the original of that line is in French, in this case. So not Gibbons unless I'm very confused, though I have heard his Cries and like it. Unfortunately I heard the motet in concert, in translation, so I haven't got the name at all - sorry for being unhelpful!
(El Grillo is great, though. In the next generation you might also look at Orlando di Lasso, who has lots of funny songs, including Matona mia cara and the echo song. For just slightly earlier than Josquin I'd try some of the other joke songs in Odhecaton. But for specific examples I'd have to hit the books, sorry. Can if you're curious.)
The cricket is a good singer! He sings for a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time!
(And it goes on from there, but that's the first musical joke - it's less knowing music than knowing Italian, I'm afraid.
Some people think "the cricket" is a nickname for a singer of the day, but IIRC that's not established. The title appears to be given in Spanish while the rest of the song is in Italian, which I suspect may be the origin of the guess, but grillo is the same word in Italian and El is close enough to be an alternate (now decidedly incorrect, but you see it during the period) spelling for Italian Il, so I could see it either way. Or at least, would need to make sure it was always el grillo in the original before I assumed it was deliberate spanish. If it is, it is; the song uses the modern il (caldo) later, and it's not as if Spain wasn't right there. Probably in southern Italy, given the period.)
But it's mostly a song about how the cricket is a great singer, (by implication) much better than the "other birds" (see, joke) because of his devotion to his art (ie he never shuts up).
AI Go programs have significantly improved the play of top Go players — not only because they are learning from them, but players are suddenly inventing new moves at a faster rate too! But this may be related to open-source Go programs like LeelaZero, though, which allow players to look at the decision-making process behind the moves.
Your question presumes libertarians want to "take down" some function of government.
For some, libertarianism is about understanding. One can't begin to understand until he stops looking for things to "take down."
A mob of over a hundred young people vandalized two local banks in our city last week. They claimed it was a protest against The Police and/or Palestine. (So many things to "take down;" so little time.)
None of the three local TV station covered it. One had to look in the local section of the one remaining newspaper to even know it occurred.
the local tv station is privately owned. a libertarian can choose to cover whatever he wants to or not; he is only under obligation to market forces should his choice be unpopular.
if anything libertarianism is acutely more vulnerable to the 100 person problem; you weaken the defense that station has in publishing the truth.
I remember something like this from 2020. I saw a bunch of people dressed like Antifa run down the street, followed by police, all heading away from the MLK Jr. Birthday parade. Zero coverage anywhere.
It's pretty clueless politics that thinks inflicting hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to a couple buildings is going to earn political capital. We appear to be turning into France, where a certain element is in a continuous state of protest -- regardless of what's going on in the real world.
I hope libertarians open a credit union, and provide so many good services to police and other first responders and civil servants they put one of the banks out of business.
Violence, or even aggression at times, is counterproductive.
I'm curious as to how the general body of ACXers would approach the very contingent, very abstract, very difficult-to-measure (but ambiently very real-seeming) phenomenon of the competency crisis.
In just about any of the well-known crises of our day which you'd care to credit, there will lay at least some grounds for suggesting that the crisis in question is underpinned by a broader crisis in which we are losing the ability to produce competent people, appoint them to important posts, or both.
Bandied about a fair deal in the last bits of 2023 by Palladium magazine and, I believe, Edward Luttwak, but otherwise yet to gain much critical mass (probably because it directly implicates lots of institutions, like the press and civil services, that critical mass-drivers tend to like or be employed by).
Not even mentioning affirmative action or DEI a single time in this article is insane. We have massive, society-wide, institutionally accepted programs of selecting AGAINST competence, programs which are almost asuredly going to be more pronounced in the future, and this doesn't even register in a discussion of competence to the point of making even the most passing of references to it?
A thought about measuring whether it's real - literature in the process safety field, seeing whether there's a trend where the lack of experience in the workforce is contributing to a higher accident rate.
It feels real to me, but it's a retention issue - therecs a tendency for organisations to preferentially shed more experienced personnel. I think inexperience and lower competency is what happens when the average time-at-role decreases because there's only so many transferrable skills between roles.
I feel like you are right about retention, also when experienced staff leaves earlier, new staff has less experienced teachers - presumably this could make them learn the job slower. This is obviously wild speculation at this point though.
The points about retention map interestingly against one of the interpretations of this article, which is that lowering social trust leads to less personnel investment, more job-hopping, and less development.
Of course that then requires you to be willing to accept that trust is lowering in society, another concept that feels real but is hard (though maybe not as hard) to measure.
Seems like a genuinely difficult to measure thing that, well, we can't measure well. I'd be very concerned if overall US TFP fell though.
Anecdotally, I feel like...the gap between x employees and 10x employees is growing and there's more of them. Top performers are just getting insanely better and average employees are static or even declining. Like, there was always that old hand who actually did a more than everyone else but now it's more like...there's 2 guys doing 60% of the work and 10 other guys doing 40%.
I think general immeasurables, or things that can only be 'measured' by speculative extrapolation from a bunch of adjacent easier-to-measure signals, are the ultimate bugbear in trying to answer large social questions definitively.
To the extent I interact with the federal bureaucracy (which is a lot, like every day with at least a few civil servants), I would say it is real there.
The "preference" in hiring and promotion has had real erosional effects on the quality of the staffing from my perspective. The group of civil servants (mostly white men and women) retiring right now, as being replaced with a new cadre of hires who are just manifestly less competent/high level people. It is not an experience effect either I don't think.
Maybe some of it is the prestige/attractiveness of the job today versus 40 years ago?
So many times there will be bizarre promotional decisions where there are 5 people plausibly up for a position, and the weakest/most incompetent one will get the role. Lots of staff who do little to nothing.
In programming terms it would be like if the senior engineer was leaving and rather than choosing one of the junior engineers or hiring outside to replace them, you picked the admin because she had the right skin tone and gender. The promotions are sometimes that off base, where it is just "wait what...this person has zero qualification?", this happens a lot.
The actual competent people are mostly white males, and they generally flee to the consulting world because there they can get the promotion and compensation their skills deserve. You will see some military veteran white males who can move up the ladder (veterancy is a big plus in federal HR), but that is about it, and often they are not strictly speaking super "right skilled" for the jobs they get. All of this is a pretty predictable consequence of preference hiring. Even if everyone is equally skilled, if you give people bonus points based on DEI characteristics, the white males who actually survive the process are all going to look amazing because they wouldn't make it through otherwise.
There have of course been big pushes to get some minority staffed consulted firms stood up, but they often go down in scandal/disgrace. So the government mostly settles for minority owned ones.
There are some confounding variables though too...
COVID was a noticeably permanent reduction in employee productivity. So many civil servants refused to return to the office, and in most cases get drastically less work done. And a lot of them have "hybrid" arrangements where they are supposed to be in the office 2 or 3 days a week, but maybe come in 1 afternoon. I know some people can work from home with the same/greater efficiency, but MANY MANY cannot.
I also think the general dysfunction at the political level and the shutdowns and whatnot have lead to competent people just leaving to civil service and/or feeling like their marching orders are such nonsense why bother enacting them. And enough people are doing so little (including management) that such inaction doesn't get caught. And since it is the government the money still mostly flows, there are few consequences.
I also think the modern computer based work environment is just awful for work attention/focus. So many things pulling at you and a world of distractions a momentarily lapse in discipline away. People who are bored might come up with creative new ideas to save labor or solve problems at work. People who are bored at work now listen to a podcast or a book or post on some stupid blog.
I think it is very clear that it would generally be better if more people in positions of power were more competent than they are.
But in order to call this a "competency crisis", I would want evidence that there is something new or different about the situation now compared to some relevant point in the past, where things were going better, and that there is some urgency to the situation.
It seems likely to me that there is a lot less competency than we imagine in some ways, but likely also much more competency than we imagine in other ways. It also seems likely to me that most of history (at least in the past few centuries) has involved a gradual increase in the level of competency. I would need some fairly strong evidence to conclude that there has been a significant decrease in competency, and would want to know when and in what set of agencies that decrease is said to have taken place.
I found the article to be quite interesting. I agree that:
>But in order to call this a "competency crisis", I would want evidence that there is something new or different about the situation now compared to some relevant point in the past, where things were going better, and that there is some urgency to the situation.
Before trying to find causes for a phenomenon, it is indeed critical to check that the phenomenon is _real_.
I've certainly seen instances of "papering over" errors, (in the corporate world), which prevents learning from them. But I have no idea if this is happening at a steady background rate or if it is getting worse.
Only at that point does it make sense to try to dissect the problem into contributing factors, whether it is corporate spin control, DEI, putting people without the skill to make decisions into positions where they are responsible for those decisions, etc.
I also think it is very clear that it would generally be better if people from a greater variety of backgrounds were present in groups with power.
Just because one thing is important doesn't mean it is the only thing that is important! And just because something improves along one important dimension doesn't mean that it is an overall improvement.
I think many existing affirmative action/DEI policies have been designed very badly, but I also think there are many that have been done pretty well
If it's very difficult to measure, how do we know the competency crisis is a real phenomenon?
And in the article, Luttiwak is quoted as claiming the CIA is incompetent, but his claims don't even reach the level of anecdata. How does he know we have no agents in China or Iran? And why does he think it was the CIA who told the president that "Kiev [sic] would fall within 72 hours of the Russian invasion." My understanding from WaPo articles at the time was that those estimates were provided by the Pentagon and the DIA. I also recall that there was massive groupthink among Rand and private defense analysts that Ru had an overwhelming superiority in tanks and personnel. But like Putin, our humint resources were misled by the glowing reports from the Ru generals about how ready their forces were. AFAIK, the only person who made the correct call was Phillips P. O'Brien, who believed that chronic graft in the Ru military had weakened them to the point that they didn't have the forces or ordinance for a quick victory.
Even if it was the CIA who made these claims, we've been having intelligence failures for as long as I can remember. Incompetence is nothing new. It sounds like the Luttiwak fellow has an ax to grind.
The Napoleonic War stuff was very interesting though. Thanks for sharing the link.
Has anyone claimed that the CIA does have officers in China? There have been articles and leaks about China purging CIA informants and sources, but with the internet and modern encryption, I don't think that implies the CIA officers that the informants contact have to also be in China.
Who knows? It's probably classified tippy top secret. But if you were in charge of an externally-facing intelligence agency wouldn't it make sense to leak information about your failures to place agents in other countries rather than to brag about having agents in place? Heck, Luttiwak may be criticizing the CIA for its failures at the behest of the CIA! To quote Sun Tzu: "All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we can attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive..."
On the other hand, I recall that Victor Sheymov — a Soviet defector — in his memoir _Tower of Secrets_ claimed that the Soviets were never able to successfully able to insert spies into the PRC.
On the third hand, there's this guy who was nabbed by the Gong An Bu. If he really was a US spy, then there probably are others they haven't caught.
> But if you were in charge of an externally-facing intelligence agency ...
Honestly, no, I would not want to make it known that our informants in China get executed or imprisoned if I were in charge of the CIA. I would want to make that known if I were China, working against the CIA.
> On the third hand, there's this guy who was nabbed by the Gong An Bu. If he really was a US spy, then there probably are others they haven't caught.
Thanks for the article.
While I'm not super clear on the distinction between an officer and an informant, Luttwak was claiming there are no CIA officers (the Americans who recruit and handle informants) in China, rather than claiming there are no informants in China. The people doing the spying would be the latter category.
In movies, an American spy is someone who had top marks in school, joined the CIA, was trained in spycraft and combat, and then travels to a foreign country to spy. In real life, intelligence agencies find someone with access to information who they think would be willing to cooperate and offer them money (or vice versa: someone with information approaches the CIA offering the information for money). The real life spies are in some sense less a part of the CIA than the movie version. Luttwak appears to be complaining about the competency of CIA employees and officers, and not about the competency of the informants.
Would it matter if the CIA has no officers physically in China? I have no idea.
I've read a biography of people who were in it at the start, and the (quite biased) impression I got was that the analyst wing was a bunch of smart lefty intellectuals that came out of the OSS and other wartime agencies, but then the Dulles brothers showed up with some wanna-be-Teddy-Roosevelt cowboy attitude, and started "doing stuff" and not understanding what the consequences would be. Like I said, it was a biased source, but it left an impression.
...Well, there goes my hope of the CIA competently intervening in the event of a fascist coup. They're probably going to end up falling in line or just get purged. But I guess letting the public sector burn is one way to solve the competency crisis... assuming anything is left afterwards.
Thanks for announcing Manifest tickets! But a correction on pricing: we originally said GA tickets were going to be $449 (not 499), but have lowered that to $399. And early bird tickets are $249 (only 10 left!).
What did you find interesting about Jessica Ocean's analysis? I found it vague to the point of uselessness: "laws can be implemented badly" is an all-purpose argument that doesn't answer the question of whether the new law will be implemented more or less badly than the previous law, and "more money doesn't always solve the problem" doesn't answer the question of whether this reallocation of existing money from one stream to another will make particular problems better or worse. As far as I can tell, the only meaningful criticism raised in that post which depended on the actual details of Prop 1 was the note that too much of the housing was set aside for veterans.
Will work to sharpen my analytical chops for next time, haha.
If you want a few actual predictions, I expect the measure to make little different on rates of homelessness, and to increase both length and frequency of involuntary hospitalisation (by expanding capacity) but not to reduce rates of mental illness or substance abuse or anything like that (because involuntary hospitalisation in general in CA doesn't seem very good at reducing those rates). I expect it to slightly reduce labour market shortages in the mental health industry and make a few housing and infrastructure contractors happier and a bunch of mental health workers upset (the ones getting their programs defunded).
Also, California has a maximum amount of debt it can take on as bonds (idk what it is or how close we are to reaching that limit) so this takes up some of that allocation.
Lastly, I haven't been able to confirm this myself, but a mental health executive I know believes it's unconstitutional, because it combines two bills into one ballot measure (which is apparently not allowed but again I haven't investigated exactly why).
That's at least a few more concrete things about the bill. My focus in my work isn't on legislative politics mostly because I don't think it will contribute usefully to solving the problems I care about (making crisis care work for people).
Thanks for the reply! I'd like to be clear that I'm very open to argument on this; nothing I've heard on either side has really impressed me much. I'd much rather have (gears-level) arguments than predictions, though. Some people are against Prop 1 because it funds a nonzero amount of involuntary hospitalization, and I think that's a very valid stance which is clearly implied by the bill. But predictions about [whether it will or won't make a substantial dent in homelessness vs the counterfactual] aren't being backed up by anywhere near that level of causal reasoning, as far as I can tell.
Personally, I already voted Yes because of my general California heuristic to vote Yes on legislative referrals (state govt-passed laws that have to get a referendum because direct democracy sounded good) and No on citizen initiatives (get a small pct of citizens to sign a petition, and you can get a constitutional amendment passed by simple majority because direct democracy sounded good) unless I have strong reasons to like/dislike the specific proposition. But I'm still curious to know if I should have voted differently.
A couple of bits of data to build a gears-level model of whether it will reduce homelessness:
Current count of people homeless in CA: 181,399
Number of units of housing proposed to be built by Prop 1: 4,350 units of supportive housing, plus 6,800 mental health treatment beds
So unless those mental health treatment beds were made of magic and everyone who laid in them was instantly mentally healthy, that's a small amount of housing compared to the number of people needing housing (estimates of how many homeless people have are considered mentally ill vary but they are always minimum 30%, and more if you consider addictions).
Also in 2018 another ballot measure (also called Prop 1) authorised $4 billion in spending for housing and housing services for veterans. This article claims that of the 20,000 units promised, fewer than 10% of them have been built 5 years later. https://calmatters.org/housing/2024/02/mental-health-housing-election/
I think in general voting in direct democracies is time consuming and complicated so I applaud having general heuristics anyways.
Thanks! That's a powerful reality check on the degree to which any improvement would be visible. I'm still curious about gears-level thoughts on why this reallocation of funds would be a good or bad marginal change.
I haven't looked into it deeply but the part of the bill that jumped out at me the most was pulling funds OUT of county-level initiatives and funding state-level initiatives instead. This is a major reversal of the last few decades' de-institutionalization (see https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/03/31/book-review-my-brother-ron/ for how we got to this point).
Any gears-level explanation of these bills should make some claim regarding the effectiveness and competence of CA gov't as opposed to... whatever these dozens of counties were doing before.
I’m confused about fractional reserve banking. The consensus seems to be that banks create money (see for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5DaC1Ujrrg), but I think that’s an oversimplification.
Take for example Capitol One, based on their annual report, as of year end they had $348 billion of deposits and $305 billion of loans outstanding. So roughly 90% of deposited were loaned out. The theory is all of those loans were deposited into a bank, so that 90% of those would be loaned out (and then deposited and then loaned out etc). But that can’t be right. If I charge $1,000 on my Capital One card, the money goes to the vendor who just replaces his inventory, he doesn’t deposit the money. Maybe just to the extent of his gross margin, maybe 10% at most.
The supplier receives payment from the vendor but they have to build another widget with the money, so they don’t deposit the full amount, they spend it on inputs to build another one. Maybe they keep 10% at most? And that’s assuming pretty high margins. If I spent $1,000 at restaurants, then they’re keeping maybe 2-3%.
Where have I gotten this wrong? The idea that $1 of deposits create 10x as much money through FRB seems hyperbolic.
Don't bother trying to become un-cofused. There is no policy implication in the question. To the extent that money supply is targeted by the Fed, it's what the Fed wants it to be.
When money is spent it typically goes into someone else's bank account. That's true recursively. A single purchase might cause a flurry of transactions, resulting in money ending up in many bank accounts.
A vendor who "just replaces his inventory" is spending the money, causing it to go elsewhere. (Though it will be briefly in their bank account.)
The deposits don't go away. If you have $348 billion of deposits and $305 billion of loans there is a total of $653 billion in circulation. This extra $305 is created. That's what you're missing. Also, money doesn't exit the system upon going to suppliers etc.
If I loan you my currently unused leaf blower, I still own it, and you have use of one. We didn't create another leaf blower. When I need it back, you have to give it back.
When/if the $305 billion at capital one needs to be withdrawn, they legally have to go get it or go bankrupt. They probably can't go get it from the people they loaned it to, but they may sell those loans to someone else which is functionally the same. In other words, if you don't have my leaf blower available when I ask for it, then you gotta go get another one from someone. If we had "created" another one with the loan, then you wouldn't have that problem.
You're reasoning by analogy. What gave you the impression money was a physical object? It literally never has been, even during the gold standard, because it's a unit of account and store of value. You can have purely physical means of exchange but not the other two.
So let's say a bank gets a $10 deposit from you. It then loans me $10 which I use to buy equipment for a business. I am then paying the bank back $1/month for a year. This loan is valued at $12. Okay, so what are the assets in the world at that moment? Well, you have a $10 deposit which is matched by a $10 liability on the banks part. The bank has a $12 asset created by a $10 liability. There is thus $2 of bank assets above its liabilities. We have created profit through business activity, lending in this case. Further, what is the amount of money that could be spent? Well, you could withdraw your $10 no issue. And I was able to buy my machine for $10 no issue. So it's $20. What happens if that happens simultaneously and there's a run? The bank just borrows the money from someone else on the strength of the value of the $12 loan. Which people will give them because the loan itself has value.
None of this could happen with a leaf blower because it's a leaf blower. But it could happen with the value of the leaf blower. For example, if I rented you the leaf blower in exchange for a promissory note then we could create money that way.
I don't think it's fair to think of money and loans as being interchangable. Yes, they can be under normal circumstances, but it's not guaranteed.
also, i think it's more useful to reserve the term "money" for the concrete implementation, whereas the abstracted value that you're gesturing at is better labeled with some other term.
It arguably does exit upon repayment of principal, however. Indeed, one thing that I find conceptually aggravating (at a minimum, aesthetically) is that under this view of creating money, the amount of money owed (assuming non-zero interest) at any given time actually exceeds the amount of money in circulation. You can't actually pay back $105 dollars when only $100 have been printed. It essentially requires revolving debt to keep going, absent default (and/or new backing collateral infusing additional money into the system without corresponding debt obligations in the event that it's a backed rather than fiat system).
Consider a toy economy where there's only a single $1 bill between 2 farmers, but they play hot-potato with it to keep trading things. the "GDP" can go arbitrarily high, depending on how many times they're willing to trade that dollar, despite M1 being $1. The money-multiplication isn't being caused by the debt, per se. it's being generated by trade. This looks counterintuitive prima facie because money_stockpile != money_velocity. it's like trying to equate speed with distance, which is mathematically illegal since the dimensions aren't actually commensurable.
What the bank is actually doing (insofar as money gets multiplied) is acting as a middle-man to make sure that money that would otherwise be "saved" (i.e. be stuffed under a mattress, and therefore be pulled out of circulation) instead gets lent to someone who can hopefully generate decent returns. If money isn't in circulation, it's not being multiplied.
According to the Austrians, the real issue with maturity transformation [0] is the risk of bank runs, and the distortion in the credit markets. Similar to how drugs pull happiness from the future, maturity transformation generates malinvestment by pulling demand from posterity.
[0] the correct name for this process is "maturity transformation". the "fractional reserve" is the brake, not engine. And as skybrian points out, nobody cares about fractional reserves anymore because banks are backed by the money printer.
A model of economics that I wish were more popular, that I have yet to see in the wild, is what I think of as a "double piechart" model. I.e. money doesn't represent value, but rather money/money-supply represents value/GDP. In this view, money is a token which tracks the *distribution* of purchasing-power. And purchasing power doesn't buy widgets, it buys a fraction of the GDP. This makes it easier for me to think about things like inflation, subsidies, and the business cycle. (It also vaguely dovetails with how I think about bayes theorem and harmonic averages.)
it also took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that "liquidity" was supposed to imply the opposite of "frozen in an asset".
That's kind of the point: Most money is created through means other than through printing money, such as through fractional reserve banking. (Which makes sense when you think about it: How much of your personal spending is via cash, versus via your checking account?
> You can't actually pay back $105 dollars when only $100 have been printed.
Sure you can, three easy installments of $35. Or I find something I can do for you that you value at $200, so now you owe me $95. And next week you do me a $150 favor, so now I'm back to owing you $55.
The "medium of exchange" use of money doesn't have to be tied strictly to the "unit of account" use of money. (To say nothing of the "store of value" use of money.) There just has to be enough physical cash in circulation so that people who want to use cash can get their hands on cash easily. I didn't need to take $4000 in cash in person to buy my car, I just (effectively) wrote a note that told my bank to give the guy the money. And he gave that note to his bank, and the banks made an entry in a spreadsheet, and then he had the money and not me. Or who knows, maybe he liked stuffing bills in a mattress, so after he gave the note to his bank, he had them give him cash equal to the value. Or I suppose he could have gone directly to my bank and given them the note, and gotten the cash directly without going through a second bank. But whatever he did with the note, I didn't have to carry a bunch of cash around, and yet I no longer had the money and instead had a car.
Debt is mostly involved because the bank owed me at least $4000, which means they know me, and I can use that fact to get them to make my life easier. And the bank owed me that money because I (effectively) gave it to them to hold for me. But I didn't give them cash, I did work for a 3rd party in exchange for money, and the 3rd party put the money into my account in the bank, because that was easier for both of us. And they (probably) didn't give the bank cash either, they just did the same thing with the note that I did in the beginning.
On the other hand, when I get my timing belt replaced, I **will** probably walk a wad of cash down there, because they recently outsourced their payment system to some backwards-ass tech startup that wants to do everything by credit card so they can tack on an extra fee and get in on the vampire squid action. Which annoys me.
I understand your point here, but it's somewhat glib to discount the significance of the medium of exchange character of money entirely: it's not like I can take out a loan and repay my bank by washing its windows or giving them a bunch of topsoil. The unit of account is specifically denominated in the medium of exchange rather than as an abstract subjective valuation that can be paid in-kind.
The closest one gets here is collateralized secured debt, but even then that only increases the number of units of exchange in circulation relative to those outstanding (1) in the event of default (as I noted in my initial post) and (2) temporarily inasmuch as in a world of perpetual revolving debt and ever-growing money supply the amount owing will eventually exceed any fixed-size cache of dollars (or other medium of exchange).
More seriously, I do think having the medium of exchange is a useful backstop for the system, and conveniently it also works as a store of value. But in a high-tech, high-trust society, cash is simply not needed. Of course, we're only approximating a "high-tech, high-trust" society at the moment, and only in certain geographical areas, so I think cash is still quite useful in most places on the planet. (I admit, I do feel a bit like someone arguing for same-sex civil unions, saying "well, if we just create a legal vehicle that duplicates all the civil functions of a marriage, we can get rid of that pesky word and its religious origins".)
But I have to disagree about the importance of debt exceeding the number of units of exchange. I get that it's tempting to simplify things that way - if the only thing valuable was some sort of metal, call it unobtanium, then we could have cash literally composed of unobtainium, and an unobtanium-denominated unit of account, and it'd be possible to model a lot of what the system does that way. But I think that model is too simple, and so when it fails to track certain behaviors of the real-world economy, that's a problem with the model, not the economy.
I do think the common story is similar to your idea, where money is the primal source and debt is a derivative. But IIRC, David Graeber argued that debt came first, so it's something of a debated point. Check out his book "Debt: The First 5000 Years". He was kind of an uneven academic, shall we say, and he definitely had a point of view, but it's a fun read and there's lots of cool stuff in it. Just be sure to also read some criticism, so you get a sense of where to follow him and where to be skeptical.
If you want an old, humorous, notionally sci-fi take on a society without money, check out the 1951 short story "And Then There Were None" by Eric Frank Russell:
... so the only way to keep the system going is to have an entity which doesn't go bankrupt in case of negative equity, and just keeps crediting everybody else (directly or indirectly). Luckily, we have such an entity - the government (or part of it, e.g. treasury + central bank), and for that reason the talk about 'debt ceiling' and 'reducing government debt' is mostly nonsensical...
I'm still worried about the debt ceiling. Even if the principal is a non-issue, it's still possible for interest payments to become an issue. In which case, either taxes get raised explicitly, or taxes get raised implicitly via the money-printer, or interest-rates go to the moon via a default.
> or taxes get raised implicitly via the money-printer
Yeah, that's inflation. I worry about inflation, but I don't worry about the debt at all, as long as the US can do all of its business in dollars. At the moment, we are kings of the world. If the government needs more money, it can conjure it up "out of thin air", which is to say, tax everyone invisibly and somewhat-equally (heavier on people who own cash and who loaned out money (like to standard dollar-denominated bank accounts), lighter on people who own assets and who borrowed money). Inflation requires a lot less immediate political capital than a normal tax, so I'm expecting the trend of printing money and handing it to favored groups to continue.
If the federal government eventually can't get its act together and misses a payment or something, due to partisan infighting, then I expect that the rest of the world will look the other way and pretend it didn't happen, but then madly scramble to replace the USD. So I predict things won't get bad immediately, and instead it will look like a big nothing, but then over the course of the next few decades, things might get much harder for the US.
Other countries which aren't the US, they have a different problem, and do have to worry about default. :-(
Actually, any government can conjure its own money out of thin air (US is not _that_ special). US unique advantage is that it doesn't have debts denominated in a foreign currency (despite running massive trade deficits for decades), and that in a sense spreads US-generated inflation all over the world (taxing pretty much everybody on the planet!).
Also, FWIW, the drift away from US dollar (and towards bilateral direct settlements in national currencies) accelerated significantly after US-imposed sanctions on Russia...
I think the only thing we disagree on is our emotional response. I, for one, am quite worried that practically every government in the world is digging themselves into a hole. To me, small chronic debt is like chronically snorting only a small amount of cocaine. Economists have somehow convinced themselves that all sorts of transitional gains are good actually(!), so long as the amounts are small.
Inflation has limits too, in the form of the ~20% mark where it becomes hyperinflation. The logical conclusion of every single scenario which accretes unchecked debt ends badly. I don't see how folks are so unworried, except perhaps to the extent that some don't believe the consequences will unroll within in their lifetime (although I don't think that's the argument gullydwarf is making).
The way I see it -- which could be completely wrong (and likely is) -- is that money is an approximation of value, and banks borrow money against future value. For example, let's say that I want to build a new chicken coop, but lack the startup capital. You loan me $100 for a month. If I build the chicken coop, and it generates $100 worth of produce, then I can repay your loan. Thus, a month ago, you have created $100 worth of money by borrowing it from the future.
However, if I already have a perfectly working chicken coop worth $100, and it gets hit by a meteorite, then $100 worth of value is destroyed (and we're all poorer for it). Something similar happens if you loan me $100 and I fail to build the coop.
Issuing loans creates money through a process called "credit creation." When a bank issues a loan, it does not actually lend out the deposits it has on hand. Instead, it creates a new deposit in the borrower's account equal to the amount of the loan. This new deposit is new money that did not exist before.
Here's a simplified example of how this works:
Initial Deposit: Let's say you deposit $1000 into your bank account.
Fractional Reserve Requirement: The bank is required to keep only a fraction of this deposit as reserves, let's say 10%. So, the bank keeps $100 as reserves and can loan out the remaining $900.
Issuing a Loan: The bank lends $900 to a borrower. This loan is typically credited to the borrower's account, creating a new deposit of $900.
New Money Creation: The borrower now has $900 in their account, which they can spend. This $900 deposit is new money that has been created by the bank through the act of issuing a loan.
Money Supply Increase: The total money supply has increased by $900. This is because the original $1000 deposit still exists in your account, and there is now an additional $900 in the borrower's account, totaling $1900.
This process demonstrates how banks can create money through the issuance of loans, effectively increasing the money supply in the economy.
>But that can’t be right. If I charge $1,000 on my Capital One card, the money goes to the vendor who just replaces his inventory, he doesn’t deposit the money. Maybe just to the extent of his gross margin, maybe 10% at most.
First, not sure if you're mixing credit and capital - Cap1 is a bank as well as a credit-card place, and has both. But let's assume you meant debit card. Yes, the vendor may spend the $900 on inventory, but where does THAT person put the money? In a bank, or they spend it with person / business XYZ, who then puts it in a bank or spends it, and on down the line.
The point is, people and businesses don't park money in mattresses, pretty much all money eventually ends up in a bank, even if you have to descend a chain of ten people / businesses to get there.
Of course, at some point the widget maker might be buying overseas, in which case it gets into trade deficits and forex reserves and a bunch of stuff like that. But if you assume a closed economy for the the thought exercise, it's easy to see that nearly all money must end up parked at a bank, because businesses don't park money in mattresses.
Sometimes I think banks are crowd-sourced loan insurance, with a tiny bit of profit-sharing as an incentive to buy in. They do more stuff, of course: the whole "keep your money in a vault guarded by men with guns" thing has historically been important. But that seems like the basic business model.
Yeah, I'd agree that's a pretty solid heuristic. And would also be why, for example, credit unions usually extend loans on better terms (they take less of that "profit sharing" margin due to shareholders being the deposit holders instead of anonymous public stockholders, so fewer middlemen to pay with the profit sharing).
I had put this on the February links post but got there very late, and likely no one will see it, so will re-post here. I'm surprised at how absolutely no one has commented on link 18
(adding only two links manually because substack is impossible)
Piketty and his diatribe on inequality have been at the forefront of the left crusade on capitalism and classical liberal style economics. And no one here finds the fact that Piketty et al were substantially incorrect worth comment?
I think most of us already knew that Piketty et al were substantially incorrect. And that it doesn't matter, because the people who take Piketty et ak seriously were just going to continue genuflecting to the unopened book gathering dust on their coffee table saying "r > g, thus inequality, It Is Written!"
Had this been the only response I would have felt like all was right with the world. Seeing some of the responses, including from people who don't necessarily genuflect, it feels like Piketty et al have the first mover moat.
I read the links above ... and concluded that my lack of economic knowledge prevents me from having an opinion on whether the critics are well-founded or not.
If Piketty were primarily correct, I would expect his work to produce in-the-range-of the number of high-profile 'debunkings' it has actually received over the years, and I don't believe I have the expertise to really tell which ones are substantial vs frivolous.
I've read this and other debunkings and it is useful as signposts to what future evidence to look for/conversation and buzzwords to listen for, but it takes more than that to make me completely reject something like this, as indeed Piketty's original work did not make me completely accept his narrative.
There have been many critiques of Piketty since Capital, most notably someone (I can't remember who) who said that it was all downstream of rising house prices instead of anything fundamental about inequality itself.
I would be interested in some survey of what percent of economists agree with these critiques (bonus if it sorts them by whether they agreed with Piketty before the critiques). Without these, I don't think most people know enough to determine whether the critiques have landed.
Piketty defenders have entered the phase of "literally wrong but directionally correct" arguments. Which is an admission that Piketty was wrong by people who don't want to say that.
The reality is that Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman were always highly political and put their politics over their arguments. If you actually read Piketty's Capital book it's an explicit argument for a global wealth tax and he spent the next decade touring progressive political parties to argue for it. There was also that incident where Piketty defended errors in his data by saying there were uncountable super-rich that don't show up in the data but makes things even worse. Which is basically a conspiracy theory.
They're leftists with a specific political ax to grind. Their numbers are almost always the most extreme left version (highest inequality, lowest returns to labor, etc). And they should be treated with the appropriate grain of salt as a result.
I am minimally familiar with Piketty and have no contribution to that topic. But your mention of his claim of uncountable super-rich people reminded me of something I once read about 1997 research on poor Americans:
> In "Making Ends Meet,"* to be published next month by the Russell Sage Foundation, Edin (with a co-author, Laura Lein) reports that all but one of the 214 welfare mothers she interviewed had unreported income. They turned to boyfriends, relatives and under-the-table jobs, and on occasion to prostitution or drugs. Edin even found a mother running her own private lottery, raffling off counterfeit bus passes. The one woman who tried to live on only her benefits failed to feed her son so often that her neighbors considered reporting her for neglect. (https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/national/042797deparle.html)
Do studies of income inequality do anything to adjust for income under-reporting among the poor?
Generally studies of inequality are narrowly tailored to count only earned and reported pre-tax income. This is sometimes justifiable if you're interested in things like labor productivity. But mostly it's used to hack the number. Conservatives, who have the opposite ideological position, generally add in taxes and transfers which shows a significantly less income inequality. And sometimes they estimate under the table income too which causes it to decline even further.
For example, the US inequality is about 30% lower if you include taxes and transfers and has not significantly grown over the past few decades. It's also much less out of line with other nations. The US progressive tax and transfer system is effectively suppressing inequality. But liberals don't want to admit that because they feel it defeats a talking point for the welfare programs they politically support. Conservatives are eager to point that out but think it's a bad thing.
Exactly! I'm surprised so many people here are saying 'we must be even handed about it etc'. Piketty was the classic man of one study with a political slant and skewed incentives to boot. The several academic refutations should make this the last nail on the coffin, yet people are out here treating this as some kind of 'listen to both sides' issue.
I read the book on release and my first thought was questioning how he got such high quality data for so many nations across so many centuries. The answer I got, which was along the lines of "shut up this is too important to nitpick," made me suspicious. As did all the liberals who were eager to talk about the book who couldn't really discuss it beyond the summaries.
Unfortunately, such data does not in fact exist. I spent some time looking for it. I honestly wish it did because I'd find it interesting and it would mean I don't have to pick through isolated datapoints to try and guess.
I haven't done a literature search but it seems like the saltwater school of economists buy into Piketty's arguments, and the freshwater economists reject him?
I agree. Im surprised that this kind of inequality isn't more obvious to people, given how it applies across otherwise very similar and comparable types of people.
Take any professional career class, and you'll find 30 year old 99.9th percentile performers, 40 year old 90th percentile, 50 year old 50th percentile, and 60 year old 25th percentile performers all living in comparable houses.
I’ve been using Yahoo Finance for a long time to keep tabs on the US stock market and get quick quotes. Even as the whole Yahoo thing was sliding into irrelevant mess of crap, with the help of adblockers the Finance page was useable.
Not anymore, with the new design it’s truly jumped the shark.
So: anybody has a recommendation for a clean-looking site for this?
For some inexplicable reason, GOOGLE is killing Google Podcasts on 2 April 2024. That's soon!
I subscribe to about a million different free podcasts. Where should I get them now? GOOGLE wants me to get them from YouTube Music but I'd rather not since they killed my prior favorite Stitcher and now are actively homiciding Google Podcasts.
Where do I go? Spotify? Apple Podcasts? Some other place?
I'm still in morning about Zune. You downloaded what you wanted how you wanted it to the computer and sent it to the (smaller and lighter than a telephone) :(
I use Spotify for music and podcasts and like it. It doesn't have the skip silences feature that Google Podcasts has (but I never used that feature anyway), but other than that, it has every feature I can think of. You also don't need premium; the podcasts are all completely free. It's especially good if you already use Spotify for music.
For me the 'killer' feature of podcast apps is the ability to skip silences. I use Overcast for this but it's iOS only. On Android 'Pocket Casts' and 'Podcast Addict' support it.
I liked Pocket Casts but then it started acting flakey, eventually it began nuking my library periodically and so was unusable. I'm on Android, I don't want to use Spotify or Apple, what is my best choice?
Huh. I went though a period of about 3 years where I didn't use it at all, and changed phones, but when I picked it up again a few years ago, it was fine. Maybe I skipped the bad period?
I admit, I don't like how they store files with guids for the name, but I seem to be an outlier in how much I enjoy poking around the internals.
When I get the notice that they were sunsetting Google podcasts, I searched for a bit and landed on AntennaPod. I've not investigated using it in Chrome so can only say it's what I want in an android app.
Does anyone here have any memories or articles about how the Western left - the real left, I mean - reacted to the collapse of the Soviet Union? I'm finding it weirdly hard to find information about it, and I'm interested.
My recollection is that the US left, at least, mostly didn't care. I think they mostly saw Gorbachev as proof that Communists aren't all ruthless evil dictators and maybe now we'll see the full potential of the system. Then Gorbachev fell to "right-wing hard-liners", was replaced by Yeltsin, and yawn, quasi-capitalist oligarchs under a corrupt populist autocrat really suck, we already knew that, nothing to do with us and our beliefs.
I'm not sure what the definition of "Western left" here is. A lot of leftists had spent decades already before the collapse saying that Soviet Union was bad for one reason or another - due to not being democratic (social democrats and democratic socialists), for being a state (anarchists), for not following Trotsky (Trotskyists), for not following Stalin (Maoists, Hoxhaists etc.) and so on. Of course when it came to moderate leftists a lot of them were shocked simply because they had assumed the general conventonional wisdom of Soviet Union, for all of its faults, being destined to stay.
I grew up in Manhattan with very liberal friends & family. By '91, the USSR/Castro/China apologists were few and far between. Gorbachev was seen as a Ghandi-like figure, a liberator. My Marxist-leaning friends all took the line that the self-proclaimed Communist states were not practicing "real Communism". Basically the "No True Scotsman" defense.
When the wall came down, I don't recall anyone having a negative viewpoint on what was happening. I vaguely recall arguments downplaying Reagan's role (bc Reagan BAAD) but everyone pretty clearly recognized that a great number of people were now less burdened by a corrupt and inefficient authoritarian regime.
In the U.K., in say the 70s and 80s, most of the far left, and the mainstream (Labour Party).left were anti-communist. The Socialist Workers Party, fo example, was not communist, George Orwell, famously, was anti-communist, writing books like 1984 which really have it in for Soviet communism. There was also, a small communist party. But much of the mainstream and far left was not a fan of the USSR.
If you went back earlier, say before the invasion of Hungary, you'ld have an easier time finding a USSR enthusiast.
I'm not sure it's quite the answer you are looking for, but here goes. In the UK, the mood on the ordinary left (broadly, Labour voters) was pretty positive as the USSR liberalised, and very positive as the Wall came down, Havel took power, etc. The final collapse was pretty much welcomed too, except for reservations (scarcely confined to the left) about what next: the potential for ethnic conflict, where are all the nukes going. It was a pretty upbeat and optimistic time
"Does anyone here have any memories or articles about how the Western left - the real left, I mean..."
Do you mean organizations such as the US Communist party and maybe individuals such as Bernie Sanders? If not, then can you provide some examples of "the real left"?
I like to stay clear of culture war topics, and what once was called the IWD and is now probably more clustered as the heterodox skeptics community has been too close to it for me. Coleman Hughes used to be an exception for me, but this excellent 3 part series made me update on him as well: https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-retconning-of-george-floyd
Thank you for posting this. I listen to a number of podcasts regularly that feature Coleman and he talked about the documentary. But reading a bit more about the incident, especially the autopsy, has changed my mind. I am significantly less sympathetic to Chauvin than I was.
I only ready part 3, the one you linked below, but wow was that shocking. It definitely makes me more sympathetic to the police reform movement. I wish everyone could see this, but of course the people who need it most will never read it.
I feel like the question of what killed George Floyd is a distraction. It doesn't really matter if he was a saint or the worst person in history, it shouldn't have triggered such a massive disruption of public order.
Why shouldn't it have? It's a totally predictable social phenomenon when there are tensions between those who dispense justice and those who receive the dispensation of justice. George Floyd is one of a long list of people whose deaths became flashpoints for civil unrest — Mark Duggan and Mohamed Bouazizi come immediately to mind. And let's not forget how the death of Christopher Seider may have changed the course of history. If those who dispense justice don't want civil unrest, they should be cautious in the application of power. Just sayin...
The original failure of good policing was to keep officers on staff who were prone to use violence in situations that didn't warrant it. Derek Chauvin had 18 complaints against him in his official record and was involved in *three* police shootings, one of which was fatal. He received two letters of reprimand for misconduct. If the police unions didn't let the MPD fire him, he should have been put on a desk job manning the evidence locker or following up on pawnshop slips for stolen goods. I had a cousin who was in the Chicago PD. He said the average officer never has to draw their gun in the line of duty. Of course, he retired years ago and since passed away (so things may be different now) — but he warned me to mind my P&Qs with police because he said there are three types: officers, cops, and pigs — and I wouldn't know which type I was talking to until it was too late.
No, thank you! And I was surprised no one rose to my Christopher Seider bait. But that may have been due to people's ignorance of history. But it amazes me that the same law-and-order crowd who cluck their tongues at civil unrest seem go out of their way (not in this thread, I admit) to memorialize the acts of civil unrest that created the United States.
The tension is almost entirely manufactured. We don't have benign good guys in prison, people think we do. We don't have a racist epidemic in LE and CJ, people think we do. We don't have an epidemic of police abuse, people think we do. All of that ignorance is what's causing the unrest. I don't think it's the fault of the useful idiots, I place all of the blame on social media influencers and activo-journalists. They're grifters, liars, and in some cases genuine morons who have no right to be anywhere near a microphone.
Well that's the problem, these tensions exist because there's a false (or at least very dubious) narrative out there that black people are treated worse by police than people of other races. This narrative is propagated by the media, who could instead be critically examining the evidence for it.
'Triggered' being the operative word, as Floyd was being used as a final-straw to unleash long-growing tensions, rather than that release being a reaction to the Floyd incident itself.
If you say 'was the amount of disruption proportional to this one incident,' then of course the answer is no, almost no matter what that incident was.
If you say 'was the amount of disruption proportional to the amount of tension built up to that time,' then it seems really hard to me to make a confident answer in either direction. A *lot* goes into that question, and much of it is hyper-local and hyper-contextual to the specific cities and neighborhoods in which specific disruptions took place.
You can always ask 'if the tension had to be released, couldn't they have chosen a better figurehead than Floyd?'. But there are a lot of answers to that question.
Starting with the fact that Floyd-as-figurehead wasn't entirely a decision by the movement, the media and their opponents elevated Floyd had equal or greater power in sculpting that unitary narrative. If you'd asked people really engaged with the movement at the time, they would have a long list of other provocations that were equally motivating; I remember memes of very long lists of names and incidents from those days, though not the details. The reduction to Floyd being the whole story is mostly a retroactively-applied narrative.
And also just the fact that you don't always get to choose your martyrs. A lot depends on timing, contingent details like if anyone was recording and how galling the video looks, how it first gets reported and how that shapes the cultural understanding in the early days, and other such coincidences.
As long as the tension exists, something will trigger it eventually, but that trigger might not be the best' or 'cleanest' or 'most reasonable' possible incident from the perspective of outside-view hindsight.
The question isn't about what to do with the tension, but whether or not it was astroturfed in the first place. Yes, if the average person believes that the cops treat their jobs like open season for hunting innocent black men, there's gonna be some tension. What if this isn't true and never was? Now that's a horse of a different color, pun intended.
Astroturfed is a loaded word. That suggests that there's an effort by an organization or by organizations to propagandize police killings of black people. But astroturfing isn't necessary when everyone has a smartphone that can act as a video camera and has the potential to access audiences of millions of people on social media. But fatal police shootings of unarmed suspects has fallen dramatically since 2015. Back then blacks were being killed at twice the rate of whites — approx 1 per million for blacks, and 0.5 per million for whites. In 2022 their rates were roughly equal and below 0.2 per million. I wonder if ubiquitous smartphones have caused police to be more cautious in the use of force.
And Hispanics for some reason have (at least since 2015) been killed at significantly lower rates than blacks or whites. I wonder why?
I'm trying to imagine what would be a better way than per capita rates to compare police-induced mortality rates among groups with different raw population sizes. I can't come up with anything better. Thoughts?
Are you actually prepared to defend 'never was' in the historical context, or was that just colorful language?
Anyway, yes, a reasonable question - not one where I personally think the conclusion is in any real doubt, but the right kind of quesiton to ask - is 'do black communities actually face any types of oppression or harm at the hands of police that would justify this type of resentment and tension?'
But if you know that's teh actual question at stake here, then's it disingenuous to ask 'did what happened to George Floyd justify this level of disruption?'
Which was my original point, just that the wrong quesiton is being asked.
Heh yes I would be willing to defend that. I'm no booster of the police, mind you, but they're bad in ways that don't fit the stereotypes supporters of BLM believe.
Your framing itself shows the problem I'm pointing to -- if polling shows that after Obama's election race relations were at their best maybe ever, and then something happened to perceptions, what would that be? Did white people suddenly become more racist again?
I think people massively underrate the influence of lockdown. Millions of young people were locked in their houses for months, in the middle of the summer, and then told that the only acceptable reason to go out and have fun with their friends was if they were protesting for Floyd. They also had few serious work or school obligation during this period, so they had nothing better to do. Were their no lockdown, I doubt the national phenomenon would have happened at all. Most likely it would be limited to the kind of smaller, local protests and rioting we saw in the past.
I agree that fires, unrest, chaos, etc. are bad things. That said, public order was already disrupted for the marginalised, and the case was just the tip of an iceberg that is and was smothering non-whites.
I don't want to stage a culture war reenactment here, I'm happy to read anything you have to reply to this, or, preferably another similarly sober long-form that goes into it though. Let's just not fence too much about this topic here, I know and appreciate that Scott wants to keep threads free of the tug of war that is consuming so much of our attention already.
Most of the unrest came from blacks and white liberals. The more Hispanics and Asians in a community, the smaller the protests/riots and the less most people cared.
Police reform should be based off data with a p < 0.01, not anecdotes. Collect data, run good stats analysis on it, then go ahead and change the system. This applies to any area of life, not just police reform.
I don't think it was that study, but a few years ago I found a different one that said the same thing: that after controlling for various factors, white officers were slightly less likely than black officers to shoot black people. (Specifically, IIRC but it's been a while, the numbers said that if you were a black person and encountered police, white police would be less likely to kill you.) However, it also found that white officers were slightly more likely than black officers to commit verbal abuse and non-lethal physical violence against black people. I choose to interpret this as meaning that police departments do, on average, have a small problem with racism, but that the white officers tend to over-correct when it comes to the use of lethal force, to avoid causing racially charged incidents.
Conveniently for me and my contrarian tendencies, this lets me say that just about everyone is wrong for one reason or another. Also, assuming that the above is accurate, it's worth noting that Chauvin was presumably intending to apply non-lethal violence against Floyd.
Police statistics like this always have Goodhart problem.
And that's even downstream of the fact that the metrics themselves are adversarially chosen (either for study or for promotion) by opponents of a given narrative or conclusion.
Do I think it's easy to convince an entire population that they are persecuted when they're actually not? Sure, that's possible.
Do I think it's *easier* to write one convincing-looking paper 'debunking' that fact, and get a few politically-motivated people to be convinced by that paper and share it widely? Yeah, I think that's a lot easier and more common.
I recommend reading part 3. I never talked about lethal shootings, I talked about over-policing, and the articles does reference data not just anecdotes, so I feel like this is missing my point.
Update: to bite a little bit, I don't know what would make this the best paper on the subject, there does seem to be scientific controversy around it:
Apropos data, I'll quote from the above "framed their literature review and interpreted their findings in ways that clearly did not correspond to the data they had analyzed and presented"
Thanks, I've read Part 3 and I'm not convinced. I live in a major coastal city and the 2020 reforms have been a disaster due to the subsequent uptick in crime. Luckily they're now being rolled back and order is slowly getting restored.
I'd rather have overpolicing than being worried about walking alone at night in my neighborhood.
I'm sorry to hear that, no one should be worried walking alone at night. I should maybe disclose here that I live in Germany myself, and have probably only spent a total of 3 months in the US over my lifetime, for work and vacation. So this is more of an abstract topic for me.
Then again I did have negative experiences in both SF and Miami. Both made me wish for a better social safety net in the US and wrt my encounter in Miami I was also VERY glad cops were around. When they took the person into custody I was still not relieved though, imagining what the person will go through now with what I know about US prisons did not make me hopeful that they will be rehabilitated.
Anyway, I'd be curious to know which policies specifically you think contributed to the uptick in crime?
Yes and I quite frankly don't understand why it matters. Random violence between people happens all the time, we're a nation of 350 million people so there's bound to be some deaths in the process too. I don't see why the question of why that particular man's death should be of such significance to anyone other than his immediate family and perhaps the police officers involved.
Coleman has said (reasonably imo) that he was waiting until all 3 installments of Balko’s essays were up to issue a response. I’ll be very curious to see what he says.
I now better understand where Hughes was coming from, but I also feel less sympathetic towards him, mainly because I doubt his commitment to sincerity. In the podcast he positions himself as someone like a defense attorney, who merely has to cast reasonable doubt on the case against Chauvin. That is not the position I see himself taking in the piece, which positions itself as a piece of journalism, where I personally expect a larger scope than a simple (inaccurate) defense.
Yeah I listened to that podcast and had a different takeaway. I continue to think Coleman is a total straight shooter, whether or not I agree with him. Coleman’s point, which after rereading his column is spelled out (though I think a casual reader can be forgiven for not grokking this, as I also did not the first time) is that he is very narrowly saying that the outcome of the trial was incorrect, not that Chauvin did nothing wrong (though many commenters on the free press seem to think so, yikes). On this, he makes a good case.
I’m not finding the good faith inside myself to read it this way. It does seem to speak more to the court of public opinion than the judicial one (which imo makes a difference for the required degree of reasonable doubt), and there it positions itself in within culture war by uncritically aligning itself with the documentary makers.
I think there is a version of the piece that would have worked for me, but this one needs secondary literature to be understood “correctly”, which is not the bar I have for writing about culture war stuff (Scott is one of the few writers who imo consistently manages it)
I’m not totally sure what you mean. I personally find myself agreeing with Balko on the actual issue of the conviction, but I just don’t see any evidence of bad faith on Coleman’s part and frankly it hurt my opinion of Balko as a writer/thinker when he hurled many such accusations.
I will definitely read what he will put out, but in my eyes some credibility is already lost by the quality (and confidence) of what he put out initially.
The pernicious thing about culture war topics seems to be that positioning yourself outside of it, still pulls you into it since you are positioned relatively to it. I don't know, I'm still a bit dumbfounded because "initially" I read him (and to a lesser degree even Barri Weiss), to take more of a grey tribe, outside of it, position but now they seem to be wholly inside of it.
I don't know if any of that rambling makes sense, but SSC is what I associate with the right place to ramble about the changing gestalt of intellectual communities.
You're right in that I also would not want to set the bar like that in isolation. It's just a the combo of high-confidence bad research with culture war positioning which makes it to me worse than merely "not right the first time"
It raises the probability that that hold is something that isn't as dangerous as it looks, making it more reasonable to use it to restrain people who resist arrest? If it turned out that's genuinely not dangerous for most people and was only lethal in Floyd's case to to unexpected drug interactions (I haven't read the original series, no opinion on the object level question), then the cops do in fact look more reasonable.
A movie called _The Fall of Minneapolis_ argued that the hold was normal procedure. Radley Balko argued in considerable detail that the hold was *not* permitted except briefly to apply an additional restraint.
Coleman, McWhorter, and Loury fell for the movie. So far as I know, Loury is the only one who admitted he'd made a mistake. I wish he'd gone into more detail, but he said he was so angry at the destruction from the riots that he lost track of the evidence about what Chauvin did to Floyd.
I implore anyone thinking this hold was somehow “less dangerous” or some such to pay a visit to a local MMA or BJJ school and ask for the experience. Make sure to ask for your hands to be tied behind your back.
This is unbearable. At least on the mat or in the cage you can tap out. Floyd kept verbally tapping out until he passed out.
He was no angel, but he did not deserve to be smothered to death.
It's regrettable, but if he was being bolshie and resisting arrest then he has (or had) only himself to blame, especially if he was aware he had a dodgy ticker!
He was handcuffed, prone, pleading to breathe for minutes, and then unresponsive for minutes. Both things can be true at the same time:
I have no patience for people who don't understand violence and think cops dealing with raging suspects should just talk nicely or something, and...
I have no patience for people who don't understand violence and think that it's ok to just keep smothering the suspect in handcuffs lying on his belly and being non-responsive.
He was still innocent in the eye of the law at that point. He did not deserve the horrible death from the very people who swore to serve and protect us. Even him. Even if he's a shitty human being.
As quickly as Floyd? I don't think anyone can answer truthfully what LD50 duration for that hold is, both because it will be contexual on very slight differences in how it is applied, and because we just don't do lethal human experimentation of the type needed to answer that question.
But, like, watch the fucking video, you know? Most reasonable people are going to agree that looks hugely dangerous even at the start, and by the time a few seconds before Floyd's death where he has been begging and showing signs of distress for a while, any reasonable person would say this is become a medical emergency that you have a duty to respond to.
He was saying he couldn't breathe when he was in the back of the car, before anyone was kneeling on him. If they hadn't let him out (at his request), they might have gotten him to a hospital quicker.
To add more color, if you watch MMA, you occasionally see fighters pass out in choke holds, and then there's an immediate flurry of activity to revive the fighter ASAP, literally within seconds.
This is actually kind of why you see fighters trying to get out of chokes as long as possible - they know their risks are minimal if they fail and pass out, they will get resuscitated immediately. So you might as well try everything to fight out of a choke, since you're losing anyway. Even in training, when sparring I would quickly tap to joint locks, but hold out for chokes because I know there are people around to immediately help if I pass out. But if the choke is continuously applied after the blackout it quickly becomes extremely dangerous.
Yes. If the pressure is not released you will eventually be unable to get enough oxygen and black out. If the pressure is not released by then and you are not revived you will die.
Hard to say. If the knee was kept there for a couple minutes after you lost consciousness and went limp it might.
The hold was approved for as short a period as possible and the subject was then supposed to be placed in the recovery position. As one of Chauvin’s partners suggested a few minutes in. Chauvin said no and kept the knee in place.
Like I replied to Melvin - this is deadly. The thing is, you don't need to stop the oxygen completely to kill someone, there's a basing metabolic rate that requires certain minimum amount, take that away by compressing the chest enough (and adding the pressure on the carotid artery to further throttle the blood flow to the brain), and eventually the body just can't cope.
You can learn to assist drawing breaths with other parts of the torso, like shifting to stomach breathing when the chest is compressed. I've done this to get my bearings under heavy pressure when a bigger/stronger/more skilled opponent has flattened me under. But again, I've trained for this, and always had a way out - to tap - if I feel like I'm losing it. Floyd has no training, was probably high and panicking, and - was verbally tapping out for minutes before going unconscious.
This was murder, and a pretty cruel one as far as that goes.
Is 2024 a good year to visit Israel? Due to the war, I imagine tourism is down, so there won't be crowds at the main sites, and plane tickets and hotels will be cheaper.
If any of you live in Israel or frequently visit, can you give me advice?
None of the descriptors in the last line apply to me, but what is sorta relevant is the moral integrity and/or self-respect you lose by pouring money into the coffers of a state that killed 12500+[1] children in 6 months, or about 70 children per day, at a rate of 3 every hour. You will probably feel different about doing business (or really interacting in any way imaginable) with someone who lined up 12500 children, a heap of ammo, and pulled the trigger every 20 minutes. But the greatest trick that states and corporations ever pull is that they don't have a face, glitching the normal operation of moral intuitions.
From a certain point of view, we all sell our souls by merely working for a state and/or participating in the global economy, but it's a bit more understandable when the genocidal state you work for is the only one you have got and the business is needed for survival, going out of your way to give another genocidal state your money on a luxury activity seems different. Yesterday's rocks ain't worth the price of today's children.
How do you define child? Because even in the US, a 17 year old firing a rifle at you is considered a childhood victim of gun violence if you defend yourself.
I define a child as whatever the Gazan Health Ministry defines as a child, it never occurred to me to check whether they put the line at 17 or 16 or 15. As I said in another comment, even if you generously half the estimate to account for any exaggerations, misreporting, misleading definitions, etc..., 6250 children in 6 months is still one child per 40 minutes.
>I define a child as whatever the Gazan Health Ministry defines as a child, it never occurred to me to check whether they put the line at 17 or 16 or 15.
Sure, and considering the US government and the entirety of the UN do, you would probably have to invent a whole new world in your head not to believe the Gazan Health Ministry.
As a last resort, let's say the Gazan Health Ministry is meanie liar with pants on fire, and let's half their claim. 6250 children killed. So, instead of the hypothetical killer pulling the trigger on a child every 20 minutes, it's every 40 minutes instead. I'm sure that changes a lot of things.
The US government does not believe the Gazan Health Ministry. Do you have a citation for the entirety of the UN believing the Gazan Health Ministry? I would find that difficult to believe, particularly as Israel is a member of the UN.
For someone who claims that my claims are "easily disproved with 5 minutes of Googling", you sure as heck don't like to do the 5 minutes of Googling yourself.
> The US government does not believe the Gazan Health Ministry.
See my other comment to you on another thread.
> Do you have a citation for the entirety of the UN believing the Gazan Health Ministry?
By... Googling or YouTube-ing "UN Gaza death tolls", optionally filtering by date since November 2023, and then noticing that every UN official or UN office generally agree with the Gazan estimate. Here's the literal first google result https://www.ochaopt.org/he.
It's trivially easy to get a counterexample to this if it exists, eh? Maybe that's your chance to shine.
> I would find that difficult to believe, particularly as Israel is a member of the UN.
Also, I actually clicked on your link. If you click a little further and go to their Data page, and then to their Causalties page, you find the following information:
"Casualties in the context of the ongoing hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel, which started on 7 October 2023, will only be added to this page once these incidents have been independently verified. Until then, reported figures on those are included in our Flash Updates and Snapshots. By contrast, data on casualties in the West Bank and Israel in other contexts is updated regularly beyond 7 October 2023."
So, in other words, while they use Ministry numbers in their updates they do not trust the information enough to say that it's accurate until they have independent verification.
(30,000 dead / 4.5 months) * 12 months/year = 80,000 dead/year. At that rate, it would take 25 years to kill 2 million people. (Assuming no other change in population.) That's a bit faster than the last time I ran the numbers, where it came out to about 30 years. So maybe the pace is picking up, although my estimates are loose. If I use 5 months, it comes out to 27.7 years.
This does not fit my intuitions about genocide, either. However, I'm not sure I should trust my intuitions. So I'm falling back on numbers. Here's a question I was going to save for a Hidden Open Thread, but I might as well ask it here:
How fast does it have to be to count as genocide? Or put another way, if someone wants to commit genocide, how slow do they have to go to fool you?
(I've got no answer to that. I'm trying to find out what other people think, ideally other normally-pro-Israel people. From your number of 300,000, I'm guessing that you think killing a population of 2 million people in 2.5 years would count as genocide? I agree with that; that matches my intuition, too.)
I see no reason to assume that the rate will remain constant. That’s not how war works. (Also not how famine works.)
I think the genocide issue is best left to the International Court of Justice, which seems to be doing a better job than we’re likely to do. So far they’ve ruled that it’s plausible that it’s genocide.
Yeah, I don't think it'll be constant either. But I don't have a better model, or any good predictions about what will happen. And strictly for the purpose of "is the current rate of killing equivalent to genocide", linear projections like this seem fine? As the parent comment said, if the rate were 10 times higher, I'd absolutely call that genocide.
The definition of genocide has to do with intent, not just rate. You can not avoid asking whether we want and plan to spand the next 25 years killing Palestinians in that rate, and whether the ones that we did kill died because we wanted them dead, or because they happened to be in our way to achieve some other goal.
After introspecting for a bit, I've concluded that the word "genocide" is (thankfully) not used in my day-to-day life enough for me to develop a sense of its common usage. So I tend to equate it with "homicide", which is an explicitly intent-neutral term; "murder', "manslaughter", and "manmort" being criminal terms that depend partially on intent. Obviously we want to punish people more if it's intentional, but I think it's still "genocide" if it's unintentional. We don't have separate criminal terms for degrees of genocide, and again, I'm thankful that we don't live in a world where that's been necessary.
Let's say Google messes with their AI Gemini to try to fix it, but the "fix" winds up setting into motion a chain of events that kills all... East Asian people, let's say. No one wanted that, no one intended that, but I'd call that a "genocide". It's unclear whether any person could be prosecuted for the crime of genocide, but to me that's a different matter. The thing happened, and we've got a name to call it.
The Palestinian population of Gaza is currently *growing*. Yes, genocide is a crime of intent. But absent telepathy, we can only infer intent from actions. And if one's actions cannot plausibly result in [X], if it's obvious from fifth-grade math that [X] isn't going to happen, then I think there's a pretty high bar for claiming that [X] is the intended result. What have you got to back that up?
Another good indicator: in an actual genocide attempt, the civilian death rate will generally increase as the perpetrator gains control of the territory in which the victims live. In Gaza, the Israelis have gained control of approximately 2/3rds of the territory, and the death rate of Gazans has declined by about 2/3rds from the start of the war.
Growing since October? That seems implausible to me.
Also, isn't the pro-Isreal position that all death numbers are fake Hamas propaganda? Where would you even get reliable figures to see if the population is growing in that case?
Oh okay, disputing the numbers, why do I feel I have seen this tactic before?
I have read the definition of a Genocide in the text of the Convention On The Prevention of the Crime of Genocide [1], it's pretty readable and the design of the website is very fluid and attractive. Do you know what's the one thing that the text of the Convention never does? Setting numerical limits on Genocides and how much they could kill the population. You could be a perpetrator of Genocide by killing 100 babies/pregnant women with a homemade bomb (preventing the births of the victim group as such), or you could be a perpetrator of Genocide by killing the group to the last baby, and everything in between. The Bosnian Genocide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide), and that's what the ICJ calls it, is one where 8000 Bosnian died, less than 1/3 Palestinian casualties.
I believe that OP's point is not there is a numerical limit under which an event is not a genocide, but rather that, a genocide requires an intent to eliminate a group, and that were that Israel's intent, the number of deaths would be much higher. And, honestly, the genocide accusation seems to me to be very counterproductive (assuming that the goal is to reduce mass casualties): If you accuse me of genocide, I know for a fact whether I am guilty, because I know my own intent. And if I don't have that intent, the conversation is over. In contrast, if you accuse me of war crimes, because I am doing too little to limit civilian casualties, well, I can't dismiss that so easily.
> and that were that Israel's intent, the number of deaths would be much higher
But isn't that exactly how Israeli officials would think, too? I have the capability to kill X people, but X is too high, and people would think that I'm committing a genocide, which would decrease my support or cut it off entirely, so I kill X/2 but do it for twice as long, achieving the same end result with less danger. X/4 for 4 times as long would also work. X/8 for 8 times as much would also work.
> because I know my own intent
The part you're missing is that the hypothetical you is also dishonest, and even though "you know your own intent" (which is genocide), you figure that you can simply keep denying and deflecting.
If you want proof of intent, consider that a Gaza resettlement conference [1] made on the 28th of January was attended by Ben Gvir, minister of public security, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, among 12 other ministers. Google says the Israeli government is 35 ministers, so that's about 33% of the most high ranking officials in the government after the Prime Minister and the president supporting settlement (which implies supporting Genocide of the people currently living in the places they want to settle.)
>The part you're missing is that the hypothetical you is also dishonest, and even though "you know your own intent" (which is genocide), you figure that you can simply keep denying and deflecting.
The point is that if my intent is not genocide, then I can simply dismiss your genocide accusation, since I know for a fact that it is wrong. In contrast, I cannot dismiss an accusation of war crimes
It’s hard to see how “our people are starving due to our actions” should be popular, but that does seem to be the case. Nonetheless, “we should starve civilians to win the war” is no longer acceptable in modern times. Even pretty stringent sanctions (as in Iran) do allow for buying food.
Israel's main tourist sites have not seen active combat since 1967. Tel-Aviv hasn't seen active combat since 1948. I'd say you'd be 100% fine even if a war breaks out with Lebanon. Israel is a great country, highly recommend a visit.
I don't know whether it is a good idea or not. Just some complications about the considerations that you mentioned: The sites are less crowded, but planes supply may be lower to match the lower demand, and the many Israelis who left their homes because of the war may offset the lack of tourism. And while the war with Gaza would not affect your visit, a war with Lebanon is still a possibility, that may make the visit interesting not in the ways you expect.
It's not too bad anymore - we haven't had rocket strikes in a while, things are getting normal-ish again. Hotels and other touristy things will probably be unusually cheap due to low demand.
The one issue though is flights - a lot of airlines have just stopped flying in due to low demand, and some will still let you order tickets online without actually telling you they're not flying in. Don't get tickets on kayak unless you've confirmed the airline actually is flying to Israel (Google flights is generally better about this issue).
I write about specific high-impact ways I've improved my life. N=1, but most of them feel pretty generalizable. Every other post on philosophy or current events so you don't feel like you're being lectured.
Back in 1997 David Shumway published “The Star System in Literary Studies” in PMLA. He begins with a paragraph about George Lyman Kittredge, of Harvard’s English Department at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, noting that Kittredge was unknown to the public. Here’s the first sentence of his second paragraph:
"Kittredge, who virtually founded Chaucer studies in the United States, stood at the head of a professional genealogy that controlled the field for many years after his death, but he was not a star. Nor were any of his illustrious contemporaries or near contemporaries, such as John Manly, John Livingston Lowes, and so on. Why they were not stars and Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, Stanley Fish, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Fredric Jameson, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and other figures in the academy are is the subject of this essay."
What I’m wondering is whether or not the so-called AI “Godfathers” don’t represent a similar phenomenon in contemporary AI. Strictly speaking I believe the Godfather term applies to the three winners of the 2018 Turing Award, Yoshua Bengio, Yann Lecun, and Geoffrey Hinton, but I believe there are others in AI with a similar status, such as Ilya Sutskever, Hinton’s student and co-founder of OpenAI, Andrej Karpathy, the former director of AI at Tesla who just made waves, albeit little ones, by resigning from OpenAI, Demis Hassibis, cofounder of DeepMind, and perhaps even such figures as Nick Bostrom and Eliezer Yudkowsky, who aren’t AI researchers but are highly influential figures through their commentary. Perhaps Sam Altman, the heroic CEO who fought off a recalcitrant board, is a star as well.
Later:
Concerning the rise of literary stars, Shumway noted: “As theory has called into question the traditional means by which knowledge has been authorized, it may be that the construction of the individual personality has become an epistemological necessity.” That seems like the state of AI today. We’ve got a very complicated technology involving a blend of engineering, science, and alchemy, lacking objective knowledge. Note only that, the technology is enormously important and will change the way we live. In the absence of objective knowledge, what choice do we have but to steer by the freakin' stars?
Question for those knowledgeable about the USSR's international relations/global left:
My rough understanding is that following the dissolution of the USSR, with the exception of Cuba and North Korea, most nations/political leaders aligned with the USSR ultimately pursued their own paths. In today's context, there seems to be little that unites these countries.
However, nearly all the nations/political leaders who still broadly adhere to their far-left/USSR roots (e.g., Lula, Daniel Ortega, the ANC, etc.) continue to hold a strong animosity towards Israel, seemingly as much as they did during the USSR era. This also applies to every day Westerners who were sympathetic to the USSR.
I'm seeking a deeper understanding of this phenomenon. These nations/political leaders/people appear less focused on the USSR/far-leftism nowadays and generally exhibit significant differences in their contemporary ideologies, which makes me believe that any positions on this aren't rooted in some underlying ideology. Moreover, Israel does not seem particularly relevant to their countries to have needed to maintain a fixed position on the subject. Therefore, I'm trying to comprehend why opposition to Israel has remained so pronounced and become entrenched in this group. Is the opposition to Israel rooted in some ideology that transcends socialism...? (I'm skeptical) or is Israel merely being used as a proxy for antipathy towards the United States, which would make much more sense as something that would remain sticky? Or some third thing...
I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on this... especially if there are other similar things like opposition to Israel that the post-USSR players have remained unified on.
If by this you mean the Brazilian president, then he isn't hostile to Israel by any reasonable definition. This article in Haaretz (https://archive.ph/FrGM2) is a good rundown of his history with Israel, the long and short of it is that he is an old school 1970s leftist, and Israel has a strong leftist history that goes back to before its founding [0] and continues till about the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Kibbutzim [1] are (were?) collective farms in a way that most communists would probably approve of. According to the Haaretz article, Lula had close relations with many Israelis and Zionists in his close circle as early as the 1980s, and - quoting - :
> When Lula himself visited Israel in 2010, he placed a wreath on the monument to fallen soldiers on Mount Herzl, spoke in the Knesset, held a series of meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other ministers, and planted a tree in the Jewish National Fund's 'Nations Forest'– the symbol of Zionism in the eyes of the world – in Jerusalem. During his visit to Yad Vashem, he spent long hours in the museum's archives and found his family name (Da Silva) among the lists of Holocaust victims, an experience he often says was the most moving for him.
It's not uncommon for politicians to turn on a dime, especially in extreme and unusual circumstances, and Lula was just one example among many others you mentioned. Still, this misdiagnosis of his views *should* make you stop and think about how much actual "anti-Israelism" is there, vs. legitimate concern and legitimate changes of hearts in response to Israeli actions that rabidly pro-Israel supporters interpret as hostility. If someone who was an Israel supporter for 50-ish years says that what Israel is doing is Holocaust-like, accusations of anti-Semitism can only get you so far.
> Is the opposition to Israel rooted in some ideology that transcends socialism? [...] or is Israel merely being used as a proxy for antipathy towards the United States? [...] Or some third thing?
Why not all of the above?
(1) Socialism probably doesn't mean as much as it would seem to on first glance, since lots of leftists in the 1950s and 1960s were Pro-Israel and even the Soviet Union itself didn't really give this much of a shit except as a fig leaf in front of its Arab allies who imported third rate weaponry from it for lots of money.
(2) Israel's weird parasitic relationship with the USA does indeed consistently draw attention, with both sides often saying that one of the 2 states is a puppet state for the other. Since there is such a multitude of reasons a leftist could hate the USA for, it stands to reason that a leftist would also hate the self-proclaimed "closest ally", one whose lobbying group's annual conference is the second most attended one in US politics after the State of the Union address [2].
(3) Some western anti-Semites are just very happy Israel is dumb enough to paint Magen Davids on the airframe of jet fighters dropping 2000-pound bombs on hospitals and residential buildings, so they're anti-Israel in the sense of "Never interrupt your enemy while they're making a mistake". Israel is betting that the world's reserve of love/tolerance for Jews is enough to shield it from accountability, and the anti-Semites are gladly taking the bet in the opposite direction.
(4) Some countries have increasingly non-obvious reasons to hate Israel. South Africa, that's the most obvious one, the Apartheid regime was a hugely profitable client of Israel's weapons corporations, and Israel was the last government to stop doing deals with it. Ireland is not too obvious on first glance, until you realize that the Irish predominantly look at their history with the British like Palestinians look at their history with Israelis. The most non-obvious country to hate Israel is probably Spain, I can find no reason in my knowledge of it or its history to explain the repeated support for Palestine I keep seeing and hearing from Spanish officials. China is roughly on par with Ireland, in that you would expect them to hate Israel (due to proximity to US and China's open economic attitude to countries in Africa including lots of Arab countries) but also it's surprising that they hate it *this* much.
(5) No need to explain why predominantly Muslim countries like Indonesia and Malaysia are anti-Israel
(6) The elephant in the room, of course, is that Israel killed no less than 20K civilians according to its own numbers, and 25K civilians according to the competing story's numbers. Killing 1-1.5% percent of a 2.3-million-strong population in 6 months is just bad no matter what's your opinion on God or how Economy should work or how much the USA sucks or how much annoying and disgusting the Jews are. This sentiment can unite even the most secular and tolerant new leftist with the most rabid anti-Jewish white supremacist with the most rabid anti-Jewish Muslim. So, picking this historical moment to tease out who hates Israel why is a uniquely bad choice, there is lots of reason all mixing and breeding together in the boiling pot of media and info ecosystem.
>Israel killed no less than 20K civilians according to its own numbers, and 30K civilians according to the competing story's numbers.
The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilian or military casualties. They claim 30k dead, not 30k civilian deaths.
I'll need to see a citation for the claim that Israel says they've killed 20k civilians, I can't find any official statement other than an IDF claim that they've killed 15,000 Hamas combatants.
Correct, the competing story's claim should be 25K civilian deaths, since Hamas claims 6000 of its own were killed, 1/2 of the IDF's estimation.
> I'll need to see a citation for the claim that Israel says they've killed 20k civilian
Implied by the fact that IDF estimates 12,000 Hamas deaths (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war, ctrl-f for "IDF estimated"), subtracting from a total of 31,000 deaths (Israel never disputed Gazan Health Ministery numbers), yields 19,000 civilian deaths.
So you're saying that because Israel has not released it's own Gazan casualty numbers, it must agree with the Gaza Health Ministry?
You claimed that Israel said 20k, and Gaza Health Ministry said 30k, but in actuality Gaza claimed 30k, and you turned that into two numbers, one of which you claimed was from Israel.
You have a bad habit of playing fast and loose with facts and spreading false information. Any time you cite a figure I expect that, when checked, it has a 70% probability of being false. Everyone reading your comments should treat them as what they are, an activist's claims that are unlikely to be accurate to reality.
Similarly, per Reuters, Hamas acknowledged the deaths of 6,000 Hamas fighters by February 19. At that time, they claimed 29,092 people killed in Gaza. The difference would be 23,092, which is not more than 25,000.
More significant (and related to the claim that Israel accepts Hamas's claims about the total number of people killed in Gaza) is that Hamas makes various claims about this number that not only Israel, but international press dispute. For example, Hamas claims Israel kiled hundreds of people at al-Ahli hospital, while international media do not accept that Israel was behind the strike (or the casualty figures, for that matter).
This isn't the only incident of Gazan rockets landing on Gaza (other such incidents have been caught on video) but Hamas doesn't seem to acknowledge any of these.
More significantly, Hamas's claims about 6,000 fighters being killed was about *Hamas* fighters being killed (per Reuters report). But Hamas isn't the only terror group with fighters in Gaza. PIJ and other groups have thousands, as well. Israel's claim about the number of terrorists they've killed was not limited to Hamas (see link above; this sometimes gets confusing, as some sources sometimes use 'Hamas' as shorthand for "Gaza based Palestinian militant groups", but in that very speech, Hagari distinguishes between the two), so even if Israel accepted Hamas's figures for the total number of people they killed in Gaza, subtracting the number of fighters touted by Hamas would not be equivalent to the number of terrorists they killed.
I'd draw a distinction between Hamas reporting of numbers from a specific event, and the (Hamas-controlled) overall death toll. Bounded distrust, perhaps.
I absolutely do not trust Hamas to report correct numbers immediately after any Israeli action, nor even later on. IIRC, they've been caught time-shifting and place-shifting deaths, to inflate the death tolls by adding in people who died recently for other reasons. Similarly, I don't tend to trust photos that come out of Gaza, not so much because of digital manipulation, but simply because of staging. And reporters in Gaza tend to be ideologically aligned, or under pressure.
But I haven't heard solid reasons to distrust the overall death toll. Like other civil governments, they keep records of people and can identify dead bodies. I also haven't yet run into credible accusations that the videos coming out of Gaza have been staged.
One thing I've heard suggested, but without any evidence backing it up, is that Hamas deliberately inflates its population count, and comes up with false names and records which can later be used to inflate death tolls. This sounded like someone backed into a corner in an Internet argument pulling something out of their ass to keep from admitting defeat. But it does seem like a trick that could be pulled off by Hamas, and if I see evidence, I'll update my trust in the total death toll numbers. (Frankly, though, it would seem easier just to increase the population the old-fashioned way.)
> So you're saying that because Israel has not released it's own Gazan casualty numbers, it must agree with the Gaza Health Ministry?
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. What supports what I'm saying is that the US government, usually rabidly pro-Israel, is using the Gazan Health Ministry numbers, and historically internal Israeli estimates themselves usually track the numbers of the Gazan Ministery [1] within the range of the 100 people, as well as independent UN estimates.
I wouldn't expect the government whose president made a pathetic attempt at propaganda with a Mein Kampf copy to not dispute Gazan numbers IF they had evidence or whiff of evidence, so the fact that they don't is a pretty cut-and-dried implicit agreement in my book. You're free to disagree.
> Gaza claimed 30k
Gaza doesn't have a mouth.
>You have a bad habit of playing fast and loose with facts and spreading false information.
Meaningless and childish "Boo outgroup". My comment is a very natural phrasing of the actual facts, Israeli newspapers from Haaretz to Times of Israel all mention the numbers of Gazan Health Ministery and then right next to them the fact that the government of Israel never disputed them in 6 months of war. You're free to play air-headed as much as you like but to me and - I suspect - to most people that means "Israeli gov agrees with this overall number" as clear as the Sun at 12 PM.
> Everyone reading your comments should treat them as what they are,
Everyone with a brain reading my comments would think about them and verify them independently, including going beyond the literal phrasing of my comment and not making a big deal of a minor choice of words. Your very transparent attempt at consensus-building and performative outrage would hopefully change none of that.
>US government, usually rabidly pro-Israel, is using the Gazan Health Ministry numbers
Citation needed (particularly because its not true).
>historically internal Israeli estimates themselves usually track the numbers of the Gazan Ministery
Which means that Israel agrees with Ministry's current casualties for the current conflict? Not so. To say that Israel accepts the Ministry's numbers because in prior wars Israel's estimates were similar to the Ministry's is a non-sequitur. Do you have any actual evidence that Israel supports the Ministry's numbers?
>Meaningless and childish "Boo outgroup".
No its boo to you in particular. You regularly write things that aren't true, and that 5 minutes of Googling can demonstrate isn't true. Nobody should take anything you have to say on this conflict seriously.
>Israeli newspapers from Haaretz to Times of Israel all mention the numbers of Gazan Health Ministery and then right next to them the fact that the government of Israel never disputed them in 6 months of war.
Not publicly putting out casualty figures is still not an endorsement of someone else's casualty figures. Newspapers reporting on what the Gaza Health Ministry said are not evidence that Israel agrees with the Gaza Health Ministry. And regardless of all that, even if Israel did agree they never said that there were 20k civilian casualties, yet you claimed that they did. Even as the Gazan Health Ministry never claimed that there were 30k civilians killed, yet you claimed they did anyway.
>Everyone with a brain reading my comments would think about them and verify them independently, including going beyond the literal phrasing of my comment and not making a big deal of a minor choice of words.
Not a minor choice of words: you claimed the Israeli government said there were 20k civilian casualties when they said no such thing, whatsoever, anywhere. It was a flat out fabrication, and apparently you assumed nobody would actually check. When called out on your fabrications, you try to minimize it and throw on ad hominin attacks on your critics.
Russian influence networks didn't go away. They became weaker because Russia was significantly weaker than the USSR. But they didn't go away. And they mostly kept the old contacts they'd had among various left wing movements. You'd think that ideologically Lula, the ANC, and other leftist organizations would stick to their ideological guns and move away from hypercapitalist, anti-gay Russia. Perhaps to China if they insisted on remaining aligned with the far left. But in fact most of them just kept up with Russia. The exceptions, like Vietnam and India, did so mostly because they were rebalancing against China. Russia was no longer a credible ally against China in a world where it was both weaker and more pro-Chinese. But it wasn't due to some ideological repudiation of Russia's shift to the right.
It shows there is a strong streak of anti-Americanism, rather than anything intellectually deeper than that, in such movements.
Yes, it's the first one. The opposition to Israel fundamentally derives less from the suzerainty of USSR over the global left in Cold War and more from the anticolonial movement, which the USSR of course supported but which was still a separate thing. The fall of USSR certainly didn't make anticolonialism go away.
> anticolonial movement, which the USSR of course supported
A bit ironic, considering that USSR was a colonial superpower. Unless, of course, someone is sufficiently naive to believe that everyone who was ruled from Moscow has volunteered for it.
Has to be both geographically separated and separately administered, I think, but the geographic separation doesn't have to be maritime. Just conquering and annexing a place doesn't count.
This doesn't explain most Latin American countries: they were settler colonies like the US, and European colonists and later European immigrants are the majority ancestry. In most Latin American countries there is more native ancestry than in the US, but not the majority. So they have no reason to think of colonists as an enemy.
My perception, which could very well be wrong, is that the percentage of native population who were massacred in South America is significantly less than those in North America, and that due to this South American societies are both more evenly mixed than USA | Canada and also tend to think of themselves less as being on the side of the Colonizer/Settler.
> inequality between Israelis and Palestinians is the highest in the world
This isn't really true. Israeli to Palestinian GDP per Capita ratio is something like ten to one. Which isn't much higher than US to Mexico (7 to 1) and is much lower than other cases where you have first world countries next to developing countries (Singapore/Indonesia and south/north Korea are both over 20 to 1).
Economic inequality wasn't specified in the original wording. Inequality could also mean that one population is under martial law while another is under civilian law, or that one population belongs to a state even outside the lawful borders of the state while the other is stateless in their own lands, right next to the first one.
Both situations, as far as I'm aware of, are the case in the West Bank and vanishingly rare (if existent at all) outside of Palestine.
I partially buy your analysis, mostly for developing countries. Keep in mind though that the USSR turned against Israel before the power differential was that clear, so it is probably mostly just geopolitics. The left vs right thing may also be to a large degree coalitions and associations politics - Muslims feel related to Palestinians, and leftist to Muslim minorities in their countries.
Also, cringy as I feel when writing that, it is hard to deny the historical creativity of (post-)Christian societies in finding reasons to hate the jews. Reasons that are often valid, but get suspicious amounts of attention. small sample: we are filthy Capitalists and also communists, xenophobs and globalist elites, killed Jesus if you love him, and raised him if you don't. So how surprised should we be if we hear "jews are oriental and do not belong in Europe" and 2 generations later "jews are white invaders in Palestine"
Hating Israel sounds like the worst confounder ever in the history of confounders for testing whether someone hates Jews.
>>>> Ok anon, we want to test whether you hate a group of people for no reason, so here's a country that perpetrated an Ethnic Cleansing on the year of its founding one human lifetime ago, one that has never stopped killing mostly-women-and-children civilians since then, and whose armed forces personnel post TikToks of themselves gloating about it. Quick: Do you hate the group that form 70-75% of said country's population? [Y/N]
If I want to test whether someone hates Jews (and if I want to do so sincerely), I'm not going to ask or care about Israel in the same way that if I want to test whether someone hates Muslims I'm not going to ask or care about Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Trying to portray anti-Israel views as anti-Jewish sounds like betting, like you are so sure that someone (hates|loves) Jews or (hates|loves) Israel that think tying one to the other will give you an advantage (make people hate Jews by proxy of their hate of Israel, or make people hate Israel by proxy of their hate of Jews, or vice versa for the love case). I do actually believe people are doing that (first among them are Israelis themselves), but I also see no reason to fall into the trap myself or even accept the premise at all, however implicitly.
Jews don't have magical superpowers, do they? If I put a Jew in charge of a company that failed every year for 100 years, he or she is probably not going to make it succeed, especially if other people had tried before. That's not anti-Jewish, that's just the 2 premises: that human ethnicities aren't vastly different in abilities and/or predispositions on average, and that God doesn't exist. The concept of the nation state has been a violent and genocidal concept since its very inception, and every single nation state that I can think of right now has committed one form or another of mass murder and/or mass enslavement and/or mass violations of human rights in some way or another. Nation states are, much more than corporations, the original paperclip optimizers: no matter who you put in charge or how much you try to instill values in their alien institutional "brains", they're going to trade human dignity and life for paperclips every time. Putting Jews in charge of a state won't magically fix this. And noticing that the country with Jews in charge is every bit as genocidal as the ones without (and more, most nation states are older and their more genocidal phase was in an era without much mass media) isn't anti-Jewish.
Let me clarify my position: I agree that not all, and probably not most, of the anti-israelis are anti-semites - and that it is often claimed insincerely. I think that your anti-israeliness is probably the result of someone else's antisemiticly motivated reasoning and cherry picking, rather than your own.
I also agree that there are many other factors distinguishing Israel except for its Judaism. We may argue about your description, but I see why it is possible perspective. I just think that jews were always exceptional, and there was always a fact-based negative view of them to be formed if one so wish - and people often did.
The fact that I try to explain is not your own opposition to Israel, but the massive attention that the reasons to this opposition get, relative to the many worse things that happen in the world (as you said, there are many other evil nation states. And I expect you to agree that Gaza is not the most large scale or most clear cut case of genocide around)
"Hey, at least we aren't killing as many people as some other 3rd world basket cases" seems like a pretty low bar. Is that *really* the standard that Isreal wants to be judged by?
Israel wants to be judged against the other small countries in the world surrounded by hostile neighbors who want them wiped off of the face of the earth by any means necessary.
No. We want to be better than the US, and better than EU. Unfortunately, we are not in the same strategic situation, and have harder choices to make. And personally, I want the bar for 3rd world countries to be higher. Otherwise, it is racism of low expectations.
I broadly agree with most of this, and I agree that facts and arguments can be weaponized even if true, and I agree that Arabs did their fair share of inciting to Genocide and did Ethnic Cleansing on the same scale as the Nakba (if a bit temporally diffuse across decades, not that this matters), I try to push back against hateful rhetoric in my social circle as much as possible within the "controversy budget" I find myself having.
I also think it's a good idea for a heated debate/thread to begin by both parties saying that they don't want the innocent civilians of the other party to suffer (and - of course - admitting that there *are* innocent civilians on the other side in the first place). This helps in establishing a common ground of "No matter how much we disagree, I don't want your people dead and neither you mine", which significantly calms down things. It might be cringe, but all rituals are cringe at first, then they become invisible and anyone *not* doing them would be cringe.
Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does get more attention, and maybe some of the attention might be anti-Semitism, but it can also be explained by (1) Abundance of media (2) Unwavering US support to Israel, unprecedented with any other human-rights-violating country except possibly Saudi Arabia (3) Homogeneity of Israel and the blurriness of Judaism as a component in its formation (religion? ethnicity? national identity? pseudo-legal source of jurisdiction?).
Point (1) is doing most of the heavy work, and it can be explained by the long history of the conflict. There are songs about the conflict that you would sing along with as contemporary until you hear about a "Vietnam" or an "Imperialism" in the lyrics and then find out the song is from the 1970s. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a stable bubble of discord that keeps being red no matter how much the world around it turns blue. Exact same phrasing from the 1960s and the 1970s and the 1980s and the 1990s and the 2000s and the 2010s can be transported as-is to describe the current state. The only comparable territorial disputes I can think of that have a history this long is China-Taiwan and India-Pakistan, and both of them are "intra" conflicts with both populations having comparable history in the land, unlike Israel which is perceived to be foreign and European because its founders are indeed foreign and European and until now is indeed full of Polish and Russian names. This, while not straightforward Colonialism, is dangerously close to it with many common markers, witness also how many Israelis in street interviews say things like "In the Middle East, kindness is perceived as weakness", which implies that they feel they're not of "The Middle East", they look at themselves as a piece of Europe transplanted into the Middle East (and they're kinda resentful about it?). This is not present in any of the other 2 conflicts.
It is great to that you began with the agreements, and that you clarified your position against killing or transferring my family. Other anti Israelis add sometimes ambiguous about it...
About the reasons for hyper-attention:
1. I did not understand.
2. Is plausible if we only discuss American attention, and attention in countries that look for more reasons to hate America.
3. I don't understand what the supposed homogeneity of Israel has to do with it. Is this a typo? (The blurriness is frustrating for us Israelis too, but it's the inevitable result of Zionism being a fuzzy coalition rather than a single doctrine)
I agree with some of your points about colonialism but not with others, but don't want to mix the object level discussion with the meta discussion about antisemitism etc. On the meta level - as I said, there are many special reasons to hate Israel in particular, but also many reasons to hate France in particular, or Indonesia, etc. We are special, and are sins are specia l- but not especially evil.
I don't know. Prejudice is a very large spectrum, and it tends to hide behind reasonable facades. People might be prejudiced without them knowing so, and since all humans suck there is always a wealth of reasons to hate a group of humans.
There are some obvious markers like Conspiracy Theories and inter-personal prejudice, which are a dead giveaway of Prejudice and Racism. But other than that Prejudice can hide itself very well, even to the person it resides inside.
Scott wrote a great article on IRB's in science in 2014. Universities go way beyond what the the federal government requires, which is silly enough. And universities take 50% of grants as overhead. Are there any universities which do science like Hillsdale does humanities, intelligently with minimum administration adn overhead? Could somebody start one? I bet it would be easier to lure top scientists away with lack of bureaucracy than with high salaries.
That's basically what Arc Institute, Arena Bioworks, and a few other places, are doing. (Arena will take 30% and keep it for profit, which is better than 50%, but this will still be the lowest overhead in Boston/Cambridge).
Do we know when we're getting the resolutions for the 2023 predictions? Specifically for the ones who are still open on Metaculus (https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/2023-contest/). It's been already two months and if another month and a bit passes they will count for another leaderboard, which is not ideal.
Tbh, it doesn't seem like the questions should've been resolved on Manifold either. Their description says "Market will resolve according to Scott Alexander’s judgment, as given through future posts on Astral Codex Ten", but moderators went ahead and just resolved them?
I'm a Manifold moderator and can confirm that we do generally resolve things early when there's enough certainty about the outcome. (I didn't personally resolve any of these though.)
> We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions. Therefore, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project. We will work out specifics in case-by-case agreements, but a typical triggering condition might be “a better-than-even chance of success in the next two years.”
Scott then asked to set some reminders to check back in March 2024 whether these plans for specific triggering conditions of the merge-and-assist clause went anywhere.
As far as I can tell after some internet search, there was no public announcement of such firmer commitments by OpenAI. There have been several further statements on their safety plans, including the Superalignment Team, Frontier Model Forum and Voluntary AI commitments (July 2023), but no improvements on the merge-and-assist mechanism (see their blog
In fact, in December 2023 the company VERSES (whose Chief Science Officer is Karl Friston) published an open letter in which they announced having a pathway to AGI and asking OpenAI to trigger the above clause in their charter:
AGI in 2 years seems pretty incredible. If they aren't being taken seriously enough, it would be interesting for them to release a demo/video of their product, because that would basically (I'm assuming) force Open AI to pay attention. Seems curious they haven't done that if their approach will yield AGI in 2 years and no one is listening to them (or if they have released something like this, I'd love a link!). Their system must be pretty capable already if it will be at AGI level in 2 years.
Wonder if anyone external has actually seen their system/full approach yet.
According to their roadmap, this platform will be in private beta soon, but only have a public beta towards Summer/Fall 2024. So it might still be some time before people can try their hands on their product. I agree that if their work is really so promising for leading to AGI within 2 years, one would expect that they could already show some impressive capabilities now.
There seems to already have been a research beta - this article claims it began last year in October https://finance.yahoo.com/news/verses-ai-surpasses-1-500-132800682.html. But I suppose we'll have to wait for the private beta to get more information. Would be more than a little surprised if their system is capable of what they claim and we still haven't heard private beta participant's saying so or having visible proof. Either way, a very interesting story to follow!
As I prepare to not vote in the next Irish referendum on something stupid in the constitution being replaced by something even stupider, I am confirmed in my bias - unique to myself in this country - that constitutions are largely useless pieces of paper and you can organise a society perfectly well without one.
For all its faults, and despite being the home of my eternal racial enemies, I have to admit that the U.K. gets on perfectly fine without a formal constitution and remains a relatively free and relatively prosperous country.
Meanwhile North Korea has and the Soviet Union had constitutions, the Soviet one guaranteeing absolute freedom of speech, decide amongst yourself if that worked or not.
Constitutions are either the dictatorship of the past upon the present subject to the whims of unelected justices - often leading to an effective krytocracy - or worse, the legislature uses referenda to not govern, or legislate, and which without getting into the specifics in Ireland that’s the case with the specific amendment here.
I feel the same about initiatives in US States as well. I’ve elected you to govern - don’t ask me to legislate.
So is it time for one last referendum or constitutional convention or whatever is needed in your country - to get rid of the constitution?
Ideally a Constitution is *only* about the structure & function of the government itself.
AIUI, the US Constitution is notably short compared to other countries', mostly because there are a lot of topics in the others that are just handled as normal law in the US.
It sometimes appears easier for other countries to amend their Constitution than for Congress to pass a law in the US, implying that laws elsewhere are even more ephemeral and at least partly explaining the increased appetite for amendments to attain an adequate degree of persistence.
I'm only reading about the issue right now, but it seems to me that the main problem with your constitution is not that it exists but that it contains a whole bunch of crap that shouldn't be there. The clauses in question here should not be in a constitution. The whole Article 41 of the constitution shouldn't be there. From a quick scroll-through neither should articles 42, 43, or 45 or most of 44. I can't be bothered reading the rest.
A constitution should set out the basic operating system of the country; when the elections are held, how judges are appointed, and so forth. It shouldn't go round attempting to codify particular policy directions that seem like a good idea at the time.
The UK does have a constitution though, it just isn’t codified. And it has only been able to get by with this system because it has a very long history of stable government and tradition. So that system can’t easily be transferred to another place.
(1) I don't think the original wording in the Constitution is stupid; I think it's been ignored and downgraded because "oh who wants to be a stuffy old trad Cath housewife with four kids instead of working on a factory floor or in an office like a high-flyer in New York?" is the image here, instead of recognising the "emotional labour" and support that women in families give to society. It's funny that we now have a term such as "emotional labour" and that the very people complaining about sexist. out-dated language will also probably be throwing such terms about themselves when they write their little opinion pieces for the Irish Times and the Irish Independent
(2) I do intend to vote this Friday so I can vote "no" in both referenda. I don't expect it to make a straw's worth of difference, mind you, as our betters and the great and good have decided for the grubby masses that this is what we are going to do. But I at least want to be able to wear the t-shirt "Don't blame me, I voted no" when the chickens come home to roost.
Here commenceth the rant:
The absolute bollocks the pro-yes side are spouting about "grandparents raising grandkids, those are families, and they're not recognised in the Constitution until we pass this change". There's plenty of ways to recognise "grandparents taking care of their grandchildren" as families, we do it already when deciding custody and guardianship cases, and if it isn't already catered for in law, then pass laws about it, Leo.
The examples all given are blood relationships via family:
"Mr Varadkar explained the Government would be holding votes on two of the recommended changes, but not the third.
“In relation to the family, our Constitution will continue to explicitly protect both the family and the institution of marriage,” he said.
“We’re proposing wording, however, that acknowledges that families may also be founded on lasting relationships other than marriage. For example, the family headed by a lone parent or a family headed by a grandparents or guardian."
I've seen other quotes that extended that to aunts/uncles taking care of children of siblings. So, what's the problem there? Well, they're talking out of both sides of their mouth: we are going to protect marriage, but we're also extending this beyond marriage.
What are "durable relationships"? There's no definition, so that's going to be left up to the courts. It'll be no good saying "no, we meant people who lived together for ten years and have two kids, not that guy you shacked up with last week" because there's nothing there to say one is excluded and one is included.
There's a ton about single/lone parents, and I'm not too impressed. We now have both divorce and same-sex marriage, so a lot of the previous barriers have gone. "Oh, we want to get married but his wife won't divorce him/we want to get married but we're two women" - well, now you can, congratulations!
So what is stopping you?
Unfortunately, this story is paywalled, but the introduction should give the gist of it:
"A Cork mother and her partner of 12 years are advocating for a Yes vote for “durable relationships” in this week’s referendum, as they “don’t feel recognised by the State as a family”.
Louise Murphy and her partner James Langan, who live together in Cobh, Co Cork, with their two children, said they are no different from their married neighbours and yet they “don’t get help”."
What's stopping you from getting married, Louise? You can have a civil marriage registered and recognised for the cost of €200 for the licence and however much for the local council office to solemnise it. You don't need a religious ceremony, you don't need to splash out thousands on a big wedding.
If they're living together for twelve years, you'd think they could find six months to sort that out. And I'm damn sure Louise is getting children's allowance for her two kids, like other families.
I'm not a parent. How unfair that she gets money just for having kids, and I don't! Yes, I *could* have had children had I wanted, but I didn't. So I should get legal right to children's allowance too!
Nobody would believe that, but Lil' Ms "I can't get off my backside for long enough to go down to the courthouse" is claiming she is so terribly, terribly, oppressed because she's not legally married. You don't have to marry if you don't want to marry, but you can't expect to get the same benefits then, no more than I can expect to get the same money as you because you have kids and I don't.
Yeah, so, end of rant. I'm voting "no" and I fully expect the shiny new wording in the Constitution to mean feck-all when push comes to shove: oh, you *thought* we'd invest money in care services? Sorry, we only said we'd "strive" to do that!
Reading about this at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2024_Irish_constitutional_referendums it has the feel of an attempt to increase and entrench sex equality. Sounds commendable, but if Ireland's birth rate is below replacement level then maybe diluting the relative status and legal privileges of the traditional family, just to be trendy, is not the smartest move!
Perhaps it is also a recognition that in these days of soaring property and energy prices etc, a family with children can't have a decent lifestyle without both parents working, and it will allow advantageous tax status for married couples to be more readily degraded in future.
I wonder if the whole thing was prompted by some EU-wide policy. If so then you'd think they had learned their lesson by now after the Brexit referendum! :-)
Oh, no, this was the fruit of our Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality established in 2019 and meeting from 2020-2021..
So the Citizens' Assembly is supposed to be a random sampling of the Irish public, called together by our parliament, in order to have Big Brain Thinky-Thinks on Burning Issues Of The Day. In 2019 our government decided this would be Gender Equality; the new Assembly is going to be On Drugs (not that they are on drugs, but that they will be Thinking About Drugs, Drug Abuse, Laws and all the rest of it. Well, maybe some of them will be on drugs, too).
I have no idea exactly how they're selected since I never heard of anyone I know getting an invitation to participate, and I have a feeling the selection process will lean towards the activist type (not deliberately, just that they're the most likely to respond 'yes please I want to participate' and be able to arrange to attend all the Assembly meetings).
Anyway, this is what our Representative Voices Of The Irish People allegedly called for once the shindig was done:
You'll notice all the recommendations on spending money (equal pay, paying carers and so forth) are *not* what is being voted on in the two referenda, I have a feeling there also that this was steered in the "for the love of God don't commit us to spending any money" direction as well by all the advisory and steering and government committees 'supervising' the Assembly.
So we're getting gender-neutral language and durable relationships to make us all modern and egalitarian, huzzah! A victory for deliberative democracy!
Since, in the Chair's summing up of the report, the Assembly has no actual power to make anything happen, I have no idea what its purpose is meant to be, apart from the government of the day throwing a bone to lobbyists about "yeah sure definitely we'll take advice from The People and get the Views of The People on that one, no problem" about things they want (or more importantly, don't want) to do:
"However, after much discussion, we agreed that it was not the job of the Assembly to draft legislation or design detailed policy. Instead, the recommendations are concentrated on what the citizens want to see changed/introduced/removed. It is up to the Government and the legislature, if they decide to follow the recommendations, to turn them into the appropriate measures, whether in the wording of a referendum or a legislative act or the formulation of a policy decision."
But we will all be delighted to know that the Assembly members, representing the Plain People of Ireland remember, are willing to pay more taxes to fund all these improvements:
"In order to respond to this part of the Oireachtas resolution, I felt it was important to test the willingness of members to take account of the possible need for increased public funding in deciding their recommendations. We had several discussions on the concept of a statement by the Assembly on their willingness to pay higher taxes. Citizens stressed the need for greater efficiency in public spending, and for reprioritisation between current spending and revenue raising to be explored before tax increases are envisaged. However, 95.6% supported a clear statement indicating they are prepared to support and pay ‘higher taxes, based on the principle of ability to pay, to make a reality of Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality 88 our recommendations.’ To my mind, this statement lends considerable credibility to the recommendations of the Assembly and underlines the strong wish of members to see changes in key areas, such as in the pay and conditions of carers and the move to a publicly funded and regulated childcare system."
So if the government does hike taxes, it can point the finger at the Assembly: look, they told us to do it!
Mucking around with the Constitution to make it gender-neutral language doesn't cost them a penny but lets them claim credit for being socially progressive, while things about "paid care in nursing homes" - ah well now, things like that, sure you couldn't expect us, the government, to be making laws on that, but we have the Assembly views right enough!
I didn’t want to specifically get into a discussion here about that change but you are absolutely right about Louise and James , they want the benefits in law of a legal partnership without signing a contract saying they are in a legal partnership. Morons.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that she's angling for a move into social housing, or if already in social housing, to get moved to a better estate. A court case over "I am being discriminated against because we're cohabiting, the new referendum says we're the same as married" is next in line.
Let's just say I saw a lot of gaming the system when working in social housing, e.g. one couple with six kids, steadfastly *not* getting married because they did better as single people, kids lived with mam, dad lived on his own but put in for a bigger house because he needed to have room for when the kids stayed with him. No reason at all they couldn't marry (he was working) but it worked out better for them economically if she claimed as a single mother and he wasn't living with them.
I'm betting the same is going on with Louise and James there, they'd lose benefits if they got married. But they want the same rights, while dodging the same responsibilities.
I'd laugh if, ironically, after the referendum is passed, the changes were "okay, you are no longer single parents, you are de facto married because you're in a durable relationship, so we're taking all income into account, tax, etc. and treating you just like a married couple" and they lost their best of both worlds.
As for the uselessness of constitutions… as far as anybody’s concerned, the UK actually has a constitution. It‘s not written down as such, so it could be changed like any other law, plus or minus the strength of precedent, and perhaps this is a good way to do things, but that’s not exactly the same as not having a constitution and everyone actually being okay with changing the governance structure of the country every time it benefits anyone. Having a written constitution, with stricter standards for amendments than a mere law, makes it more difficult to simply show up and pass a law that this country is now a dictatorship and you’re under arrest :-)
But there are massive debates as to what should go in the constitution: maybe "democracy and liberalism" should indeed be constitutionally protected, but should abortion rights be constitutionally protected? Should the right to a decent standard of living be so protected? (Relevant link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1013691208701)
And that’s without noticing that constitutions, even to the extent that they only focus on how the government should be run and what it should do, don’t cover everything: so, currently, most countries have an "unwritten constitution" of sorts in addition to the main one (eg., few constitutions say that there should be political parties, and yet they are there anyway and are very important to how the government works) (relevant link: https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/unilllr2013&div=58&id=&page=)
In the US, the constitutional protections on right to free speech, right to free religion, right to bear arms, right against unusual search and seizure, etc, have very often been used in court cases to strike down laws trying to infringe these things. I don't think the US is 100% perfect on any of these counts, but it seems better than most other countries (eg Europe bans speech in ways that the US Supreme Court would strike down immediately), and the Constitution definitely makes these things better (because we know that politicians have tried to pass laws violating them, and these have been stricken down by SCOTUS on constitutional grounds).
I don't know why the US constitution works so much better than other countries' constitutions. Maybe other countries' courts don't feel as comfortable striking things down on constitutional grounds? Or they started getting their case law later, when people already cared less about these things?
>(eg Europe bans speech in ways that the US Supreme Court would strike down immediately)
The US Supreme Court has historically allowed restrictions on free speech that go way beyond the hate speech laws anywhere in the EU. The reason you don't see politicians trying that now is not due to a change in the Constitution, but because of subtler and more illegible changes in the cultural perception of what American identity means.
I'm a big fan of the First Amendment protection of speech. Coming back to the UK after 25 years in the USA, I am shocked at how cavalier my government is with anti-speech laws and I am horrified when the police show up at someone's house because of a Tweet they didn't like. The right to assemble is nice too but my country seems pretty tolerant of assembly anyway. We were intolerant of religion for a long time but we are very tolerant about it now; no constitutional amendment required.
Other parts of the Bill of Rights are cool but it seems to me that they could just as well be laws passed by Congress — except Amendments 9 and 10 which are largely ignored anyway. The only bits of the constitution that seem essential are the bits that define the relationship between the federal government and the States.
Many of the later amendments — like prohibition— just seem to be random popular opinions that have nothing to do with running a country or are intended to fix earlier constitutional rules that should not have been there in the first place.
The separation of powers is a disaster IMO. The elected government should be in charge.
How does the US constitution work better? There is all kinds of dysfunction in the design of the US government that can be observed even in current affairs, eg that a small group of people in the House can block the border legislation that their own party wanted or the Ukraine aid even though there is no doubt a majority for it. Not to speak of the Electoral College.
I mean the First Amendment is great but any constitution could have such a provision.
The US constitution isn't very hard to change, all it takes is a consensus between both major political parties that a particular change is desirable. And I don't think you'd want to change the rules of the game without the consent of both major players.
America does free speech better a certain extent but maybe add:
“ Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, *or allow private actors to materially abridge freedom of speech*”
And that’s the constitution. Maybe a few other bits.
> Maybe other countries' courts don't feel as comfortable striking things down on constitutional grounds?
Yes, that’s true in Ireland. Without getting into a debate about the actual referendum here it does add “or other durable relationship” to the protection of marriage in the constitution. Constitutional lawyers and even Supreme Court justices have been keen to emphasise that they are not going to create any new law from this, nor overthrow existing laws, nor go against cultural norms. In other words they are not going to treat polygamy or polyamory as a durable relationship - at least that’s implied - they don’t specifically mention either. Great, then why bother?
Once you realise that the constitution doesn’t need to protect marriage at all and we could have gotten rid of the entire passage without any loss - no laws would be affected - you realise that most of the Irish constitution is redundant and probably that’s true of most constitutions.
"Constitutional lawyers and even Supreme Court justices have been keen to emphasise that they are not going to create any new law from this, nor overthrow existing laws, nor go against cultural norms."
And I believe that the way I believe in Gemini's diverse leprechauns. We got same-sex marriage through a combination of the Zeitgeist had changed sufficiently for it not to be political suicide to support it, and the years-long case wending through the courts by the Canadian lesbians:
Well, to be factual, the marriage was Canadian, the lesbians were American and Irish, respectively.
Poly, whether -gamy or -amory, is probably still a step too far, but the guff about "protecting marriage" is bullshit. They're expanding the definition of family beyond "based on marriage" and recognising "durable relationships", without any detail as to what a "durable relationship" is. Our Cork lady above fully expects to be treated the same as married, even though she can't be bothered to get married, after this passes. The second a case goes to court over inheritance, tax, or other matters, the judges will be creating new law and going against cultural norms.
EDIT: This is personal spite on my part, but Ms. Zappone, after upturning Irish society, then scuttled back to Amerikay once she lost her plum government job, went working for Joe Biden's presidential election campaign, then lobbied our government for a new plum job to be specially created for her, but when push came to shove "as a U.S. citizen she could not be compelled" to attend for questioning. So she was as Irish as Paddy's pig when it came to claiming her 'rights', and then when it suited better, she was Uncle Sam's favourite niece:
"Following the loss of her seat at the 2020 Irish general election, Zappone moved back to Seattle to work as a full-time volunteer for Joe Biden's presidential campaign in the 2020 United States presidential election, then to New York.
Controversy over appointment as "Special Envoy"
In July 2021, it was announced that Zappone was to be appointed to the newly created position of "Special Envoy to the UN for Freedom of Opinion and Expression". It subsequently emerged that the proposed appointment had not been flagged in advance of the Cabinet meeting where it was proposed by Minister Simon Coveney, raising the concerns of the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin. However, he did not block the appointment, attracting criticism from within government, the opposition and the public, with Sinn Féin describing the appointment as "cronyism".
In the following days it was reported that Zappone had lobbied for the creation of and appointment to the part-time position, which was not openly advertised or subject to a competition. Further controversy arose when it was reported that shortly prior to the announcement of her appointment, Zappone had hosted a party for 50 guests, including politicians such as Leo Varadkar, at the Merrion Hotel, while the COVID-19 pandemic in the Republic of Ireland was ongoing. Comparisons were made between the party and the Golfgate scandal from earlier in the pandemic. On 4 August 2021, Zappone announced that she would not take up the envoy role, saying "While I am honoured to have been appointed by the Government to be the Special Envoy on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, it is clear that criticism of the appointment process has impacted the legitimacy of the role itself. It is my conviction that a Special Envoy role can only be of real value to Ireland and to the global community if the appointment is acceptable to all parties."
In September 2021, she was invited to appear before the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, but chose not to attend. As a US citizen and resident, the committee had no power to compel her attendance."
I’m no specialist of either the US or European countries’ constitutions, but I don’t get why you say the US’s works better? I works quite well, but the reason why free speech is less protected elsewhere is because other countries’ constitutions have decided it should be less protected? (While often also deciding that the president should be elected directly rather than through an electoral college — now who has the better system?). Personally, I think free speech should be as protected in Europe as in America, but not everyone agrees. And there probably should be some debates on what the EU courts allow or not: even though individual countries tend to disagree, the EU claims its legislation trumps countries’ legislation and constitutions, and yet European citizens don’t seem to care much about what influence they can have on European institutions.
The lack of control British citizens had over laws imposed on Britain by the EU was a major argument made in favour of Brexit. There are a substantial number of people who do care about how much influence they have on European institutions.
True. But what I mostly wanted to point to as "something I’d expect/want to happen but don’t really see" is closer to the following: since EU law is basically equivalent in power to national law, maybe we could vote in European elections, or learn about how European institutions work? No one seems to give a damn! Or, closer to what you say, maybe we could complain that European institutions aren’t democratic enough / aren’t working very well, and figure out how they could be improved. And yet we don’t do much of that. Instead, and as you mention, we only see people having that understandable gut feeling that there’s something rotten in the kingdom of Brussels and just getting mad about it — although often with political consequences at the national level. Political activists are very good at using EU power for their own ends, but it doesn’t feel like EU institutions are an actual part of the government I, as a European citizen, am subject to/can appeal to/other stuff one does with one’s government? Come to think of it, it makes sense: they have little to no legitimacy as "our government" the way eg the US Federal government or the Swiss government or what have you has, and yet they have clearly established their power, so it‘s probably not surprising that they’re used gladly by anyone who sees politics as a strategy board game, while still being seen as some aloof power we don’t routinely engage with by regular people. I doubt that‘s a good thing.
Works at what? German and Austrian speech laws are intended to prevent a revival of Nazism, and they haven't had a revival of Nazism. The US, on th other hand, has Nazis. If you don't want Nazis, the US is the one doing it wrong.
I don’t think we should be looking to Germany for pointers on free speech. That said I’m also ok with preserving democracy, so I would he happy to a temporary curtailment on free speech or political parties if there’s a definite threat to democracy.
This is something that constitutions hinder rather than help.
There are maybe three or four philosophers per century who make a difference in the world. Meanwhile, there are thousands and thousands of philosophers churning out philosophy papers.
What are those papers for? Who reads them? What are philosophers for?
I would argue that philosophy as a discipline is similar to alchemy. It produced a lot of great insights and was a critical step along the way to our modern understanding of the world (which itself is only a step to something yet greater); yet by now, it has been superseded by other disciplines which do not share its shaky foundations and appalling lack of intellectual rigor.
The university I went to only let you study philosophy in conjunction with another subject. You couldn't just study philosophy on its own like you could most subjects (this is the UK where most degrees are 'single honours' in one subject). I remember being told that it was because there was a feeling that philosophy needed to be studied alongside something to apply it to.
Yes, I was at Oxford - at the time I very got much the impression that they wanted you study the 'philosophy of something' and although the joint degrees included 'general' philosophy they were also very much geared to the accompanying subject.
Every philosopher you've heard of was in conversation with a dozen philosophers you haven't heard of, and every one of them was in conversation with dozens more. Philosophers don't come up with their ideas in a vacuum.
Now, probably most philosophy papers are never read by anyone other than maybe the person grading them. Most papers and most students of philosophy will not have any impact on anything. But the rare philosopher who "makes a difference" couldn't exist without the institution of Philosophy. (Does that mean academic philosophy is the best of all possible institutions? No.)
I have (appropriately) outsourced my thoughts on this matter to the great philosopher David Stove, who says that the point of having professional philosophers is to save normal people from the trouble of doing philosophy on their own https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/whyhave.html
> There are philosophers who have thought longer and better about the two-slit experiment than physicists have.
Previously, philosophers have spent millennia contemplating the nature of reality, and yet "the probability of an experimental outcome is the square of the absolute value of a complex amplitude" was *not* among the many possible answers they proposed.
Which suggests that even the "generate thousand different answers, one of them will be right in retrospect, and then you can brag about how philosophers already knew it all" strategy is not reliable, if the answer turns out to be more complicated than "everything is water... actually no, everything is fire".
...Oh. I thought he was joking, but he really meant it.
I don't know why people think thinking about something for a long time is going to magically get you closer to the truth. And if everyone is going to philosophize on their own anyways, that makes it even dumber to actually pay people to do it.
> In a non-totalitarian society, then, philosophy will be done, and the only remaining practical question is how, or by whom, this is likely to be done best.
I am not convinced though that philosophers of medicine think more about the ethics of medicine (or more usefully) than professors of medicine. Same deal with philosophers of science.
PS. I want to make a distinction between philosophy and philosophers. Philosophy has great utility and teaches good habits of thinking. I am a fan. Philosophers though? I'm not sure if employing all those philosophers is worthwhile.
Maybe philosophers of X don't think about it better than practitioners of X, but they've been thinking about it for longer, and they've already thoroughly mapped out the space of answers to possible questions and put labels on every possible position. A practitioner of X who starts thinking about philosophical questions can open a book, find his position already has a name and has been debated ad nauseum, and close the book satisfied that the territory he's been exploring has already been thoroughly mapped.
I think you are right that philosophers are more likely to have thought about a problem from every direction. That's a good skill to have and many people — experts, even — seem unable to do that.
Same thing goes for 90% of all scientists out there, in every field. It's mostly BS dressed up with credentials. There's obviously some important progress going on but you could cut down the bottom 90% of academia without any measurable change in the world around us.
I disagree, there's a lot of science going on out there that's not sexy or interesting or penetrable to outsiders but winds up being very important.
The whole field of materials science, for instance, is composed of unsexy but ultimately important papers. Each individual paper measuring some random property of some random material is likely to appear very boring, and yet it's the foundation on which so much other technological advancement is built. Nobody gave a crap about the conductivity properties of doped silicon until suddenly it became very important.
Agreed! Similarly with looking for new synthetic reactions in organic chemistry. No one cares very much about being able to add functional group X without disturbing functional group Y - until one needs that capability to e.g. synthesize a new pharmaceutical.
There's an element of luck in science and an element of needing freedom from gruntwork. For those reasons, I don't think it's quite fair to say that the 90% who aren't super productive are just doing BS work. The way I'd phrase it is that they're filling in the bulk of a very right-skewed distribution. A few folks get outlier results, but I don't think that would be possible without the rest of the distribution being filled in by less productive and brilliant researchers.
Philosophy is brute-force search for the truth without a good feedback mechanism. When everyone inquires in every possible direction, some people stumble into true stuff. Too bad we are not good at noticing when it actually happens.
Current implied probabilities for US presidential election, Betfair/Polymarket/Metaculus/Manifold (percentages, nearest whole number):
Trump: 47/54/50/48
Biden: 28/32/45/47
Obama: 8/5/1/1
Newsom: 4/3/1/0
Harris: 3/2/2/1
Haley: 3/1/1/0
Kennedy: 3/3/1/1
Since I last posted about this, the gap between Betfair and Polymarket on Trump has narrowed slightly, which is good to see, but the difference is still surprisingly large. One person now holds 28% of the Trump "Yes" shares on Polymarket, which means they have now bet over $1m. Biden continues to be much lower in real money markets than other prediction sites; one side must be wrong.
Betfair continues (IMO) to overvalue the outsider candidates, which probably represents small-odds bias, i.e. the difficulty of taking large "no" positions at long odds on an event 8-10 months in the future. This appears true to a lesser extent for Polymarket, which is probably because their market claims "supports negative risk (convert No shares to Yes of the other options)". For example, only 311 "no" shares seem to exist for Harris, despite there being 2,968,743 "yes" shares. Assuming this has actually been implemented correctly, it's a clever idea. It's worth noting that this means the bet totals are inaccurate: IIUC much less than $3m has been bet on Harris for example.
Super Tuesday seems to have been good for Trump, despite Haley's surprise win in Vermont. It was either good (Betfair, Polymarket), neutral (Metaculus) or bad (Manifold) for Biden.
Most surprisingly, it was very bad for Michelle Obama, who had been holding steady at 7-8% on Betfair for the past three weeks, but suddenly collapsed to 3%. Possibly the mere occurance of Super Tuesday attracts market participants who expect the candidate to be chosen according the primary votes. Or is it possible that some market participants were surprised to discover that she is not running?
Interesting thanks. I've only been betting 'fake' money on manifold. (Mostly on the long shots which I think are under valued.) I think one of the outsiders will have a shot because... Biden will have to drop out.
One unrelated point, I wish I could put down fractional limit orders on manifold. I want to bet say Dean Phillips (yes) at 0.2% but the min is 1%. I hope they change that.
Can you explain why there's an Obama option in your list? The chance of Obama being the president for a third term should be zero because it would be illegal and there's absolutely no indication that he would be interested in a third term.
Perhaps at some point between now and November, 2/3rds of Congress and 3/4ths of state legislatures will amend the Constitution to allow Presidents to serve more than two terms.
Some people are hinting strongly at "how about ditching Joe and running Michelle Obama, who is a black woman without Kamala's baggage, and would have the good vibes of Barack's time in office to woo the voters?"
It's Michelle Obama, not Barack. And yes, given that she has never expressed any interest in running having her at 8 or 5% seems absurd, but that's what the numbers say.
Weird question: a while ago, I went to see a therapist because my executive function was/is terrible and I suspected ADHD. After the therapist had dug into it, it appeared that actually I don’t have ADHD, just ASD, which also involve some executive dysfunction (which is probably made worse by eg. my low self-confidence, etc., I guess). So, I have ASD, I’m fine with that, but now my therapist says "maybe you should consider getting ADHD stimulants, those might help with your executive function".
She’s probably right, at least it makes some kind of sense, but… I can’t just go to a psychiatrist, diagnosis in hand, saying "here it says I don’t have ADHD, now gimme the ADHD drugs anyway, pretty please?", and expect it to work! Or can I? Even assuming that I can: I’ve never seen a comparison of the various kinds of stimulants there are, from Adderall to weird nootropics to very very strong coffee. Anyone has good sources on what works best / what has the best "effects on executive function : difficulty of getting it and magnitude of side effects" ratio?
I thought I had ADHD many years ago. I went to a clinic at the local university and was told that my attention issues are downstream of depression and anxiety. That made sense as I was very depressed and anxious at the time, and I could see how those conditions affected my attention and caused misery w/r/t motivation.
After years of therapy, drugs, and whatnot, I'm much less depressed and anxious now. But I continue to struggle with motivation, especially at work. The couples therapist I see with my wife recommended that I get a neuropsych test to rule in/out ADHD. So I got on the (8 month) waitlist for a neuropsych test.
Meanwhile, I started seeing a psych NP to go over my meds. As she took my history, she noted that I pretty clearly have ADHD and she'd be happy to prescribe something. I mentioned that I was waiting on a neuropsych test and didn't yet want to start a stimulant.
Then I had the neuropsych test, which showed a relative deficiency in categorizing and contextualizing new information. The neuropsych doc was unwilling to diagnose ADHD because, despite my present distress and experiences, she didn't see the basis for it in my youth.
I shared with my psych NP the neuropsych doc's conclusions and report. The psych NP was not bothered by the conflicting diagnosis and declined to defer to the neuropsych doc. So I got some Vyvanse, first 20mg, then 30.
It changed my life. For about two months, I took Vyvanse every weekday. It crushed my appetite and gave me the runs. But work became stupidly easy. I could just sit and write a memo without having to negotiate with myself.
About a month ago, I started intentionally skipping doses, just to see what would happen. Now, when I'm unmedicated, I experience the struggle with motivation, but during the two months of consistent use, I learned to not be so afraid of "lack of motivation." To be clear, lacking motivation sucks because you have to "make yourself do things." But the other thing that sucks is being afraid of the lack of motivation, and that fear is simply not necessary. (It's like the "two arrows" parable in Buddhism.)
More info than you asked for. I guess the takeaway is that you need to find the right person with a prescription pad.
Psychologist here. What’s happening that leads you to call your executive functioning terrible? If it is mostly procrastination and inability to get yourself to do things you want and need to get done, it may be more accurate to think of it as demand avoidance. (Means you recoil from *having to* do something. Very common in people on the autistic spectrum)
What you call "demand avoidance" sounds like it might be what I call "the wall." I sit at my desk to do work, and it feels like I have to scale a very high wall before I can start the work. There is no wall separating me from internet distraction, so I take the path of least resistance...
Hey, I didn’t know that! That’s definitely a part of it, but not the whole thing, though?
I definitely avoid stuff like "write cover letter for application to master’s degree", "apply to internships", or even "work on writing down the stuff I found in my research". That’s demand avoidance! (Some things are easier to do: it seems to have something to do with "when it’s a friend/acquaintance directly asking me to do X, I drop whatever else I was doing even if urgent, and do that for hours on end instead". But this matches my intuitive definition of what "demand avoidance" should be about, so that’s not surprising?)
But when I discuss my issues with my therapist, I usually see a broader kind of akrasia: the main narrative I’m exploring is something like "I have low confidence, so I don’t dare to do stuff, and end up doing boring things because I didn’t dare to actually give my brain work". I also see around me a lot of people — often with far less free time than me! — writing blogs, starting really cool projects, while I don’t: It’s again likely that I simply don’t dare to seriously consider that I could do it too, even when I intellectually know my best bet is to give it a try? :-(
Also worrying is the non-procrastination part of executive dysfunction: I often feel like I have trouble thinking, connecting ideas together, thinking in a strategic/goal oriented way rather than daydreaming. That, I simply cannot make sense of: I know a bunch of people with ADHD, it doesn’t make them brain-dead? Maaaayybe again something something understimulation and boredom?
And maybe I’m grossly exaggerating how terrible my EF is by comparing myself to very smart and driven people? (Many of whom openly have ADHD, though?).
I guess that’s why I started wondering about my therapist’s idea that I should take stimulants instead of just going to ask a doctor for the pills: surely, stimulants would only work on my ability to get things done, not on my confidence to try things in the first place or whatever. Maybe I just have two separate issues and they’re not both EF-related.
(Don’t necessarily feel too obligated to answer that, I’ve (as usual!) written a lot… But your answer was very useful!)
The set of problems you’re describing isn’t one where it makes sense to look for one Culprit, in the form of a diagnosis. There are too many easy-to-spot feedback loops involved — e.g., it’s pretty natural for someone who has trouble getting themselves to do stuff to have low self-confidence, and also for the causality to go in the other direction.
I think what you should do is look for interventions that target one trouble spot, and work hard on breaking up that part of the logjam, then see how things look — how many of the other problems remain if you make substantial progress on one. I’d say the most promising trouble spot to start with is akrasia. Look for CBT practitioners that mention that as a speciality of theirs (they might call it procrastination, stuckness, or some such, and they may call what they do something like behavioral activation).
Do you spend a lot of time online, and especially do you spend a lot of time gaming? Consider the possibility that online activities are interfering with your ability to invest fully in your non-online life. Even if you aren’t exactly *addicted* you may have developed a sort of reduced investment in the non-online world because the internet offers distraction, challenges, and the ability to switch activities whenever you feel like it. It will also distract your from your guilt and worry about things like not writing your cover letter for the application for your masters degree.
As for psychopharm: The trouble with adderall is that it makes most people feel energetic and optimistic. I am positive I do not have ADD, but I love the way adderall makes me feel, and take it very occasionally for fun, or to help me get a big project done. So if you take it and love the way you feel, you have not learned that what your brain needed all along was adderall — but you will probably want to keep taking it. So I wouldn’t recommend it as a first thing to try. (I doubt that it will be terribly hard to get, though, if you are determined to try it first.) If you want to go the psychopharm route I recommend googling “psychopharmacologist specialize in autistic spectrum disorders” and go see one of them. That’s likely to work out much better than generic psychopharm. If you are in a university town there will be some ASD specialists.
Oh, and about daydreaming: Introspect and maybe keep some notes on what you’re daydreaming about. They might tell you something about what what’s sapping your vitality. Could it be that you’re unmotivated to get your masters degree because you’re not enthusiastic about what you’re studying?
>"it makes most people feel energetic and optimistic."
That sounds better than not feeling energetic and optimistic. Is it just concern about side effects and/or tolerance that stops you from taking it more often? That would be entirely reasonable, but I wouldn't explain it in term of "not having ADHD."
I don't have side effects from it. If I take it in the morning and am reasonably physically active during the way I don't even have trouble sleeping that night. I avoid taking it more because of a general feeling that it's probably not good for me, and concern about becoming addicted to it. Also, it's easy to get a few from friends, but would be hard to get a regular script for -- I'd have to go to a doc and lie, and I don't like the idea of that.
This is similar to what I felt for a long time and Wellbutrin (bupropion) was extremely helpful to me. I think it's because not only does it have some of the stimulant effects of Adderall, etc. (albeit milder), but it also helped me feel more self esteem and general optimism. I still do things I did before, but I get less of the feeling of being "blocked" by self-defeating attitudes. I feel like my brain has "opened up" again in a way I haven't felt since my late teens -- I literally feel my cognitive pace moving faster and holding onto trains of thought longer.
I also generally enjoy things more, especially things I already enjoyed doing before in theory but generally felt too low energy to really do and feel totally engaged with. It's a very great feeling compared to the years of vague... inertia towards inaction? I had before :)
Of course pay attention to the people saying to avoid N=1 anecdotes, but if you're looking for something easier to get than stimulants, it's easy (in the US) to just tell your PCP "I'm depressed (even if you're not) and want to avoid low-libido side effects (even if you don't). Can I get on bupropion?" without having to jump through the controlled-substance hoops
Stimulants are used to treat some symptoms of ADHD.
To the extent that other disorders produce those same symptoms, it's standard practice to treat them with teh same stimulants.
You just say 'My therapist recommended stimulants to treat my symptoms of executive dysfunction stemming from ASD' and let them do whatever tests of execute dysfunction they want (if they even bother).
Also, do not pay too much attention to anecdotes. E.g., one paper I looked at found that 50% of people were helped a lot by Adderall. I recently started taking Vyvanse (basically long-acting Adderall), and it doesn't really help me. There are no side effects, though. But obviously, my experience is worth much less than a study.
Adderall: makes me jittery, increased my resting heart rate to 80 (normally it's under 60), walking heart rate to 110 (normally its 85). This also decreases the quality of sleep, which has negative impact on your wellbeing. Helped to be more focused in general, didn't help to be more focused on actual work. Also numbs my emotions and makes it hard to connect with people.
Vyvanse: long-release version of Adderall (Scott had a post explaining this in better detail). Didn't make me as jittery as Adderall but otherwise same negative effects. Didn't help focus on actual work.
Modafinil: increases my heart rate but not as badly as Adderall. In my experience works better for actually forcing me to get work done. But if I take it more than once a week it starts impacting my short-term memory, so I try to take it rarely.
Cocaine: surprisingly works pretty well for productivity if you take a single dose in the morning. But all the usual caveats about addiction potential and health harms apply. If you don't have an unusually low potential for addiction, I wouldn't recommend trying it.
Xanax: makes me want to take a nap for an hour or two, afterwards working is a lot easier as it removes most anxiety. Unfortunately benzos have horrible side effects with long term use and apparently lots of people get addicted to them, so likewise a poor long term option.
Phenibut: recommended on the ACX survey. I've tried 500mg and 1g doses, didn't feel much of a productivity boost. But apparently it does work for some people.
Rhodiola Rosea: didn't feel much of an effect.
Phenylpiracetam: best productivity nootropic I've tried so far. Does increase my heart rate but not as badly as Adderall or Modafinil. Helps me focus but doesn't blunt emotions. Based off my research taking it twice a week is acceptable health-wise. Biggest downside is that it's a somewhat obscure Russian drug with poor research on long-term health impacts.
Things I haven't tried yet that apparently worked for some people: Noopept (another racetam), Semax, Ritalin, Bacopa Monnieri. You can get any of the above substances by ordering online, some can be ordered by credit card, some require Bitcoin/Monero.
Lots of my local doctors, both GP's and psychiatrists, told me over the phone that they don’t prescribe adderal, and that’s speaking as someone with a previous diagnosis who had an active prescription before moving. If anyone tells you adderal/Ritalin/etc. is akin to a strong cup of coffee, they’re straight up pulling your leg. Having experienced the side effects and after seeing how much effort it was gonna take to get another prescription, I’ve decided against it for now. Goddamn is it some good stuff though!
I don't know how atypical I am in this regard: Adderall doesn't make me feel good; I would even gag at the unpleasant chalkiness of the pills. Adderall makes me calm and less anxious. I wouldn't describe it as good stuff, it's just neutral. I continue to take it because it makes executive function at work merely challenging, as opposed to near heroically difficult when unmedicated.
Just to point out that I didn’t mean that adderral was anywhere near like coffee, just that caffeine is also a milder stimulants and maybe someone wants to say "coffee is enough for me", or "coffee is worse/better than adderral in those ways beyond just being a stronger substance". That’s partly bc adderral is both hard to get and has side effects that I’m curious about other things worth looking into
I would pay substantial money for something I could add to coffee to prevent me developing resistance to. Have you ever quit coffee for a while, then had it fresh? That stuff is goddamn miraculous.
Is the age of formal classroom schooling entering a long secular decline? And if so - apart from the growth of homeschooling - what could possibly replace it as the primary means by which society teaches its children? https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/teach-your-children-well
I predict nothing would change in schools within the next 30 years, unless of course we get AGI and all human knowledge will cease to have any economic value. Most of the pro- or anti- public school hysteria is among the "highly online" people, 90% of society doesn't care all that much.
We might see more private/charter schools thanks to school choice laws but fundamentally these private schools don't work all that different.
When both parents are at work, they need babysitting for their kids. Therefore, schools.
Smart people have many options other than being teachers. Even if some of them decide to be teachers, there are dozens of them, and the education system needs thousands of teachers. Therefore, schools that suck.
In some sense, "schools that suck" are our collective revealed preference. It's not that we literally want schools that suck -- it's just that anything else is considered too costly.
Private/charter schools seem to mostly work better because they can pick better kids. The same is probably true for alternative schools (Montessori, Waldorf, etc.) with the difference that they work better when they are new, so only the parents who are actively looking for something new send their kids there; once they become "normal" and normies start sending their kids there, they revert to the mean.
A recipe for a great school is probably the following: be very picky about which kids you accept, then hire the best teachers (you don't even have to pay them more, they will probably be happy to work with the best kids). Everything else is secondary; for example, you could give the kids lots of homework and they will handle it well, but if you don't give them any homework, they will turn out great, too. The obvious problem is that this recipe does not scale.
The next big story, likely to come out in 2-3 years is the thus far invisible collapse in public school effectiveness. Literacy levels, classroom order, as well as basic empathy/decency among children is so stunningly poor that anyone working outside of public schools can scarcely imagine it. Right now we have a situation of teachers sounding the alarm and no one listening because everyone hated school and claims that adults always complain about children, and no drastic global decline in focus, behavior, and performance is likely or possible.
Basic empathy and decency? I've heard, anecdotally, that kids are nicer and less mean than in days of yore. They definitely teach the Social Emotional.Learning, even if the academics are failing.
Arbituram touched on the major and most obvious reasons (selection effects for parents, Ipad kids, etc.) but in my experience it's the inexplicable collapse of punishment and reward systems at all levels of child rearing (which I've observed in schools all around the world!)
Students don't get kicked out of class and when they do they don't get sent to anyone with any power to punish, and then if they are punished they're simply sent home (which is often just using their iphone as they always do) and then soon enough they're right back in school exhibiting the same behaviours.
There has been a cultural shift, no doubt bound up with the shift away from having children in general, into a perverse kind of worship of children. They are simply never presented with real consequences, at home, at school, or in any other capacity they might start to bump up against the 'real world'. They do, sadly, get emotional and inconsistent outbursts of aggression from their parents, but that does not constitute good or 'strict' parenting.
For thousands of years, child rearing was founded upon the cruel, hard, rock of physical punishment. I'm no advocate of harsh physical punishment, but from all I've observed our society has a gaping physical punishment sized hole at its heart, because there is now simply nothing the 'teaching' class can do to control the millions of children to whom they are supposed to socialize and 'teach' for a generation of hopelessly screen-addicted parents.
The kids state this openly. They do whatever they want and don't study because they feel secure in the knowledge that nothing bad will happen as a result of this.
A good system is one that uses punishments rarely -- it is the *threat* of punishment that does most of the work. But when you ban the punishments (taking the "using punishments rarely" part to its extreme), the threats become empty.
As an analogy, I have never been in jail, but there are many rules that I follow, because the alternative is to pay a fine, the alternative to paying the fine is having my property taken away, and the punishment for resisting having my property taken away is jail. To avoid this entire sequence, I follow the rules (most of the time; and I pay the fine occasionally).
But imagine a system where there is no jail, and the fines are voluntary. I would probably still follow most of the rules, because I am a nice person, and many rules are about not hurting others, or about coordinating with them better. But sometimes I simply would not bother; I would stop paying taxes, and probably most things that require paperwork. And that's still me being a nice person; many people would go much further. (Then at some moment, some kind of vigilante "justice" would appear, or the criminal gangs would start managing "their" territories.)
There is the idea that you should discuss everything rationally with your kids. Which is nice... when possible. But often it's not. The kids are kids, which means that their capacity of rational thinking is evolving, just like their self-control, etc. Sometimes you just have to override their desires and say "no more chocolate today" or "put away your smartphones, now we are going to do math". And you better have a good response for when they say "no", because sooner or later it is going to happen.
I don't know what's causing it (I have extremely speculative hypotheses, at end) but at least in the UK it is pretty clear there's *something* going on with parents getting worse at parenting (1), and long term teachers reporting really bad absenteeism (2) and behaviour(3), particularly since COVID.
(1) A *quarter* of incoming reception (kindergarden) children aren't potty trained this year, a dramatic increase, and which was basically unheard of a generation ago outside of very special needs children.
(3) "Suspensions for physical assault, threatening behaviour and verbal abuse have increased, with even primary schoolchildren being defiant and refusing to follow simple classroom instructions, such as to get out their books."
I've come to see the different articles on collapsing birth rates and collapsing childrearing schools as, effectively, the same trend; certainly in my social circles, almost no one I know has children (I have two, and that makes me the most fertile of my extended social group. I'm in my late 30s.)
If the people who should be having children (high conscientiousness) aren't, that leaves the impulsive and the religious people to have children, with behavioural outcomes we would expect.
Screens also make it easier to be a bad parent; I'm horrified by the number of prams I see with a phone or tablet strapped in front of the child like some kind of hypno device, and playing on that device is absolute muck, often not even human generated.
Anecdotally, in our mixed-income Sacramento-area public school the biggest problem is that discipline is nonexistent. My children (5th and 8th grade) report that in some classes nearly no work gets done because students are verbally disruptive and they are apparently not allowed to send them to the principal's office at all (or they are simply sent right back). Since there are no consequences for misbehavior and no teacher ability (in these cases) to control the classroom, anarchy results.
These issues have gotten markedly worse since the post-Covid return. My sense is that simply investing the teachers with some of their previous authority would work wonders. However in the current climate this is unlikely to happen.
Here's one thing-- there was a fashion for "whole language" as a method of teaching reading for some 30 years.
Phonics seems to work for a majority of students. Whole word (visually recognizing the word rather than doing letters and sounds) works for some students.
Whole language is teaching the child to look at the first letter and *guess* and the rest of the word. It can appear to work with picture books and a lot of hand-holding by the teacher up to about the third grade, but it effectively produces illiterate people.
In California there are 977 school districts each with its own school board and curriculum. Meanwhile there is this feeling of scarcity and competition and median house in California is 8.6 times family income. It seems like your kid needs to be uber successful in order to live the dream so parents are neurotic about their children's futures. Then schools really screwed up during the pandemic (In Europe they hardly closed schools), nearly all kids are addicted to tech, and schools are leaders in creating bureaucracy and group think while being culture war battlefields. It makes it seem like a shit show, but I doubt it is that bad.
For many years now, phonics and whole have both been used. They call this a blended approach. But right now phonics is really being pushed hard in the US. I seriously doubt the prescribed method of reading instruction has anything to do with a perceived decline in children and schools.
Yes, pretty much. Primary education is administered at the local rather than state or federal level, usually funded by local property taxes. Just like each city or county has its own police department and fire department, they have their own K-12 schools. The State governments can set standards and provide support, but they don't have the bureaucratic infrastructure to exercise operational control of the schools directly.
Local school boards are democratically elected, and at a scale where individual votes matter and concerned citizens can expect to directly meet the candidates, which *should* result in the school districts being highly responsive to the parents' desire for well-educated children. Historically, that worked pretty well. But see elsewhere in this thread re: Parents These Days.
There were decades of teaching an especially bad method. Blended is probably best, especially if it's tweaked for the individual child rather than expecting all children to learn both ways.
There isn’t much literature on this, so I’m asking here: if you were on 150mg Wellbutrin and 60 mg buspirone, would you avoid nonalcoholic beer (defined as less than 0.5% ABV)?
All literature agrees you should avoid alcohol on these medications. Studies haven’t really been done on NA beers like Athletic Brewery which are increasingly popular. Any thoughts, inferences, or guidance is appreciated.
I think the alcohol + bupropion interaction is mentioned out of an extreme abundance of caution but probably won't matter for most people (reasoning: modern preparations of bupropion don't seem to increase seizure risk, alcohol doesn't cause seizures in most people, and I would expect this interaction to be linear-ish, plus sometimes people recommend bupropion as an alcoholism treatment and nobody worries about seizures!) The buspirone interaction is even weaker.
Based on this, I would say don't worry AT ALL about non-alcoholic beer.
I just started on wellbutrin for ADD and tried 2 drinks, and had a pretty bad night of sleeplessness, uneasy dreams, and heart racing. now that this has happened twice, I'm staying away from alcohol for a while. But I see on reddit other folks who do just fine with drinking.
None of this answers your question, I just wanted to vent out what I was going through. I can't imagine non-alcoholic beer would be a problem.
I used to read the Economist, but lately I have less time and can only get to "Politics this week". I like it a lot, but on its own it's not worth the subscription. Does anybody know of a good replacement? Something to tell me the important news from the recent week around the world, in very brief form?
They've got an app called "Espresso" which is basically this. It has a few minutes of reading a day, and four short articles a week. As a bonus, they've spun off their American political coverage into a separate app, which means I DON'T SEE IT!!! :-D
Proposition 1 adds additional criminal penalties to homelessness and nothing justifies that. The state has not shown a willingness to abide by restrictions it places on itself, so a promise to provide services in exchange for making certain things double illegal is really just a promise to make things double illegal.
Perhaps I misremembered. I may have confused it with an initiative to provide drug treatment but issue higher sentences for drug use if treatment was refused.
I'm sorry, no. "You can't walk down the street without getting harassed by crazy homeless people or walking over people doing drugs in public" is a pretty huge problem with living somewhere.
What's the relevant punishment and case? On the margin I would prefer more enforcement on street people not harassing passers by. It depends on the details (general rule of thumb is that increasing consistency is better than severity) but I can't figure out what the punishment details are in this case.
For the local SF proposition that actually is doing this (Prop F), the proposal is that anyone who gets cash payments from the city (about 5,700 people total, separate from state welfare) will have them withheld if they are abusing substances and not in approved treatment.
I'm not sure what you mean; I am not trying to say that the proposed measure will do anything about harassing passersby. The actual proposition is just about mandating substance abuse treatment.
If people want more enforcement on harassing passersby, they'd want a different piece of legislation.
Can someone who knows the science please explain to me: Does IQ matter?
Many years ago I read Stephen Gouldings The Mismeasure of Man, where he says there have been many attempts to measure human intelligence on a straight line, and they have all been flawed. And that IQ is just one of the latest of these. He said IQ had been created to separate children needing special attention from other kids, and was not meant to be used for individuals.
But in recent years, there have been many people claiming IQ is important. The chief proponent I remember is Jordan Peterson who claims IQ is the main indicator of how much you will earn, and if your IQ is less than 80 even the US Army won't hire you. This 2nd claim got some criticism online and some people said it was a made up fact.
But I dont know enough about this field--how relevant is IQ? Is it really as important as many people are claiming it to be?
Stephen Jay Gould is misrepresenting science. You shouldn't trust him.
As a basic sanity check -- look at the people you know. Have you ever met someone who was quite dumb? Have you ever met someone who was quite smart? If your answer is "yes" to both, how likely it is that there is actually no such thing as intelligence?
People usually object by saying that there is no such thing as being generally intelligent, only having a specific talent. For example, Scott has a specific talent for writing; nothing more. Oh, he also has a specific talent for statistically evaluating scientific studies about medicine; what a coincidence! Also, he seems to know a lot of interesting facts about various topics, such as politics, prediction markets, artificial intelligence, economics, etc. (At this moment I start to suspect that he is also rich and has a harem of girls.) Would it be too unthinkable to suggest that perhaps Scott is... a smart guy, generally speaking?
Which doesn't mean that Scott is necessarily great at everything, of course. To be great at something requires also a lot of study and practice, and even the smartest people only have 24 hours a day, which limits the number of subjects they can study and practice. However, I assume that if you chose a subject at random, for example "French architecture of 12th century", and told Scott that he has 6 months to master the subject or he dies, he would probably do a quite good job, even if under normal circumstances he might never learn anything about this specific subject. He has the possibility of mastering many things, even if only a tiny fraction of this possibility actually becomes a reality.
There are also people who are the opposite of this, and if you told them they have 6 months to master something or they die, they simply would die, unable to do even a mediocre job.
And this all doesn't mean that people don't have their specific talents and weaknesses. It's just that it makes more sense to model the specific talents and weaknesses as something they have *on top* of their general intelligence. For example, "dyscalculia" doesn't simply mean that someone sucks at math. It means that someone sucks at math *surprisingly*, considering their general intelligence. For example, if someone is mentally retarded, it is not surprising if they also suck at math. It's when someone is generally smart, and then seemingly inexplicably fail at very simple math, that we diagnose them with "dyscalculia".
> there have been many attempts to measure human intelligence on a straight line, and they have all been flawed
There have been many flawed attempts to do *anything*. Does the existence of alchemy invalidate modern chemistry? Do the ancient philosophers speculating that everything is water make particle physics suspicious? The important question is whether the current answers are right or wrong. The fact that people in the past believed wrong things is, I guess, very frequent.
Gould compares craniometry to IQ testing. Well, craniometry is measuring the skull, and speculating on the impact on the mental skills. IQ testing is measuring the mental skills themselves. The difference is like reading one's horoscope and speculating on their personality type, versus giving them a personality test where you directly ask them how they behave and what they prefer.
> He said IQ had been created to separate children needing special attention from other kids, and was not meant to be used for individuals.
Yes, historically the first use of IQ tests was to determine which kids are ready for school. They measured which 6 years old kids were mentally comparable to other average 6 years old kids, which ones were below that level (and might benefit from starting the school a year later), and which ones were above that level.
Then it turned out that the kids who significantly mentally exceeded their peers at the age of 6, usually continued to exceed their peers for the rest of their lives. And therefore psychologists started to measure the IQ of adults, too.
It doesn't matter what the test was originally meant for. Science is the process of gradually figuring things out, rather than coming with the right answers from the start. Also, the original IQ tests had many obvious flaws (for example they also measured the fluency of English language and familiarity with American culture), and yes, the scientists have noticed these flaws and tried to eliminate them, which is why the modern IQ tests contain the abstract patterns instead.
> But in recent years, there have been many people claiming IQ is important.
It's more like, people always knew that being smart is often an advantage. Then it became a taboo to say that. Now people are pushing back against the taboo. It's not like Jordan Peterson invented any of this stuff; he is merely saying what psychologists who study IQ have been saying all the time.
> how relevant is IQ? Is it really as important as many people are claiming it to be?
That depends on what exactly which people are claiming. IQ is quite important, but it is also possible to make exaggerated claims. There are statistics about how IQ is linked to income, crime, educational success, etc.
As I see it, higher IQ allows you to handle greater complexity, and thus it "unlocks" for you certain topics that would otherwise remain inaccessible. (For example, if you have IQ 100, you probably shouldn't study quantum physics, because it will turn out to be too difficult for you.) It also helps you learn faster.
But of course intelligence isn't everything. To succeed at life, you also need emotional balance, social skills, financial support, and good luck. Even highly intelligent people can be sabotaged by depression, autism, poverty, bad luck, racism, sexism, random bullying, etc. High intelligence is a necessary -- but not sufficient -- condition for intellectual success.
Here, a cheap target for the opponents is to point at Mensa, which selects for people with IQ over 130, but also seems to unintentionally select for various kinds of dysfunction, simply because the more functional smart people will find a better use for their time than sitting at the Mensa meetings. So, yes, one can point at Mensa and laugh. But if you removed the self-selection aspect -- if you simply took all kids in one city and measured their IQs and then traced their life outcomes, then I believe that the kids with IQ over 130 would turn out to be more successful on average (and most of them would never join Mensa).
This is how I understand it: An IQ test score is to intelligence what a 100-meter sprint time is to athleticism. If you run a good time, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll also be good at boxing. Or pole vaulting. But it indicates a physical fitness that could translate. And good 100-meter runners are typically better at pole vaulting and boxing than those who sprint poorly.
Among the brave few who objectively study human intelligence, it appears many of them prefer a measure called G-Factor, which can be measured in tests such as the Stanford-Binet. Nevertheless G still closely correlates to IQ. And both correlate strongly to overall life success but to me that’s not surprising in a world predominantly shaped by people who excel at tasks related to these measures to reward people of the same type.
As a side, I don’t think there’s any brand of discrimination more problematic, widespread, and less recognized than discrimination against the less intelligent. I think this problem becomes increasingly relevant as advances in AI could potentially transform the most brilliant people on earth into relative idiots.
As someone who considers himself to already be in the dumber half of the population, I’ve considered the idea of forming an advocacy group for the self-determination of stupid people, but I can’t land on a strategy for filling the leadership positions.
IQ isn't a true underlying trait of a person, it's a score on a test. It's an imperfect measure of some underlying trait of the person, which is "ability to answer the sorts of questions you get on IQ tests".
This turns out to be heavily correlated with the ability to do a lot of other things. If someone has a high IQ score then you can reasonably predict they're pretty good at all other mental things; if someone has a low IQ score you can reasonably predict that they're pretty bad at all other mental things. Sometimes these predictions will be wrong. That's about all you can say about it.
I think this is a neat way to visualize the IQ and salary data: https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1763312772408807823 . This doesn't prove that IQ causes the salary, but since variance in adult IQ is mostly genetic I think the causation is most likely that direction (although you could come up with various galaxy-brained ways around it).
Nassim Taleb argues that it's basically useless on the upper end except as a measure of ability to sit still and take a test. He does say that it's very useful for spotting learning difficulties.
At the upper end it's not much use for the same reason that any other noisy measurement is. If you try to use an IQ test to identify the top 10% of the population you'll do pretty well, if you try to use it to identify the top 0.1% of the population you'll do a bad job, mostly getting a random sample of the top couple of percent.
Remember what the IQ test actually measures -- the ability to solve a particular bunch of puzzles at a particular time on a particular day. Anyone who has ever done particularly well or particularly badly on a test should be able to understand that there's going to be a reasonable degree of natural variation from test to test.
Yeah that’s what Stephen Goulding said as well- because the person who created the IQ test did it to separate special needs children. Which is why I’m surprised why it’s come back into fashion
It does matter if what you are measuring is the kind of intelligence that IQ measures. This isn’t a put down - while IQ is a proxy for intelligence and not the an actual thing there is plenty of evidence that it correlates strongly with academic and life success. Gould is generally assumed to be political here, he was a Marxist.
IQ and intelligence are not affected by genetics alone however, so don’t take the endorsement of IQ to be an endorsement of someone like Richard Lynn.
>Gould is generally assumed to be political here, he was a Marxist.
_Groan_.
I was trying to avoid being political, which is why I avoided mentioning the racist history of IQ testing, and the political beliefs of those pushing for it
Do you want an actual answer here or not? Are you arguing in bad faith?
It’s pertinent that Gould might have been affected by his political beliefs on this, and by bringing him up you are implicitly bringing his politics into it. If you don’t want an answer here, except one that confirms your original proposition, why post.
I'll make an argument for Steve Garvey for Senate. If it's Porter vs Schiff, then Democrats end up spending tens of millions more dollars on a general election that doesn't matter. If it's Democrat vs Steve Garvey then the Democratic candidate wins anyway.
Unless you strongly prefer one Democratic candidate vs the other, it's better to vote for Garvey.
Also I'd still argue you're better off voting for Schiff. While he will likely vote exactly the same way as Porter as a Senator he is slightly more economically literate (or at least, his public person is more economically literate than hers). For instance, Porter has been all in on the corporate greed theory of inflation, while Schiff has acknowledge supply chain disruptions and restrictive housing policy.
I would never, ever, ever, vote for Jesse Arreguin for any office. His NIMBY nonsense not only slowed down perfectly reasonable housing from being built in Berkeley, but also cost the city a huge amount of money in legal fees, all for a quixotic quest the city attorneys told him he was bound to lose.
I did not consider him an acceptable mayor of Berkeley, I sure as hell won’t vote for him for higher office.
I was also very upset and disappointed with Arreguin's NIMBY nonsense early in his tenure. My impression though is that he has come around on this, if not to a fully YIMBY position, at least far enough pro-housing that Berkeley has been permitting new housing at the fastest rate in decades https://www.berkeleyside.org/2023/07/25/berkeley-housing-boom-construction. So I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that his early NIMBYism was more a way to cater to the notoriously NIMBY Berkeley homeowners than a personal conviction, and that he's legitimately changed course on this.
I mostly agree with your friend's answers, but I would look into voting for Schiff instead of Porter. Since you are less left than your friend, his politics are probably closer to yours. Also he's a much more experienced and IMO more effective legislator than Porter.
It's also worth thinking about the strategic voting option of voting for Garvey. Not to actually support him, but since he has no chance of winning in November, a vote for him is basically a vote for having a low stakes Senate election between him and either Schiff or Porter (probably Schiff). Whereas if the general election ends up being Schiff vs Porter we'll have to be subjected to many months of tiresome Dem infighting.
If this is your belief, you should probably vote for Barbara Lee. She has by far the strongest anti-war credentials with her lone vote against use of military force in Afghanistan. And I'm not sure what you mean by xenophobic conspiracy theories but this sounds like something she is also very much against.
Edit: Also, for anyone else reading, this is the sort of Dem infighting that you'll get less of if the general election is D vs R instead of D vs D.
I would pretty much legalize all drugs (except antibiotics!). We could collect some tax dollars and cut off an enormous source of funding for some of the most destructive people in the world. The harm reduced by moving the supply chain into the hands of regulated businesses instead of anonymous sociopaths would likely outweigh the harm caused by widespread availability. Retail prices for many drugs would also fall by orders of magnitude because the production cost is dwarfed by the cost of having everyone involved in the distribution network risking life and liberty every step of the way, which would prevent non-wealthy heavy drug users having to choose between keeping up their habit and paying the rent.
For every 10 people on Social Security or Medicare that die, the 9 oldest people not yet eligible become so.
They're the deepest holes we're still actively digging, but a sudden stop could be catastrophic. Putting them on a gradual trajectory to evaporate takes care of both prongs.
I also considered shifting eligibility from a fixed age to a percentile (e.g., eldest X%) with X dwindling over time, but rejected it for complexity of implementation; I suppose that would also create a similar incentive.
Yeah, honestly I think the best you can do is try to instill some cultural movement towards radical independence / taking one for the team / when it's your time, you choose to go out on the ice floe or whatever.
Essentially NOBODY wants to "Who By Slow Decay" the last decade or two of their lives - yet huge amounts of people do, due to inertia, or "family" or simple ignorance of safe, effective suicide methods.
There ought to be *some* solution to that that preserves dignity and independence in old age, where you can voluntarily check out before you enter the "slow decay" stage, but I'm not sure any country in the world has got this right so far.
Inuit and Russians don't count in my book - ice-floeing yourself to death isn't a thing any more, and that or drinking yourself to death (the Russian male method) are both absolutely terrible deaths, and no other society that I know of does this at an appreciable scale.
Agreed (though I'm sure there is an exception somewhere)
>the last decade or two of their lives
With the exception of the horror of Alzheimer's and (some?) of the other dementias, many people are able to get enjoyment from their lives up to a lot closer to their deaths than 10-20 years.
I've read that roughly half of deaths are "expected" - the result of some illness with a reasonably predictable course. And, yes, the endgame of most fatal illnesses are pretty miserable. From family members that I've outlived, I'd guess that typically the period that, with perfect information, one would want to skip, would be months to a year.
Does anyone have better information? One can't expect a neat graph of "fraction of time spent with negative quality of life" vs "fraction of population"... Is there some plausible surrogate?
>With the exception of the horror of Alzheimer's and (some?) of the other dementias
Yeah, I was specifically thinking of dementia and mental degradation - even if we solved the biggest hurdle and safe, effective suicide methods were widely known and available, if your mental capacities decay enough, you're not going to be able to avail yourself of them, legally or practically. But your body can just keep trucking along for decades after that point, especially if you're in a directly adversarial environment designed to prop up and sustain your shambling corpse as long as possible to juice monthly money out of it. Hello, nursing homes!
I've always wanted a Lickert scale on drugs across a large and representative sample - something like this should be in Cochrane reviews, but it's not. We should have a similar Lickert scale for medical conditions, and we could aggregate across time to at least broadly infer the info you're looking for. Too bad it's not a standard practice anywhere.
If you're talking about literally removing parts of the government, then I think I'd start with the BATF, the DEA, and the TSA. To the extent that we need government involvement in those things, it should mostly be at a lower level and the limited requirement for direct Federal enforcement should be reduced to a scale that the FBI can handle in its spare time.
More controversial, and requiring more thought, would be doing away with the EPA and the NLRB, and their state equivalents. I think the ideal state would require *some* level of legally-mandated environmental protection, but if the choices are "none at all" vs "everything we've got now plus everything that's going to be enacted in the next ten years", I might actually go with "none at all".
And on the taxation front, I'm open to replacing what we've got with either a flat income tax above a certain floor, or a national property tax. But not to overall tax cuts, until the current national debt has been at least mostly paid off.
But I'm really not a big fan of all-or-nothing solutions if there's any reasonable alternative. On the environmental front, for example, I want the reasonable middle ground and not unchecked "Drill, baby, drill!" So, less taking down parts of the government, and more reforming or restricting them.
It's been a long time since I thought about this, but the BATF had a very bad reputation, and it seemed like the best thing to do would be to eliminate it entirely, fire everyone involved, and fold any necessary responsibilities into other agencies. There didn't seem to be any principled reason for the feds to have their own enforcement arm (goon squad) for what should be state matters.
I consider myself ex-libertarian. But it's decades of cruft that I'm sloughing off. Weight my comment as you will.
Much like the practical personal financial advice that tells you, "no, you will not return to a sustainable household budget by eliminating Starbucks", I think libertarians (and everyone else) has to squarely deal with the fact that our arrangement of ultra-popular entitlements, aka The Welfare State, is unsustainable. Raising FICA taxes (Medicare and Social Security contributions) is a must.
That said, libertarians (the sane fraction) pride themselves on finding win-win solutions...IOW, eliminating dead-weight loss where something that the government does both retards economic growth AND mechanically diminishes government revenues.
One classic solution is to "broaden the base" of taxpayers by letting in more working-age immigrants. (With more taxpayers, everyone's burden could be lower.)
Here are some other ideas I retain from my libertarian days:
- The Fedgov should not own huge tracts of land, e.g. owning 80+% of Nevada. Auction it
- Most labor regulation is at minimum gratuitous, could better be handled by states, and probably radically retards economic growth. Deregulate the labor market just by sending it to the states.
- The Department of Education. We didn't have one until 1979. Is education better than it was in 1979? Permit me to seek medical attention that I should avoid literally dying of laughter.
- Many other federal departments: Commerce, FTC, FEC, SBA. We can kill these. These are just change in the couch cushions but it's important to pare back the administrative state or you get self-crowning tyrants like Lina Khan who just destroy liberty and national wealth through a haughty wave of their Yale-Law-School educated fingers.
I'm rambling here, so let me quit. But the truth is that we need a top-to-bottom accounting from something like Jimmy Carter's Zero-based-budgeting or Ronald Reagan's Grace Commission. The skyrocketing federal debt is a national security issue second only to the rise of China.
Nancy, let's hang out the next time I'm in Philly!
Medical care is a huge topic, and the US bad-lucked into a remarkably inefficient way of supplying it. I'm not sure what pieces should be taken down first.
Yes, let's. Let me know when you're going to be in town.
While I'm sure I don't have a complete answer, I think I have a good idea where to start. Physicians in the US earn twice as much in compensation as doctors in the second-best paid country. That's a glaring problem. While I'd be open to persuasion, I think it's indefensible.
I think we should import more doctors (from countries whose medical education systems are up to snuff) until wages equalize. This could also help ameliorate local doctor shortages in the US.
Technology changes, society changes with it, and government must follow suit. Back in ye olde 1600s, the military didn't have an Air Force, yet today it does. Education used to be a luxury (most people could get by with what they learned on the farm), yet today it is a necessity (even on the farm). Commerce used to be local and conducted in cash, but today it is global and conducted using a variety of computation-mediated financial instruments. Science used to be the province of rich eccentrics, today it is the long-term driver of the economy. Medicine is a lot trickier than leeches and turpentine. What I'm saying is that I don't mind having extra departments, as long as they work well. If they are working poorly, they may need to be rebuilt or consolidated into one smaller department, of course.
I would automatically issue Green Cards to graduates of the 500 best engineering schools in the world. Land use, nuclear, labor law, etc, are nice to reform, but getting the best engineering minds in the world should be our biggest priority.
The average federal income tax payment is $13k. Do you want to replace that system with... everyone paying $13k? Presumably anyone who can't afford that (and I certainly couldn't have for the first 6 years of paying my taxes) is out of the "membership model". Do you deport them to Mexico or what?
I'm in Australia so it would probably be Papua New Guinea for us. But they could move to any country that would take them, we'd just make a deal with PNG. But they could go to any country that's willing to take them, they just can't stay here.
In the US, Mexico would seem like fair play turnabout.
The thing is that as the number of people incapable of supporting themselves decreased, that $13K would decrease as well.
Setting aside any other question about this proposal, do you really see this as _libertarian_? To my ear, this sounds like a large increase in government force, not a decrease.
This would have the same consequences as the most brutal ethnic cleansing, even at its most efficient. Do you think that's more sustainable than an expensive welfare state?
Ultimately this is what I'd do, it's not what's politically feasible. People won't vote for it in any existing country. But if a new country were to pop up that used this as a founding principle, then that country would become incredibly wealthy. Perhaps it's something to think about for future space colonies.
I doubt it. The problem is, your tax is most punishing to the least productive sectors. Low productivity is often stubborn like in the construction sector: difficult to automate (like manufacturing), not possible to decouple from the constraints of the physical realm (like software), lack of economics of scale and cost reductions through learning.
In your hypothetical society, productivity gains are free meaning that the chronically low-productivity industries will over time make up an increasingly large proportion of the tax base.
Then your society will degenerate in one of the following ways:
1. The alternative place where you get deported if you can't pay the flat fee is horrible: in this case workers in low productivity industries will work for scraps in order to avoid deportation. You get a caste society where AI-enhanced megabrains enslave destitute peons. This is no longer a libertarian society as it basically forces people into contracts which they would not enter without coercion.
2. The alternative place is decent: you get turbo-charged Baumol's disease. Most of the low productivity sector workers just leave, constraining supply. Prices for goods and services from these industries will go through the roof. You have AI-enhanced megabrains who can't afford housing. This is no longer a wealthy society.
I'd like to see the fourth amendment taken more seriously. We seem to be trampling all over our individual 'rights' in the name of making us all more safe or something.
I'd institute a flat income tax, eliminate all deductions and credits, and fire 90% of the IRS' staff. I'd also institute a UBI that could only be used for approved types of expenses (housing, food, medical care, child care), and every adult would get the same UBI payment each month regardless of their income.
I'd abolish the Veterans Administration, sell off all it's assets, and give veterans vouchers to spend on private sector health care providers. The VA is one of the most wasteful, corrupt, and inefficient of all federal agencies.
I'd drive a stake through the heart of needless occupational licensing laws.
Yes, I would consider it income. However, for the purpose of taxation, monetary inflation would have to be taken into account when calculating the real capital gain.
Oh boy, I sell my house that I've owned for ~20 years... and now I've got to adjust the 'income' to account for 20 years of inflation. Sounds complicated.. and that is an easy example. I just think it's hard to calculate 'income' for someone who doesn't have the bulk of their income reported on a W-2.
My normal, boring answers would be land-use regulations and burdensome environmental reviews. The sort of "death by a thousand cuts" red tape that prevents modern economies from quickly building out necessary infrastructure. Particularly since the purported benefits of those regulations do not, IMO, outweigh the negatives.
That's just the stuff i'd cut entirely , and it already accounts for 10.8% of the budget.
Then there "environment"(1.7%), "economic affairs" (5.8%), "unemployment benefits" (3.3%), totalling 10.8% as well which could probably get a >50% cut before hitting something that need to be done by the state.
And finally retirement (26.2%) and health (19.5%) which should get a TBD cut (retirement a large one, we're the only country where pensioners got a higher income than workers).
All in all, assuming 50% for the 2nd list, 25% for retirement and 15% for health, we're reaching ~25%.
Good list. In particular, I agree cutting culture expenditures is basically a no-brainer. These policies basically amount to taking money from the poor and using it to fund "high brow" culture mostly enjoyed by rich people.
I wonder about family subsidies, though. France is one of the few countries that has successfully maintained a birth rate close to replacement level. I presume that has to do with its family subsidies (especially the large tax credits?). Any ideology that discourages having children must vanish eventually - so it is an issue libertarians should address somehow.
Depends on the country. In Sweden, I'd remove rent control, as the rental market there is completely broken in the places where people want to live. In Malta, I'd liberalize immigration for people from rich countries (e.g. JP, KR, US, CA & TW), as those immigration restrictions are causing a lot of hassle for no good reason.
As a libertarian, I honestly can’t give you a halfway decent answer for this, since it seems like the powers that be are fully entrenched to play both sides of the field (privatization or “social democratization”) almost equally well. My natural inclination for an answer is just to gesture frustratedly at the behemoth.
The reason I’m a libertarian is not so much because I think the free market is the end-all-be-all for wealth generation (all though it very well might be the best we can do). The bigger concern I have is that the modern economy is clearly doing an excellent job at hedging people’s pet political passions against their economic best interests. For example, we’re moving towards renewable energy, which is definitely a passion of mine, but it’s being done in such a way as to ensure the OG economic winners cement their place at the top of the pyramid for all of eternity. This has always gone on to some extent, but it seems to have been turbocharged in recent decades. Instead of taking steps to decentralize our infrastructure, which, while yes, would make it somewhat less efficient with less consolidated profits for shareholders, would also make it more robust and tailored to the needs of the local economies it serves. Instead it’s being tailored to big business, so overseas manufacturing (China) can benefit from selling us buttloads of solar panels, and meanwhile our (somewhat) more local oil&gas billionaires are well positioned to sell us extra-premium-priced natural gas, via the multi-step intermediary of a natural gas fired power plant, for when solar isn’t producing and people need *need* electricity just to heat their homes through the night (in new construction that mandated all electric appliances...) I know I know, this isn’t so much a specific policy solution as vague gesturing, but it’s an example of how they’re using the general trend among voters pushing us *away* from economic interests, as a way to screw us in the most ironic ways possible.
When it comes to specific policy positions, there does seem to be some low hanging fruit, like zoning as Shaked Koplewitz points out. With so many millennials living in their parents basements, it’s seems like a no-brainer to re-examine those policies which mostly seem to satisfy the interests of busybody HOA board members at the expense of basically everyone else...
Libertarian-adjacent conservative here. There's a problem with the question in that at the moment the answers will differ if you interpret the question as "which parts of the government are unnecessary?" versus "which parts of the government need immediate reform?" (And you can add on another layer as "which parts of the federal government would be better handled at the state or local level?)
Reforming America's education system is one of the things I'd want to tackle from all three categories, though rather than take down public education entirely at the start, I'd want the initial goal to be school choice plus removing the federal Department of Education rather than complete privatization. Once there, in addition to making it easier to get out of generational poverty, you've removed the one of the major drivers in pushing up a lot of land values in the better off areas, reduced the disproportionate influence the teacher's unions have in local politics, and removed one of the major battlefields in the culture war.
My latest paper about ChatGPT: Does ChatGPT Understand the Concept of Tragedy? Symbolic AI & Neural Nets
Abstract: Tragedy is an abstract concept. David Hays proposed that abstract concepts can be metalingually defined. A term, such as tragedy, can be given its meaning by a pattern over a string of words. By using a cognitive network to define tragedy Brian Phillips investigated that computationally. In this paper I have taken Brian Phillips’ definition and presented it to ChatGPT in six different trials, where each trial also included a short story. Three stories satisfied the definition and three did not. ChatGPT was asked to indicate whether or not the story satisfied the definition it was given. It was correct in each case.
https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2024/03/does-chatgpt-understand-concept-of.html
Anyone else find it weird how OpenAI goes to frankly absurd lengths to be "unbiased" (including flat out lying about certain sensitive topics), presumably to avoid pissing off the wrong people and getting negative attention for OpenAI and its services. But then, the CEO of OpenAI has as his twitter bio a symbol of his ethnoreligious identity, which he set this as in the midst of one of the bloodiest and brutal ethnoreligious conflicts in modern history, one which is amongst the most sensitive political topics in the world right now. Really gets the noggin joggin.
Has anyone else noticed Google Doc's autocorrect get much more aggressive and stupider recently?
Previously, it would just attempt to correct mispellings or grammar errors. Sometimes it would get one wrong, but for the most part it was ok, and it would never attempt to apply the same correction more than once if you backspaced and changed it back. However, perhaps a few weeks ago, it got a lot more aggressive and also stupider, and now frequently makes changes that aren't even gramatically correct.
For example, when I was writing just now, in the space of one paragraph, it changed the "worn" to "worms" in "However, there were also small holes worn", and it changed "I applied" to "I apple".
Furthermore, it no longer gives up if you undo its correction. I've seen it apply the exact same (mis)correction three or more times when I backspace and fix the "correction".
Does anyone here know what's going on here? I'm curious what people on Google Docs would say about this.
That sounds like they're using LLMs now, did you enable some newfangled Google AI or anything?
You can turn off spelling autocorrection under Tools and then Preferences. I don't know why anyone would want it enabled in the first place. Just git gud.
I've rejected every AI related prompt I've seen, but that wouldn't stop them from releasing a new model under the hood. What I'm really wondering is *why* they would move to a new model that's so clearly inferior.
As for disabling it, the correction actually is helpful sometimes, especially the old version.
Oh, Jebus, how ‘bout that Caitlin Clark?
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/iowa-womens-basketball-storms-back-beat-nebraska-win-big-ten-tournament-slow-caitlin-clark-start.amp
He's an update on the kid-prompted, generative-AI-generated, smart-phone distributed kiddie porn saga at Beverly Hills middle school. Five of the 16 perps (err students )involved have been expelled under a stipulated agreement with the parents of the perps (so the parents have accepted the expulsion and they won't legally challenge the school district). It's unclear what if anything is going to happen to the other 11 perps (err students) involved.
The county DA and BHPD are still investigating, so criminal charges could still be filed. But... "California’s laws against possessing child pornography and sharing nonconsensual nude pictures do not specifically apply to AI-generated images, which legal experts say would pose a problem for prosecutors."
It's unclear if the parents of the victims of this AI-generated classmate porn will sue the parents of the perps or the school district.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-07/beverly-hills-school-district-expels-8th-graders-involved-in-fake-nude-scandal
It occurs to me that Facebook has implemented some sort of machine-learning mechanism to identify and prevent photos of nude people from being posted (my photographer friends call it the Facebook "titty filter"). Why can't these generative AI systems prevent the production of images of nudes? I wonder how much usage of these apps is porn-related — and these apps want to avoid restrictions because that would impact some of their potential future revenue streams.
OC ACXLW Sat March 9 AI vs The Past, Who is Utilitarian?
Hello Folks!
We are excited to announce the 58th Orange County ACX/LW meetup, happening this Saturday and most Saturdays after that.
Host: Michael Michalchik
Email: michaelmichalchik@gmail.com (For questions or requests)
Location: 1970 Port Laurent Place
(949) 375-2045
Date: Saturday, Mar 9 2024
Time 2 pm
Conversation Starters :
AI’s Threat to History:
Text:
A.I. Is Coming for the Past, Too
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pj2GL3s-R4uIy9udrSGcOMQCNUk-6dVcaWNFTh-mTmg/edit?usp=sharing
Audio:
AI's Threat to History - The AI Breakdown: Daily Artificial Intelligence News and Discussions (podcast) | Listen Notes
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-ai-breakdown/ais-threat-to-history-Kw2Jm8CrBkc/
Less Utilitarian than Thou by Scott Alexander:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/less-utilitarian-than-thou
Thinking the unthinkable by Tetlock:
Thinking the unthinkable tetlock2003.pdf
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RAXxXggyCSYoK9aUI4nZ3MdPW9s9wrE3/view?usp=sharing
Walk & Talk: We usually have an hour-long walk and talk after the meeting starts. Two mini-malls with hot takeout food are readily accessible nearby. Search for Gelson's or Pavilions in the zip code 92660.
Share a Surprise: Tell the group about something unexpected that changed your perspective on the universe.
Future Direction Ideas: Contribute ideas for the group's future direction, including topics, meeting types, activities, etc.
> A.I. Is Coming for the Past, Too
AI deep fakes are already starting to influence and distort the political discourse. I fear we're too focused on the human extinction scenarios to see the immediate threats of generative AI...
https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-hamas-israel-misinformation-ai-gaza-a1bb303b637ffbbb9cbc3aa1e000db47
https://apnews.com/article/biden-robocalls-artificial-intelligence-new-hampshire-texas-a8665277d43d05380d2c7594edf27617
https://apnews.com/article/deepfake-trump-ai-biden-tiktok-72194f59823037391b3888a1720ba7c2
https://abc7news.com/biden-state-of-the-union-address-ai-voice-generations-artificial-intelligence-regulations-ban/14505536/
But of course, there are non-political uses for deepfake voices...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ai-phone-scam-voice-call-b2459449.html
I don't think it has been established that "deepfakes" are significantly influencing or distorting the political discourse, except about AI of course. Yes, there are deepfakes about e.g. the Gaza War, but do deepfakes of suffering Palestinian moppets do anything that real but mislabeled photos of suffering Syrian moppets wasn't already doing?
Lies have always been part of the political discourse, and the craftsmanship of the lies is of disturbingly little relevance. Too many people just want to be lied to.
I am a somewhat intelligent person -- I once measured with a 143 IQ, which seems a fair number to capture how I qualitatively think of my intelligence. Is there any fast path to a decently paying job the way "learn to code" was 10 years ago?
I am looking to pivot in my career. I have been unemployed several months and, for reasons I don't understand (market saturation?), no one is responding to my seemingly perfectly qualified applications to roles in line with my previous job.
Are you over forty and applying for tech jobs? Don't rule out age discrimination. It's a real thing in Silicon Valley (though HR people will never admit it).
I am near 40 and "in tech" but I work in marketing. My sense is that age discrimination is not really a factor at my age just yet (though I realize within engineering it might be)
My reply would be that "learn to code" is still relevant if you are highly intelligent. I've been working in software and hiring developers for many years, and the money is still very good relative to what you have to learn. The simplest path in my opinion is learning a basic backend language (golang is hot) and SQL. This will give you the flexibility to contribute in many areas, and you will grow in pay and responsibility because you will learn much faster than others. Average software people I work with are nowhere near 140+ IQ.
How important is age for employability?
To make it concrete: How old was the oldest person you have hired for an entry-level developer position? (I guess the job title would be "junior developer"?)
Thanks for asking this, that's a relevant question I didn't even consider in all this. In some ways in my mind I'm still 22, but I am not even close to 22 and people will take that into account when evaluating me.
Age discrimination is brutal and pervasive in the software industry, in my experience.
Definitely if you are just getting started. A solid reputation for delivering results will counter it to a certain extent, but yeah, you will run into "I just don't think you will fit in with our team beyond a certain age.
Also, if you're not necessarily looking to pivot your career but more frustrated by the job market, I can recommend looking for employment with jails, prisons, and mental institutions. While prison guards and nurses comes to mind, these are large institutions with lots of administrative, legal, and technical staff that are often desperate for talent.
Most positions will involve some prisoner/patient interaction, it's hard to avoid, but it's a solid way to get work, especially if you're looking for the stability of long-term civil service. It's a great way to do 1-2 years and then you're in and the civil service becomes so much easier.
Actuary can be an option. Passing one or two exams is often sufficient to get a job. You'd generally be expected to keep passing exams, which would generally come with pay increases.
Thank you for your response. That is a good option -- any sort of career with a standardized test as the only barrier to entry would probably be good for me, I will look into that
My pleasure! Best of luck with whichever job you pursue!
Can you write competent SQL?
In every organization I've been in, there's an endless demand for dashboards because managers and executives don't understand any other way to take advantage of all the data they've collected. This is problematic because, well, writing SQL code is simple as far as coding goes but it still requires that weird brain thing that let's you code all day, so there's a solid barrier to entry. Lot's of really smart people just can't do it. And anyone who can write SQL competently tries to move on to better things pretty fast. So there's always demand.
If you can do it, look for data analyst, business intelligence developer, etc roles.
Also...man, hiring practices became insanely dysfunctional over the past 5 years. It honestly feels like a dating app now in terms of rejection rates and dysfunction. HR genuinely has no idea how to handle the flow of applicants so they put in a bunch of bad filters, many of which filter out good applicants, and...I dunno what drives it but it's a mess.
I can't -- my original post was probably unclear, I can't code at all.
I mentioned coding because 10 years ago my impression was an intelligent and dedicated individual could learn to code relatively quickly and outside a university setting and get a decent job. I assume the ship had sailed on that because of AI and the massive growth of CS majors. I was wondering if any comparable skill now exists for a near-term pivot.
But if you're saying that's SQL by itself, then I will look into it... I can handle all day drudgery and career plateaus.
Anyone who's actually *good* at coding would still easily get a high paying job, as far as I can tell, and AI is a nonfactor and likely to remain so. But your age probably forecloses that route.
Damn. Well, thanks for the warning.
I would recommend to learn SQL first, then Python. In Python, maybe focus on working with a database (whichever database, not important) and parsing text. Maybe create one program that reads some text files and writes some data read from them into a database, and another program that creates text files containing some reports from the database. At that moment, there should exist an IT job you are qualified to get as a junior developer.
Regardless of AI, human intelligence will probably remain a bottleneck for some time. Someone needs to talk to the AI after all, and many people suck at communicating.
"Learn to code" is probably still your best bet. It's not as easy as it was ten years ago, but still easier than anything else.
Your other best bet is probably to stick with your existing career and wait for the job market to improve (while doing Uber Eats or whatever it takes to keep money coming in).
OpenAI just put out a blog post which includes releasing an email chain involving Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Ilya Sutskever, regarding Scott's SSC post "Should AI be Open?" https://openai.com/blog/openai-elon-musk
Someone sent the post to Musk, who forwarded it to Altman, Sutskever, and Brockman. Sutskever's reply:
> The article is concerned with a hard takeoff scenario: if a hard takeoff occurs, and a safe AI is harder to build than an unsafe one, then by opensorucing everything, we make it easy for someone unscrupulous with access to overwhelming amount of hardware to build an unsafe AI, which will experience a hard takeoff.
> As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it's totally OK to not share the science (even though sharing everything is definitely the right strategy in the short and possibly medium term for recruitment purposes).
To which Musk posted "Yup". Musk's agreement with Sutskever's rebuttal to Scott's article is now a major point in the lawsuit, which I find interesting.
"The Open in OpenAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it's totally OK to not share the science"
This is a very nonstandard definition of "open", at least in any context involving software. which strikes me as intent to deceive.
It's like calling MS Excel "open" because anyone can buy a license and open the spreadsheets.
Would removing restrictive zoning temporarily raise the cost of buying land or a house? My intuition is that by removing restrictive zoning, you are increasing the set of things that can be done with the land, including options that could be more profitable for the land owner than, say, a single family home. I would think that this should raise the price of buying land/a house, at least until increased construction raises the supply and drives down the price.
The link between housing units and price seems tenuous at best (but in IMHO no one has been able to explain why this is the case to my satisfaction).
Kevin Drum did a series of posts in 2022, showing that California did not have a housing shortage.
https://jabberwocking.com/we-dont-have-a-housing-shortage/
https://jabberwocking.com/update-housing-units-in-california/
This guy (below) argues that Drum, by focusing on raw housing supply numbers is obscuring the real cause of high housing prices even in markets with surplus housing. He blames the demise of low-tier mortgage lenders — so I gather only wealthier people can get into the market, keeping prices high.
I don't have any skin in this argument, but I don't think I've heard a good explanation for why free market supply and demand doesn't seem to be working in the housing market — especially when there's a surplus of housing available.
https://www.idiosyncraticwhisk.com/2022/04/some-thoughts-on-kevin-drums-housing.html
> I don't have any skin in this argument, but I don't think I've heard a good explanation for why free market supply and demand doesn't seem to be working in the housing market — especially when there's a surplus of housing available.
The reason is because the US effectively made it impossible to build new housing in many markets starting in the 70s, with California hit worse than anywhere, creating an extreme shortage of housing. It's only now that the political tide is just barely starting to turn in favor of legalizing housing construction, but that's still too little, too late.
It's a bit like the reason why the "free market" fails to fix generic drugs being too expensive.
Except that it's a myth that there's a shortage of housing in US! The US ranks *1st out of 41 OECD countries* with "Dwellings with basic facilities" per capita, and *2nd out of the 41 countries* for "Rooms per person". But we're 9th out of 41 on what we spend on housing.
https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/housing/
And according to one of the Kevin Drum links I posted above, in 2022 California had something like about 108% of the housing it needs for its population. Roughly on par with the rest of the US.
What we have is a shortage of inexpensive housing. So, why isn't the free market working?
We don't have a shortage of inexpensive housing, we have a shortage of people wanting to live in the cheap cities. Because our expensive cool cities are *really* cool, and the American Dream is that anyone can aspire to that level of coolness.
Of course, part of coolness is exclusivity, so don't expect the cool cities to allow crass commercial real-estate developers to ruin the vibe by putting up lots of cheap housing for the masses. If you care about that sort of thing, plenty of the cheap cities are still trying to grow.
As for why the "free market isn't working", the reason is because local governments make it impossible or extremely expensive to build new housing. https://www.pacificresearch.org/new-report-latest-evidence-of-how-red-tape-blocks-sf-homebuilding/
Here's another good post about the housing crisis you might want to look at: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything/
Incidentally, even the Idiosyncratic Whisk post that you yourself linked to explains this and convincingly shows how the housing shortage is driving people out of the most dynamic cities in a hsitorically unprecedented fashion.
There's clearly a shortage of housing in the places that people actually want to live. For example, noone can say with a straight face that SF has enough housing.
Is there though? I just went online and there are >1300 homes for sale in SF at this time. This includes 1 bedroom condos, townhouses, standalones, and mansions. About a thousand of those listed for sale are 3 bdrm or less. Of course, the median list price for a 2 bedroom 2 bath house is about 1.4 million dollars — which seems low to me for SF, because Zillow says my dinky suburban bungalow across the bay is worth that much. Obviously most housing is out of reach of people considered low income — and In San Francisco a person earning less than $105,000/year is considered low income. Anyway, it doesn't really look like there's a shortage of housing per se, just a shortage of housing that a family starting out can afford.
https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/under-100k-low-income-san-francisco-18168899.php
Transactions happening is not proof of a lack of supply. In the absence of artificial price caps, lack of supply compared to demand usually manifests as extreme price increases, which is exactly what happened and is happening. That's how markets work.
I'd recommend checking out some of the links I posted, as well as your own Whisk post.
Econ 101 suggests that upzoning will quickly increase the price of an acre of land or a detached single-family house, because buyers will be competing with investors who now want to put a duplex or whatever on the same spot. It will also, not quite so quickly, decrease the price of other forms of housing like apartments, condominiums, and halves of duplexes.
I still think induced demand is a thing, and building more apartments will (in desirable areas) eventually raise the price of apartments too.
Your denser, more populous city will soak up an even greater share of the economic activity of your country, making it an even more attractive place to live (in the sense that you can't possibly get a job anywhere else).
That can't increase prices unless the increased demand is supralinear, e.g. if having twice as many people living in your city makes three times as many people want to live there at a given price point. Otherwise, doubling the number of apartments may mean 1.8 times as many people want to live in your city at the old rates, and 20% of the new apartments are going to be empty unless the prices go down.
And I have a hard time seeing what the highly supralinear mechanisms that are going to drive this alleged effect are. Part of what makes a city desirable is geographic and not density-dependent. Oakland's position on the SF bay makes it the best place to make lots of money by unloading container ships, which depends on the size of the CONUS and Pacific Rim markets but not on the number of people in Oakland. Part of it is artificial but still not density-dependent. The US Federal Government plops down a finite amount of bureaucracy in and around the District of Columbia, and thus a finite opportunity for bureaucrats and for baristas selling overpriced coffee for bureaucrats, again independent of local population or density.
And part of it is density dependent, but I think mostly linear at the outset and sublinear at the margin. Going from two nice restaurants to four makes your town twice as appealing to hardcore foodies, but going from 200 to 400 only modestly shifts the quality distribution experienced by people who are only ever going to eat at a hundred of them.
I'm not seeing the highly supralinear density-driven demand that's going to overshadow the fixed and sublinear demands to drive a net price increase. The prices might not come down as much as you'd naively expect in the fixed-demand case, but they will come down relative to what would have happened if you hadn't built any new housing.
Curious as to peoples’ thoughts on this paper about electoral competition and electoral systems. Would a Condorcet-consistent electoral system solve the problem of hyper-polarized politics? Is it realistic to get this implemented?
Link to a blog post describing the paper: https://edwardbfoley.substack.com/p/a-must-read-analysis-of-why-us-elections
Link to paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4728225
I'm not impressed. I'm no fan of FPTP either, but theorizing that the voting system is what's driving polarization misses the mark. There's been a rise in populism around the world, not just the U.S. And as best I can tell, it represents a backlash against globalism and a backlash against institutions that operate outside the scope of democracy, such as the European Union. Putting goldilocks centrists in power *might* have been useful a decade or two ago. But currently, centrists will be seen as just another lapdog. Elections aren't about policy, they're about trust. And there's a severe lack of trust, not only in leaders, but in institutions.
> Would a Condorcet-consistent electoral system solve the problem of hyper-polarized politics?
No.
> Is it realistic to get this implemented?
No.
The chance for this country to change course has passed decades ago. Even if it was remotely possible to implement such a massive change to the electoral system, it wouldn't change the underlying cultural issues responsible for this mess. Democracy isn't going to stop anyone. The people will get what they want, one way or another.
I can't tell how they think this would work. It looks like it moves votes down the list of the second-highest top candidate's vote. But it's a two party system; if the second-highest loses, it's because the highest has the majority, and the other votes aren't going to overcome that. Barring that, it looks like it has the fail state of pushing votes ever farther down the list; with stiff competition between 1 and 2, 2's votes go to 3, which push 1's votes to 4, which puts 3's votes to 5, who wins by dint of votes not having any further lower to sink. So now everyone loses.
It also seems to disincentivize people from dropping out, which means more money and time spent on losing campaigns whose main hope is gaming the trickledown system.
I stopped around page 11, do they mention other countries who use the system and/or are less polarized? If not, I would say they haven't looked into the problem enough.
Condorcet methods have the property that if there is one candidate who beats all of the other candidates in head to head races, then that candidate is the winner. This is generally going to be a centerist candidate who beats candidates to his/her left in a head to head matchup because people on the right prefer him/her to candidates further left, and similarly beats candidates to his right in a head to head matchup because he is preferred by people on his left to candidates who are further to the right.
You can describe the election of a centerist candidate as “everybody loses” because a compromise candidate doesn't give anyone exactly what they want. But if you believe that democracy depends on compromise to function, then a system that elects centerists is a good thing, not a bad thing.
I'm saying the system elects not centrists, but jokes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcsNbQRU5TI
Apparently the NYT is now abusing DMCA to take down all Wordle-like games (https://github.com/cwackerfuss/reactle/issues/765)
Say what you will about journalism, but this is pretty scummy. It also seems weird that they're doing this *now* rather than back when Wordle was actually popular.
Funny timing indeed - about two weeks ago I decided to move away from Google as much as was reasonably practical, so started doing my regular online word games (Wordle, Quordle, and Canuckle) on Duck Duck Go instead. I was a bit dismayed to see that my scores for all three games had been reset.
I played the games for a few days, and then decided to quit them.
I can only hope the NYT doesn't go after KenKen and Nerdle.
Sorry to hijack your post, but I couldn't post on your old site.
I used Claude (AI) to summarise your Meditations on Moloch, but also to create some associated imagery, which I thought you might be interested in.
https://www.kublermdk.com/2024/03/06/meditations-on-moloch-summary/
-----------
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
This is a thought-provoking and profound piece that touches on some big questions about human civilization, values, technology and the future. I’ll do my best to provide a high-level summary of the key points, but I would encourage you to read the full article if you have a chance, as it contains a lot of nuance and insight that is hard to capture in a short summary.
The central idea is that there are powerful forces and incentives that push civilization towards bad outcomes, even when no individual wants those outcomes. The author frames this in terms of a “Moloch” figure that demands sacrifice and bad behavior.
Some key examples of these “multipolar traps” that are discussed:
* Arms races between nations
* Competitive dynamics between firms that lead to poor treatment of workers and damage to the environment
* Evolved biological incentives that no longer serve our values
* Ideological and political races to the bottom
The concerning thing is that as technology grows more powerful, the potential danger of these traps increases. Advanced technologies could lead to terrible outcomes if not very carefully managed.
The author suggests the only way out is to create a singleton superintelligent AI that is imbued with human values and has the power to prevent these destructive forces. This is an ambitious but perilous proposal.
The article covers these ideas in much more depth, with vivid examples and poetic language. While heavy and sobering, it is a rewarding read for those interested in the trajectory of human civilization. The ideas are speculative but the core concerns seem important to grapple with. I’d recommend reading it in full if these topics interest you and you can find the time.
—
Side note: Scott Alexander is now posting to the Astral Codex Ten substack https://www.astralcodexten.com/
I also asked Claude to give me a description of Moloch for Midjourney and got:
> A towering, menacing bronze idol with the head of a bull, seated on a throne of gears, industrial machinery, and weapons. The idol has fiery eyes and smoke pouring from its nostrils. Thousands of tiny human figures are gathered around the base of the throne, some worshipping the idol, others being crushed by the gears or cast into flames. The scene is set against a bleak, dystopian cityscape with smokestacks and brutalist buildings looming in the background under an ominous red sky.
That's a fun piece of steampunk graphic art, but it's at least three lightyear steps away from the actual meaning of Moloch in Ginsberg's poem, Howl. Moloch for Ginsberg was the cultural conformity of the 1950s that labeled rebel artists crazy, forced them into mental institutions, and drove them to suicide. It wasn't a screed against technology or the future threats to civilization. And BTW, I think Scott got it wrong, too. Here's the original poem. Give it a read...
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl
Let's have some goddam Howl on here:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
I'm snapping my fingers in appreciating like the Beats did!
Your image of Moloch? -- that's what AI looks like to me. Added 3 shitlords of tech perched on its nose.
Considered showing them pissing into the crowd, but thought perhaps too crass.
Edit later: Decided to have them pissing after all, in honor of Ginsberg.
https://imgur.com/a/hLDxJer
Hey, Michael K, I'm ragging on AI, not you.
Nice addition.
Every major company eventually becomes a defence contractor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xRaPijFckA
Entirely uncontroversial author Abigail Shrier is doing the promo rounds again, talking about her new book, Bad Therapy.
The main thesis being that we (as a society) are promoting and causing mental health issues in our kids by being too proactive in our approach. Putting too much focus on mental health, having under-qualified teachers, social workers and school counselors frequently screen them or ask them about mental health, preemptively putting kids in therapy when something sad happens, pathologizing and medicalizing the experience of being a teenager, etc. etc. has iatrogenic effects. In many cases it does the exact opposite of what it’s intended to do: making kids more depressed, fragile, and traumatized.
It all sounds very commonsensical but also pop-sciency. On one hand it meshes well with ideas and observations put forward by people like Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge, and with stats and trends like the one about antidepressants shared by Beowulf888 further down here. On the other hand, I don’t expect everyone to agree. If they did, I don’t see how it would be a growing problem.
So, does anyone here have perspectives on how seriously a parent should take this?
My question is: is this a real cultural phenomenon, or is it perceived to be a cultural phenomenon but isn't real? Though I was briefly a jr high school science teacher 40 years ago, I don't have much interaction with kids anymore. So I don't know if kids are actually more f*cked up today than they were 40 years ago. NB: I worked in an upper-middle-class ghetto, and my students certainly seemed f*cked up back then!
And I never found talk therapy to be particularly helpful — until I got so pissed off at my therapist for telling me how messed up my life was, that I quit therapy and decided to see if I could figure out how to handle my bouts of depression on my own (not that I'm recommending other people do this). But I probably sound like an old fart: "I used to walk ten miles to school in the snow uphill both ways without SSRIs!"
Anyway, there that NORC survey that's been done every year since the early that asks people to rank themselves as very happy, moderately happy, or not very happy (I love those precise quantifiable terms! #snarkasm). It hasn't shown much variation until COVID came along. Then it swung back to the long-term average post-pandemic. It seems like we should take a page from Bhutan's playbook and we should be running detailed happiness surveys. After all the US was founded on the ideas of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — but we as a nation have never tried to quantify our gross national happiness. ;-)
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2024/02/04/1228505757/agent-of-happiness-bhutan-documentary-film-gross-national-happiness
Well, it's hard to make the claim that people aren't feeling what they say they're feeling – especially if they're acting as though it is true – so it has to be some kind of "real", whatever that means. If suicide and hospitalization rates are dramatically up among teens (as reported), it comes across as a bit dismissive to tell them they're "not *really* depressed … not like back in my day". 😉 But it matters how they got that way, whether by iatrogenic therapy, social contagion, screen time, or a broader culture that romanticizes/fetishizes mental health issues.
I second your suggestion that we follow Bhutan's lead and start measuring more of what we care about.
Not a parent, but this:
"Entirely uncontroversial author Abigail Shrier"
Made me literally laugh out loud.
I assumed it was deliberate sarcasm. Normally intensifiers like that are used to suggest the opposite, as in Douglas Adam's Perfectly Normal Beats.
Yes, I laughed because I assumed it was sarcasm, squared.
Of course Shrier has been observably controversial.
Pointedly introducing her as exceedingly uncontroversial is an elegant commentary that her views shouldn't be.
While I'm very happy to have made the StoryGirl laugh, I'm even more happy to have inspired a reference to Douglas Adams. Small things like that make my day.
I have been reading the book and largely agree with the premise (that any treatment powerful enough to help people is also powerful enough to hurt them, yet we are pretty blase about this risk with so-called mental health). The questionable moral-panicky valence for me is the focus on children: there is plenty of evidence that therapy does not work period, so why the focus on kids in particular?
There are also plenty of examples of questionable practices in therapy that would never fly in other medicalized professions. The therapy industry seems to want the freedom to operate with the same business practices and "methodological creativity" as alternative healing, and yet also wants the authority and social power that comes with being designated as a science-based medicine; the current situation is what happens when they try to have it both ways. That IMHO is a way better thesis for an investigative journalist to explore, not the old "but think of the children!" angle. But I know that wouldn't sell as many books.
That’s interesting. Both the idea that if it’s powerful enough to help, it’s powerful enough to hurt (as so many talk about therapy as an unmitigated good), and the tension in wanting both “methodological creativity” and science-backed authority.
It does seem to me like the mental health crisis is hitting our children particularly bad, and I assume they are more impressionable and vulnerable to bad therapy, so don’t share much of your skepticism about that.
I'm a psychologist and agree with you that a lot of what is called therapy is ineffective, and some is outright silly or dangerous. What are the so-called treatments that you see as especially awful?
I do think, though, that the there is much less flakiness in children's treatment. A lot of what kids get from school-based therapist is pretty practical and directly connected to the identified problem: social skills training, techniques for controlling angry outbursts, stuff like that. School-based psychologists also give teachers advice on how to manage difficult students, generally little behavioral plans that would work well if implemented carefully, but that teachers are generally to preoccupied with other things to carry through with carefully.
I don't know whether you are including psychopharm in your condemnation of mental health treatment of children. As a psychologist I can't prescribe drugs. But my general knowledge about the common psych drugs isn't bad, and I worry about SSRI's, especially, being prescribed so freely to kids. I mean, you're tweaking a brain that's actively developing very rapidly. It does not seem far-fetched to me that an SSRI interferes in subtle ways with brain development. Adults on these drugs very commonly experience weight gain, decreased interest in sex, difficulty with sexual performance, and emotional blunting. Sometimes the sexual side effects never go away after the person stops the drug. Who knows that the long-term effects of the drugs are on kids' emotional aliveness, developing sexuality and metabolism?
And something I observe in both adults and kids is that once people commit to these drugs as a helpful agent at the time they begin them, a very high proportion of them never come off. Often this is because both patients and doctor have a fear that things will deteriorate without the drug. Another reason is that patients are generally not informed about withdrawal syndromes, and of the importance of tapering off slowly to avoid the unpleasant effects of fast withdrawal. So those that do decide to try getting off the drug often just stop it cold turkey on their own, experience a bunch of highly unpleasant withdrawal symptoms, and conclude that they have just had a taste of how hellish life without the drug would be.
Thank you. This seems like a balanced and helpful perspective – reasonably concerned, but not as dire as the picture I get from listening to Shrier.
Oops didn't see the original question. My completely uninformed opinion is that most therapy neither hurts nor helps, but it is expensive and it has definite risks if you get an actually bad/unethical therapist (e.g., you don't want the therapist to abuse your kid). So it's probably not worth the money unless you really need it (e.g., if your kid has noticeable behavioral/developmental issues) and if you do want a therapist for your kid, find someone who is extremely high-quality (PhD or NP or MD) who will be honest with you if they feel the treatment isn't doing much.
Also for better or worse, I was simultaneously finishing reading a book on brainwashing and it basically concluded that it's very hard to convince people--including children--of things they don't already believe. Shrier is essentially worried that therapy is brainwashing kids, and I think that fear is unfounded in the research.
I’m actually not super-worried about my own kids, but am surprised and worried about how fragile, anxious, stressed, etc. *a lot* of other kids I know seem to be. I’m surprised at how many of them I’d think might benefit from therapy. But if bad therapy and its offshoots throughout the system are a significant part of the problem, I no longer know what they need.
One thing I've noticed is that kids are swamped with homework these days. I'm shocked by the amount of hours my friends' kids put in after school. Subjectively, it seems like — school plus homework — they're working 60-hour-plus weeks pursuing academic achievement. That *can't* be healthy. I was the class of 77 from the Dazed and Confused generation, and I could usually finish my homework during study hall. And I spent most of my after-school hours avoiding chores and roaming the woods around my house. Oh, I remember my life during school hours was filled with social angst, but in retrospect, my life was pretty stress-free. And as a teacher, I didn't give much homework (mid 80s). I'd say the academic road for kids these days is lot rougher.
Yes I have been apart of several research projects involving youth wellness, and it's ridiculous that adults are jumping to therapy--another structured activity--when the main problems facing kids seems to be extreme overscheduling. Instead of adding an hour of therapy to a packed week, I wish most parents would 1) subtract 1-2 time commitments kids already have, 2) set high standards of behavior for the few things that are truly important, and 3) then leave them alone and let them fail at a few things. Based on the most current information I've seen, the last thing kids need these days is more supervised time sitting in a closed room with an adult.
Yes, the part about school counselors is dumb and I think is meant to appeal to conservative parents who are already distrustful of their local public schools. If you don't like your school, you probably won't like what the school counselor has to say, but if you do generally like your school, then it's unlikely you'll have a problem based on the counselor alone.
There is compelling evidence that therapy can damage already vulnerable and victimized populations (e.g., instigating PTSD symptoms where there were none before, reinforcing disordered eating in someone who was already at risk for an eating disorder, calling authorities on a passively suicidal person and escalating their crisis). But overall, the larger problem with therapy IMO seems to be less that it is harmful, and more that it is exploitative in the same way alternative medicine is--it's expensive and not that effective.
Thanks. I find it interesting that you say it’s common wisdom that therapy is hurting people. I expect it’s true that it can hurt, but I still hear a lot of people talk about therapy as though it can only be good, and that it would benefit everyone, on par with something like physical exercise.
Tell me again how AI is so bloody wonderful, I dare you.
Another Irish company has decided that AI is the way to go for customer service. I'm currently tussling with it because it cannot understand my query. It is plainly running off a script and is even stupider than an ordinary human. It redirects me to the website, I've been on the website and the solution to my query is not there. It's not a technical issue or fault. The thing cannot understand English or think or do anything that an ordinary, average human could understand in five seconds.
Bah, humbug. And this is what is going to rule the sevagram?
It's digital fascism -- all the rage. You have two options, theoretically, Option A, and Option B. Option B, however is a dead link. So, you actually have only one "option". Welcome to Diversity. Technology is like a birthday every day for authoritarians. Check the robotic help page. Eventually, you'll end up back on the home page, your query disdained.
Your alternative is likely no customer service at all.
With the traditional phone menus, I've heard that swearing a lot helps get you connected to a human. Don't know if that works for AI chatbots as well or not.
By the way, somebody on this thread's asking for info about traditional Irish St. Patrick's Day foods. You of course are uniquely qualified to answer. I hope the truth isn't that the Irish just eat fucking Cheetos like everyone else does these days.
I saw and answered! We don't yet have Cheetos in the shops, but they might be introduced - there are some American groceries making inroads.
Mostly we drink and eat a big dinner that isn't much different from normal dinners. The media style sections try and give fancy cosmopolitan versions of the 'bacon and cabbage dish' (e..g bacon and orzo. Orzo????) but really it's just a half-hearted day of celebration. It's falling on Sunday this year, which means that the Bank Holiday will be on Monday 18th. Some people will get the day off, others will get extra pay for working the day or can take a day off in lieu later.
"If you qualify for public holiday benefit, you are entitled to one of the following:
A paid day off on the public holiday
An additional day of annual leave
An additional day's pay
A paid day off within a month of the public holiday"
The way it works for my ISP is that if you loudly say swearwords, it detects you are angry and transfers you to a human. It might be worth a try for you too.
And don't pussyfoot around, Deiseach. Start right in with the worst swears you've ever heard. It's the perfect setting to experiment with saying things like 'motherfucker.' You won't be distressing another human being, and it's possible that the more and viler swears you employ the quicker you get passed to someone with a pulse.
I asked for a human and after a bit of "I don't understand" did get passed on to a real person.
Honestly, though, the worries about super-competent paperclipper AI? I wish! What we're getting are hallucination bots that don't know how many fingers make five and are working off limited scripts because companies hope they'll be free labour as opposed to paying even low-cost overseas call centre labour. I do think the future of AI is less "giant brain setting public policy for government and the economy, post-scarcity utopia on the way" and more "annoying non-human pretending to be human 'help' where you never again interact with a real person and customer service is accepted to be very poor but there's no point switching providers since they all use AI bots now".
Antidepressant usage among younger age cohorts is way up. I'll let the Results and Conclusions of this paper speak for themselves...
"RESULTS
Between January 2016 and December 2022, the monthly antidepressant dispensing rate increased 66.3%, from 2575.9 to 4284.8. Before March 2020, this rate increased by 17.0 per month (95% confidence interval: 15.2 to 18.8). The COVID-19 outbreak was not associated with a level change but was associated with a slope increase of 10.8 per month (95% confidence interval: 4.9 to 16.7). The monthly antidepressant dispensing rate increased 63.5% faster from March 2020 onwards compared with beforehand. In subgroup analyses, this rate increased 129.6% and 56.5% faster from March 2020 onwards compared with beforehand among females aged 12 to 17 years and 18 to 25 years, respectively. In contrast, the outbreak was associated with a level decrease among males aged 12 to 17 years and was not associated with a level or slope change among males aged 18 to 25 years."
"CONCLUSIONS
Antidepressant dispensing to adolescents and young adults was rising before the COVID-19 outbreak and rose 63.5% faster afterward. This change was driven by increased antidepressant dispensing to females and occurred despite decreased dispensing to male adolescents."
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/153/3/e2023064245/196655/Antidepressant-Dispensing-to-US-Adolescents-and?autologincheck=redirected
What do you think of Alzheimer's being caused by herpes? See this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5935641/.
How could herpes cause Alzheimer's if a fungus is causing it? :P https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211124723012524
The fungus causes the herpes which then causes the Alzheimers?
Big if true. Also weird if true, but who knows?
Earlier down thread I engaged with a user named FLWAB, regardless of what's the actual point we were debating, I behaved like an asshole. Some of this is due to (as perceived by me) unfairness on FLWAB's part, and some of it is emotional volatility on my part because the topic we were discussing relates to morality, and is important to me, and it's all too easy to appear heartless and cruel by speaking a certain way, and I perceived FLAWB to be heartless and cruel. FLWAB also attacked my objectivity and accused me of manipulation in what I perceived to be a personal attack.
This comment is:
(1) A public apology to FLWAB: I'm sorry I was an asshole. And I'm sorry about a more dismissive apology that I made in the comments that didn't properly acknowledge me being an asshole in the comments before it.
(2) A pledge to be more careful next time
(3) A promise conditional on FLWAB accepting my Apology, I will refrain from commenting for a number of Open Threads they choose, not exceeding 7 Open Threads
(4) A promise conditional on FLWAB accepting my Apology, I will watch/read a source sympathetic to their views of their choosing provided it doesn't exceed 100 page or 150 minutes
(5) A promise conditional on FLWAB accepting my Apology, I will delete my comments down thread if they so choose
I accept your apology.
I wish to apologize myself for my comment "Lying is not honest", as it was a swipe without commentary or discussion attached to it and falls short of my standards and the standards of the blog. I too was experiencing some "emotional volatility" around this discussion, and I was more heated then I should have been.
I appreciate your pledge to be more careful. Feel free to comment on Open Threads, I don't need you to refrain. You don't have to delete the comments either, it's good for others to be able to read our exchange and come to their own conclusions. Though I don't mind you deleting your comments if that's what you want to do.
I appreciate you offering to read something recommended by me, and I choose this article: https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/hamas-apologists-have-destroyed-international-law/
I didn't see the original discussion and have no other context but from what I've seen here, this is one of the most mature and reasonable resolutions to a conflict I've ever seen on the internet. I am genuinely shook. Props to both of you.
BTW, if this is a new account for the user formally known as LearnsHebrewHatesIsrael, did you see Scott's note in the main body of this open thread? https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-317
The one about unbanning and Substack's trash backend? Yes, I did. But I had already made a new account (with new email, etc...), so I saw no reason to bother Scott with what's already - for all intents and purposes - a solved problem. Scott also mentioned he identified another case on his own, that case could be my old account, now with no one at the wheel.
> formally known as LearnsHebrewHatesIsrael
Typo, but I smirked at the mental image of this being my *formal name*, the one I have on my ID and in job interviews. Insert "Dad why is my sister's name" meme.
For what it's worth, I changed the spicy name before I got banned, I'm too lazy to inspect the actual email log of the old account right now, but there was a significant (> 1 month) separation between the name change and the ban. This account's name is identical to the latest name of the old one.
Too bad we're not allowed to upvote comments. I'd upvote this one — because of your willingness to update your opinion — which can be rather rare event in this community of strong-minded people. Other than your 4-yr-old nephew crack I didn't think you were being particularly assholish in your responses — but maybe I missed something further up the thread. I'll be curious how FLWAB responds, but I don't think you need to beat yourself up over that exchange.
You're right, it's quite rare on here for either of the people who are debating something to change their minds -- and that doesn't seem to me like a great sign about the functioning of this group. I read in a reliable source that the Yale Political Union's regular debates have an unusual norm: It's expected that in a fair number of debates one participant will "break" the other -- that is, change the other's mind about the issue under debate. The broken debater then concedes that he or she has been convinced of the opposing point of view. Both breaking the opponent and being broken are valued, and people who have broken others but never been broken are generally less admired.
That seems to me like an excellent norm, and I wish I knew how to move this group more in that direction. All I can think of is highlighting posts where it occurs, or posts like LearnsHebrewHatesIP's present one, which actually is not about changed opinion but an apology for communication style. Still, the latter is in the right ball park. I know that when I'm in debate mode, I am driven by a desire to win and my processing the other person's points consists almost entirely of thinking about how to refute them. There is an irritability there, and a lack of interest in the other, that is a muted version of the desire to attack and humiliate. Amp things up a little, and I'll start craving to be sarcastic. And of course in this state very little of my mind is available to consider the possibility that my opponent is right.
Seems to me that rationalism doesn't take on this problem, where a person's failure to think well comes not from ignorance of. principles of clear and fair-minded thinking, but from emotional investment in maintaining one's views and triumphing in a conflict.
A long time ago I think folks tried to make this mindset explicit through the virtue of humility, but nobody talks about it that way anymore. Now they talk about humility in terms of feeling gratitude, there but for the grace of god, etc., all of which is nice but entirely different. [EDIT: cut out a bunch of crap.]
Working in Silicon Valley I've encountered a lot of *very* smart people. These are people who (I would guess) are at least two standard deviations above median IQ. But I've noticed that most are intellectually lazy about subjects outside their core training. Being smarter than average, they're used to being right in their core disciplines, and because of that, they often assume they're right when they step outside core competencies. It's a Dunning-Kruger Syndrome for smart people. But when challenged to support their opinions they often flail and get combative, because they have little experience with being challenged.
These are very hyperfocused people. I think it's because modern academia promotes career-focused learning at the expense of creative thinking. There's a vast world of knowledge out there that they've never explored, and there are all sorts of modes of reasoning—philosophy, logic and the study of reasoning, the history and philosophy of science, statistics, rhetoric, etc. that they're unable to bring to bear when faced with a question outside the comfort zone of their core specialty.
These people are all over academia as well and I think it's for the reason you describe. When some is (legitimately) smart and spends most of their time being correct about the subject they're an expert in, it's VERY easy to think that that translates to other areas of expertise.
They provide an excellent example of the importance of not only raw intellect or a deep knowledge base, but the right mental framework if you want to increase your chances of being right about things. A healthy sense of humility, an ability to detach your ego or your sense of self as a "smart person", and a willingness to face each new problem with the mentality of a beginner.
Yes! And the manifestation of their Dunning-Kruger that really gets to me is that they seem unconcerned that their decisions will have huge impacts on aspects of life that they are ignorant about and in some cases constitutionally dumb about as well: The impact on people of screen time itself, and of all the destructive things that can happen on a screen -- deception, cruelty, persuasion, infection by toxic fads and lies, seduction by the fake and heartless. And then there's the immense power the big tech companies have, which may one day soon exceed that of elected government. And then of course there's motherfucking AI, which seems very promising for speeding up things like medical research, but seems guaranteed to totally enshittify the Internet and give all kinds of powerful tools to crooks, and addict a bunch of people to plastic sex partners, plastic friends, plastic advisors, plastic versions of self.
My god, if I was even going to take on something as novel as helping refuges settling in the US I'd be bingeing on info about their country, the problems of refugees, what constitutes good help and what doesn't -- and I already work in a helping profession. These entitled Silicon Valley fools have more power over what happens in the next 50 years than any other group, and they're like "what, me worry?"
"I think it's because modern academia promotes career-focused learning at the expense of creative thinking. "
All the complaining about "why do I have to do these stupid gen ed modules for my course?" This is why! It's trying to expose people to topics outside the core degree you ae going for, so the non-STEM people have to do something STEM flavoured, and the STEM people have to do something humanities flavoured.
Even if you end up with "Shakespeare is over-rated", you should at least come to it from "yeah well we did a play and three poems" and not from "going by statistical analysis of global population over three hundred years, how likely is it that Best Playwright was born then and not now?"
Even if you think Shakespeare is overrated, you'll probably find some writer you love -- Shaw? Twain? Alexander Pope? Oscar Wilde? Dickens? I have low points where I feel like 95% of ACX thinks that Dr. Who, The Ring Trilogy and Star Trek are the greatest pieces of fiction our species has produced. Or possibly that they are the ONLY pieces, FML.
Ah now, I wouldn't put it as high as 95%. 45% maybe, the rest of us think Tolkien or Brandon Sanderson are the peak of human cultural achievement and shape up to fight the Fantasy Wars over that (not a Sanderson person myself) 😀
What is the low point is the general attitude of the STEM types (not all!) that the humanities have no value, that if you must read then read non-fiction (but a podcast is better and when AI can précis and directly feed the bullet points into your brain best of all), and all that arty-farty stuff is just timewasting by people too midwit to get a decent job being productive contributors and drivers of the economy creating apps to sell advertising.
BTW, I don't have any opinion on the numbers you two were arguing over. I admit that I'm avoiding reading much about the conflict because it seems like the leadership of both sides is behaving in ways that have and will maximize the suffering of innocents. Even a simple opinion like the one I just expressed is like stepping into a minefield, but that's my personal opinion and I can see why people supporting either side of the conflict would have very different opinions from mine. Anything I say is just adds to the noise.
So after watching Epic Rap Battle's "Ivan the Terrible vs Alexander the Great", it struck me that modern-day politicians might get tagged with titles like "The Great" or "The Terrible" in the history books. Does anybody have any guesses as to who'll get what?
In my headcanon, I like to imagine a movie where Rocky Balboa, the Italian Stallion faces an MMA match of cosmic proportions against Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the Science Bison.
Nobody is doing anything as great or terrible as these people though
I don't think so, since the introduction of family names has made most names unique. I can only think of one exception, and I'm guessing they'll just be called "George Bush the Older/Younger".
I don't have novel contributions, but this Chinese Doom Scroll post is extremely relevant:
https://weibo.substack.com/p/what-if-american-presidents-had-chinese
Monroe the Famous? Is he more famous in China than he is here?
1,000 years hence, the chronicler rolls will state proudly the names of glorious American Lords of old thusly:
King Washington the Honest
King Jackson the Wroth
King Lincoln the Emancipator
King Roosevelt the Hunter
King Cleveland the Fat
King Nixon the Tricky
King Ike the Liked
King Reagan the Gipper
King Trump the Braggart
King Biden the Witless
Edit: Just realized it should be King Taft the Fat, sorry Grover.
Also just realized that a better epitaph for Trump would be “King Trump the Probably Greatest Ever of All Time, Folks, it’s Incredible”
This requires a little setup so bear with me. I'll get on topic in a moment.
I'm pretty familiar with American presidents because my small home town named most of its streets after them.
There was also a lot of mostly friendly rivalry between neighboring small towns so someone from one of those rivals once told me how one time, long ago, a horse died on McKinley Ave in my city.
According to my rival's story the police dragged the horse around the corner to Hayes Street because they couldn't spell McKinley for their report.
Oh yeah? Let me tell you a story about your town!
King Raygun's Lasers from Space
I feel like World War 2's General of the Army will have more staying power than Clinton in the long run.
We are more likely to remember Bill Clinton *now* than wear Eisenhower, because most of us literally *can* remember President Bill Clinton and only Joe Biden can still remember President Dwight Eisenhower.
But when living memory fades, we remember Abraham Lincoln and, without googling, how many of the five presidents before and after Lincoln can you name with confidence?
I mean, all of them, but I can name every president and I acknowledge that is not at all a normal thing to be able to do.
Wnzrf X Cbyx
Mnpunel Gnlybe
Zvyyneq Svyyzber
Senaxyva Cvrepr
Wnzrf Ohpunaana
Noenunz Yvapbya
Naqerj Wbuafba
Hylffrf F. Tenag
Ehguresbeq O. Unlrf
Wnzrf N. Tnesvryq
Purfgre N. Neguhe
Polk Taylor Pierce Fillmore Buchanan Johnson Grant Hayes Garfield Harrison
Some of those are probably in the wrong order, but I think I've mostly got it.
90%, with only 2 out of order.
Right; they both got to be President because they commanded the Army in an enormously consequential and uncertain war. We remember both as great generals who became Presidents, not as great Presidents. And we will remember them long after the Bill Clintons of their day have faded to the level of Jeopardy trivia questions.
Yeah, his actual presidency was pretty in-memorable. So if he does get remembered it will be more in an "oh yeah, he happened to become president later" sense.
Who could forget King Clinton the Slick (or King Clinton the Perjurer, to his foes at court).
He's got the jazz
He's got the rizz
But most of all
He's good for bizz
Oh, come on, do you think we'll forget Consort of the First Empress? Do you have so little faith in Hillary that you don't think she'll manage to become First Female Ever? 😁
If Hillary ever gets to be Empress, she's going to go full Damnatio Memoriae on Slick Willie, and that Lewinsky tramp too.
King William the Slick
Who is the most influential, important political figure of the past half-century?
Deng Xiaoping, assuming he deserves his appellation, "The Architect of Modern China"
Ooh, good one. I’d endorse that pick.
Lyndon "the Johnson"
I am still on my journey exploring Aldous Huxley's writing, this week slowly reading my way through Heaven and Hell. I was very surprised to find out he articulated the idea that our minds are inhabited by some quasi-independant entities, which we should catalogue and study "the way a zoologist studies animals found on a new continent". I wrote a short essay on this (https://valentinsocial.substack.com/p/aldous-huxley-on-the-exploration). I keep getting fascinated by his ability to write in a way which makes you feel like you are being told some galaxy-brain concepts, even when it's something super simple, like the fact that colors are more vivid while on mescaline
A bit of Huxley trivia for you:
His last words were “LSD, 100 micrograms I.M.”1, which he wrote in a note to his wife, asking her to inject him with the psychedelic drug. She did so twice before he passed away. He also said “Let us be kinder to one another” before he died.
Regarding the stereotype that the Dutch are direct and the British highly indirect: if there is truth to it, what are the historical reasons why it is supposed to have evolved?
The best answer is probably "it's unknowable and random" like Rappatoni's, but that's no fun so allow me to speculate wildly.
The main social difference between the English and the Dutch (I know the question was about Britain but I'll focus on England in particular) is that England has historically been dominated by the upper class whereas the Dutch have been dominated by middle class merchant types ever since the 1600s.
Indirectness is an upper class virtue, it enables people to communicate in shibboleths that ensure everyone present is of the proper class. You can't just go round saying "Could you please pass the port?", you have to say "Do you know the Bishop of Norwich?"
Directness is a middle class virtue, it's hardy and practical and boring and it's a style you can communicate in without spending your formative years in etiquette training. And of course it signals that you're hardy and practical and not at all like those effete upper class types.
Thank you. But in some ways England seems no less egalitarian than other European countries, so how did the upper class get to dictate more of culture in England than the Dutch did (I understand you say you are speculating wildly, but I guess the upper class shaping of culture is still a well-accepted fact)?
As a native speaker of British English who knows beginners Japanese .. the politeness forms in Japanese are the part of the language I find hardest to get, while acknowledging that Br. English speakers use polite forms of English a lot.
(E.. using. -kun forms when speaking to one of your students feels kind of wrong to a Br. English speaker, for surely teacher speaking to student is one of those contexts where polite speech is expected...)
But (and I am guessing without knowing a bit of Japanese) the British rules are presumably more intuition-guided than hard-coded almost like a syntax? I mean, one tests your memory and your ability to be faithful to it, the other your ability to pick up some psychological dynamics and innovate various optimizations?
I think that might have been one of the places where "thees" and "thous" were used?
cf. Horace Underwood, Introduction to the Spoken Korean Language (1914):
"It is important that he address servants and attendants in low terms, and speak of himself in higher terms ; while in the presence of officials and men of high rank, he must always speak of himself in low terms and address them in the highest forms. While this in theory is so contrary to the Christian idea, in practise in Korea it is almost a necessity, unless one desires to be considered entirely ignorant of both language and propriety."
Re: japanese. Pretty sure it's not about politeness, it's about hierarchy. The teacher has the senior role and the student has the junior role. When everyone observes their obligations according to their positions in the hierarchy, society will be harmonious. Or at least, that's the theory.
I believe -kun is used that way in Japanese, yes.
So while British English does have different registers of politeness, the rules for when you can get away with using them are way different from Japanese.
There are sort of dimensions to this:
- formal vs informal
-polite vs impolite
-superior vs subordinate speaking
Yeah but like, I doubt teachers think of themselves as "getting away with" being impolite. Rather, there's a certain noblesse oblige that comes with being in a position of authority.
I mean, are you gesturing at calling the students -san? or is there a more polite equivalent of -kun that i'm unaware of.
Certainly, some of the English thought the Dutch were indeed very direct; from a bawdy poem of 1673 by Lord Rochester:
Tom Killigrew's wife, that Holland fine flower,
At the sight of this signior did fart and belch sour,
And her Dutch breeding the further to show,
Says, 'Welcome to England, Mynheer Van Dildo.'
Thanks :)
Jeez, is this a translation? the meter is way off. In a poem this short and humorous meter looms large.
The meter seems fine to me? It's a "ta-tumpty" rhythm, if you'll excuse my ignorant way of putting things. I know there are markings for long and short feet but I'm just putting in capitals the 'long' ones/emphaisis and the breaks are for syllables:
Tom KILLI-grew's wife, that HOLL-and fine flower
At the SIGHT of this SIGNIOR did FART and belch SOUR
And her Dutch BREED-ing the FUR-ther to show
Says, 'WEL-come to ENG-land, Myn-HEER Van DilDO
It's one verse of a longer poem:
https://allpoetry.com/Signior-Dildo
Having lived in both countries, I think it is impossible to deny that this is true.
As for the causes: I think societies drifting around randomly in the space of possible etiquette norms until they fall into some attractor state is fully sufficient to explain such differences.
Thanks.
Also, the national stereotypes themselves, once people become aware of them, may become self-fulfilling prophecies. Ie. people from nation X live in ways reflecting the stereotype Y, because at some level they are aware that that's how you're expected to act when you're X.
Scott has written a few times about Land Value Tax, the benefits of which seem overwhelming. Last year, CA Assembly member Alex Lee introduced a bill to study the potential impact of a LVT in California. That's a good sign, but even in an optimistic case it seems like adoption would be lightyears away in spite of the glowing cost-benefit profile.
Has anyone discussed the idea of getting a California proposition on the ballot to implement LVT? According to Ballotpedia, such a proposition was on the ballot over 100 years ago -- in 1918 -- and was crushed by 50 points. Getting a proposition on the ballot is no easy feat (I think it requires something like 500K signatures IIRC?) but could be an interesting angle if it sputters in the legislature.
Something land value tax proponents never seem to answer is how the tax would raise enough revenue to significantly alter the dynamics of government finance. All the land in California has a value of [$3.9 trillion](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-10/the-real-role-of-land-values-in-the-united-states) (or maybe as low as $2.6 trillion of unimproved land value) compared to total California state and local tax revenue of [$630 billion](https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/projects/state-fiscal-briefs/california). That means you're looking at a 16—24% land value tax, just to get out of state and local taxes (everyone would still have to pay federal taxes, which of course is where the most tax is). It's actually even worse than than, because who would pay for an asset that will get taxed away in the next few years? So an LVT would cause land values to drop, meaning you need an even higher tax rate to break even.
Do you think Californians who spent 30 years paying off a mortgage would vote for a tax that would tax away their home in 2–6 years? Even if it freed them of other income, property, and sales taxes? I can't imagine it.
I share your concern about how to raise enough revenue with just LVT. It doesn't seem realistic to replace all CA state taxes with just a LVT.
I have a factual correction though: when you list California state and local tax revenue, that includes federal transfers as well (see your urban.org link). Calculating from the per capita numbers provided (divide total $630.7 billion by total per capita $16,114 to get ~39 million residents, then multiply by per capita federal transfer of $3,670) this means that the $630.7 billion total includes $143.6 billion in money that is transferred from the federal government, not extracted in taxes from Californians by the state of California directly.
That leaves $487 billion that California collects directly from Californians. This changes your % calculations to 12.5% to 18.7% LVT needed.
Also, charges are a part of overall state revenue, and they include things like city water, city sewer, etc. Unless your proposal plans to also provide free water/sewer/etc. for everyone, most of those charges don't need to be covered by a LVT. Eyeballing the chart, that's roughly $2200 per capita, for $86 billion. That brings the total amount of taxes that California collects to around $401 billion, giving you percentages of 10.2% to 15.4% LVT. (I read off the chart, so we don't have 3 digits of precision anymore, if we ever did).
Instead of trying to replace the entire CA tax revenue, if this were to leave other taxes in place and just restructure the property tax portion that currently collects ~$2000 per capita for $78.3 Billion total, that would only require a 2% to 3% LVT, which might be feasible.
Now if California were to cut some governmental spending they wouldn't need as much tax revenue overall, but that might be even less feasible than implementing LVT in the first place :)
On the other hand, no more other taxes! No more filling out income tax forms, no more sales tax math, no more weird hidden taxes, no more fees tacked on to everything. It all gets paid in one place, through mortgages and rent. (In theory, not even any liquor taxes. But it would be tempting for stores to break out the LVT portion of their prices.)
If only it were that easy, but I see no reason to think state governments (especially in California?) wouldn't slap on "levies" instead of "taxes" to raise money for worthy causes. Homelessness seems to be a sink for that, for example; $12 billion in 2022:
https://ebudget.ca.gov/2021-22/pdf/Enacted/BudgetSummary/HousingandHomelessness.pdf
Maybe shops wouldn't deduct sales tax any more, but they'd just put that onto the shelf price because "hey, people are used to paying this price for a gallon of milk and now we don't have to turn the sales tax over to the government, why would we just give away money we could keep?"
Oh, it's California, they'd mess it up by the next election cycle. But the dream is nice!
A LVT would already have an impact on the price level of goods given that firms require land for most outputs and value ads. Whether that would be more or less than sales tax is a little ambiguous.
Please explain why a LVT would be very much different and so why it would be very much better than a well administered regular property tax?
Regular property tax taxes the land value AND the value of improvements on the land, like buildings. This means that if I want to improve my home by adding a bedroom, or replacing the roof, that can make my property tax increase. This disincentivizes improving properties. That’s bad.
Land value tax just taxes the land value. That means if everybody else fixes up their houses making the area I live nicer, my land value tax will increase (as the land value portion of my property tax does under normal property tax). But I can fix up my own house without worrying about it increasing my own tax.
Extend this to commercial and industrial properties, and those benefits of building and improving things increase. That’s the theory anyway, the Wikipedia and some of the previous Georgist posts around these part go into more detail.
Isn't that a disincentive, though? If I fix up my house, it won't jack up the value of my land and hence my tax. But if everyone fixes up their houses, then it will do so. So we all have a strong incentive to prevent *anyone* starting to fix up their house, because that might lead to a chain reaction of "well it was okay for Bob, so I'll do it, and that won't affect LVT" and then everyone does it and the LVT goes up.
I get the idea of taxing land in desirable locations lying idle because property developers would prefer to wait for the value to go up and then sell on the plot, rather than do anything with it. But at the same time, if your LVT goes up because now you *have* developed the land, what is my incentive to make it productive, or at least to make it productive in a way that pushes up my tax? If I run a meth lab on it, that brings *down* property values and decreases my LVT accordingly, but do we want lots of meth labs on otherwise empty plots?
I think taxing large scale developers for building up land banks and hoarding land is a good idea, but I'm not so sure about "well we could pull down this house and build a pharma plant here in theory at least, so if you're not willing to pull down your house and build a pharma plant, we'll tax the life out of you".
I only get to decide what I do with my own land, I don't get to decide how my neighbor uses their land. The main ways that we formally influence what neighbors do with their lands are through zoning and and Homeowners Associations (HOAs). HOA rules are aimed at making things "nicer", albeit for sometimes questionable definitions of "nicer", but none intend to bring down property values. Nobody wants their neighbors house to be a meth lab, even if it would bring down their taxes, so I'm not concerned about HOAs here (any more than normal, I'm not a fan generally).
Zoning is the thorny issue and where you have a point. The traditional Georgist response is that land value tax (LVT) will fix zoning over time, as LVT revenue is tied to overall land value, leading to upzoning to generate more government revenue. Personally, I'm not convinced. I don't think zoning issues get significantly worse with LVT, but I don't see them improving. I do think it likely that some landowners will lobby to restrict zoning outside of their own properties to keep their own taxes low, while improving their own properties to charge large rents to their tenants. If other landowners lobby similarly it might cancel out, but large rich landowners could dominate.
Side note: I don't see how we realistically move from current property taxes to LVT in the USA/UK/Ireland considering the size of government it would have to support, how entrenched the current system is, and the many investments people have made throughout society based on the established systems. I can just imagine a world where different taxation norms were established in the first place: https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/singapore-economic-prosperity-through (standard Singapore caveats apply: it's very small, too authoritarian for my tastes, etc.)
"The traditional Georgist response is that land value tax (LVT) will fix zoning over time, as LVT revenue is tied to overall land value, leading to upzoning to generate more government revenue. "
Hmmmm. I think the traditional/original Georgist view was formed with "there are plots of land in city locations that are vacant and which could be developed into productive factories or workplaces instead of being held as a store of increasing value" as the case. I don't think they really contemplated housing, outside of "okay instead of a lead paint factory, turn this vacant lot into apartment block", or private property.
The thing is, today we *don't* want lead paint factories in the middle of the city, and "upzoning to create more government revenue" sounds a hell of a lot like eminent domain, which has not always been a shining success:
https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Redevelopment-Wrecks.pdf
Not sure about the official Georgist line on how LVT affects zoning, but I'm skeptical that land use behavior would meaningfully change. It's plausible LVT could incentivize more restrictive zoning: the financial impact of nearby nuisances should be capitalized into the assessed value of the land, not the improvement. So property value would be more sensitive to nuisances under LVT (since you're only taking into account land value and ignoring improvement value), so you can expect property owners advocate for even more exclusionary zoning.
But I don't think property owners take land use positions on the basis of property taxes; they seem to make them on the basis of property value alone. Financially undiversified homeowners are rabid about their property values and advocate for e.g., exclusionary zoning to (in theory) keep those values elevated even though it should lead to higher property taxes (proviso that this doesn't really apply in CA because of Prop 13).
Assuming this dynamic stays the same under LVT, you would still see property owners engaging in property value-maximizing behavior (even if that behavior is also property tax-maximizing), and I don't see why that behavior would change depending on the the taxation regime.
"Traditional" was a bad word choice. What I meant was "standard", as I've seen it as a response to this concern. I've never been convinced by it myself.
I do think it's important to note where high tax differs from eminent domain: no central government authority is making decisions about the actual use of the land. If you can afford the tax, you can stay. If not, you can sell. Whoever buys it either has the wealth to afford the tax, or they can attempt to profit from the property enough to afford the tax. This same thing is already true of existing property taxes, so the question with LVT is how severe in magnitude it is.
I know that LVT at a rate that forces property sales is similar, but importantly the government isn't choosing anybody specific to sell any specific property, nor are they choosing who acquires the property. This doesn't ensure that the land gets used well, but it can avoid some of those failure modes of eminent domain abuse that you linked.
Thanks for that pdf link by the way, great (horrible) stuff.
> Isn't that a disincentive, though?
I think the idea is that the disincentive of higher LVT is directly compensated by the incentive of living in a nicer neighborhood.
> if your LVT goes up because now you *have* developed the land, what is my incentive to make it productive, or at least to make it productive in a way that pushes up my tax? If I run a meth lab on it, that brings *down* property values and decreases my LVT accordingly
LVT doesn't scale with your own improvements though? One of us is confused. Maybe both of us.
I very probably am confused about the whole thing. But if LVT is based on the perceived value of the land in the neighbourhood due to its desirability as a place to live, I'm pretty sure an active meth lab with cops busting in every week, lines of junkies, and the kinds of citizens who operate meth labs all hanging round is not going to raise the perceived desirability of living in this neighbourhood, hence property prices decrease for everyone, hence land + property values go down and LVT goes down.
oh, so it's about 2nd-order effects being reflected back onto the property. Yeah, I guess that's a fair point. Although somehow, I have a hard time imagining that the effects will be strong enough to incentivize meth labs (steel factories, etc) in practice.
I understand but is it a big problem? How many kitchens are not being remodeled and sunrooms not added, golf courses turned into housing/commercial areas because it will bump up the property tax on the improvement compared to the Hell a person must go through to get permissions to improve property. It's the SCALE I meant by "how." Not to mention having to go through hundreds of thousands of properties valuing the improvements, registering them on every real estate transaction. I can't see the juice being worth the squeeze.
I’m not sure I follow: the typical property tax system already sends assessors around to “hundreds of thousands of properties valuing the improvements, registering them on every real estate transaction”.
Anyway, I’m not some Georgist prophet. Whether it’s worth the upheaval that overhauling our current property tax system would entail I couldn’t tell you. I am convinced a land value tax would be an improvement, as it would help mitigate rent-seeking behavior and doesn’t introduce the same deadweight losses that typical property tax does. An alternate world where society had grown up with land value tax would be better in those ways.
To answer further questions, I recommend reading through Lars Doucette’s excellent book review and follow-up articles, all linked towards the top here: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/does-georgism-work-is-land-really
Seems like fixing up your own property would tend to marginally increase your neighbors’ taxes. Is that fair?
Yes. Note that this is also the case under typical property tax systems, which also tax land value. Just the magnitude of the effect has changed a bit.
Similarly, your neighbors can vote to improve the local parks, and vote to raise your tax rate to pay for it.
For SF East Bay Democratic party voters:
I was trying to figure out what to do for "County Central Committee" and ran across this:
https://eastbayinsiders.substack.com/p/primarys-central-question
> The Alameda County Democratic Central Committee is a deep down ballot race. They are large, misunderstood contests that often include virtual unknowns vying for the right to volunteer the first Wednesday night of every month to the Democratic cause.
> Understanding the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee might be easier if you just view them as the Alameda County Democratic Party, one of 58 franchises within the California Democratic Party.
> What is their role? To fundraise and support their endorsed candidates. In years past, the fundraising aspect was a weak point, but unexploited simply because Alameda County has one-party rule. But within the party there has been internal threats to the progressive majority on the central committee by business-friendly moderates in the Tri-Valley and Fremont.
> Compounding the schism was Pamela Price and her push to win control of the central committee as far back as her first run for Alameda County district attorney in 2018. The plan worked. In 2020, Price spent heavily to help herself and a slate of candidates win seats on the central committee.
...
> To underscore Price’s control of the central committee, the chaos followed an attempt to allocate up to $10,000 to the campaign opposing Price’s recall. As a central committee member, Price voted for the allocation.
> The central committee election this March is essentially about younger progressives moving the local party further left and experienced elected officials aiming for a return to the status quo.
"But within the party there has been internal threats to the progressive majority on the central committee by business-friendly moderates in the Tri-Valley and Fremont."
skybrian, warn a person before you drop such blood-curdling terror on them! Business-friendly moderates, oh my! An internal threat to the progressives! Well I guess it is time for some Nazi-punching, then? 😁
Though I can't make out are they for or agin' the younger progressives moving the party leftward? I was amused by the bit about the "schism" - golly gosh, politician behaves like politician, who'd a thunk? Reminds me of the throat-cutting and back-stabbing within a local political party round these parts about twenty or more years ago, when they preferred to claw one another's eyes out over turf wars (the votes in this area belong to *me*, you don't canvass round here!) than fight the opposition.
EDIT: Okay, I read the link, and if you're not an unfortunate voter in Alameda County, it's great entertainment, and the post seems to be anti- the leftward move. Mind you, if you want to oppose the progressives you've got your job cut out for you, because every second group seems to be named some flavour of progressive.
You've got the PPP (People Powered Progressives) party which, even better, is Pamela Price's PPP. Somebody give me the kabbalist rundown on all those Ps.
And in the blue (or other red) corner, squaring off against the PPP are the Climate Labour Progressives! The clash of the lustrum, PPP vs CLP!
Not forgetting in another district, the Pragmatic Progressives. But their measly two Ps lack the heft and grandeur of the 3-5 Ps for Pamela's party, so will they be able to beat them back?
I suspect that this reporter is trying very hard to avoid taking sides because he wants to keep talking to all the local politicians and he wants them to subscribe. (You can tell from the name of the Substack - it’s an *insider’s* newsletter.) So, it’s not so helpful for people coming in cold, but it’s useful to know what the sides are. Looking at the ballot, I had no idea what’s going on. Why am I voting on this?
Weird that these sides can be described (by this reporter anyway) as either for or against Pamela Price. Is that really a thing? How did that happen?
I’d rather read something more conceptual, but I’ll take what I can get.
I have been posting on Substack a subtle but I think important distinction about how we should be thinking about central bank macroeconomic management. The difference is that instead of thinking about managing aggregate supply and demand (implicitly as if the economy were one good produce with one input -- undifferentiated labor -- and therefor only one relative price, the real wage) we should think about the central bank as facilitating adjustments in relative prices among goods and differentiated labor in response to shocks that affect sectors differently. The "facilitation" is critical because all prices do not adjust at the same speed and some are downwardly sticky. This has implications for the average target rate of inflation that a central bank sets to facilitate "Brownian movement shocks" as well as how "flexible" it should be in engineering over target inflation the face of extraordinary shocks requiring extraordinary movements in relative prices.
I am seeking comments on these ideas, ideally on the Substack posts themselves or here if anyone is so moved.
Some of the posts are:
https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/framework-for-monetary-policy-1
https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/arrrrr
https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/supply-and-demand-in-disinflation
https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/why-no-recession
https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/the-lessons-of-pandemic-inflation
Thanks
Here are my questions for Scott regarding parenthood.
• What are your thoughts about school nowadays? Have they changed since a couple years ago?
• Have you read *Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids* and which parts do you agree with or disagree with?
• How are you going to try to affect which influences they end up under? Presumably you're going to limit and supervise device usage during the younger years, and then eventually give up and hope for the best.
• Are you going to make a big budget for individual tutoring? That was one of the things that stood out to me about the childhoods of Marcus Aurelius and John von Neumann, and which seems underrated.
• Are you going to prioritize social parallax, and if so, how? (In the sense of moving between multiple social groups, so as to see them all from different perspectives.)
• A while ago I jotted 70 bullet points about raising children ( https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6vPvpTZTBqe6evmKL/some-random-parenting-ideas ). I would be interested to hear if any of them stand out to you as good/bad.
1. Not really changed.
2. Yeah, that sounds about right.
3. I don't know. Some friends on my street have set up a home schooling co-op. I worry I'm going to end up sending the kids there by inertia. It's probably not worth hiring individual tutors when they're (eg) 6, so maybe I'll start by sending them there, then try to get tutors once they're good enough at things (and good enough at paying attention) for that to be worth it? Although a local seven-year old is benefitting a lot from math tutoring, so I don't know.
4. I'm not sure what you mean by this and haven't thought about it. I don't know if I have deep access to enough different social groups to make this work. Some of my wife's relatives are farmers in Texas, and I'd like for the kids to spend some time on their farm to learn what different lifestyles are like
5. Some of these seem pretty wrong to me; others depend on implementation; others seem downstream of having the sort of kid for whom this would be a good idea.
You're probably better off sending them to the local homeschooling, if it's still around when they're old enough, then when they're old enough for mainstream school have a look at what's available and how much it makes you go "yeah, maybe" to "ahhhhh, no!!!!!".
Wait until they show aptitudes or areas of improvement before getting into tutoring/grinds.
Several years ago, I read an article claiming that the 5G technology used in the US broadcasts on the same frequency as the Doppler radar used for weather prediction, and that this would make forecasts less accurate [something something] climate change [something something] Donald Trump. Did anything come of this, or was it entirely made up?
Substack, being the unusable piece of shit it is, ate my reply. But the conclusion was "made up".
Question - does anyone know what foods are traditional for St. Patrick's Day in Ireland? Especially finger foods? My mother and I are doing coffee hour for our church that Sunday, and wanted to do something a bit more than dying everything green.
Traditionally in Ireland for St Patrick's Day, you go out to Sunday Mass with a wilting bunch of shamrock on your label (or, if very fancy and citified, a shop-bought badge generally along the lines of a harp and the national flag), then have the mid-day meal ("dinner" if you're a country person) of bacon (NOT corned beef), cabbage and floury spuds* (not too different from general Sunday dinners) then head off to stand on a street corner in the rain and wind (it's March in Ireland, what other weather do you expect?) to watch a parade. Then home for the tea at six o'clock and watch the national evening news which gives a roundup of the parades throughout the country.
For the Big City like Dublin, they usually get a few American marching bands turning up. Or any vaguely famous American with some Irish ancestry, who gets captured and forced to drink a pint of Guinness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWm1rFmhIZA
We don't really have a traditional cuisine for the day, apart from drinking (ahem). No national dessert like the Italians, with zeppole for St Joseph's Day:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppola
As for finger foods - well. Not so much, either. What we *do* have are plenty of cups of strong tae (yes, spelled like that for the pronunciation), with soda bread (brown or white) slathered with butter, and/or things like buns and sponge cakes for the fanciness. Barm brack is for Hallowe'en, otherwise I'd recommend that. Mostly, because it comes in the middle of Lent, it was a relaxation of fasting rules so people ate the meats they couldn't eat other Lenten days, which is why it's heavy on the "alcohol and lumps of pig" and less so on the cucumber sandwiches 😁
Well, that's my childhood there, what the whippersnappers of today do for Lá le Pádraig I have no idea. The tourist bods in this country have tried making it an entire week, again mostly in Dublin, and it may or may not be successful in enticing people to visit and spend money.
Lemme have a look to see what they've lined up for "St Patrick's Festival 15-18 March 2024":
https://stpatricksfestival.ie/events
Hmmm. I dunno, I think I'll stick with the "milk churn on a float pulled by a tractor", myself.
Dyeing things green is *not* traditional Irish, so you're doing well to avoid that. I really would suggest tea, coffee, bread and jam and buns and tarts:
BBC recipes including ones for soda bread
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/st-patricks-day-recipes?page=2
Odlums - flour millers, so decent baking recipes
https://www.odlums.ie/category/occasion/st-patricks-day/
Guinness cupcakes? Nothing in the least traditional but one for the adults
https://realfood.tesco.com/gallery/10-perfect-st-patricks-day-recipes.html?id=d9b06e93-3421-44d5-8303-36c08b0146db
Our national broadcaster, with the fancy 'notions!' recipes for those too sophisticated to dig their own shamrock off a ditch and stand there getting pneumonia cheering on the local hurling team on the float pulled by a tractor:
https://www.rte.ie/lifestyle/food/2020/0313/1121635-10-truly-irish-recipes-for-st-patricks-day/
Another cake for the grown-ups
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/food-and-drink/recipes/irish-whiskey-cake-1.4192528
*Ooh! Turn your potatoes into colcannon (mashed potatoes with cabbage or kale mixed through) or champ (mashed potatoes with chopped up onions or scallions)!
Did Ireland pick up the colier's meal, pasties? They were originally Cornish? A good pasty was and still is always in demand in my old iron mining town.
I've heard the song so many times, one of these days I need to actually make colcannon in a little skillet pot. :-)
"Oh you did, so you did, so did he and so did I" 😁🥔
"When worries we knew not."
Thank you very much!
What do tarts mean in context? I'm familiar with that in a French context (custard, fresh fruit, sugar glaze) and a medieval context (meat, cheese, and egg pies, or two out of three, usually ordinary pie sized) but I have no idea what it means in a modern Irish context. The Odlums recipes have one full sized sweet tart and the small ones are called tartlets, so I'm guessing full size and sweet?
The cupcakes looked maybe doable, though decidedly green. Likely to come out just fine baked the day before though, which is a plus. Baked things for breakfast are always tricky. Or we might just do shamrock cut-out cookies; we have a good recipe for those, and it's a metaphor for the trinity.
Thanks again for all the links!
Ah, right! We mean things like apple tart, which would be apple pie in America. You can add things like cloves to the tart (the version I know) or spices like nutmeg and cinnamon, depending on taste.
Another Odlum's recipe, but they leave out the spices (no idea why); traditionally served with custard or cream (not even whipped cream, just pour some cream over it):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wBeQKmyVTE&t=2s
Neven Maguire is one of our trendy celeb chefs, but this recipe does include the spices:
https://www.bordbia.ie/recipes/desserts-and-baking-recipes/apple-tart-with-custard/
Cookies are probably the way to go, as I said we don't really have 'traditional' foods for the day. Best of luck!
Hi folks, I was wondering if someone might have advice on this purchase. What are best practices in buying a used car?
How do I find out if the price quoted for a used car by a seller is a good price?
I went to carfax.com and checked out reports of accidents or damage (whatever involved a police report will show up), and how many owners there were. No accidents, one owner only. Looks good.
It is a Toyota Camry.
I don't know a mechanic in the city to take it to, to get it checked out.
How do I figure out if the price is good?
> What are best practices in buying a used car?
Check Kelley Blue Book for the price.
https://www.edmunds.com/tmv.html
Do have a mechanic check it out before purchase. It's worth it.
Thank you! Is there a way to find an honest car mechanic, who can check the car to see if there are obvious problems at least?
This is anywhere in the SF Bay area.
I've had terrible experiences with bad mechanics ruining cars, and hiding that, in the past. Or at least, the next mechanic I'd take to would say "oh yeah, that other place clearly did not do the right thing. So you have this engine leak". I can't tell which one is fibbing.
So, how about Dune: Part 2?
Rot13: V gubhtug Nhfgva Ohgyre jnf n terng Srlq-Enhgun. Terng hfr bs zvpebrkcerffvbaf va znal fprarf, yvxr gur bar jurer Oneba Iynq trgf zhexrq.
Gurer jnf n ybg zber bs punatrf gb gur obbx guna va gur svefg zbivr, cnegvphyneyl Punav'f rkcnaqrq ebyr. V unq frra crbcyr pbzcynva nobhg guvf orsber gur zbivr naq unq qvfzvffrq vg nf fvzvyne gb fbzr crbcyr ovgpuvat nobhg Ynql Wrffvpn'f terngre ebyr va Cneg 1, ohg urer gur pbzcynvagf unq zber inyrapr - juvyr V'ir arire haqrefgbbq gur crbcyr jub guvax gung Mraqnln vf htyl, cnegvphyneyl fvapr fur'f cynlvat n fheiviny-bevragrq qrfreg abznq urer, ohg fur'f whfg abg gung tbbq bs na npgbe, naq V'z abg fher ubj Ivyyrarhir'f tbvat gb unaqyr Zrffvnu jvgu gur punatrf gurl qvq urer. BGBU n ybg bs phggvat qrpvfvbaf jrer tbbq (gur pbashfvat Thearl-if-Wrffvpn cybg sebz gur obbx, sbe vafgnapr, naq V jnf rira BX jvgu ubj Nyvn jnf unaqyrq, cebonoyl orggre gb qb vg yvxr Qravf qvq urer vafgrnq bs n zheqre gbqqyre.)
I was very impressed; in particular, I wasn't sure Chalamet was going to be able to pull off Muad'Dib and Kwizatz Haderach as well as he did Paul Atreides. But he did, and everyone else did fine or better than fine with their roles, and the cinematography was fantastic. I used to consider the 1984 "Dune" to be at least useful as a visualization even if it was an abysmal adaptation; now even that visualization is dead to me.
And I agreed with almost all of the cuts and changes made in the name of cinematic expediency, except:
Pbzcyrgryl vairegvat gur svany fprar bs gur abiry vf Whfg Cynva Jebat. Vg'f bar guvat gb tvir Punav zber ntrapl guna fur unq va gur bevtvany, juvpu fur qvq jryy, ohg gung ntrapl unf gb yrnq ure gb nccebkvzngryl gur fnzr fcnpr. Guvf jnf yvxr Crgre Wnpxfba zneelvat Nentbea bss gb Rbjla orpnhfr fur jnf n orggre zngpu - fur jnf, ohg gung'f abg jung Gbyxvra jebgr naq vg'f abg n gevivny zbqvsvpngvba.
Ivyyrarhir vf cynaavat gb znxr n guveq zbivr. Vs gung'f tbvat gb or onfrq ba gur obbxf, gura ur'f tbvat gb unir gb erhavgr Cnhy naq Punav fb jung'f gur cbvag bs uvf raqvat guvf fgbel jvgu gurz grzcbenevyl rfgenatrq? Naq vs gur rcbalzbhf "Puvyqera bs Qhar" nera'g Cnhy naq Punav'f, gura ur'f abg rira gelvat gb nqncg Ureoreg nal zber naq V jnag abguvat zber gb qb jvgu vg.
V guvax gung gur jubyr guvat jvgu Punav vf whfg Ivyyrarhir tbvat ernyyl unz ba gur zrffntr bs "Cnhy naq Wrffvpn ner ONQ, gurfr ner gur ONQ THLF, ybbx, rira Mraqnln qvfnccebirf bs jung gurl ner qbvat". Lbh xabj, vs Wrffvpn pbagvahbhfyl fcbhgvat bss nobhg znavchyngvat gur Serzra vagb qbvat gur Ngervqrf snzvyl ovqqvat naq Cnhy trggvat n jubyr onq-thl fbhaqgenpx cerprrqvat gur ragel vagb gur Serzra pvepyr gb pynvz uvf ebyr nf gur Zrffvnu be tbvat "Jr'er yvgrenyyl gur Unexbaaraf" jnfa'g rabhtu. Pyrneyl gur jrnxrfg cneg bs gur zbivr sbe zr nf jryy, gurl fubhyq unir cnerq qbja ba nyy gung naq nqqrq n ybatre fprar bs Cnhy gnxvat gur Jngre bs Yvsr.
V qba'g guvax vg'f tbvat gb nssrpg Qhar Zrffvnu n ybg gubhtu, V guvax vg'f pyrne gung Cnhy naq Punav ner tbvat gb trg onpx gbtrgure ng yrnfg ybat rabhtu gb trg gur onovrf fgnegrq.
Vs Ivyyrarhir jrer gelvat gb cnvag Cnhy nf na bhgevtug ivyynva, V qba'g guvax ur'q unir bcrarq gur qhbybtl jvgu Punav zbabybthvat nobhg ubj nal Serzra jub pna qevir gur Rivy Rzcver bss Neenxvf jvyy trg shyy "Evtug Fvqr bs Uvfgbel naq gur Frggyre/Pbybavny Aneengvir" fgnghf, naq gura tbar bhg bs uvf jnl gb fubj Cnhy orpbzvat naq orpbzvat npprcgrq nf n Serzra orsber qevivat gur Rivy Rzcver bss Neenxvf.
Nyfb, cebonoyl jbhyqa'g unir ercrngrqyl uvtuyvtugrq Cnhy'f eryhpgnapr gb tb Shyy Wvunq ba nppbhag bs gur pbfg, juvyr univat Wrffvpn, Thearl, naq lrf Punav urefrys or gur barf qevivat Cnhy gb tb Fbhgu naq yrnq gur Wvunq. Naq cebonoyl gevrq gb fubj Cnhy'f npgvbaf univat ng yrnfg *fbzr* hacyrnfnag pbafrdhraprf, gubhtu gung'f tbvat gb or gbhtu jvgu gur renfher bs Neenxvf'f ragver aba-Serzra cbchyngvba (qrnq Unexbaaraf naq Fneqnhxne qba'g pbhag nf hacyrnfnag pbafrdhraprf).
Wrffvpn, pbzrf bss ybbxvat fbeg bs ivyynvavfu, be creuncf nagvurebvp, va Ivyyrarhir'f gryyvat. Cnhy trgf cerggl zhpu gur pynffvp Ureb'f Wbhearl, raqvat ng na rzbgvbany, gnpgvpny, naq zbeny uvtu cbvag. Vs ur trgf gb znxr n guveq zbivr, naq vf ng nyy snvgushy gb gur obbxf, *gura* fbzr bs gur fuvar jvyy pbzr bss Cnhy.
> V gubhtug Nhfgva Ohgyre jnf n terng Srlq-Enhgun
I'm not gonna rot13 the comment because I haven't seen the movie yet but I'm amused by the fact that I could decode this one in my head just from the punctuation and the context. Glad to hear he did a good job, I thought the black-and-white scenes in the trailer were a bit weird.
Not a major spoiler so not going to rot13 it either, but they provide context for black-and-whiteness.
Do you think it's worth doing IVF to select for genes to potentially increase IQ at this point in time? Or is the risk/cost still not worth the benefit? Do any companies even offer this sort of thing yet?
I looked into doing this for a while and had a few conversations with Jonathan Anomaly about it. In general: I think this is a good thing. It is quite expensive, and IVF is non-trivial for the female involved as well if it's not otherwise necessary. But the benefits really are there for select populations.
Which select populations would it have the most benefit for?
Those most similar to the reference population (which draws in large part from the UK Biobank GWAS studies). I was assured that it worked well for Ashkenazi as well.
If you have the money for IVF, it's definitely worth it. People of European ancestry can already get +3-7 IQ points, plus reduction in many different disease risks.
I wrote a whole guide about how to do it: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yT22RcWrxZcXyGjsA/how-to-have-polygenically-screened-children
You also just can't really get these benefits any other way. Embryo selection is basically a non-fungible good for your child at this point.
That contradicts Scott's own research. IIRC he concluded that a 0.2 point gain was plausible.
That's completely wrong and I don't recall ever reading that on the blog. If you have a source please link it for me.
Maybe he said a 2 point gain was possible five years ago, but the predictors have improved since then.
Scott wrote about this in a number of places.
Here: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/obscure-pregnancy-interventions-much he wrote:
>Ability to detect embryo IQ is limited, and optimizing for this in particular will probably only gain you <1 - 3 IQ points (higher numbers for more embryos).
Here: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/welcome-polygenically-screened-babiesv he stated:
>Gwern has done some calculations and finds that with ten embryos (a near-best-case scenario of what you're likely to get from egg extraction) and modern (as of 2016) polygenic scoring technology, you could get on average +3 IQ points by implanting the smartest. If polygenic scoring technology reached the limits of its potential (might happen within a decade or two) you could get +9 IQ points.
Here: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/quests-and-requests he wrote:
>If you had an open-source polygenic EA [educational attainment] predictor, you could figure out which one had highest EA and select it yourself (at current tech levels, this means probably +3-5 IQ points, see here for more: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yT22RcWrxZcXyGjsA/how-to-have-polygenically-screened-children.
[Note that this is Gene Smith's aforementioned guide.]
Also related is his comment here: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/who-does-polygenic-selection-help/comment/50180073.
A separate post, the misrecollection of which may have led to a claim of 0.2 points, can be found here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/08/23/things-i-dont-understand-about-genetics-a-non-exhaustive-list/.
The 1-3 point range was outdated when Scott's post was published. Gwern's wasn't, but the predictors have improved significantly since 2016.
As far as the difference between 5 and 6 points, the predictors have gone from ~0.11 variance explained to 0.16 variance explained, hence the additional increase.
Where does that 3 -7 points figure come from?
The company Jonathan Anomaly is affiliated with.
There's been some good articles about envy on Substack. Rob Henderson had a good review of the book "Sadly, Porn" a while ago. But when I re-watched the older version of "The Razor's Edge" an adaptation of Somerset Maugham's novel, I was blown away by its portrayal of envy. My review here: https://falsechoices.substack.com/p/old-stories-the-razors-edge BTW, it's free to watch on YT.
"Amadeus" is about envy too, and great.
Ah, right, that's a good film, too, and yes, envy, lots of envy.
The 1946 version of the Razor's Edge or the 1984 Bill Murray version?
Edit: I had a look at your post and gather you are referring to the earlier version. I've seen Bill Murray's take a couple time and don't recall it touching on envy in particular. The thing about the Murray version that tickles me the most is the callback in a pivotal line to the profound classic 'Meatballs', "It just doesn't matter." I'm joking about Meatballs being profound of course but in his version the 'RE' it does speak to a strong element of Eastern thought.
I'll have to check out the Tyrone Power version now. Free on YouTube now? I've never tried to watch a feature length movie in the app.
The 1946. The 1984 version is bad, really bad.
It had its moments. I thought the 'Pass the soap bishop' and the "It just doesn't matter" lines were good. I've read that Murray really wanted to do the film and only agreed to appear in "Ghost Busters" if he could do "The Razor's Edge".
Of course Bill Murray loves to be a goofball. He is part owner of the minor league team, The Saint Paul Saints. He likes to throw out the season opening pitch by tossing the ball over the safety netting backstop behind the catcher.
He works as a ticket taker at some home games but I haven't run into him yet.
What percent of income is OK to pay for the substack subscription? I feel like $10 is kinda too much for me to pay each month, but like $2.5 is too little. (I'm not poor, but that's by Russian standarts, plus we have some problems with money transfers).
The percentage of income you should pay for something is however much you feel is worth (and can get away with convincing the seller of).
As a throwaway estimate, 0.1% (1/1000) of your income is very much a miniscule amount to pay for anything, Substack or not. So if your monthly income is greater than 10K dollars, then $10 is always fair whatever you're buying (as long as it's not utterly useless or worse). Moving up or down from this baseline will depend on how much you're careful with money and how much you perceive the thing you're paying for to be beneficial or rewarding.
Does anyone know of a place to donate to support the rollout of the new malaria vaccine?
Is "El Grillo" by Josquin des Prez the earliest (possibly-a-)joke song that we know of?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI-bQ0RkArA
Caesar vanquished the Gauls, Nicomedes Caesar, Caesar who vanquished the Gauls now triumphs. Nicomedes does not triumph, who vanquished Caesar
Citizens, keep an eye on your wives, we’re bringing back the bald adulterer. He’s fucked away the gold in Gaul that you loaned him here in Rome
...It looses a lot in translation
https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/curiosities/did-roman-legionaries-sing-songs-during-march/amp/
Incredibly unlikely, Josquin is late. There are definitely a lot of funny cantigas, but by joke song do you mean one framed around a joke? In that case we start running out of secular texts when you get early enough but my guess is you can find jokes in the troubadour and trouvere material, though I don’t know them as well. The motet on the wonders of I-think-Paris might also qualify depending on your idea of a joke. (“Fresh strawberries!”)
Or to summarize - I don’t know the pre-1501 repertoire as well but I would be shocked. Humor is universal, and there is certainly humor in poetry well before that.
I suppose part of my reaction is that the song reminds me very strongly of PDQ Bach, for some reason. :-)
> The motet on the wonders of I-think-Paris might also qualify depending on your idea of a joke. (“Fresh strawberries!”)
Are you thinking of “The Cries of London”, probably the Orlando Gibbons rather than the Thomas Weelkes (I think the Gibbons more prominently features ‘ripe strawberries’, from memory)?
No, this is one of the 3-part motets - you know, the ones with two complex lines and one simple one interweaving with different texts, like Pucilete, often the third line is in Latin? You know. Although IIRC the original of that line is in French, in this case. So not Gibbons unless I'm very confused, though I have heard his Cries and like it. Unfortunately I heard the motet in concert, in translation, so I haven't got the name at all - sorry for being unhelpful!
Ooo, is it this? https://youtube.com/watch?v=1JFE-G_tQRs
What an interesting little thing: I’m glad to have discovered it, even if not.
... OK, I can't find the video (it's by a band called Psallite if anyone wants to look) but here is a translation of the dancing porkchop cantiga.
https://stcpress.org/pieces/non_sofre_santa_maria
(El Grillo is great, though. In the next generation you might also look at Orlando di Lasso, who has lots of funny songs, including Matona mia cara and the echo song. For just slightly earlier than Josquin I'd try some of the other joke songs in Odhecaton. But for specific examples I'd have to hit the books, sorry. Can if you're curious.)
Due to being a musical ignoramus, I don't get the joke :-(
The cricket is a good singer! He sings for a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time!
(And it goes on from there, but that's the first musical joke - it's less knowing music than knowing Italian, I'm afraid.
Some people think "the cricket" is a nickname for a singer of the day, but IIRC that's not established. The title appears to be given in Spanish while the rest of the song is in Italian, which I suspect may be the origin of the guess, but grillo is the same word in Italian and El is close enough to be an alternate (now decidedly incorrect, but you see it during the period) spelling for Italian Il, so I could see it either way. Or at least, would need to make sure it was always el grillo in the original before I assumed it was deliberate spanish. If it is, it is; the song uses the modern il (caldo) later, and it's not as if Spain wasn't right there. Probably in southern Italy, given the period.)
But it's mostly a song about how the cricket is a great singer, (by implication) much better than the "other birds" (see, joke) because of his devotion to his art (ie he never shuts up).
If you do the voting guide even after Tuesday, it’d still be fun to read.
AI Go programs have significantly improved the play of top Go players — not only because they are learning from them, but players are suddenly inventing new moves at a faster rate too! But this may be related to open-source Go programs like LeelaZero, though, which allow players to look at the decision-making process behind the moves.
https://t.co/5Q6ZTiyPn1
Your question presumes libertarians want to "take down" some function of government.
For some, libertarianism is about understanding. One can't begin to understand until he stops looking for things to "take down."
A mob of over a hundred young people vandalized two local banks in our city last week. They claimed it was a protest against The Police and/or Palestine. (So many things to "take down;" so little time.)
None of the three local TV station covered it. One had to look in the local section of the one remaining newspaper to even know it occurred.
what does this have to do with libertarianism?
the local tv station is privately owned. a libertarian can choose to cover whatever he wants to or not; he is only under obligation to market forces should his choice be unpopular.
if anything libertarianism is acutely more vulnerable to the 100 person problem; you weaken the defense that station has in publishing the truth.
I remember something like this from 2020. I saw a bunch of people dressed like Antifa run down the street, followed by police, all heading away from the MLK Jr. Birthday parade. Zero coverage anywhere.
It's pretty clueless politics that thinks inflicting hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to a couple buildings is going to earn political capital. We appear to be turning into France, where a certain element is in a continuous state of protest -- regardless of what's going on in the real world.
I hope libertarians open a credit union, and provide so many good services to police and other first responders and civil servants they put one of the banks out of business.
Violence, or even aggression at times, is counterproductive.
I'm curious as to how the general body of ACXers would approach the very contingent, very abstract, very difficult-to-measure (but ambiently very real-seeming) phenomenon of the competency crisis.
In just about any of the well-known crises of our day which you'd care to credit, there will lay at least some grounds for suggesting that the crisis in question is underpinned by a broader crisis in which we are losing the ability to produce competent people, appoint them to important posts, or both.
Bandied about a fair deal in the last bits of 2023 by Palladium magazine and, I believe, Edward Luttwak, but otherwise yet to gain much critical mass (probably because it directly implicates lots of institutions, like the press and civil services, that critical mass-drivers tend to like or be employed by).
Article length exploration here (also one for aficionados of the Rev./Napoleonic wars) https://heirtothethought.substack.com/p/the-competency-crisis-and-what-it
Not even mentioning affirmative action or DEI a single time in this article is insane. We have massive, society-wide, institutionally accepted programs of selecting AGAINST competence, programs which are almost asuredly going to be more pronounced in the future, and this doesn't even register in a discussion of competence to the point of making even the most passing of references to it?
A thought about measuring whether it's real - literature in the process safety field, seeing whether there's a trend where the lack of experience in the workforce is contributing to a higher accident rate.
It feels real to me, but it's a retention issue - therecs a tendency for organisations to preferentially shed more experienced personnel. I think inexperience and lower competency is what happens when the average time-at-role decreases because there's only so many transferrable skills between roles.
I feel like you are right about retention, also when experienced staff leaves earlier, new staff has less experienced teachers - presumably this could make them learn the job slower. This is obviously wild speculation at this point though.
The points about retention map interestingly against one of the interpretations of this article, which is that lowering social trust leads to less personnel investment, more job-hopping, and less development.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00018392241233257
Of course that then requires you to be willing to accept that trust is lowering in society, another concept that feels real but is hard (though maybe not as hard) to measure.
Briefly...a genuinely difficult challenge.
The closest economic stat I can think of is total factor productivity, which has slowed but is still growing: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RTFPNAUSA632NRUG
However, looking at China's TFP over, say, the 1990-2010 period...does not match well to China's economic performance over this period: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RTFPNACNA632NRUG
Seems like a genuinely difficult to measure thing that, well, we can't measure well. I'd be very concerned if overall US TFP fell though.
Anecdotally, I feel like...the gap between x employees and 10x employees is growing and there's more of them. Top performers are just getting insanely better and average employees are static or even declining. Like, there was always that old hand who actually did a more than everyone else but now it's more like...there's 2 guys doing 60% of the work and 10 other guys doing 40%.
I think general immeasurables, or things that can only be 'measured' by speculative extrapolation from a bunch of adjacent easier-to-measure signals, are the ultimate bugbear in trying to answer large social questions definitively.
To the extent I interact with the federal bureaucracy (which is a lot, like every day with at least a few civil servants), I would say it is real there.
The "preference" in hiring and promotion has had real erosional effects on the quality of the staffing from my perspective. The group of civil servants (mostly white men and women) retiring right now, as being replaced with a new cadre of hires who are just manifestly less competent/high level people. It is not an experience effect either I don't think.
Maybe some of it is the prestige/attractiveness of the job today versus 40 years ago?
So many times there will be bizarre promotional decisions where there are 5 people plausibly up for a position, and the weakest/most incompetent one will get the role. Lots of staff who do little to nothing.
In programming terms it would be like if the senior engineer was leaving and rather than choosing one of the junior engineers or hiring outside to replace them, you picked the admin because she had the right skin tone and gender. The promotions are sometimes that off base, where it is just "wait what...this person has zero qualification?", this happens a lot.
The actual competent people are mostly white males, and they generally flee to the consulting world because there they can get the promotion and compensation their skills deserve. You will see some military veteran white males who can move up the ladder (veterancy is a big plus in federal HR), but that is about it, and often they are not strictly speaking super "right skilled" for the jobs they get. All of this is a pretty predictable consequence of preference hiring. Even if everyone is equally skilled, if you give people bonus points based on DEI characteristics, the white males who actually survive the process are all going to look amazing because they wouldn't make it through otherwise.
There have of course been big pushes to get some minority staffed consulted firms stood up, but they often go down in scandal/disgrace. So the government mostly settles for minority owned ones.
There are some confounding variables though too...
COVID was a noticeably permanent reduction in employee productivity. So many civil servants refused to return to the office, and in most cases get drastically less work done. And a lot of them have "hybrid" arrangements where they are supposed to be in the office 2 or 3 days a week, but maybe come in 1 afternoon. I know some people can work from home with the same/greater efficiency, but MANY MANY cannot.
I also think the general dysfunction at the political level and the shutdowns and whatnot have lead to competent people just leaving to civil service and/or feeling like their marching orders are such nonsense why bother enacting them. And enough people are doing so little (including management) that such inaction doesn't get caught. And since it is the government the money still mostly flows, there are few consequences.
I also think the modern computer based work environment is just awful for work attention/focus. So many things pulling at you and a world of distractions a momentarily lapse in discipline away. People who are bored might come up with creative new ideas to save labor or solve problems at work. People who are bored at work now listen to a podcast or a book or post on some stupid blog.
I think it is very clear that it would generally be better if more people in positions of power were more competent than they are.
But in order to call this a "competency crisis", I would want evidence that there is something new or different about the situation now compared to some relevant point in the past, where things were going better, and that there is some urgency to the situation.
It seems likely to me that there is a lot less competency than we imagine in some ways, but likely also much more competency than we imagine in other ways. It also seems likely to me that most of history (at least in the past few centuries) has involved a gradual increase in the level of competency. I would need some fairly strong evidence to conclude that there has been a significant decrease in competency, and would want to know when and in what set of agencies that decrease is said to have taken place.
I found the article to be quite interesting. I agree that:
>But in order to call this a "competency crisis", I would want evidence that there is something new or different about the situation now compared to some relevant point in the past, where things were going better, and that there is some urgency to the situation.
Before trying to find causes for a phenomenon, it is indeed critical to check that the phenomenon is _real_.
I've certainly seen instances of "papering over" errors, (in the corporate world), which prevents learning from them. But I have no idea if this is happening at a steady background rate or if it is getting worse.
Only at that point does it make sense to try to dissect the problem into contributing factors, whether it is corporate spin control, DEI, putting people without the skill to make decisions into positions where they are responsible for those decisions, etc.
>I think it is very clear that it would generally be better if more people in positions of power were more competent than they are.
Then stop supporting affirmative action/DEI then for goodness' sake.
I also think it is very clear that it would generally be better if people from a greater variety of backgrounds were present in groups with power.
Just because one thing is important doesn't mean it is the only thing that is important! And just because something improves along one important dimension doesn't mean that it is an overall improvement.
I think many existing affirmative action/DEI policies have been designed very badly, but I also think there are many that have been done pretty well
If it's very difficult to measure, how do we know the competency crisis is a real phenomenon?
And in the article, Luttiwak is quoted as claiming the CIA is incompetent, but his claims don't even reach the level of anecdata. How does he know we have no agents in China or Iran? And why does he think it was the CIA who told the president that "Kiev [sic] would fall within 72 hours of the Russian invasion." My understanding from WaPo articles at the time was that those estimates were provided by the Pentagon and the DIA. I also recall that there was massive groupthink among Rand and private defense analysts that Ru had an overwhelming superiority in tanks and personnel. But like Putin, our humint resources were misled by the glowing reports from the Ru generals about how ready their forces were. AFAIK, the only person who made the correct call was Phillips P. O'Brien, who believed that chronic graft in the Ru military had weakened them to the point that they didn't have the forces or ordinance for a quick victory.
Even if it was the CIA who made these claims, we've been having intelligence failures for as long as I can remember. Incompetence is nothing new. It sounds like the Luttiwak fellow has an ax to grind.
The Napoleonic War stuff was very interesting though. Thanks for sharing the link.
Has anyone claimed that the CIA does have officers in China? There have been articles and leaks about China purging CIA informants and sources, but with the internet and modern encryption, I don't think that implies the CIA officers that the informants contact have to also be in China.
Who knows? It's probably classified tippy top secret. But if you were in charge of an externally-facing intelligence agency wouldn't it make sense to leak information about your failures to place agents in other countries rather than to brag about having agents in place? Heck, Luttiwak may be criticizing the CIA for its failures at the behest of the CIA! To quote Sun Tzu: "All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we can attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive..."
On the other hand, I recall that Victor Sheymov — a Soviet defector — in his memoir _Tower of Secrets_ claimed that the Soviets were never able to successfully able to insert spies into the PRC.
On the third hand, there's this guy who was nabbed by the Gong An Bu. If he really was a US spy, then there probably are others they haven't caught.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/11/china/china-john-leung-mms-spy-accusations-intl-hnk/index.html
> But if you were in charge of an externally-facing intelligence agency ...
Honestly, no, I would not want to make it known that our informants in China get executed or imprisoned if I were in charge of the CIA. I would want to make that known if I were China, working against the CIA.
> On the third hand, there's this guy who was nabbed by the Gong An Bu. If he really was a US spy, then there probably are others they haven't caught.
Thanks for the article.
While I'm not super clear on the distinction between an officer and an informant, Luttwak was claiming there are no CIA officers (the Americans who recruit and handle informants) in China, rather than claiming there are no informants in China. The people doing the spying would be the latter category.
In movies, an American spy is someone who had top marks in school, joined the CIA, was trained in spycraft and combat, and then travels to a foreign country to spy. In real life, intelligence agencies find someone with access to information who they think would be willing to cooperate and offer them money (or vice versa: someone with information approaches the CIA offering the information for money). The real life spies are in some sense less a part of the CIA than the movie version. Luttwak appears to be complaining about the competency of CIA employees and officers, and not about the competency of the informants.
Would it matter if the CIA has no officers physically in China? I have no idea.
I've read a biography of people who were in it at the start, and the (quite biased) impression I got was that the analyst wing was a bunch of smart lefty intellectuals that came out of the OSS and other wartime agencies, but then the Dulles brothers showed up with some wanna-be-Teddy-Roosevelt cowboy attitude, and started "doing stuff" and not understanding what the consequences would be. Like I said, it was a biased source, but it left an impression.
...Well, there goes my hope of the CIA competently intervening in the event of a fascist coup. They're probably going to end up falling in line or just get purged. But I guess letting the public sector burn is one way to solve the competency crisis... assuming anything is left afterwards.
No need to lose hope. The fascists attempting a coup will likely be even more incompetent than the CIA!
^^ this.
Also it's a meta-competency crisis that allows anyone to think that a fascist coup could even be incompetently in the works.
Thanks for announcing Manifest tickets! But a correction on pricing: we originally said GA tickets were going to be $449 (not 499), but have lowered that to $399. And early bird tickets are $249 (only 10 left!).
What did you find interesting about Jessica Ocean's analysis? I found it vague to the point of uselessness: "laws can be implemented badly" is an all-purpose argument that doesn't answer the question of whether the new law will be implemented more or less badly than the previous law, and "more money doesn't always solve the problem" doesn't answer the question of whether this reallocation of existing money from one stream to another will make particular problems better or worse. As far as I can tell, the only meaningful criticism raised in that post which depended on the actual details of Prop 1 was the note that too much of the housing was set aside for veterans.
Will work to sharpen my analytical chops for next time, haha.
If you want a few actual predictions, I expect the measure to make little different on rates of homelessness, and to increase both length and frequency of involuntary hospitalisation (by expanding capacity) but not to reduce rates of mental illness or substance abuse or anything like that (because involuntary hospitalisation in general in CA doesn't seem very good at reducing those rates). I expect it to slightly reduce labour market shortages in the mental health industry and make a few housing and infrastructure contractors happier and a bunch of mental health workers upset (the ones getting their programs defunded).
Also, California has a maximum amount of debt it can take on as bonds (idk what it is or how close we are to reaching that limit) so this takes up some of that allocation.
Lastly, I haven't been able to confirm this myself, but a mental health executive I know believes it's unconstitutional, because it combines two bills into one ballot measure (which is apparently not allowed but again I haven't investigated exactly why).
That's at least a few more concrete things about the bill. My focus in my work isn't on legislative politics mostly because I don't think it will contribute usefully to solving the problems I care about (making crisis care work for people).
Thanks for the reply! I'd like to be clear that I'm very open to argument on this; nothing I've heard on either side has really impressed me much. I'd much rather have (gears-level) arguments than predictions, though. Some people are against Prop 1 because it funds a nonzero amount of involuntary hospitalization, and I think that's a very valid stance which is clearly implied by the bill. But predictions about [whether it will or won't make a substantial dent in homelessness vs the counterfactual] aren't being backed up by anywhere near that level of causal reasoning, as far as I can tell.
Personally, I already voted Yes because of my general California heuristic to vote Yes on legislative referrals (state govt-passed laws that have to get a referendum because direct democracy sounded good) and No on citizen initiatives (get a small pct of citizens to sign a petition, and you can get a constitutional amendment passed by simple majority because direct democracy sounded good) unless I have strong reasons to like/dislike the specific proposition. But I'm still curious to know if I should have voted differently.
A couple of bits of data to build a gears-level model of whether it will reduce homelessness:
Current count of people homeless in CA: 181,399
Number of units of housing proposed to be built by Prop 1: 4,350 units of supportive housing, plus 6,800 mental health treatment beds
So unless those mental health treatment beds were made of magic and everyone who laid in them was instantly mentally healthy, that's a small amount of housing compared to the number of people needing housing (estimates of how many homeless people have are considered mentally ill vary but they are always minimum 30%, and more if you consider addictions).
Also in 2018 another ballot measure (also called Prop 1) authorised $4 billion in spending for housing and housing services for veterans. This article claims that of the 20,000 units promised, fewer than 10% of them have been built 5 years later. https://calmatters.org/housing/2024/02/mental-health-housing-election/
I think in general voting in direct democracies is time consuming and complicated so I applaud having general heuristics anyways.
Thanks! That's a powerful reality check on the degree to which any improvement would be visible. I'm still curious about gears-level thoughts on why this reallocation of funds would be a good or bad marginal change.
I haven't looked into it deeply but the part of the bill that jumped out at me the most was pulling funds OUT of county-level initiatives and funding state-level initiatives instead. This is a major reversal of the last few decades' de-institutionalization (see https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/03/31/book-review-my-brother-ron/ for how we got to this point).
Any gears-level explanation of these bills should make some claim regarding the effectiveness and competence of CA gov't as opposed to... whatever these dozens of counties were doing before.
…and that it’s unlikely to meaningfully affect any of the societal problems most people are concerned about.
I’m confused about fractional reserve banking. The consensus seems to be that banks create money (see for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5DaC1Ujrrg), but I think that’s an oversimplification.
Take for example Capitol One, based on their annual report, as of year end they had $348 billion of deposits and $305 billion of loans outstanding. So roughly 90% of deposited were loaned out. The theory is all of those loans were deposited into a bank, so that 90% of those would be loaned out (and then deposited and then loaned out etc). But that can’t be right. If I charge $1,000 on my Capital One card, the money goes to the vendor who just replaces his inventory, he doesn’t deposit the money. Maybe just to the extent of his gross margin, maybe 10% at most.
The supplier receives payment from the vendor but they have to build another widget with the money, so they don’t deposit the full amount, they spend it on inputs to build another one. Maybe they keep 10% at most? And that’s assuming pretty high margins. If I spent $1,000 at restaurants, then they’re keeping maybe 2-3%.
Where have I gotten this wrong? The idea that $1 of deposits create 10x as much money through FRB seems hyperbolic.
Don't bother trying to become un-cofused. There is no policy implication in the question. To the extent that money supply is targeted by the Fed, it's what the Fed wants it to be.
I was not talking about any specific political policy, but about the concept of fractional reserve banking, and in fact banking in general.
When money is spent it typically goes into someone else's bank account. That's true recursively. A single purchase might cause a flurry of transactions, resulting in money ending up in many bank accounts.
A vendor who "just replaces his inventory" is spending the money, causing it to go elsewhere. (Though it will be briefly in their bank account.)
But in any case, the fractional reserve model is outdated. The Bank of England has a better explanation: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy
The deposits don't go away. If you have $348 billion of deposits and $305 billion of loans there is a total of $653 billion in circulation. This extra $305 is created. That's what you're missing. Also, money doesn't exit the system upon going to suppliers etc.
If I loan you my currently unused leaf blower, I still own it, and you have use of one. We didn't create another leaf blower. When I need it back, you have to give it back.
When/if the $305 billion at capital one needs to be withdrawn, they legally have to go get it or go bankrupt. They probably can't go get it from the people they loaned it to, but they may sell those loans to someone else which is functionally the same. In other words, if you don't have my leaf blower available when I ask for it, then you gotta go get another one from someone. If we had "created" another one with the loan, then you wouldn't have that problem.
You're reasoning by analogy. What gave you the impression money was a physical object? It literally never has been, even during the gold standard, because it's a unit of account and store of value. You can have purely physical means of exchange but not the other two.
So let's say a bank gets a $10 deposit from you. It then loans me $10 which I use to buy equipment for a business. I am then paying the bank back $1/month for a year. This loan is valued at $12. Okay, so what are the assets in the world at that moment? Well, you have a $10 deposit which is matched by a $10 liability on the banks part. The bank has a $12 asset created by a $10 liability. There is thus $2 of bank assets above its liabilities. We have created profit through business activity, lending in this case. Further, what is the amount of money that could be spent? Well, you could withdraw your $10 no issue. And I was able to buy my machine for $10 no issue. So it's $20. What happens if that happens simultaneously and there's a run? The bank just borrows the money from someone else on the strength of the value of the $12 loan. Which people will give them because the loan itself has value.
None of this could happen with a leaf blower because it's a leaf blower. But it could happen with the value of the leaf blower. For example, if I rented you the leaf blower in exchange for a promissory note then we could create money that way.
I don't think it's fair to think of money and loans as being interchangable. Yes, they can be under normal circumstances, but it's not guaranteed.
also, i think it's more useful to reserve the term "money" for the concrete implementation, whereas the abstracted value that you're gesturing at is better labeled with some other term.
It arguably does exit upon repayment of principal, however. Indeed, one thing that I find conceptually aggravating (at a minimum, aesthetically) is that under this view of creating money, the amount of money owed (assuming non-zero interest) at any given time actually exceeds the amount of money in circulation. You can't actually pay back $105 dollars when only $100 have been printed. It essentially requires revolving debt to keep going, absent default (and/or new backing collateral infusing additional money into the system without corresponding debt obligations in the event that it's a backed rather than fiat system).
Consider a toy economy where there's only a single $1 bill between 2 farmers, but they play hot-potato with it to keep trading things. the "GDP" can go arbitrarily high, depending on how many times they're willing to trade that dollar, despite M1 being $1. The money-multiplication isn't being caused by the debt, per se. it's being generated by trade. This looks counterintuitive prima facie because money_stockpile != money_velocity. it's like trying to equate speed with distance, which is mathematically illegal since the dimensions aren't actually commensurable.
What the bank is actually doing (insofar as money gets multiplied) is acting as a middle-man to make sure that money that would otherwise be "saved" (i.e. be stuffed under a mattress, and therefore be pulled out of circulation) instead gets lent to someone who can hopefully generate decent returns. If money isn't in circulation, it's not being multiplied.
According to the Austrians, the real issue with maturity transformation [0] is the risk of bank runs, and the distortion in the credit markets. Similar to how drugs pull happiness from the future, maturity transformation generates malinvestment by pulling demand from posterity.
[0] the correct name for this process is "maturity transformation". the "fractional reserve" is the brake, not engine. And as skybrian points out, nobody cares about fractional reserves anymore because banks are backed by the money printer.
One of the things Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle" got through to me was the model of currency as a flow. Literally, a current.
A model of economics that I wish were more popular, that I have yet to see in the wild, is what I think of as a "double piechart" model. I.e. money doesn't represent value, but rather money/money-supply represents value/GDP. In this view, money is a token which tracks the *distribution* of purchasing-power. And purchasing power doesn't buy widgets, it buys a fraction of the GDP. This makes it easier for me to think about things like inflation, subsidies, and the business cycle. (It also vaguely dovetails with how I think about bayes theorem and harmonic averages.)
it also took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that "liquidity" was supposed to imply the opposite of "frozen in an asset".
OK, so "money as a unit of account" translates to "a token representing purchasing power over a fraction of the total economy"?
That kind of makes sense, but how does it take into account things like fractional-reserve banking?
>You can't actually pay back $105 dollars when only $100 have been printed.
Yes, you can, because the amount of money printed is very small part of the total money supply. https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/current/default.htm
That's kind of the point: Most money is created through means other than through printing money, such as through fractional reserve banking. (Which makes sense when you think about it: How much of your personal spending is via cash, versus via your checking account?
> You can't actually pay back $105 dollars when only $100 have been printed.
Sure you can, three easy installments of $35. Or I find something I can do for you that you value at $200, so now you owe me $95. And next week you do me a $150 favor, so now I'm back to owing you $55.
The "medium of exchange" use of money doesn't have to be tied strictly to the "unit of account" use of money. (To say nothing of the "store of value" use of money.) There just has to be enough physical cash in circulation so that people who want to use cash can get their hands on cash easily. I didn't need to take $4000 in cash in person to buy my car, I just (effectively) wrote a note that told my bank to give the guy the money. And he gave that note to his bank, and the banks made an entry in a spreadsheet, and then he had the money and not me. Or who knows, maybe he liked stuffing bills in a mattress, so after he gave the note to his bank, he had them give him cash equal to the value. Or I suppose he could have gone directly to my bank and given them the note, and gotten the cash directly without going through a second bank. But whatever he did with the note, I didn't have to carry a bunch of cash around, and yet I no longer had the money and instead had a car.
Debt is mostly involved because the bank owed me at least $4000, which means they know me, and I can use that fact to get them to make my life easier. And the bank owed me that money because I (effectively) gave it to them to hold for me. But I didn't give them cash, I did work for a 3rd party in exchange for money, and the 3rd party put the money into my account in the bank, because that was easier for both of us. And they (probably) didn't give the bank cash either, they just did the same thing with the note that I did in the beginning.
On the other hand, when I get my timing belt replaced, I **will** probably walk a wad of cash down there, because they recently outsourced their payment system to some backwards-ass tech startup that wants to do everything by credit card so they can tack on an extra fee and get in on the vampire squid action. Which annoys me.
I understand your point here, but it's somewhat glib to discount the significance of the medium of exchange character of money entirely: it's not like I can take out a loan and repay my bank by washing its windows or giving them a bunch of topsoil. The unit of account is specifically denominated in the medium of exchange rather than as an abstract subjective valuation that can be paid in-kind.
The closest one gets here is collateralized secured debt, but even then that only increases the number of units of exchange in circulation relative to those outstanding (1) in the event of default (as I noted in my initial post) and (2) temporarily inasmuch as in a world of perpetual revolving debt and ever-growing money supply the amount owing will eventually exceed any fixed-size cache of dollars (or other medium of exchange).
More seriously, I do think having the medium of exchange is a useful backstop for the system, and conveniently it also works as a store of value. But in a high-tech, high-trust society, cash is simply not needed. Of course, we're only approximating a "high-tech, high-trust" society at the moment, and only in certain geographical areas, so I think cash is still quite useful in most places on the planet. (I admit, I do feel a bit like someone arguing for same-sex civil unions, saying "well, if we just create a legal vehicle that duplicates all the civil functions of a marriage, we can get rid of that pesky word and its religious origins".)
But I have to disagree about the importance of debt exceeding the number of units of exchange. I get that it's tempting to simplify things that way - if the only thing valuable was some sort of metal, call it unobtanium, then we could have cash literally composed of unobtainium, and an unobtanium-denominated unit of account, and it'd be possible to model a lot of what the system does that way. But I think that model is too simple, and so when it fails to track certain behaviors of the real-world economy, that's a problem with the model, not the economy.
I do think the common story is similar to your idea, where money is the primal source and debt is a derivative. But IIRC, David Graeber argued that debt came first, so it's something of a debated point. Check out his book "Debt: The First 5000 Years". He was kind of an uneven academic, shall we say, and he definitely had a point of view, but it's a fun read and there's lots of cool stuff in it. Just be sure to also read some criticism, so you get a sense of where to follow him and where to be skeptical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
If you want an old, humorous, notionally sci-fi take on a society without money, check out the 1951 short story "And Then There Were None" by Eric Frank Russell:
https://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.php
Ah, another Libertopian story -- thanks ! I greatly enjoy these, almost as much as I enjoy every other fantasy setting :-)
... so the only way to keep the system going is to have an entity which doesn't go bankrupt in case of negative equity, and just keeps crediting everybody else (directly or indirectly). Luckily, we have such an entity - the government (or part of it, e.g. treasury + central bank), and for that reason the talk about 'debt ceiling' and 'reducing government debt' is mostly nonsensical...
I'm still worried about the debt ceiling. Even if the principal is a non-issue, it's still possible for interest payments to become an issue. In which case, either taxes get raised explicitly, or taxes get raised implicitly via the money-printer, or interest-rates go to the moon via a default.
> or taxes get raised implicitly via the money-printer
Yeah, that's inflation. I worry about inflation, but I don't worry about the debt at all, as long as the US can do all of its business in dollars. At the moment, we are kings of the world. If the government needs more money, it can conjure it up "out of thin air", which is to say, tax everyone invisibly and somewhat-equally (heavier on people who own cash and who loaned out money (like to standard dollar-denominated bank accounts), lighter on people who own assets and who borrowed money). Inflation requires a lot less immediate political capital than a normal tax, so I'm expecting the trend of printing money and handing it to favored groups to continue.
If the federal government eventually can't get its act together and misses a payment or something, due to partisan infighting, then I expect that the rest of the world will look the other way and pretend it didn't happen, but then madly scramble to replace the USD. So I predict things won't get bad immediately, and instead it will look like a big nothing, but then over the course of the next few decades, things might get much harder for the US.
Other countries which aren't the US, they have a different problem, and do have to worry about default. :-(
Actually, any government can conjure its own money out of thin air (US is not _that_ special). US unique advantage is that it doesn't have debts denominated in a foreign currency (despite running massive trade deficits for decades), and that in a sense spreads US-generated inflation all over the world (taxing pretty much everybody on the planet!).
Also, FWIW, the drift away from US dollar (and towards bilateral direct settlements in national currencies) accelerated significantly after US-imposed sanctions on Russia...
I think the only thing we disagree on is our emotional response. I, for one, am quite worried that practically every government in the world is digging themselves into a hole. To me, small chronic debt is like chronically snorting only a small amount of cocaine. Economists have somehow convinced themselves that all sorts of transitional gains are good actually(!), so long as the amounts are small.
Inflation has limits too, in the form of the ~20% mark where it becomes hyperinflation. The logical conclusion of every single scenario which accretes unchecked debt ends badly. I don't see how folks are so unworried, except perhaps to the extent that some don't believe the consequences will unroll within in their lifetime (although I don't think that's the argument gullydwarf is making).
edited: "transitory" -> "transitional"
The way I see it -- which could be completely wrong (and likely is) -- is that money is an approximation of value, and banks borrow money against future value. For example, let's say that I want to build a new chicken coop, but lack the startup capital. You loan me $100 for a month. If I build the chicken coop, and it generates $100 worth of produce, then I can repay your loan. Thus, a month ago, you have created $100 worth of money by borrowing it from the future.
However, if I already have a perfectly working chicken coop worth $100, and it gets hit by a meteorite, then $100 worth of value is destroyed (and we're all poorer for it). Something similar happens if you loan me $100 and I fail to build the coop.
> Something similar happens if you loan me $100 and I fail to build the coop.
My short-term subjective value of $100 of heroin in my veins might be much greater than your long-term subjective value of $100 of heroin in my veins.
ChatGPT is your friend...
Me
How does a bank issuing loans create new money?
ChatGPT
Issuing loans creates money through a process called "credit creation." When a bank issues a loan, it does not actually lend out the deposits it has on hand. Instead, it creates a new deposit in the borrower's account equal to the amount of the loan. This new deposit is new money that did not exist before.
Here's a simplified example of how this works:
Initial Deposit: Let's say you deposit $1000 into your bank account.
Fractional Reserve Requirement: The bank is required to keep only a fraction of this deposit as reserves, let's say 10%. So, the bank keeps $100 as reserves and can loan out the remaining $900.
Issuing a Loan: The bank lends $900 to a borrower. This loan is typically credited to the borrower's account, creating a new deposit of $900.
New Money Creation: The borrower now has $900 in their account, which they can spend. This $900 deposit is new money that has been created by the bank through the act of issuing a loan.
Money Supply Increase: The total money supply has increased by $900. This is because the original $1000 deposit still exists in your account, and there is now an additional $900 in the borrower's account, totaling $1900.
This process demonstrates how banks can create money through the issuance of loans, effectively increasing the money supply in the economy.
>But that can’t be right. If I charge $1,000 on my Capital One card, the money goes to the vendor who just replaces his inventory, he doesn’t deposit the money. Maybe just to the extent of his gross margin, maybe 10% at most.
First, not sure if you're mixing credit and capital - Cap1 is a bank as well as a credit-card place, and has both. But let's assume you meant debit card. Yes, the vendor may spend the $900 on inventory, but where does THAT person put the money? In a bank, or they spend it with person / business XYZ, who then puts it in a bank or spends it, and on down the line.
The point is, people and businesses don't park money in mattresses, pretty much all money eventually ends up in a bank, even if you have to descend a chain of ten people / businesses to get there.
Of course, at some point the widget maker might be buying overseas, in which case it gets into trade deficits and forex reserves and a bunch of stuff like that. But if you assume a closed economy for the the thought exercise, it's easy to see that nearly all money must end up parked at a bank, because businesses don't park money in mattresses.
Sometimes I think banks are crowd-sourced loan insurance, with a tiny bit of profit-sharing as an incentive to buy in. They do more stuff, of course: the whole "keep your money in a vault guarded by men with guns" thing has historically been important. But that seems like the basic business model.
Yeah, I'd agree that's a pretty solid heuristic. And would also be why, for example, credit unions usually extend loans on better terms (they take less of that "profit sharing" margin due to shareholders being the deposit holders instead of anonymous public stockholders, so fewer middlemen to pay with the profit sharing).
I had put this on the February links post but got there very late, and likely no one will see it, so will re-post here. I'm surprised at how absolutely no one has commented on link 18
>> "18: Thomas Piketty (plus coauthors) is the most famous historians of inequality, and says it has increased dramatically in recent decades. Now Auten & Splinter have new data(https://davidsplinter.com/AutenSplinter-Tax_Data_and_Inequality.pdf) challenging their position. Here’s Piketty etc’s response, Tyler Cowen’s commentary, and Vincent Geloso’s commentary.(https://twitter.com/VincentGeloso/status/1736483851357028857) "
(adding only two links manually because substack is impossible)
Piketty and his diatribe on inequality have been at the forefront of the left crusade on capitalism and classical liberal style economics. And no one here finds the fact that Piketty et al were substantially incorrect worth comment?
I think most of us already knew that Piketty et al were substantially incorrect. And that it doesn't matter, because the people who take Piketty et ak seriously were just going to continue genuflecting to the unopened book gathering dust on their coffee table saying "r > g, thus inequality, It Is Written!"
So, nothing new to talk about.
Had this been the only response I would have felt like all was right with the world. Seeing some of the responses, including from people who don't necessarily genuflect, it feels like Piketty et al have the first mover moat.
I read the links above ... and concluded that my lack of economic knowledge prevents me from having an opinion on whether the critics are well-founded or not.
If Piketty were primarily correct, I would expect his work to produce in-the-range-of the number of high-profile 'debunkings' it has actually received over the years, and I don't believe I have the expertise to really tell which ones are substantial vs frivolous.
I've read this and other debunkings and it is useful as signposts to what future evidence to look for/conversation and buzzwords to listen for, but it takes more than that to make me completely reject something like this, as indeed Piketty's original work did not make me completely accept his narrative.
There have been many critiques of Piketty since Capital, most notably someone (I can't remember who) who said that it was all downstream of rising house prices instead of anything fundamental about inequality itself.
I would be interested in some survey of what percent of economists agree with these critiques (bonus if it sorts them by whether they agreed with Piketty before the critiques). Without these, I don't think most people know enough to determine whether the critiques have landed.
Piketty defenders have entered the phase of "literally wrong but directionally correct" arguments. Which is an admission that Piketty was wrong by people who don't want to say that.
The reality is that Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman were always highly political and put their politics over their arguments. If you actually read Piketty's Capital book it's an explicit argument for a global wealth tax and he spent the next decade touring progressive political parties to argue for it. There was also that incident where Piketty defended errors in his data by saying there were uncountable super-rich that don't show up in the data but makes things even worse. Which is basically a conspiracy theory.
They're leftists with a specific political ax to grind. Their numbers are almost always the most extreme left version (highest inequality, lowest returns to labor, etc). And they should be treated with the appropriate grain of salt as a result.
> "literally wrong but directionally correct"
That's basically their view of the other book called "Capital", right?
Yes. At least among its defenders. Marx made fairly specific predictions that did not happen.
I am minimally familiar with Piketty and have no contribution to that topic. But your mention of his claim of uncountable super-rich people reminded me of something I once read about 1997 research on poor Americans:
> In "Making Ends Meet,"* to be published next month by the Russell Sage Foundation, Edin (with a co-author, Laura Lein) reports that all but one of the 214 welfare mothers she interviewed had unreported income. They turned to boyfriends, relatives and under-the-table jobs, and on occasion to prostitution or drugs. Edin even found a mother running her own private lottery, raffling off counterfeit bus passes. The one woman who tried to live on only her benefits failed to feed her son so often that her neighbors considered reporting her for neglect. (https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/national/042797deparle.html)
Do studies of income inequality do anything to adjust for income under-reporting among the poor?
Generally studies of inequality are narrowly tailored to count only earned and reported pre-tax income. This is sometimes justifiable if you're interested in things like labor productivity. But mostly it's used to hack the number. Conservatives, who have the opposite ideological position, generally add in taxes and transfers which shows a significantly less income inequality. And sometimes they estimate under the table income too which causes it to decline even further.
For example, the US inequality is about 30% lower if you include taxes and transfers and has not significantly grown over the past few decades. It's also much less out of line with other nations. The US progressive tax and transfer system is effectively suppressing inequality. But liberals don't want to admit that because they feel it defeats a talking point for the welfare programs they politically support. Conservatives are eager to point that out but think it's a bad thing.
Thank you for explaining. Regarding your example, I'm reminded of something Tyler Cowen posted last month (https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/02/i-am-tired-of-making-this-point.html), which you probably saw, but you'll appreciate it on the chance you didn't.
Exactly! I'm surprised so many people here are saying 'we must be even handed about it etc'. Piketty was the classic man of one study with a political slant and skewed incentives to boot. The several academic refutations should make this the last nail on the coffin, yet people are out here treating this as some kind of 'listen to both sides' issue.
I read the book on release and my first thought was questioning how he got such high quality data for so many nations across so many centuries. The answer I got, which was along the lines of "shut up this is too important to nitpick," made me suspicious. As did all the liberals who were eager to talk about the book who couldn't really discuss it beyond the summaries.
Unfortunately, such data does not in fact exist. I spent some time looking for it. I honestly wish it did because I'd find it interesting and it would mean I don't have to pick through isolated datapoints to try and guess.
I haven't done a literature search but it seems like the saltwater school of economists buy into Piketty's arguments, and the freshwater economists reject him?
Krugman has a saltwater take on Piketty...
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/05/08/thomas-piketty-new-gilded-age/
Paul Krugman supporting the guy (the article is 8 years old, so less relevant now) alone should have been enough to make people suspicious
Au contraire, Krugman is the only economist I trust.
This is the problem with the internet. Very hard to tell if you're being serious.
Et tu.
I agree. Im surprised that this kind of inequality isn't more obvious to people, given how it applies across otherwise very similar and comparable types of people.
Take any professional career class, and you'll find 30 year old 99.9th percentile performers, 40 year old 90th percentile, 50 year old 50th percentile, and 60 year old 25th percentile performers all living in comparable houses.
I’ve been using Yahoo Finance for a long time to keep tabs on the US stock market and get quick quotes. Even as the whole Yahoo thing was sliding into irrelevant mess of crap, with the help of adblockers the Finance page was useable.
Not anymore, with the new design it’s truly jumped the shark.
So: anybody has a recommendation for a clean-looking site for this?
Using Firefox browser on windows.
The Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/market-data
Thank you, this looks promising.
Bloomberg
Bloomberg front page is not all that useful, unfortunately, and I of course don’t have an account or subscription with them.
In that case might be worth seeing if whatever brokerage you use has a good dashboard. Most do!
I too have been loyal to Yahoo Finance for years. Haven't seen the new design but will probably hate it also.
Forgive me if someone asked this question before.
For some inexplicable reason, GOOGLE is killing Google Podcasts on 2 April 2024. That's soon!
I subscribe to about a million different free podcasts. Where should I get them now? GOOGLE wants me to get them from YouTube Music but I'd rather not since they killed my prior favorite Stitcher and now are actively homiciding Google Podcasts.
Where do I go? Spotify? Apple Podcasts? Some other place?
I'm an Android / Chrome Browser person, FWIW.
I'm still in morning about Zune. You downloaded what you wanted how you wanted it to the computer and sent it to the (smaller and lighter than a telephone) :(
I use Spotify for music and podcasts and like it. It doesn't have the skip silences feature that Google Podcasts has (but I never used that feature anyway), but other than that, it has every feature I can think of. You also don't need premium; the podcasts are all completely free. It's especially good if you already use Spotify for music.
For me the 'killer' feature of podcast apps is the ability to skip silences. I use Overcast for this but it's iOS only. On Android 'Pocket Casts' and 'Podcast Addict' support it.
+1 for podcast addict, I've used it every day for like eight years now, a couple dozen podcasts. No problems that I can remember.
I also like Pocket Casts.
I liked Pocket Casts but then it started acting flakey, eventually it began nuking my library periodically and so was unusable. I'm on Android, I don't want to use Spotify or Apple, what is my best choice?
Huh. I went though a period of about 3 years where I didn't use it at all, and changed phones, but when I picked it up again a few years ago, it was fine. Maybe I skipped the bad period?
I admit, I don't like how they store files with guids for the name, but I seem to be an outlier in how much I enjoy poking around the internals.
Podcast addict is an excellent choice.
When I get the notice that they were sunsetting Google podcasts, I searched for a bit and landed on AntennaPod. I've not investigated using it in Chrome so can only say it's what I want in an android app.
I'm a big fan of AntennaPod. Super simple app that's easy to use. Its open source too so less risk of being sunset.
I got Podbean and that had all 4 of my measly podcasts on it. Might be worth checking out for you too.
Does anyone here have any memories or articles about how the Western left - the real left, I mean - reacted to the collapse of the Soviet Union? I'm finding it weirdly hard to find information about it, and I'm interested.
My recollection is that the US left, at least, mostly didn't care. I think they mostly saw Gorbachev as proof that Communists aren't all ruthless evil dictators and maybe now we'll see the full potential of the system. Then Gorbachev fell to "right-wing hard-liners", was replaced by Yeltsin, and yawn, quasi-capitalist oligarchs under a corrupt populist autocrat really suck, we already knew that, nothing to do with us and our beliefs.
I'm not sure what the definition of "Western left" here is. A lot of leftists had spent decades already before the collapse saying that Soviet Union was bad for one reason or another - due to not being democratic (social democrats and democratic socialists), for being a state (anarchists), for not following Trotsky (Trotskyists), for not following Stalin (Maoists, Hoxhaists etc.) and so on. Of course when it came to moderate leftists a lot of them were shocked simply because they had assumed the general conventonional wisdom of Soviet Union, for all of its faults, being destined to stay.
This lokks like the situation in germany then, as well.
I grew up in Manhattan with very liberal friends & family. By '91, the USSR/Castro/China apologists were few and far between. Gorbachev was seen as a Ghandi-like figure, a liberator. My Marxist-leaning friends all took the line that the self-proclaimed Communist states were not practicing "real Communism". Basically the "No True Scotsman" defense.
When the wall came down, I don't recall anyone having a negative viewpoint on what was happening. I vaguely recall arguments downplaying Reagan's role (bc Reagan BAAD) but everyone pretty clearly recognized that a great number of people were now less burdened by a corrupt and inefficient authoritarian regime.
Ahh, time does strange things...
In the U.K., in say the 70s and 80s, most of the far left, and the mainstream (Labour Party).left were anti-communist. The Socialist Workers Party, fo example, was not communist, George Orwell, famously, was anti-communist, writing books like 1984 which really have it in for Soviet communism. There was also, a small communist party. But much of the mainstream and far left was not a fan of the USSR.
If you went back earlier, say before the invasion of Hungary, you'ld have an easier time finding a USSR enthusiast.
Here's some contemporary writings from Sam Marcy, leader of the WWP: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/marcy/1991/index.html
Can probably navigate that site to find other hard lefties writing contemporaneously.
This is an excellent resource. Thank you.
I'm not sure it's quite the answer you are looking for, but here goes. In the UK, the mood on the ordinary left (broadly, Labour voters) was pretty positive as the USSR liberalised, and very positive as the Wall came down, Havel took power, etc. The final collapse was pretty much welcomed too, except for reservations (scarcely confined to the left) about what next: the potential for ethnic conflict, where are all the nukes going. It was a pretty upbeat and optimistic time
"Does anyone here have any memories or articles about how the Western left - the real left, I mean..."
Do you mean organizations such as the US Communist party and maybe individuals such as Bernie Sanders? If not, then can you provide some examples of "the real left"?
Yeah, those will do fine. I was just trying to distinguish them from self-identified liberals who are sometimes referred to as "the left"
Seriously, there is a long running spilt between actual communists and the rest of the far left, e.g. 5he Socialist Workers Party.
Maybe Google for "Gus Hall" and "fall of soviet union" or 1991 or stuff such as that?
I like to stay clear of culture war topics, and what once was called the IWD and is now probably more clustered as the heterodox skeptics community has been too close to it for me. Coleman Hughes used to be an exception for me, but this excellent 3 part series made me update on him as well: https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-retconning-of-george-floyd
Thank you for posting this. I listen to a number of podcasts regularly that feature Coleman and he talked about the documentary. But reading a bit more about the incident, especially the autopsy, has changed my mind. I am significantly less sympathetic to Chauvin than I was.
I only ready part 3, the one you linked below, but wow was that shocking. It definitely makes me more sympathetic to the police reform movement. I wish everyone could see this, but of course the people who need it most will never read it.
I feel like the question of what killed George Floyd is a distraction. It doesn't really matter if he was a saint or the worst person in history, it shouldn't have triggered such a massive disruption of public order.
Why shouldn't it have? It's a totally predictable social phenomenon when there are tensions between those who dispense justice and those who receive the dispensation of justice. George Floyd is one of a long list of people whose deaths became flashpoints for civil unrest — Mark Duggan and Mohamed Bouazizi come immediately to mind. And let's not forget how the death of Christopher Seider may have changed the course of history. If those who dispense justice don't want civil unrest, they should be cautious in the application of power. Just sayin...
The protests were fine. The looting and vandalism was a failure of good policing.
The original failure of good policing was to keep officers on staff who were prone to use violence in situations that didn't warrant it. Derek Chauvin had 18 complaints against him in his official record and was involved in *three* police shootings, one of which was fatal. He received two letters of reprimand for misconduct. If the police unions didn't let the MPD fire him, he should have been put on a desk job manning the evidence locker or following up on pawnshop slips for stolen goods. I had a cousin who was in the Chicago PD. He said the average officer never has to draw their gun in the line of duty. Of course, he retired years ago and since passed away (so things may be different now) — but he warned me to mind my P&Qs with police because he said there are three types: officers, cops, and pigs — and I wouldn't know which type I was talking to until it was too late.
Thank you.
No, thank you! And I was surprised no one rose to my Christopher Seider bait. But that may have been due to people's ignorance of history. But it amazes me that the same law-and-order crowd who cluck their tongues at civil unrest seem go out of their way (not in this thread, I admit) to memorialize the acts of civil unrest that created the United States.
The tension is almost entirely manufactured. We don't have benign good guys in prison, people think we do. We don't have a racist epidemic in LE and CJ, people think we do. We don't have an epidemic of police abuse, people think we do. All of that ignorance is what's causing the unrest. I don't think it's the fault of the useful idiots, I place all of the blame on social media influencers and activo-journalists. They're grifters, liars, and in some cases genuine morons who have no right to be anywhere near a microphone.
Well that's the problem, these tensions exist because there's a false (or at least very dubious) narrative out there that black people are treated worse by police than people of other races. This narrative is propagated by the media, who could instead be critically examining the evidence for it.
'Triggered' being the operative word, as Floyd was being used as a final-straw to unleash long-growing tensions, rather than that release being a reaction to the Floyd incident itself.
If you say 'was the amount of disruption proportional to this one incident,' then of course the answer is no, almost no matter what that incident was.
If you say 'was the amount of disruption proportional to the amount of tension built up to that time,' then it seems really hard to me to make a confident answer in either direction. A *lot* goes into that question, and much of it is hyper-local and hyper-contextual to the specific cities and neighborhoods in which specific disruptions took place.
You can always ask 'if the tension had to be released, couldn't they have chosen a better figurehead than Floyd?'. But there are a lot of answers to that question.
Starting with the fact that Floyd-as-figurehead wasn't entirely a decision by the movement, the media and their opponents elevated Floyd had equal or greater power in sculpting that unitary narrative. If you'd asked people really engaged with the movement at the time, they would have a long list of other provocations that were equally motivating; I remember memes of very long lists of names and incidents from those days, though not the details. The reduction to Floyd being the whole story is mostly a retroactively-applied narrative.
And also just the fact that you don't always get to choose your martyrs. A lot depends on timing, contingent details like if anyone was recording and how galling the video looks, how it first gets reported and how that shapes the cultural understanding in the early days, and other such coincidences.
As long as the tension exists, something will trigger it eventually, but that trigger might not be the best' or 'cleanest' or 'most reasonable' possible incident from the perspective of outside-view hindsight.
The question isn't about what to do with the tension, but whether or not it was astroturfed in the first place. Yes, if the average person believes that the cops treat their jobs like open season for hunting innocent black men, there's gonna be some tension. What if this isn't true and never was? Now that's a horse of a different color, pun intended.
Astroturfed is a loaded word. That suggests that there's an effort by an organization or by organizations to propagandize police killings of black people. But astroturfing isn't necessary when everyone has a smartphone that can act as a video camera and has the potential to access audiences of millions of people on social media. But fatal police shootings of unarmed suspects has fallen dramatically since 2015. Back then blacks were being killed at twice the rate of whites — approx 1 per million for blacks, and 0.5 per million for whites. In 2022 their rates were roughly equal and below 0.2 per million. I wonder if ubiquitous smartphones have caused police to be more cautious in the use of force.
And Hispanics for some reason have (at least since 2015) been killed at significantly lower rates than blacks or whites. I wonder why?
https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-police-shootings-of-unarmed-suspects-are-way-down/
Yes, the content of the media reflects efforts to propagandize tragedies. This isn't new (remember the Maine) and shouldn't be controversial.
(Also yes on rates: but I'm not sure per capita is the metric you're looking for there.)
I'm trying to imagine what would be a better way than per capita rates to compare police-induced mortality rates among groups with different raw population sizes. I can't come up with anything better. Thoughts?
Are you actually prepared to defend 'never was' in the historical context, or was that just colorful language?
Anyway, yes, a reasonable question - not one where I personally think the conclusion is in any real doubt, but the right kind of quesiton to ask - is 'do black communities actually face any types of oppression or harm at the hands of police that would justify this type of resentment and tension?'
But if you know that's teh actual question at stake here, then's it disingenuous to ask 'did what happened to George Floyd justify this level of disruption?'
Which was my original point, just that the wrong quesiton is being asked.
Heh yes I would be willing to defend that. I'm no booster of the police, mind you, but they're bad in ways that don't fit the stereotypes supporters of BLM believe.
Your framing itself shows the problem I'm pointing to -- if polling shows that after Obama's election race relations were at their best maybe ever, and then something happened to perceptions, what would that be? Did white people suddenly become more racist again?
Are we stipulating that slavecatchers weren't going after 'innocent' black men, because escaped slaves were breaking the law?
I think people massively underrate the influence of lockdown. Millions of young people were locked in their houses for months, in the middle of the summer, and then told that the only acceptable reason to go out and have fun with their friends was if they were protesting for Floyd. They also had few serious work or school obligation during this period, so they had nothing better to do. Were their no lockdown, I doubt the national phenomenon would have happened at all. Most likely it would be limited to the kind of smaller, local protests and rioting we saw in the past.
This this, this, this, and...this.
I agree that fires, unrest, chaos, etc. are bad things. That said, public order was already disrupted for the marginalised, and the case was just the tip of an iceberg that is and was smothering non-whites.
I think part 3 could be interesting to you in that regard: https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-retconning-of-george-floyd-part-382
I don't want to stage a culture war reenactment here, I'm happy to read anything you have to reply to this, or, preferably another similarly sober long-form that goes into it though. Let's just not fence too much about this topic here, I know and appreciate that Scott wants to keep threads free of the tug of war that is consuming so much of our attention already.
"that is and was smothering non-whites"
Most of the unrest came from blacks and white liberals. The more Hispanics and Asians in a community, the smaller the protests/riots and the less most people cared.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1903856116 => here's the best paper on this subject, showing no discrimination among police officers in lethal shootings.
Police reform should be based off data with a p < 0.01, not anecdotes. Collect data, run good stats analysis on it, then go ahead and change the system. This applies to any area of life, not just police reform.
I don't think it was that study, but a few years ago I found a different one that said the same thing: that after controlling for various factors, white officers were slightly less likely than black officers to shoot black people. (Specifically, IIRC but it's been a while, the numbers said that if you were a black person and encountered police, white police would be less likely to kill you.) However, it also found that white officers were slightly more likely than black officers to commit verbal abuse and non-lethal physical violence against black people. I choose to interpret this as meaning that police departments do, on average, have a small problem with racism, but that the white officers tend to over-correct when it comes to the use of lethal force, to avoid causing racially charged incidents.
Conveniently for me and my contrarian tendencies, this lets me say that just about everyone is wrong for one reason or another. Also, assuming that the above is accurate, it's worth noting that Chauvin was presumably intending to apply non-lethal violence against Floyd.
Police statistics like this always have Goodhart problem.
And that's even downstream of the fact that the metrics themselves are adversarially chosen (either for study or for promotion) by opponents of a given narrative or conclusion.
Do I think it's easy to convince an entire population that they are persecuted when they're actually not? Sure, that's possible.
Do I think it's *easier* to write one convincing-looking paper 'debunking' that fact, and get a few politically-motivated people to be convinced by that paper and share it widely? Yeah, I think that's a lot easier and more common.
I recommend reading part 3. I never talked about lethal shootings, I talked about over-policing, and the articles does reference data not just anecdotes, so I feel like this is missing my point.
Update: to bite a little bit, I don't know what would make this the best paper on the subject, there does seem to be scientific controversy around it:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7414294/
Apropos data, I'll quote from the above "framed their literature review and interpreted their findings in ways that clearly did not correspond to the data they had analyzed and presented"
If there's anywhere in the US that's over-policed I'd love to visit... all the places I've seen are drastically under-policed.
Thanks, I've read Part 3 and I'm not convinced. I live in a major coastal city and the 2020 reforms have been a disaster due to the subsequent uptick in crime. Luckily they're now being rolled back and order is slowly getting restored.
I'd rather have overpolicing than being worried about walking alone at night in my neighborhood.
I'm sorry to hear that, no one should be worried walking alone at night. I should maybe disclose here that I live in Germany myself, and have probably only spent a total of 3 months in the US over my lifetime, for work and vacation. So this is more of an abstract topic for me.
Then again I did have negative experiences in both SF and Miami. Both made me wish for a better social safety net in the US and wrt my encounter in Miami I was also VERY glad cops were around. When they took the person into custody I was still not relieved though, imagining what the person will go through now with what I know about US prisons did not make me hopeful that they will be rehabilitated.
Anyway, I'd be curious to know which policies specifically you think contributed to the uptick in crime?
the thing about overpolicing is that you're in danger from the police.
Yes and I quite frankly don't understand why it matters. Random violence between people happens all the time, we're a nation of 350 million people so there's bound to be some deaths in the process too. I don't see why the question of why that particular man's death should be of such significance to anyone other than his immediate family and perhaps the police officers involved.
Coleman has said (reasonably imo) that he was waiting until all 3 installments of Balko’s essays were up to issue a response. I’ll be very curious to see what he says.
So far the only substantial response I have come across is this dialog he had with Balko on Reason's podcast:
https://reason.com/podcast/2024/03/14/coleman-hughes-vs-radley-balko-whos-right-about-george-floyd/
I now better understand where Hughes was coming from, but I also feel less sympathetic towards him, mainly because I doubt his commitment to sincerity. In the podcast he positions himself as someone like a defense attorney, who merely has to cast reasonable doubt on the case against Chauvin. That is not the position I see himself taking in the piece, which positions itself as a piece of journalism, where I personally expect a larger scope than a simple (inaccurate) defense.
Yeah I listened to that podcast and had a different takeaway. I continue to think Coleman is a total straight shooter, whether or not I agree with him. Coleman’s point, which after rereading his column is spelled out (though I think a casual reader can be forgiven for not grokking this, as I also did not the first time) is that he is very narrowly saying that the outcome of the trial was incorrect, not that Chauvin did nothing wrong (though many commenters on the free press seem to think so, yikes). On this, he makes a good case.
I’m not finding the good faith inside myself to read it this way. It does seem to speak more to the court of public opinion than the judicial one (which imo makes a difference for the required degree of reasonable doubt), and there it positions itself in within culture war by uncritically aligning itself with the documentary makers.
I think there is a version of the piece that would have worked for me, but this one needs secondary literature to be understood “correctly”, which is not the bar I have for writing about culture war stuff (Scott is one of the few writers who imo consistently manages it)
I’m not totally sure what you mean. I personally find myself agreeing with Balko on the actual issue of the conviction, but I just don’t see any evidence of bad faith on Coleman’s part and frankly it hurt my opinion of Balko as a writer/thinker when he hurled many such accusations.
I will definitely read what he will put out, but in my eyes some credibility is already lost by the quality (and confidence) of what he put out initially.
The pernicious thing about culture war topics seems to be that positioning yourself outside of it, still pulls you into it since you are positioned relatively to it. I don't know, I'm still a bit dumbfounded because "initially" I read him (and to a lesser degree even Barri Weiss), to take more of a grey tribe, outside of it, position but now they seem to be wholly inside of it.
I don't know if any of that rambling makes sense, but SSC is what I associate with the right place to ramble about the changing gestalt of intellectual communities.
“Always being right the first time” is a pretty high bar. To me a lot depends on how Coleman handles this going forward.
You're right in that I also would not want to set the bar like that in isolation. It's just a the combo of high-confidence bad research with culture war positioning which makes it to me worse than merely "not right the first time"
It raises the probability that that hold is something that isn't as dangerous as it looks, making it more reasonable to use it to restrain people who resist arrest? If it turned out that's genuinely not dangerous for most people and was only lethal in Floyd's case to to unexpected drug interactions (I haven't read the original series, no opinion on the object level question), then the cops do in fact look more reasonable.
A movie called _The Fall of Minneapolis_ argued that the hold was normal procedure. Radley Balko argued in considerable detail that the hold was *not* permitted except briefly to apply an additional restraint.
Coleman, McWhorter, and Loury fell for the movie. So far as I know, Loury is the only one who admitted he'd made a mistake. I wish he'd gone into more detail, but he said he was so angry at the destruction from the riots that he lost track of the evidence about what Chauvin did to Floyd.
I implore anyone thinking this hold was somehow “less dangerous” or some such to pay a visit to a local MMA or BJJ school and ask for the experience. Make sure to ask for your hands to be tied behind your back.
This is unbearable. At least on the mat or in the cage you can tap out. Floyd kept verbally tapping out until he passed out.
He was no angel, but he did not deserve to be smothered to death.
Steven Crowder videotaped himself experiencing it for that amount of time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O88knFix2fo
That was by no means the hold that Floyd experienced and this is extremely obvious from looking at it at all critically.
How so?
It's regrettable, but if he was being bolshie and resisting arrest then he has (or had) only himself to blame, especially if he was aware he had a dodgy ticker!
He was handcuffed, prone, pleading to breathe for minutes, and then unresponsive for minutes. Both things can be true at the same time:
I have no patience for people who don't understand violence and think cops dealing with raging suspects should just talk nicely or something, and...
I have no patience for people who don't understand violence and think that it's ok to just keep smothering the suspect in handcuffs lying on his belly and being non-responsive.
He was still innocent in the eye of the law at that point. He did not deserve the horrible death from the very people who swore to serve and protect us. Even him. Even if he's a shitty human being.
I agree with this
But would it kill me?
Eventually, for sure.
As quickly as Floyd? I don't think anyone can answer truthfully what LD50 duration for that hold is, both because it will be contexual on very slight differences in how it is applied, and because we just don't do lethal human experimentation of the type needed to answer that question.
But, like, watch the fucking video, you know? Most reasonable people are going to agree that looks hugely dangerous even at the start, and by the time a few seconds before Floyd's death where he has been begging and showing signs of distress for a while, any reasonable person would say this is become a medical emergency that you have a duty to respond to.
He was saying he couldn't breathe when he was in the back of the car, before anyone was kneeling on him. If they hadn't let him out (at his request), they might have gotten him to a hospital quicker.
To add more color, if you watch MMA, you occasionally see fighters pass out in choke holds, and then there's an immediate flurry of activity to revive the fighter ASAP, literally within seconds.
This is actually kind of why you see fighters trying to get out of chokes as long as possible - they know their risks are minimal if they fail and pass out, they will get resuscitated immediately. So you might as well try everything to fight out of a choke, since you're losing anyway. Even in training, when sparring I would quickly tap to joint locks, but hold out for chokes because I know there are people around to immediately help if I pass out. But if the choke is continuously applied after the blackout it quickly becomes extremely dangerous.
Yes. If the pressure is not released you will eventually be unable to get enough oxygen and black out. If the pressure is not released by then and you are not revived you will die.
Hard to say. If the knee was kept there for a couple minutes after you lost consciousness and went limp it might.
The hold was approved for as short a period as possible and the subject was then supposed to be placed in the recovery position. As one of Chauvin’s partners suggested a few minutes in. Chauvin said no and kept the knee in place.
Like I replied to Melvin - this is deadly. The thing is, you don't need to stop the oxygen completely to kill someone, there's a basing metabolic rate that requires certain minimum amount, take that away by compressing the chest enough (and adding the pressure on the carotid artery to further throttle the blood flow to the brain), and eventually the body just can't cope.
You can learn to assist drawing breaths with other parts of the torso, like shifting to stomach breathing when the chest is compressed. I've done this to get my bearings under heavy pressure when a bigger/stronger/more skilled opponent has flattened me under. But again, I've trained for this, and always had a way out - to tap - if I feel like I'm losing it. Floyd has no training, was probably high and panicking, and - was verbally tapping out for minutes before going unconscious.
This was murder, and a pretty cruel one as far as that goes.
Is 2024 a good year to visit Israel? Due to the war, I imagine tourism is down, so there won't be crowds at the main sites, and plane tickets and hotels will be cheaper.
If any of you live in Israel or frequently visit, can you give me advice?
None of the descriptors in the last line apply to me, but what is sorta relevant is the moral integrity and/or self-respect you lose by pouring money into the coffers of a state that killed 12500+[1] children in 6 months, or about 70 children per day, at a rate of 3 every hour. You will probably feel different about doing business (or really interacting in any way imaginable) with someone who lined up 12500 children, a heap of ammo, and pulled the trigger every 20 minutes. But the greatest trick that states and corporations ever pull is that they don't have a face, glitching the normal operation of moral intuitions.
From a certain point of view, we all sell our souls by merely working for a state and/or participating in the global economy, but it's a bit more understandable when the genocidal state you work for is the only one you have got and the business is needed for survival, going out of your way to give another genocidal state your money on a luxury activity seems different. Yesterday's rocks ain't worth the price of today's children.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war
How do you define child? Because even in the US, a 17 year old firing a rifle at you is considered a childhood victim of gun violence if you defend yourself.
I define a child as whatever the Gazan Health Ministry defines as a child, it never occurred to me to check whether they put the line at 17 or 16 or 15. As I said in another comment, even if you generously half the estimate to account for any exaggerations, misreporting, misleading definitions, etc..., 6250 children in 6 months is still one child per 40 minutes.
>I define a child as whatever the Gazan Health Ministry defines as a child, it never occurred to me to check whether they put the line at 17 or 16 or 15.
.... Noted.
12,500 children, provided you believe the Gaza Health Ministry.
Sure, and considering the US government and the entirety of the UN do, you would probably have to invent a whole new world in your head not to believe the Gazan Health Ministry.
As a last resort, let's say the Gazan Health Ministry is meanie liar with pants on fire, and let's half their claim. 6250 children killed. So, instead of the hypothetical killer pulling the trigger on a child every 20 minutes, it's every 40 minutes instead. I'm sure that changes a lot of things.
The US government does not believe the Gazan Health Ministry. Do you have a citation for the entirety of the UN believing the Gazan Health Ministry? I would find that difficult to believe, particularly as Israel is a member of the UN.
For someone who claims that my claims are "easily disproved with 5 minutes of Googling", you sure as heck don't like to do the 5 minutes of Googling yourself.
> The US government does not believe the Gazan Health Ministry.
See my other comment to you on another thread.
> Do you have a citation for the entirety of the UN believing the Gazan Health Ministry?
By... Googling or YouTube-ing "UN Gaza death tolls", optionally filtering by date since November 2023, and then noticing that every UN official or UN office generally agree with the Gazan estimate. Here's the literal first google result https://www.ochaopt.org/he.
It's trivially easy to get a counterexample to this if it exists, eh? Maybe that's your chance to shine.
> I would find that difficult to believe, particularly as Israel is a member of the UN.
Pedantry is not clever.
Also, I actually clicked on your link. If you click a little further and go to their Data page, and then to their Causalties page, you find the following information:
"Casualties in the context of the ongoing hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel, which started on 7 October 2023, will only be added to this page once these incidents have been independently verified. Until then, reported figures on those are included in our Flash Updates and Snapshots. By contrast, data on casualties in the West Bank and Israel in other contexts is updated regularly beyond 7 October 2023."
So, in other words, while they use Ministry numbers in their updates they do not trust the information enough to say that it's accurate until they have independent verification.
https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties
So you were right: it was trivially easy to get a counterexample. I didn't even have to Google.
>See my other comment
See my reply. Citation please!
>Pedantry is not clever
Lying is not honest.
EDIT a day later: I regret the low quality of this comment, which emits more heat than light.
If this was a genocide, you'd see 300,000 dead Palestinians. This isn't a genocide.
(30,000 dead / 4.5 months) * 12 months/year = 80,000 dead/year. At that rate, it would take 25 years to kill 2 million people. (Assuming no other change in population.) That's a bit faster than the last time I ran the numbers, where it came out to about 30 years. So maybe the pace is picking up, although my estimates are loose. If I use 5 months, it comes out to 27.7 years.
This does not fit my intuitions about genocide, either. However, I'm not sure I should trust my intuitions. So I'm falling back on numbers. Here's a question I was going to save for a Hidden Open Thread, but I might as well ask it here:
How fast does it have to be to count as genocide? Or put another way, if someone wants to commit genocide, how slow do they have to go to fool you?
(I've got no answer to that. I'm trying to find out what other people think, ideally other normally-pro-Israel people. From your number of 300,000, I'm guessing that you think killing a population of 2 million people in 2.5 years would count as genocide? I agree with that; that matches my intuition, too.)
I see no reason to assume that the rate will remain constant. That’s not how war works. (Also not how famine works.)
I think the genocide issue is best left to the International Court of Justice, which seems to be doing a better job than we’re likely to do. So far they’ve ruled that it’s plausible that it’s genocide.
Yeah, I don't think it'll be constant either. But I don't have a better model, or any good predictions about what will happen. And strictly for the purpose of "is the current rate of killing equivalent to genocide", linear projections like this seem fine? As the parent comment said, if the rate were 10 times higher, I'd absolutely call that genocide.
When writing informally, I think we should avoid getting mired in tedious debates about definitions and just try to describe what’s happening using other words. See: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WBdvyyHLdxZSAMmoz/taboo-your-words
The definition of genocide has to do with intent, not just rate. You can not avoid asking whether we want and plan to spand the next 25 years killing Palestinians in that rate, and whether the ones that we did kill died because we wanted them dead, or because they happened to be in our way to achieve some other goal.
After introspecting for a bit, I've concluded that the word "genocide" is (thankfully) not used in my day-to-day life enough for me to develop a sense of its common usage. So I tend to equate it with "homicide", which is an explicitly intent-neutral term; "murder', "manslaughter", and "manmort" being criminal terms that depend partially on intent. Obviously we want to punish people more if it's intentional, but I think it's still "genocide" if it's unintentional. We don't have separate criminal terms for degrees of genocide, and again, I'm thankful that we don't live in a world where that's been necessary.
Let's say Google messes with their AI Gemini to try to fix it, but the "fix" winds up setting into motion a chain of events that kills all... East Asian people, let's say. No one wanted that, no one intended that, but I'd call that a "genocide". It's unclear whether any person could be prosecuted for the crime of genocide, but to me that's a different matter. The thing happened, and we've got a name to call it.
We seem quite far from axidentally killing all Gazans though
The Palestinian population of Gaza is currently *growing*. Yes, genocide is a crime of intent. But absent telepathy, we can only infer intent from actions. And if one's actions cannot plausibly result in [X], if it's obvious from fifth-grade math that [X] isn't going to happen, then I think there's a pretty high bar for claiming that [X] is the intended result. What have you got to back that up?
Another good indicator: in an actual genocide attempt, the civilian death rate will generally increase as the perpetrator gains control of the territory in which the victims live. In Gaza, the Israelis have gained control of approximately 2/3rds of the territory, and the death rate of Gazans has declined by about 2/3rds from the start of the war.
Growing since October? That seems implausible to me.
Also, isn't the pro-Isreal position that all death numbers are fake Hamas propaganda? Where would you even get reliable figures to see if the population is growing in that case?
Oh okay, disputing the numbers, why do I feel I have seen this tactic before?
I have read the definition of a Genocide in the text of the Convention On The Prevention of the Crime of Genocide [1], it's pretty readable and the design of the website is very fluid and attractive. Do you know what's the one thing that the text of the Convention never does? Setting numerical limits on Genocides and how much they could kill the population. You could be a perpetrator of Genocide by killing 100 babies/pregnant women with a homemade bomb (preventing the births of the victim group as such), or you could be a perpetrator of Genocide by killing the group to the last baby, and everything in between. The Bosnian Genocide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide), and that's what the ICJ calls it, is one where 8000 Bosnian died, less than 1/3 Palestinian casualties.
[1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-prevention-and-punishment-crime-genocide
I believe that OP's point is not there is a numerical limit under which an event is not a genocide, but rather that, a genocide requires an intent to eliminate a group, and that were that Israel's intent, the number of deaths would be much higher. And, honestly, the genocide accusation seems to me to be very counterproductive (assuming that the goal is to reduce mass casualties): If you accuse me of genocide, I know for a fact whether I am guilty, because I know my own intent. And if I don't have that intent, the conversation is over. In contrast, if you accuse me of war crimes, because I am doing too little to limit civilian casualties, well, I can't dismiss that so easily.
> and that were that Israel's intent, the number of deaths would be much higher
But isn't that exactly how Israeli officials would think, too? I have the capability to kill X people, but X is too high, and people would think that I'm committing a genocide, which would decrease my support or cut it off entirely, so I kill X/2 but do it for twice as long, achieving the same end result with less danger. X/4 for 4 times as long would also work. X/8 for 8 times as much would also work.
> because I know my own intent
The part you're missing is that the hypothetical you is also dishonest, and even though "you know your own intent" (which is genocide), you figure that you can simply keep denying and deflecting.
If you want proof of intent, consider that a Gaza resettlement conference [1] made on the 28th of January was attended by Ben Gvir, minister of public security, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, among 12 other ministers. Google says the Israeli government is 35 ministers, so that's about 33% of the most high ranking officials in the government after the Prime Minister and the president supporting settlement (which implies supporting Genocide of the people currently living in the places they want to settle.)
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-settlers-hold-conference-resettlement-gaza-2024-01-28/
>The part you're missing is that the hypothetical you is also dishonest, and even though "you know your own intent" (which is genocide), you figure that you can simply keep denying and deflecting.
The point is that if my intent is not genocide, then I can simply dismiss your genocide accusation, since I know for a fact that it is wrong. In contrast, I cannot dismiss an accusation of war crimes
So to be clear, did the Palestinians genocide the Jews on October 7?
Not anymore than the "Jews" are genociding Palestinians right now, which sounds like something a poster on 4Chan would say.
Israel not Jews, Hamas not Palestinians.
Too soon to say, but give it time. People are getting desperate for food. We'll see how much the airdrops help.
I'm sure the airdrops will help bolster Hamas tremendously, as does all the rest of the aid that flows to Gaza.
It’s hard to see how “our people are starving due to our actions” should be popular, but that does seem to be the case. Nonetheless, “we should starve civilians to win the war” is no longer acceptable in modern times. Even pretty stringent sanctions (as in Iran) do allow for buying food.
Oh we absolutely need to do aid drops. And we need to keep sending aid to Israel, too. The good guys *really* need to win this one.
Israel's main tourist sites have not seen active combat since 1967. Tel-Aviv hasn't seen active combat since 1948. I'd say you'd be 100% fine even if a war breaks out with Lebanon. Israel is a great country, highly recommend a visit.
I don't know whether it is a good idea or not. Just some complications about the considerations that you mentioned: The sites are less crowded, but planes supply may be lower to match the lower demand, and the many Israelis who left their homes because of the war may offset the lack of tourism. And while the war with Gaza would not affect your visit, a war with Lebanon is still a possibility, that may make the visit interesting not in the ways you expect.
It's not too bad anymore - we haven't had rocket strikes in a while, things are getting normal-ish again. Hotels and other touristy things will probably be unusually cheap due to low demand.
The one issue though is flights - a lot of airlines have just stopped flying in due to low demand, and some will still let you order tickets online without actually telling you they're not flying in. Don't get tickets on kayak unless you've confirmed the airline actually is flying to Israel (Google flights is generally better about this issue).
You can also get a ticket to Sharm-el-Sheikh and get a bus to Taba/Eilat, if you're trying to save money.
Note: do not actually try this.
Even if the bus is somehow still running this is not a good time to be someone Egyptians think is traveling to Israel.
Here’s a report from last week of an Israeli citizen doing this without any problems: https://www.facebook.com/1774103564/posts/10211513268905389/
Egypts border with Israel is open and they haven’t been hostile to Israelis despite the war.
I write about specific high-impact ways I've improved my life. N=1, but most of them feel pretty generalizable. Every other post on philosophy or current events so you don't feel like you're being lectured.
https://youbutbetter.substack.com/
I just read several of your posts and find them very insightful and helpful, thank you for these writings!
What a beautiful compliment, thank you Emma!
I’ve been to Manifest 2023 and can confirm it’s been great. Highly recommend everyone to get a ticket for the 2024 event.
Just up on New Savanna: Of Lit Crit “Stars” and AI “Godfathers” – In what way is Geoffrey Hinton like Jacques Derrida? https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2024/03/of-lit-crit-stars-and-ai-godfathers-in.html
Back in 1997 David Shumway published “The Star System in Literary Studies” in PMLA. He begins with a paragraph about George Lyman Kittredge, of Harvard’s English Department at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, noting that Kittredge was unknown to the public. Here’s the first sentence of his second paragraph:
"Kittredge, who virtually founded Chaucer studies in the United States, stood at the head of a professional genealogy that controlled the field for many years after his death, but he was not a star. Nor were any of his illustrious contemporaries or near contemporaries, such as John Manly, John Livingston Lowes, and so on. Why they were not stars and Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, Stanley Fish, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Fredric Jameson, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and other figures in the academy are is the subject of this essay."
What I’m wondering is whether or not the so-called AI “Godfathers” don’t represent a similar phenomenon in contemporary AI. Strictly speaking I believe the Godfather term applies to the three winners of the 2018 Turing Award, Yoshua Bengio, Yann Lecun, and Geoffrey Hinton, but I believe there are others in AI with a similar status, such as Ilya Sutskever, Hinton’s student and co-founder of OpenAI, Andrej Karpathy, the former director of AI at Tesla who just made waves, albeit little ones, by resigning from OpenAI, Demis Hassibis, cofounder of DeepMind, and perhaps even such figures as Nick Bostrom and Eliezer Yudkowsky, who aren’t AI researchers but are highly influential figures through their commentary. Perhaps Sam Altman, the heroic CEO who fought off a recalcitrant board, is a star as well.
Later:
Concerning the rise of literary stars, Shumway noted: “As theory has called into question the traditional means by which knowledge has been authorized, it may be that the construction of the individual personality has become an epistemological necessity.” That seems like the state of AI today. We’ve got a very complicated technology involving a blend of engineering, science, and alchemy, lacking objective knowledge. Note only that, the technology is enormously important and will change the way we live. In the absence of objective knowledge, what choice do we have but to steer by the freakin' stars?
Question for those knowledgeable about the USSR's international relations/global left:
My rough understanding is that following the dissolution of the USSR, with the exception of Cuba and North Korea, most nations/political leaders aligned with the USSR ultimately pursued their own paths. In today's context, there seems to be little that unites these countries.
However, nearly all the nations/political leaders who still broadly adhere to their far-left/USSR roots (e.g., Lula, Daniel Ortega, the ANC, etc.) continue to hold a strong animosity towards Israel, seemingly as much as they did during the USSR era. This also applies to every day Westerners who were sympathetic to the USSR.
I'm seeking a deeper understanding of this phenomenon. These nations/political leaders/people appear less focused on the USSR/far-leftism nowadays and generally exhibit significant differences in their contemporary ideologies, which makes me believe that any positions on this aren't rooted in some underlying ideology. Moreover, Israel does not seem particularly relevant to their countries to have needed to maintain a fixed position on the subject. Therefore, I'm trying to comprehend why opposition to Israel has remained so pronounced and become entrenched in this group. Is the opposition to Israel rooted in some ideology that transcends socialism...? (I'm skeptical) or is Israel merely being used as a proxy for antipathy towards the United States, which would make much more sense as something that would remain sticky? Or some third thing...
I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on this... especially if there are other similar things like opposition to Israel that the post-USSR players have remained unified on.
> Lula
If by this you mean the Brazilian president, then he isn't hostile to Israel by any reasonable definition. This article in Haaretz (https://archive.ph/FrGM2) is a good rundown of his history with Israel, the long and short of it is that he is an old school 1970s leftist, and Israel has a strong leftist history that goes back to before its founding [0] and continues till about the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Kibbutzim [1] are (were?) collective farms in a way that most communists would probably approve of. According to the Haaretz article, Lula had close relations with many Israelis and Zionists in his close circle as early as the 1980s, and - quoting - :
> When Lula himself visited Israel in 2010, he placed a wreath on the monument to fallen soldiers on Mount Herzl, spoke in the Knesset, held a series of meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other ministers, and planted a tree in the Jewish National Fund's 'Nations Forest'– the symbol of Zionism in the eyes of the world – in Jerusalem. During his visit to Yad Vashem, he spent long hours in the museum's archives and found his family name (Da Silva) among the lists of Holocaust victims, an experience he often says was the most moving for him.
It's not uncommon for politicians to turn on a dime, especially in extreme and unusual circumstances, and Lula was just one example among many others you mentioned. Still, this misdiagnosis of his views *should* make you stop and think about how much actual "anti-Israelism" is there, vs. legitimate concern and legitimate changes of hearts in response to Israeli actions that rabidly pro-Israel supporters interpret as hostility. If someone who was an Israel supporter for 50-ish years says that what Israel is doing is Holocaust-like, accusations of anti-Semitism can only get you so far.
> Is the opposition to Israel rooted in some ideology that transcends socialism? [...] or is Israel merely being used as a proxy for antipathy towards the United States? [...] Or some third thing?
Why not all of the above?
(1) Socialism probably doesn't mean as much as it would seem to on first glance, since lots of leftists in the 1950s and 1960s were Pro-Israel and even the Soviet Union itself didn't really give this much of a shit except as a fig leaf in front of its Arab allies who imported third rate weaponry from it for lots of money.
(2) Israel's weird parasitic relationship with the USA does indeed consistently draw attention, with both sides often saying that one of the 2 states is a puppet state for the other. Since there is such a multitude of reasons a leftist could hate the USA for, it stands to reason that a leftist would also hate the self-proclaimed "closest ally", one whose lobbying group's annual conference is the second most attended one in US politics after the State of the Union address [2].
(3) Some western anti-Semites are just very happy Israel is dumb enough to paint Magen Davids on the airframe of jet fighters dropping 2000-pound bombs on hospitals and residential buildings, so they're anti-Israel in the sense of "Never interrupt your enemy while they're making a mistake". Israel is betting that the world's reserve of love/tolerance for Jews is enough to shield it from accountability, and the anti-Semites are gladly taking the bet in the opposite direction.
(4) Some countries have increasingly non-obvious reasons to hate Israel. South Africa, that's the most obvious one, the Apartheid regime was a hugely profitable client of Israel's weapons corporations, and Israel was the last government to stop doing deals with it. Ireland is not too obvious on first glance, until you realize that the Irish predominantly look at their history with the British like Palestinians look at their history with Israelis. The most non-obvious country to hate Israel is probably Spain, I can find no reason in my knowledge of it or its history to explain the repeated support for Palestine I keep seeing and hearing from Spanish officials. China is roughly on par with Ireland, in that you would expect them to hate Israel (due to proximity to US and China's open economic attitude to countries in Africa including lots of Arab countries) but also it's surprising that they hate it *this* much.
(5) No need to explain why predominantly Muslim countries like Indonesia and Malaysia are anti-Israel
(6) The elephant in the room, of course, is that Israel killed no less than 20K civilians according to its own numbers, and 25K civilians according to the competing story's numbers. Killing 1-1.5% percent of a 2.3-million-strong population in 6 months is just bad no matter what's your opinion on God or how Economy should work or how much the USA sucks or how much annoying and disgusting the Jews are. This sentiment can unite even the most secular and tolerant new leftist with the most rabid anti-Jewish white supremacist with the most rabid anti-Jewish Muslim. So, picking this historical moment to tease out who hates Israel why is a uniquely bad choice, there is lots of reason all mixing and breeding together in the boiling pot of media and info ecosystem.
[0] https://www.972mag.com/search/?q=communists
[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/10/12/1205284601/what-is-a-kibbutz-the-roots-of-israels-communal-villages-where-violence-raged
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIPAC#Prominent_officers_and_supporters
>Israel killed no less than 20K civilians according to its own numbers, and 30K civilians according to the competing story's numbers.
The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilian or military casualties. They claim 30k dead, not 30k civilian deaths.
I'll need to see a citation for the claim that Israel says they've killed 20k civilians, I can't find any official statement other than an IDF claim that they've killed 15,000 Hamas combatants.
> They claim 30k dead, not 30k civilian deaths.
Correct, the competing story's claim should be 25K civilian deaths, since Hamas claims 6000 of its own were killed, 1/2 of the IDF's estimation.
> I'll need to see a citation for the claim that Israel says they've killed 20k civilian
Implied by the fact that IDF estimates 12,000 Hamas deaths (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war, ctrl-f for "IDF estimated"), subtracting from a total of 31,000 deaths (Israel never disputed Gazan Health Ministery numbers), yields 19,000 civilian deaths.
So you're saying that because Israel has not released it's own Gazan casualty numbers, it must agree with the Gaza Health Ministry?
You claimed that Israel said 20k, and Gaza Health Ministry said 30k, but in actuality Gaza claimed 30k, and you turned that into two numbers, one of which you claimed was from Israel.
You have a bad habit of playing fast and loose with facts and spreading false information. Any time you cite a figure I expect that, when checked, it has a 70% probability of being false. Everyone reading your comments should treat them as what they are, an activist's claims that are unlikely to be accurate to reality.
There are a few other mistakes in the claims, although most aren't as disnohest as saying Israel accepts Hamas's claims about total deaths in Gaza. First, Israel claims 13,000 terrorists killed in Gaza, not 12,000 (https://www.idf.il/%D7%90%D7%AA%D7%A8%D7%99-%D7%99%D7%97%D7%99%D7%93%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%99%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%9F-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%9C%D7%97%D7%9E%D7%94/%D7%9B%D7%9C-%D7%94%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%A2%D7%93%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%99-%D7%93%D7%95%D7%91%D7%A8-%D7%A6%D7%94-%D7%9C/%D7%A2%D7%93%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%9F-%D7%93%D7%95%D7%91%D7%A8-%D7%A6%D7%94%D7%9C-%D7%A6%D7%94-%D7%9C-%D7%AA%D7%90-%D7%9C-%D7%93%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%90%D7%9C-%D7%94%D7%92%D7%A8%D7%99-%D7%99%D7%95%D7%9D-%D7%97%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%99-2902//). At the time Israel said 13,000 (Feb. 29), Hamas claimed 30,035 (not 31,000). The difference would thus be 17,035 which is not more than 20,000.
Similarly, per Reuters, Hamas acknowledged the deaths of 6,000 Hamas fighters by February 19. At that time, they claimed 29,092 people killed in Gaza. The difference would be 23,092, which is not more than 25,000.
More significant (and related to the claim that Israel accepts Hamas's claims about the total number of people killed in Gaza) is that Hamas makes various claims about this number that not only Israel, but international press dispute. For example, Hamas claims Israel kiled hundreds of people at al-Ahli hospital, while international media do not accept that Israel was behind the strike (or the casualty figures, for that matter).
This isn't the only incident of Gazan rockets landing on Gaza (other such incidents have been caught on video) but Hamas doesn't seem to acknowledge any of these.
More significantly, Hamas's claims about 6,000 fighters being killed was about *Hamas* fighters being killed (per Reuters report). But Hamas isn't the only terror group with fighters in Gaza. PIJ and other groups have thousands, as well. Israel's claim about the number of terrorists they've killed was not limited to Hamas (see link above; this sometimes gets confusing, as some sources sometimes use 'Hamas' as shorthand for "Gaza based Palestinian militant groups", but in that very speech, Hagari distinguishes between the two), so even if Israel accepted Hamas's figures for the total number of people they killed in Gaza, subtracting the number of fighters touted by Hamas would not be equivalent to the number of terrorists they killed.
I'd draw a distinction between Hamas reporting of numbers from a specific event, and the (Hamas-controlled) overall death toll. Bounded distrust, perhaps.
I absolutely do not trust Hamas to report correct numbers immediately after any Israeli action, nor even later on. IIRC, they've been caught time-shifting and place-shifting deaths, to inflate the death tolls by adding in people who died recently for other reasons. Similarly, I don't tend to trust photos that come out of Gaza, not so much because of digital manipulation, but simply because of staging. And reporters in Gaza tend to be ideologically aligned, or under pressure.
But I haven't heard solid reasons to distrust the overall death toll. Like other civil governments, they keep records of people and can identify dead bodies. I also haven't yet run into credible accusations that the videos coming out of Gaza have been staged.
One thing I've heard suggested, but without any evidence backing it up, is that Hamas deliberately inflates its population count, and comes up with false names and records which can later be used to inflate death tolls. This sounded like someone backed into a corner in an Internet argument pulling something out of their ass to keep from admitting defeat. But it does seem like a trick that could be pulled off by Hamas, and if I see evidence, I'll update my trust in the total death toll numbers. (Frankly, though, it would seem easier just to increase the population the old-fashioned way.)
> So you're saying that because Israel has not released it's own Gazan casualty numbers, it must agree with the Gaza Health Ministry?
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. What supports what I'm saying is that the US government, usually rabidly pro-Israel, is using the Gazan Health Ministry numbers, and historically internal Israeli estimates themselves usually track the numbers of the Gazan Ministery [1] within the range of the 100 people, as well as independent UN estimates.
I wouldn't expect the government whose president made a pathetic attempt at propaganda with a Mein Kampf copy to not dispute Gazan numbers IF they had evidence or whiff of evidence, so the fact that they don't is a pretty cut-and-dried implicit agreement in my book. You're free to disagree.
> Gaza claimed 30k
Gaza doesn't have a mouth.
>You have a bad habit of playing fast and loose with facts and spreading false information.
Meaningless and childish "Boo outgroup". My comment is a very natural phrasing of the actual facts, Israeli newspapers from Haaretz to Times of Israel all mention the numbers of Gazan Health Ministery and then right next to them the fact that the government of Israel never disputed them in 6 months of war. You're free to play air-headed as much as you like but to me and - I suspect - to most people that means "Israeli gov agrees with this overall number" as clear as the Sun at 12 PM.
> Everyone reading your comments should treat them as what they are,
Everyone with a brain reading my comments would think about them and verify them independently, including going beyond the literal phrasing of my comment and not making a big deal of a minor choice of words. Your very transparent attempt at consensus-building and performative outrage would hopefully change none of that.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-health-ministry-health-death-toll-59470820308b31f1faf73c703400b033
>US government, usually rabidly pro-Israel, is using the Gazan Health Ministry numbers
Citation needed (particularly because its not true).
>historically internal Israeli estimates themselves usually track the numbers of the Gazan Ministery
Which means that Israel agrees with Ministry's current casualties for the current conflict? Not so. To say that Israel accepts the Ministry's numbers because in prior wars Israel's estimates were similar to the Ministry's is a non-sequitur. Do you have any actual evidence that Israel supports the Ministry's numbers?
>Meaningless and childish "Boo outgroup".
No its boo to you in particular. You regularly write things that aren't true, and that 5 minutes of Googling can demonstrate isn't true. Nobody should take anything you have to say on this conflict seriously.
>Israeli newspapers from Haaretz to Times of Israel all mention the numbers of Gazan Health Ministery and then right next to them the fact that the government of Israel never disputed them in 6 months of war.
Not publicly putting out casualty figures is still not an endorsement of someone else's casualty figures. Newspapers reporting on what the Gaza Health Ministry said are not evidence that Israel agrees with the Gaza Health Ministry. And regardless of all that, even if Israel did agree they never said that there were 20k civilian casualties, yet you claimed that they did. Even as the Gazan Health Ministry never claimed that there were 30k civilians killed, yet you claimed they did anyway.
>Everyone with a brain reading my comments would think about them and verify them independently, including going beyond the literal phrasing of my comment and not making a big deal of a minor choice of words.
Not a minor choice of words: you claimed the Israeli government said there were 20k civilian casualties when they said no such thing, whatsoever, anywhere. It was a flat out fabrication, and apparently you assumed nobody would actually check. When called out on your fabrications, you try to minimize it and throw on ad hominin attacks on your critics.
Russian influence networks didn't go away. They became weaker because Russia was significantly weaker than the USSR. But they didn't go away. And they mostly kept the old contacts they'd had among various left wing movements. You'd think that ideologically Lula, the ANC, and other leftist organizations would stick to their ideological guns and move away from hypercapitalist, anti-gay Russia. Perhaps to China if they insisted on remaining aligned with the far left. But in fact most of them just kept up with Russia. The exceptions, like Vietnam and India, did so mostly because they were rebalancing against China. Russia was no longer a credible ally against China in a world where it was both weaker and more pro-Chinese. But it wasn't due to some ideological repudiation of Russia's shift to the right.
It shows there is a strong streak of anti-Americanism, rather than anything intellectually deeper than that, in such movements.
Yes, it's the first one. The opposition to Israel fundamentally derives less from the suzerainty of USSR over the global left in Cold War and more from the anticolonial movement, which the USSR of course supported but which was still a separate thing. The fall of USSR certainly didn't make anticolonialism go away.
> anticolonial movement, which the USSR of course supported
A bit ironic, considering that USSR was a colonial superpower. Unless, of course, someone is sufficiently naive to believe that everyone who was ruled from Moscow has volunteered for it.
An imperial superpower, to be sure, but where did they actually colonize?
Ah, good point, I guess it only counts as a colony if it is separated by a sea?
Has to be both geographically separated and separately administered, I think, but the geographic separation doesn't have to be maritime. Just conquering and annexing a place doesn't count.
This doesn't explain most Latin American countries: they were settler colonies like the US, and European colonists and later European immigrants are the majority ancestry. In most Latin American countries there is more native ancestry than in the US, but not the majority. So they have no reason to think of colonists as an enemy.
The Latin American left has traditionally appealed very strongly to the anticolonial narratives, if one has read, for instance, Eduardo Galeano.
My perception, which could very well be wrong, is that the percentage of native population who were massacred in South America is significantly less than those in North America, and that due to this South American societies are both more evenly mixed than USA | Canada and also tend to think of themselves less as being on the side of the Colonizer/Settler.
I think you're right, but this doesn't prevent people resenting abuse and low status.
Latin America was rather brutally colonized and there are really significant tensions between more native and more European groups.
> inequality between Israelis and Palestinians is the highest in the world
This isn't really true. Israeli to Palestinian GDP per Capita ratio is something like ten to one. Which isn't much higher than US to Mexico (7 to 1) and is much lower than other cases where you have first world countries next to developing countries (Singapore/Indonesia and south/north Korea are both over 20 to 1).
Economic inequality wasn't specified in the original wording. Inequality could also mean that one population is under martial law while another is under civilian law, or that one population belongs to a state even outside the lawful borders of the state while the other is stateless in their own lands, right next to the first one.
Both situations, as far as I'm aware of, are the case in the West Bank and vanishingly rare (if existent at all) outside of Palestine.
I partially buy your analysis, mostly for developing countries. Keep in mind though that the USSR turned against Israel before the power differential was that clear, so it is probably mostly just geopolitics. The left vs right thing may also be to a large degree coalitions and associations politics - Muslims feel related to Palestinians, and leftist to Muslim minorities in their countries.
Also, cringy as I feel when writing that, it is hard to deny the historical creativity of (post-)Christian societies in finding reasons to hate the jews. Reasons that are often valid, but get suspicious amounts of attention. small sample: we are filthy Capitalists and also communists, xenophobs and globalist elites, killed Jesus if you love him, and raised him if you don't. So how surprised should we be if we hear "jews are oriental and do not belong in Europe" and 2 generations later "jews are white invaders in Palestine"
Hating Israel sounds like the worst confounder ever in the history of confounders for testing whether someone hates Jews.
>>>> Ok anon, we want to test whether you hate a group of people for no reason, so here's a country that perpetrated an Ethnic Cleansing on the year of its founding one human lifetime ago, one that has never stopped killing mostly-women-and-children civilians since then, and whose armed forces personnel post TikToks of themselves gloating about it. Quick: Do you hate the group that form 70-75% of said country's population? [Y/N]
If I want to test whether someone hates Jews (and if I want to do so sincerely), I'm not going to ask or care about Israel in the same way that if I want to test whether someone hates Muslims I'm not going to ask or care about Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Trying to portray anti-Israel views as anti-Jewish sounds like betting, like you are so sure that someone (hates|loves) Jews or (hates|loves) Israel that think tying one to the other will give you an advantage (make people hate Jews by proxy of their hate of Israel, or make people hate Israel by proxy of their hate of Jews, or vice versa for the love case). I do actually believe people are doing that (first among them are Israelis themselves), but I also see no reason to fall into the trap myself or even accept the premise at all, however implicitly.
Jews don't have magical superpowers, do they? If I put a Jew in charge of a company that failed every year for 100 years, he or she is probably not going to make it succeed, especially if other people had tried before. That's not anti-Jewish, that's just the 2 premises: that human ethnicities aren't vastly different in abilities and/or predispositions on average, and that God doesn't exist. The concept of the nation state has been a violent and genocidal concept since its very inception, and every single nation state that I can think of right now has committed one form or another of mass murder and/or mass enslavement and/or mass violations of human rights in some way or another. Nation states are, much more than corporations, the original paperclip optimizers: no matter who you put in charge or how much you try to instill values in their alien institutional "brains", they're going to trade human dignity and life for paperclips every time. Putting Jews in charge of a state won't magically fix this. And noticing that the country with Jews in charge is every bit as genocidal as the ones without (and more, most nation states are older and their more genocidal phase was in an era without much mass media) isn't anti-Jewish.
Let me clarify my position: I agree that not all, and probably not most, of the anti-israelis are anti-semites - and that it is often claimed insincerely. I think that your anti-israeliness is probably the result of someone else's antisemiticly motivated reasoning and cherry picking, rather than your own.
I also agree that there are many other factors distinguishing Israel except for its Judaism. We may argue about your description, but I see why it is possible perspective. I just think that jews were always exceptional, and there was always a fact-based negative view of them to be formed if one so wish - and people often did.
The fact that I try to explain is not your own opposition to Israel, but the massive attention that the reasons to this opposition get, relative to the many worse things that happen in the world (as you said, there are many other evil nation states. And I expect you to agree that Gaza is not the most large scale or most clear cut case of genocide around)
"Hey, at least we aren't killing as many people as some other 3rd world basket cases" seems like a pretty low bar. Is that *really* the standard that Isreal wants to be judged by?
Israel wants to be judged against the other small countries in the world surrounded by hostile neighbors who want them wiped off of the face of the earth by any means necessary.
No. We want to be better than the US, and better than EU. Unfortunately, we are not in the same strategic situation, and have harder choices to make. And personally, I want the bar for 3rd world countries to be higher. Otherwise, it is racism of low expectations.
I broadly agree with most of this, and I agree that facts and arguments can be weaponized even if true, and I agree that Arabs did their fair share of inciting to Genocide and did Ethnic Cleansing on the same scale as the Nakba (if a bit temporally diffuse across decades, not that this matters), I try to push back against hateful rhetoric in my social circle as much as possible within the "controversy budget" I find myself having.
I also think it's a good idea for a heated debate/thread to begin by both parties saying that they don't want the innocent civilians of the other party to suffer (and - of course - admitting that there *are* innocent civilians on the other side in the first place). This helps in establishing a common ground of "No matter how much we disagree, I don't want your people dead and neither you mine", which significantly calms down things. It might be cringe, but all rituals are cringe at first, then they become invisible and anyone *not* doing them would be cringe.
Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does get more attention, and maybe some of the attention might be anti-Semitism, but it can also be explained by (1) Abundance of media (2) Unwavering US support to Israel, unprecedented with any other human-rights-violating country except possibly Saudi Arabia (3) Homogeneity of Israel and the blurriness of Judaism as a component in its formation (religion? ethnicity? national identity? pseudo-legal source of jurisdiction?).
Point (1) is doing most of the heavy work, and it can be explained by the long history of the conflict. There are songs about the conflict that you would sing along with as contemporary until you hear about a "Vietnam" or an "Imperialism" in the lyrics and then find out the song is from the 1970s. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a stable bubble of discord that keeps being red no matter how much the world around it turns blue. Exact same phrasing from the 1960s and the 1970s and the 1980s and the 1990s and the 2000s and the 2010s can be transported as-is to describe the current state. The only comparable territorial disputes I can think of that have a history this long is China-Taiwan and India-Pakistan, and both of them are "intra" conflicts with both populations having comparable history in the land, unlike Israel which is perceived to be foreign and European because its founders are indeed foreign and European and until now is indeed full of Polish and Russian names. This, while not straightforward Colonialism, is dangerously close to it with many common markers, witness also how many Israelis in street interviews say things like "In the Middle East, kindness is perceived as weakness", which implies that they feel they're not of "The Middle East", they look at themselves as a piece of Europe transplanted into the Middle East (and they're kinda resentful about it?). This is not present in any of the other 2 conflicts.
>The only comparable territorial disputes I can think of that have a history this long is China-Taiwan and India-Pakistan, ...
Perhaps also Greece v Turkey and some of the Balkan conflicts?
( I suspect that there are more in areas of the world that I'm not familiar with and that get less western press coverage. )
It is great to that you began with the agreements, and that you clarified your position against killing or transferring my family. Other anti Israelis add sometimes ambiguous about it...
About the reasons for hyper-attention:
1. I did not understand.
2. Is plausible if we only discuss American attention, and attention in countries that look for more reasons to hate America.
3. I don't understand what the supposed homogeneity of Israel has to do with it. Is this a typo? (The blurriness is frustrating for us Israelis too, but it's the inevitable result of Zionism being a fuzzy coalition rather than a single doctrine)
I agree with some of your points about colonialism but not with others, but don't want to mix the object level discussion with the meta discussion about antisemitism etc. On the meta level - as I said, there are many special reasons to hate Israel in particular, but also many reasons to hate France in particular, or Indonesia, etc. We are special, and are sins are specia l- but not especially evil.
Do you have ideas about what would be good tests for prejudice?
I don't know. Prejudice is a very large spectrum, and it tends to hide behind reasonable facades. People might be prejudiced without them knowing so, and since all humans suck there is always a wealth of reasons to hate a group of humans.
There are some obvious markers like Conspiracy Theories and inter-personal prejudice, which are a dead giveaway of Prejudice and Racism. But other than that Prejudice can hide itself very well, even to the person it resides inside.
Scott wrote a great article on IRB's in science in 2014. Universities go way beyond what the the federal government requires, which is silly enough. And universities take 50% of grants as overhead. Are there any universities which do science like Hillsdale does humanities, intelligently with minimum administration adn overhead? Could somebody start one? I bet it would be easier to lure top scientists away with lack of bureaucracy than with high salaries.
https://www.rasmusen.org/rasmapedia/index.php?title=Best_Articles_2021#.282.29_.22My_IRB_Nightmare.2C.22_Scott_Alexander.2C_SlateStarCodex_blog_.28Sept._2014.29
That's basically what Arc Institute, Arena Bioworks, and a few other places, are doing. (Arena will take 30% and keep it for profit, which is better than 50%, but this will still be the lowest overhead in Boston/Cambridge).
The Space Science Institute is another example, I think. https://www.spacescience.org/index.php
Thanks. There's definitely an opportunity both for social good and massive profit.
Do we know when we're getting the resolutions for the 2023 predictions? Specifically for the ones who are still open on Metaculus (https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/2023-contest/). It's been already two months and if another month and a bit passes they will count for another leaderboard, which is not ideal.
I hope to post tournament results today.
All the questions are resolved on Manifold, so may be a Metaculus issue? https://manifold.markets/ACXBot?tab=questions
Scott has previously said that his write-up is in progress but may take some time.
Tbh, it doesn't seem like the questions should've been resolved on Manifold either. Their description says "Market will resolve according to Scott Alexander’s judgment, as given through future posts on Astral Codex Ten", but moderators went ahead and just resolved them?
I'm a Manifold moderator and can confirm that we do generally resolve things early when there's enough certainty about the outcome. (I didn't personally resolve any of these though.)
In the article https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/openais-planning-for-agi-and-beyond , Scott discussed a statement by OpenAI on their future safety plans. In particular, that statement mentioned a clause from the OpenAI charter saying:
> We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions. Therefore, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project. We will work out specifics in case-by-case agreements, but a typical triggering condition might be “a better-than-even chance of success in the next two years.”
Scott then asked to set some reminders to check back in March 2024 whether these plans for specific triggering conditions of the merge-and-assist clause went anywhere.
As far as I can tell after some internet search, there was no public announcement of such firmer commitments by OpenAI. There have been several further statements on their safety plans, including the Superalignment Team, Frontier Model Forum and Voluntary AI commitments (July 2023), but no improvements on the merge-and-assist mechanism (see their blog
https://openai.com/blog?topics=safety-alignment
for more safety statements and projects).
In fact, in December 2023 the company VERSES (whose Chief Science Officer is Karl Friston) published an open letter in which they announced having a pathway to AGI and asking OpenAI to trigger the above clause in their charter:
https://www.verses.ai/open-letter
Some discussion on the VERSES letter in the OpenAI Developers forum:
https://community.openai.com/t/verses-declares-path-to-agi-now-what/572636
As best as I can tell, there has been no reply from OpenAI to VERSES.
I am curious if other people also did some research and maybe found some more statements from OpenAI on the assist clause.
AGI in 2 years seems pretty incredible. If they aren't being taken seriously enough, it would be interesting for them to release a demo/video of their product, because that would basically (I'm assuming) force Open AI to pay attention. Seems curious they haven't done that if their approach will yield AGI in 2 years and no one is listening to them (or if they have released something like this, I'd love a link!). Their system must be pretty capable already if it will be at AGI level in 2 years.
Wonder if anyone external has actually seen their system/full approach yet.
Their flagship project seems to be GENIUS, a platform focussed on providing AI agents:
https://www.verses.ai/genius
According to their roadmap, this platform will be in private beta soon, but only have a public beta towards Summer/Fall 2024. So it might still be some time before people can try their hands on their product. I agree that if their work is really so promising for leading to AGI within 2 years, one would expect that they could already show some impressive capabilities now.
There seems to already have been a research beta - this article claims it began last year in October https://finance.yahoo.com/news/verses-ai-surpasses-1-500-132800682.html. But I suppose we'll have to wait for the private beta to get more information. Would be more than a little surprised if their system is capable of what they claim and we still haven't heard private beta participant's saying so or having visible proof. Either way, a very interesting story to follow!
As I prepare to not vote in the next Irish referendum on something stupid in the constitution being replaced by something even stupider, I am confirmed in my bias - unique to myself in this country - that constitutions are largely useless pieces of paper and you can organise a society perfectly well without one.
For all its faults, and despite being the home of my eternal racial enemies, I have to admit that the U.K. gets on perfectly fine without a formal constitution and remains a relatively free and relatively prosperous country.
Meanwhile North Korea has and the Soviet Union had constitutions, the Soviet one guaranteeing absolute freedom of speech, decide amongst yourself if that worked or not.
Constitutions are either the dictatorship of the past upon the present subject to the whims of unelected justices - often leading to an effective krytocracy - or worse, the legislature uses referenda to not govern, or legislate, and which without getting into the specifics in Ireland that’s the case with the specific amendment here.
I feel the same about initiatives in US States as well. I’ve elected you to govern - don’t ask me to legislate.
So is it time for one last referendum or constitutional convention or whatever is needed in your country - to get rid of the constitution?
Ideally a Constitution is *only* about the structure & function of the government itself.
AIUI, the US Constitution is notably short compared to other countries', mostly because there are a lot of topics in the others that are just handled as normal law in the US.
It sometimes appears easier for other countries to amend their Constitution than for Congress to pass a law in the US, implying that laws elsewhere are even more ephemeral and at least partly explaining the increased appetite for amendments to attain an adequate degree of persistence.
I'm only reading about the issue right now, but it seems to me that the main problem with your constitution is not that it exists but that it contains a whole bunch of crap that shouldn't be there. The clauses in question here should not be in a constitution. The whole Article 41 of the constitution shouldn't be there. From a quick scroll-through neither should articles 42, 43, or 45 or most of 44. I can't be bothered reading the rest.
A constitution should set out the basic operating system of the country; when the elections are held, how judges are appointed, and so forth. It shouldn't go round attempting to codify particular policy directions that seem like a good idea at the time.
Yes. I would have voted to remove that paragraph and lots more, if that were an option.
The UK does have a constitution though, it just isn’t codified. And it has only been able to get by with this system because it has a very long history of stable government and tradition. So that system can’t easily be transferred to another place.
(1) I don't think the original wording in the Constitution is stupid; I think it's been ignored and downgraded because "oh who wants to be a stuffy old trad Cath housewife with four kids instead of working on a factory floor or in an office like a high-flyer in New York?" is the image here, instead of recognising the "emotional labour" and support that women in families give to society. It's funny that we now have a term such as "emotional labour" and that the very people complaining about sexist. out-dated language will also probably be throwing such terms about themselves when they write their little opinion pieces for the Irish Times and the Irish Independent
(2) I do intend to vote this Friday so I can vote "no" in both referenda. I don't expect it to make a straw's worth of difference, mind you, as our betters and the great and good have decided for the grubby masses that this is what we are going to do. But I at least want to be able to wear the t-shirt "Don't blame me, I voted no" when the chickens come home to roost.
Here commenceth the rant:
The absolute bollocks the pro-yes side are spouting about "grandparents raising grandkids, those are families, and they're not recognised in the Constitution until we pass this change". There's plenty of ways to recognise "grandparents taking care of their grandchildren" as families, we do it already when deciding custody and guardianship cases, and if it isn't already catered for in law, then pass laws about it, Leo.
The examples all given are blood relationships via family:
"Mr Varadkar explained the Government would be holding votes on two of the recommended changes, but not the third.
“In relation to the family, our Constitution will continue to explicitly protect both the family and the institution of marriage,” he said.
“We’re proposing wording, however, that acknowledges that families may also be founded on lasting relationships other than marriage. For example, the family headed by a lone parent or a family headed by a grandparents or guardian."
I've seen other quotes that extended that to aunts/uncles taking care of children of siblings. So, what's the problem there? Well, they're talking out of both sides of their mouth: we are going to protect marriage, but we're also extending this beyond marriage.
What are "durable relationships"? There's no definition, so that's going to be left up to the courts. It'll be no good saying "no, we meant people who lived together for ten years and have two kids, not that guy you shacked up with last week" because there's nothing there to say one is excluded and one is included.
There's a ton about single/lone parents, and I'm not too impressed. We now have both divorce and same-sex marriage, so a lot of the previous barriers have gone. "Oh, we want to get married but his wife won't divorce him/we want to get married but we're two women" - well, now you can, congratulations!
So what is stopping you?
Unfortunately, this story is paywalled, but the introduction should give the gist of it:
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/referendums/other-families-have-a-marriage-licence-so-they-get-help-and-we-dont-cork-mum-calls-for-yes-vote-in-family-referendum/a1656482699.html
"A Cork mother and her partner of 12 years are advocating for a Yes vote for “durable relationships” in this week’s referendum, as they “don’t feel recognised by the State as a family”.
Louise Murphy and her partner James Langan, who live together in Cobh, Co Cork, with their two children, said they are no different from their married neighbours and yet they “don’t get help”."
What's stopping you from getting married, Louise? You can have a civil marriage registered and recognised for the cost of €200 for the licence and however much for the local council office to solemnise it. You don't need a religious ceremony, you don't need to splash out thousands on a big wedding.
https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/birth-family-relationships/getting-married/civil-marriage-ceremony/
If they're living together for twelve years, you'd think they could find six months to sort that out. And I'm damn sure Louise is getting children's allowance for her two kids, like other families.
I'm not a parent. How unfair that she gets money just for having kids, and I don't! Yes, I *could* have had children had I wanted, but I didn't. So I should get legal right to children's allowance too!
Nobody would believe that, but Lil' Ms "I can't get off my backside for long enough to go down to the courthouse" is claiming she is so terribly, terribly, oppressed because she's not legally married. You don't have to marry if you don't want to marry, but you can't expect to get the same benefits then, no more than I can expect to get the same money as you because you have kids and I don't.
Yeah, so, end of rant. I'm voting "no" and I fully expect the shiny new wording in the Constitution to mean feck-all when push comes to shove: oh, you *thought* we'd invest money in care services? Sorry, we only said we'd "strive" to do that!
https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/carers-in-the-referendum-6313920-Mar2024/
Reading about this at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2024_Irish_constitutional_referendums it has the feel of an attempt to increase and entrench sex equality. Sounds commendable, but if Ireland's birth rate is below replacement level then maybe diluting the relative status and legal privileges of the traditional family, just to be trendy, is not the smartest move!
Perhaps it is also a recognition that in these days of soaring property and energy prices etc, a family with children can't have a decent lifestyle without both parents working, and it will allow advantageous tax status for married couples to be more readily degraded in future.
I wonder if the whole thing was prompted by some EU-wide policy. If so then you'd think they had learned their lesson by now after the Brexit referendum! :-)
Oh, no, this was the fruit of our Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality established in 2019 and meeting from 2020-2021..
So the Citizens' Assembly is supposed to be a random sampling of the Irish public, called together by our parliament, in order to have Big Brain Thinky-Thinks on Burning Issues Of The Day. In 2019 our government decided this would be Gender Equality; the new Assembly is going to be On Drugs (not that they are on drugs, but that they will be Thinking About Drugs, Drug Abuse, Laws and all the rest of it. Well, maybe some of them will be on drugs, too).
I have no idea exactly how they're selected since I never heard of anyone I know getting an invitation to participate, and I have a feeling the selection process will lean towards the activist type (not deliberately, just that they're the most likely to respond 'yes please I want to participate' and be able to arrange to attend all the Assembly meetings).
Anyway, this is what our Representative Voices Of The Irish People allegedly called for once the shindig was done:
https://citizensassembly.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/report-of-the-citizens-assembly-on-gender-equality.pdf
You'll notice all the recommendations on spending money (equal pay, paying carers and so forth) are *not* what is being voted on in the two referenda, I have a feeling there also that this was steered in the "for the love of God don't commit us to spending any money" direction as well by all the advisory and steering and government committees 'supervising' the Assembly.
So we're getting gender-neutral language and durable relationships to make us all modern and egalitarian, huzzah! A victory for deliberative democracy!
Since, in the Chair's summing up of the report, the Assembly has no actual power to make anything happen, I have no idea what its purpose is meant to be, apart from the government of the day throwing a bone to lobbyists about "yeah sure definitely we'll take advice from The People and get the Views of The People on that one, no problem" about things they want (or more importantly, don't want) to do:
"However, after much discussion, we agreed that it was not the job of the Assembly to draft legislation or design detailed policy. Instead, the recommendations are concentrated on what the citizens want to see changed/introduced/removed. It is up to the Government and the legislature, if they decide to follow the recommendations, to turn them into the appropriate measures, whether in the wording of a referendum or a legislative act or the formulation of a policy decision."
But we will all be delighted to know that the Assembly members, representing the Plain People of Ireland remember, are willing to pay more taxes to fund all these improvements:
"In order to respond to this part of the Oireachtas resolution, I felt it was important to test the willingness of members to take account of the possible need for increased public funding in deciding their recommendations. We had several discussions on the concept of a statement by the Assembly on their willingness to pay higher taxes. Citizens stressed the need for greater efficiency in public spending, and for reprioritisation between current spending and revenue raising to be explored before tax increases are envisaged. However, 95.6% supported a clear statement indicating they are prepared to support and pay ‘higher taxes, based on the principle of ability to pay, to make a reality of Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality 88 our recommendations.’ To my mind, this statement lends considerable credibility to the recommendations of the Assembly and underlines the strong wish of members to see changes in key areas, such as in the pay and conditions of carers and the move to a publicly funded and regulated childcare system."
So if the government does hike taxes, it can point the finger at the Assembly: look, they told us to do it!
Mucking around with the Constitution to make it gender-neutral language doesn't cost them a penny but lets them claim credit for being socially progressive, while things about "paid care in nursing homes" - ah well now, things like that, sure you couldn't expect us, the government, to be making laws on that, but we have the Assembly views right enough!
I didn’t want to specifically get into a discussion here about that change but you are absolutely right about Louise and James , they want the benefits in law of a legal partnership without signing a contract saying they are in a legal partnership. Morons.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that she's angling for a move into social housing, or if already in social housing, to get moved to a better estate. A court case over "I am being discriminated against because we're cohabiting, the new referendum says we're the same as married" is next in line.
Let's just say I saw a lot of gaming the system when working in social housing, e.g. one couple with six kids, steadfastly *not* getting married because they did better as single people, kids lived with mam, dad lived on his own but put in for a bigger house because he needed to have room for when the kids stayed with him. No reason at all they couldn't marry (he was working) but it worked out better for them economically if she claimed as a single mother and he wasn't living with them.
I'm betting the same is going on with Louise and James there, they'd lose benefits if they got married. But they want the same rights, while dodging the same responsibilities.
I'd laugh if, ironically, after the referendum is passed, the changes were "okay, you are no longer single parents, you are de facto married because you're in a durable relationship, so we're taking all income into account, tax, etc. and treating you just like a married couple" and they lost their best of both worlds.
My thoughts on this:
The idea that constitutions shouldn’t be carried over from the past is not new: Jefferson said as much in 1789 (https://www.colorado.edu/herbst/sites/default/files/attached-files/nov_2_-_constitution.pdf), and in fact that’s a debate you learn about in introductory political science classes: do governments have the legitimacy to bind people from the future?
As for the uselessness of constitutions… as far as anybody’s concerned, the UK actually has a constitution. It‘s not written down as such, so it could be changed like any other law, plus or minus the strength of precedent, and perhaps this is a good way to do things, but that’s not exactly the same as not having a constitution and everyone actually being okay with changing the governance structure of the country every time it benefits anyone. Having a written constitution, with stricter standards for amendments than a mere law, makes it more difficult to simply show up and pass a law that this country is now a dictatorship and you’re under arrest :-)
Still, a written constitution does have disadvantages, mostly in giving more power to judges (relevant link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00057m8).
But there are massive debates as to what should go in the constitution: maybe "democracy and liberalism" should indeed be constitutionally protected, but should abortion rights be constitutionally protected? Should the right to a decent standard of living be so protected? (Relevant link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1013691208701)
And that’s without noticing that constitutions, even to the extent that they only focus on how the government should be run and what it should do, don’t cover everything: so, currently, most countries have an "unwritten constitution" of sorts in addition to the main one (eg., few constitutions say that there should be political parties, and yet they are there anyway and are very important to how the government works) (relevant link: https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/unilllr2013&div=58&id=&page=)
In the US, the constitutional protections on right to free speech, right to free religion, right to bear arms, right against unusual search and seizure, etc, have very often been used in court cases to strike down laws trying to infringe these things. I don't think the US is 100% perfect on any of these counts, but it seems better than most other countries (eg Europe bans speech in ways that the US Supreme Court would strike down immediately), and the Constitution definitely makes these things better (because we know that politicians have tried to pass laws violating them, and these have been stricken down by SCOTUS on constitutional grounds).
I don't know why the US constitution works so much better than other countries' constitutions. Maybe other countries' courts don't feel as comfortable striking things down on constitutional grounds? Or they started getting their case law later, when people already cared less about these things?
>(eg Europe bans speech in ways that the US Supreme Court would strike down immediately)
The US Supreme Court has historically allowed restrictions on free speech that go way beyond the hate speech laws anywhere in the EU. The reason you don't see politicians trying that now is not due to a change in the Constitution, but because of subtler and more illegible changes in the cultural perception of what American identity means.
I'm a big fan of the First Amendment protection of speech. Coming back to the UK after 25 years in the USA, I am shocked at how cavalier my government is with anti-speech laws and I am horrified when the police show up at someone's house because of a Tweet they didn't like. The right to assemble is nice too but my country seems pretty tolerant of assembly anyway. We were intolerant of religion for a long time but we are very tolerant about it now; no constitutional amendment required.
Other parts of the Bill of Rights are cool but it seems to me that they could just as well be laws passed by Congress — except Amendments 9 and 10 which are largely ignored anyway. The only bits of the constitution that seem essential are the bits that define the relationship between the federal government and the States.
Many of the later amendments — like prohibition— just seem to be random popular opinions that have nothing to do with running a country or are intended to fix earlier constitutional rules that should not have been there in the first place.
The separation of powers is a disaster IMO. The elected government should be in charge.
How does the US constitution work better? There is all kinds of dysfunction in the design of the US government that can be observed even in current affairs, eg that a small group of people in the House can block the border legislation that their own party wanted or the Ukraine aid even though there is no doubt a majority for it. Not to speak of the Electoral College.
I mean the First Amendment is great but any constitution could have such a provision.
Being able to block new laws easily is a feature, not a bug.
I have a notion that the founders made the constitution hard to change, but they didn't realize they were making it almost impossible to change.
The US constitution isn't very hard to change, all it takes is a consensus between both major political parties that a particular change is desirable. And I don't think you'd want to change the rules of the game without the consent of both major players.
America does free speech better a certain extent but maybe add:
“ Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, *or allow private actors to materially abridge freedom of speech*”
And that’s the constitution. Maybe a few other bits.
> Maybe other countries' courts don't feel as comfortable striking things down on constitutional grounds?
Yes, that’s true in Ireland. Without getting into a debate about the actual referendum here it does add “or other durable relationship” to the protection of marriage in the constitution. Constitutional lawyers and even Supreme Court justices have been keen to emphasise that they are not going to create any new law from this, nor overthrow existing laws, nor go against cultural norms. In other words they are not going to treat polygamy or polyamory as a durable relationship - at least that’s implied - they don’t specifically mention either. Great, then why bother?
Once you realise that the constitution doesn’t need to protect marriage at all and we could have gotten rid of the entire passage without any loss - no laws would be affected - you realise that most of the Irish constitution is redundant and probably that’s true of most constitutions.
"Constitutional lawyers and even Supreme Court justices have been keen to emphasise that they are not going to create any new law from this, nor overthrow existing laws, nor go against cultural norms."
And I believe that the way I believe in Gemini's diverse leprechauns. We got same-sex marriage through a combination of the Zeitgeist had changed sufficiently for it not to be political suicide to support it, and the years-long case wending through the courts by the Canadian lesbians:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zappone_v._Revenue_Commissioners
Well, to be factual, the marriage was Canadian, the lesbians were American and Irish, respectively.
Poly, whether -gamy or -amory, is probably still a step too far, but the guff about "protecting marriage" is bullshit. They're expanding the definition of family beyond "based on marriage" and recognising "durable relationships", without any detail as to what a "durable relationship" is. Our Cork lady above fully expects to be treated the same as married, even though she can't be bothered to get married, after this passes. The second a case goes to court over inheritance, tax, or other matters, the judges will be creating new law and going against cultural norms.
EDIT: This is personal spite on my part, but Ms. Zappone, after upturning Irish society, then scuttled back to Amerikay once she lost her plum government job, went working for Joe Biden's presidential election campaign, then lobbied our government for a new plum job to be specially created for her, but when push came to shove "as a U.S. citizen she could not be compelled" to attend for questioning. So she was as Irish as Paddy's pig when it came to claiming her 'rights', and then when it suited better, she was Uncle Sam's favourite niece:
"Following the loss of her seat at the 2020 Irish general election, Zappone moved back to Seattle to work as a full-time volunteer for Joe Biden's presidential campaign in the 2020 United States presidential election, then to New York.
Controversy over appointment as "Special Envoy"
In July 2021, it was announced that Zappone was to be appointed to the newly created position of "Special Envoy to the UN for Freedom of Opinion and Expression". It subsequently emerged that the proposed appointment had not been flagged in advance of the Cabinet meeting where it was proposed by Minister Simon Coveney, raising the concerns of the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin. However, he did not block the appointment, attracting criticism from within government, the opposition and the public, with Sinn Féin describing the appointment as "cronyism".
In the following days it was reported that Zappone had lobbied for the creation of and appointment to the part-time position, which was not openly advertised or subject to a competition. Further controversy arose when it was reported that shortly prior to the announcement of her appointment, Zappone had hosted a party for 50 guests, including politicians such as Leo Varadkar, at the Merrion Hotel, while the COVID-19 pandemic in the Republic of Ireland was ongoing. Comparisons were made between the party and the Golfgate scandal from earlier in the pandemic. On 4 August 2021, Zappone announced that she would not take up the envoy role, saying "While I am honoured to have been appointed by the Government to be the Special Envoy on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, it is clear that criticism of the appointment process has impacted the legitimacy of the role itself. It is my conviction that a Special Envoy role can only be of real value to Ireland and to the global community if the appointment is acceptable to all parties."
In September 2021, she was invited to appear before the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, but chose not to attend. As a US citizen and resident, the committee had no power to compel her attendance."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Zappone_controversy
I’m no specialist of either the US or European countries’ constitutions, but I don’t get why you say the US’s works better? I works quite well, but the reason why free speech is less protected elsewhere is because other countries’ constitutions have decided it should be less protected? (While often also deciding that the president should be elected directly rather than through an electoral college — now who has the better system?). Personally, I think free speech should be as protected in Europe as in America, but not everyone agrees. And there probably should be some debates on what the EU courts allow or not: even though individual countries tend to disagree, the EU claims its legislation trumps countries’ legislation and constitutions, and yet European citizens don’t seem to care much about what influence they can have on European institutions.
The lack of control British citizens had over laws imposed on Britain by the EU was a major argument made in favour of Brexit. There are a substantial number of people who do care about how much influence they have on European institutions.
True. But what I mostly wanted to point to as "something I’d expect/want to happen but don’t really see" is closer to the following: since EU law is basically equivalent in power to national law, maybe we could vote in European elections, or learn about how European institutions work? No one seems to give a damn! Or, closer to what you say, maybe we could complain that European institutions aren’t democratic enough / aren’t working very well, and figure out how they could be improved. And yet we don’t do much of that. Instead, and as you mention, we only see people having that understandable gut feeling that there’s something rotten in the kingdom of Brussels and just getting mad about it — although often with political consequences at the national level. Political activists are very good at using EU power for their own ends, but it doesn’t feel like EU institutions are an actual part of the government I, as a European citizen, am subject to/can appeal to/other stuff one does with one’s government? Come to think of it, it makes sense: they have little to no legitimacy as "our government" the way eg the US Federal government or the Swiss government or what have you has, and yet they have clearly established their power, so it‘s probably not surprising that they’re used gladly by anyone who sees politics as a strategy board game, while still being seen as some aloof power we don’t routinely engage with by regular people. I doubt that‘s a good thing.
Works at what? German and Austrian speech laws are intended to prevent a revival of Nazism, and they haven't had a revival of Nazism. The US, on th other hand, has Nazis. If you don't want Nazis, the US is the one doing it wrong.
Nazis in the US are a rounding error. When Nazis hold a rally, usually less than 100 people show.
Out of a nation of 300,000,000 it seems like the US is doing a perfectly fine job of preventing the revival of Nazism.
I don't care whether the US has Nazis or not, so long as there's no prospect of their gaining power. Mission accomplished!
Germany and Austria both have significant Neo-Nazi movements.
Indeed. https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/you-cant-censor-away-extremism-or
I believe Germany also has Nazis, but the restrictions on what they may say presumably slows them down.
I don’t think we should be looking to Germany for pointers on free speech. That said I’m also ok with preserving democracy, so I would he happy to a temporary curtailment on free speech or political parties if there’s a definite threat to democracy.
This is something that constitutions hinder rather than help.
There are maybe three or four philosophers per century who make a difference in the world. Meanwhile, there are thousands and thousands of philosophers churning out philosophy papers.
What are those papers for? Who reads them? What are philosophers for?
https://raggedclown.substack.com/p/what-are-philosophers-for
I would argue that philosophy as a discipline is similar to alchemy. It produced a lot of great insights and was a critical step along the way to our modern understanding of the world (which itself is only a step to something yet greater); yet by now, it has been superseded by other disciplines which do not share its shaky foundations and appalling lack of intellectual rigor.
That's a good way to think about it.
The university I went to only let you study philosophy in conjunction with another subject. You couldn't just study philosophy on its own like you could most subjects (this is the UK where most degrees are 'single honours' in one subject). I remember being told that it was because there was a feeling that philosophy needed to be studied alongside something to apply it to.
I'm studying philosophy at university in the UK. We have to study other stuff as well.
FWIW Cambridge lets you study 100% philosophy while Oxford requires you to study it with something else.
Yes, I was at Oxford - at the time I very got much the impression that they wanted you study the 'philosophy of something' and although the joint degrees included 'general' philosophy they were also very much geared to the accompanying subject.
The four philosophers who 'make a difference' read them, and read papers influenced by people who read them.
Every philosopher you've heard of was in conversation with a dozen philosophers you haven't heard of, and every one of them was in conversation with dozens more. Philosophers don't come up with their ideas in a vacuum.
Now, probably most philosophy papers are never read by anyone other than maybe the person grading them. Most papers and most students of philosophy will not have any impact on anything. But the rare philosopher who "makes a difference" couldn't exist without the institution of Philosophy. (Does that mean academic philosophy is the best of all possible institutions? No.)
> Every philosopher you've heard of was in conversation with a dozen philosophers you haven't heard of
I thought it was all footnotes on plato.
Good point!
I have (appropriately) outsourced my thoughts on this matter to the great philosopher David Stove, who says that the point of having professional philosophers is to save normal people from the trouble of doing philosophy on their own https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/whyhave.html
> There are philosophers who have thought longer and better about the two-slit experiment than physicists have.
Previously, philosophers have spent millennia contemplating the nature of reality, and yet "the probability of an experimental outcome is the square of the absolute value of a complex amplitude" was *not* among the many possible answers they proposed.
Which suggests that even the "generate thousand different answers, one of them will be right in retrospect, and then you can brag about how philosophers already knew it all" strategy is not reliable, if the answer turns out to be more complicated than "everything is water... actually no, everything is fire".
...Oh. I thought he was joking, but he really meant it.
I don't know why people think thinking about something for a long time is going to magically get you closer to the truth. And if everyone is going to philosophize on their own anyways, that makes it even dumber to actually pay people to do it.
That was excellent, thank you!
I love this line:
> In a non-totalitarian society, then, philosophy will be done, and the only remaining practical question is how, or by whom, this is likely to be done best.
I am not convinced though that philosophers of medicine think more about the ethics of medicine (or more usefully) than professors of medicine. Same deal with philosophers of science.
PS. I want to make a distinction between philosophy and philosophers. Philosophy has great utility and teaches good habits of thinking. I am a fan. Philosophers though? I'm not sure if employing all those philosophers is worthwhile.
Maybe philosophers of X don't think about it better than practitioners of X, but they've been thinking about it for longer, and they've already thoroughly mapped out the space of answers to possible questions and put labels on every possible position. A practitioner of X who starts thinking about philosophical questions can open a book, find his position already has a name and has been debated ad nauseum, and close the book satisfied that the territory he's been exploring has already been thoroughly mapped.
I think you are right that philosophers are more likely to have thought about a problem from every direction. That's a good skill to have and many people — experts, even — seem unable to do that.
Same thing goes for 90% of all scientists out there, in every field. It's mostly BS dressed up with credentials. There's obviously some important progress going on but you could cut down the bottom 90% of academia without any measurable change in the world around us.
I disagree, there's a lot of science going on out there that's not sexy or interesting or penetrable to outsiders but winds up being very important.
The whole field of materials science, for instance, is composed of unsexy but ultimately important papers. Each individual paper measuring some random property of some random material is likely to appear very boring, and yet it's the foundation on which so much other technological advancement is built. Nobody gave a crap about the conductivity properties of doped silicon until suddenly it became very important.
Agreed! Similarly with looking for new synthetic reactions in organic chemistry. No one cares very much about being able to add functional group X without disturbing functional group Y - until one needs that capability to e.g. synthesize a new pharmaceutical.
There's an element of luck in science and an element of needing freedom from gruntwork. For those reasons, I don't think it's quite fair to say that the 90% who aren't super productive are just doing BS work. The way I'd phrase it is that they're filling in the bulk of a very right-skewed distribution. A few folks get outlier results, but I don't think that would be possible without the rest of the distribution being filled in by less productive and brilliant researchers.
I'm OK with 90% of everything being crud. It seems worse than that in philosophy though.
I'm not as sure about science-- a good bit of it is collecting the information needed to build the important theories.
I've described problems in a few different fields as being "too many wanna-be-Keplers, not enough Brahes".
Philosophy is brute-force search for the truth without a good feedback mechanism. When everyone inquires in every possible direction, some people stumble into true stuff. Too bad we are not good at noticing when it actually happens.
Current implied probabilities for US presidential election, Betfair/Polymarket/Metaculus/Manifold (percentages, nearest whole number):
Trump: 47/54/50/48
Biden: 28/32/45/47
Obama: 8/5/1/1
Newsom: 4/3/1/0
Harris: 3/2/2/1
Haley: 3/1/1/0
Kennedy: 3/3/1/1
Since I last posted about this, the gap between Betfair and Polymarket on Trump has narrowed slightly, which is good to see, but the difference is still surprisingly large. One person now holds 28% of the Trump "Yes" shares on Polymarket, which means they have now bet over $1m. Biden continues to be much lower in real money markets than other prediction sites; one side must be wrong.
Betfair continues (IMO) to overvalue the outsider candidates, which probably represents small-odds bias, i.e. the difficulty of taking large "no" positions at long odds on an event 8-10 months in the future. This appears true to a lesser extent for Polymarket, which is probably because their market claims "supports negative risk (convert No shares to Yes of the other options)". For example, only 311 "no" shares seem to exist for Harris, despite there being 2,968,743 "yes" shares. Assuming this has actually been implemented correctly, it's a clever idea. It's worth noting that this means the bet totals are inaccurate: IIUC much less than $3m has been bet on Harris for example.
Now:
Trump: 48/54/52/50
Biden: 31/33/45/45
Obama: 3/3/1/1
Newsom: 5/3/1/1
Harris: 3/2/1/1
Haley: 2/1/1/0
Kennedy: 3/3/1/1
Super Tuesday seems to have been good for Trump, despite Haley's surprise win in Vermont. It was either good (Betfair, Polymarket), neutral (Metaculus) or bad (Manifold) for Biden.
Most surprisingly, it was very bad for Michelle Obama, who had been holding steady at 7-8% on Betfair for the past three weeks, but suddenly collapsed to 3%. Possibly the mere occurance of Super Tuesday attracts market participants who expect the candidate to be chosen according the primary votes. Or is it possible that some market participants were surprised to discover that she is not running?
Interesting thanks. I've only been betting 'fake' money on manifold. (Mostly on the long shots which I think are under valued.) I think one of the outsiders will have a shot because... Biden will have to drop out.
One unrelated point, I wish I could put down fractional limit orders on manifold. I want to bet say Dean Phillips (yes) at 0.2% but the min is 1%. I hope they change that.
Can you explain why there's an Obama option in your list? The chance of Obama being the president for a third term should be zero because it would be illegal and there's absolutely no indication that he would be interested in a third term.
Perhaps at some point between now and November, 2/3rds of Congress and 3/4ths of state legislatures will amend the Constitution to allow Presidents to serve more than two terms.
Some people are hinting strongly at "how about ditching Joe and running Michelle Obama, who is a black woman without Kamala's baggage, and would have the good vibes of Barack's time in office to woo the voters?"
https://www.theweek.in/voices/columns/ajish-p-joy/2024/03/01/is-michelle-obama-the-one-to-beat-donald-trump.html
https://nypost.com/2024/03/01/opinion/dont-count-michelle-obama-out-for-2024-her-whole-life-has-been-political/
ETA: It seems far-fetched to me and I myself have bet against her, but this is the story behind the numbers.
It's Michelle Obama, not Barack. And yes, given that she has never expressed any interest in running having her at 8 or 5% seems absurd, but that's what the numbers say.
The premise was that if the Dem leadership could persuade Biden to step aside, then Michelle Obama would be drafted.
But that's a big if.
It's a big "then" too. There's a lot of other Democrats who want it to be them, or failing that, someone who owes them favours.
Weird question: a while ago, I went to see a therapist because my executive function was/is terrible and I suspected ADHD. After the therapist had dug into it, it appeared that actually I don’t have ADHD, just ASD, which also involve some executive dysfunction (which is probably made worse by eg. my low self-confidence, etc., I guess). So, I have ASD, I’m fine with that, but now my therapist says "maybe you should consider getting ADHD stimulants, those might help with your executive function".
She’s probably right, at least it makes some kind of sense, but… I can’t just go to a psychiatrist, diagnosis in hand, saying "here it says I don’t have ADHD, now gimme the ADHD drugs anyway, pretty please?", and expect it to work! Or can I? Even assuming that I can: I’ve never seen a comparison of the various kinds of stimulants there are, from Adderall to weird nootropics to very very strong coffee. Anyone has good sources on what works best / what has the best "effects on executive function : difficulty of getting it and magnitude of side effects" ratio?
I thought I had ADHD many years ago. I went to a clinic at the local university and was told that my attention issues are downstream of depression and anxiety. That made sense as I was very depressed and anxious at the time, and I could see how those conditions affected my attention and caused misery w/r/t motivation.
After years of therapy, drugs, and whatnot, I'm much less depressed and anxious now. But I continue to struggle with motivation, especially at work. The couples therapist I see with my wife recommended that I get a neuropsych test to rule in/out ADHD. So I got on the (8 month) waitlist for a neuropsych test.
Meanwhile, I started seeing a psych NP to go over my meds. As she took my history, she noted that I pretty clearly have ADHD and she'd be happy to prescribe something. I mentioned that I was waiting on a neuropsych test and didn't yet want to start a stimulant.
Then I had the neuropsych test, which showed a relative deficiency in categorizing and contextualizing new information. The neuropsych doc was unwilling to diagnose ADHD because, despite my present distress and experiences, she didn't see the basis for it in my youth.
I shared with my psych NP the neuropsych doc's conclusions and report. The psych NP was not bothered by the conflicting diagnosis and declined to defer to the neuropsych doc. So I got some Vyvanse, first 20mg, then 30.
It changed my life. For about two months, I took Vyvanse every weekday. It crushed my appetite and gave me the runs. But work became stupidly easy. I could just sit and write a memo without having to negotiate with myself.
About a month ago, I started intentionally skipping doses, just to see what would happen. Now, when I'm unmedicated, I experience the struggle with motivation, but during the two months of consistent use, I learned to not be so afraid of "lack of motivation." To be clear, lacking motivation sucks because you have to "make yourself do things." But the other thing that sucks is being afraid of the lack of motivation, and that fear is simply not necessary. (It's like the "two arrows" parable in Buddhism.)
More info than you asked for. I guess the takeaway is that you need to find the right person with a prescription pad.
Psychologist here. What’s happening that leads you to call your executive functioning terrible? If it is mostly procrastination and inability to get yourself to do things you want and need to get done, it may be more accurate to think of it as demand avoidance. (Means you recoil from *having to* do something. Very common in people on the autistic spectrum)
What you call "demand avoidance" sounds like it might be what I call "the wall." I sit at my desk to do work, and it feels like I have to scale a very high wall before I can start the work. There is no wall separating me from internet distraction, so I take the path of least resistance...
Hey, I didn’t know that! That’s definitely a part of it, but not the whole thing, though?
I definitely avoid stuff like "write cover letter for application to master’s degree", "apply to internships", or even "work on writing down the stuff I found in my research". That’s demand avoidance! (Some things are easier to do: it seems to have something to do with "when it’s a friend/acquaintance directly asking me to do X, I drop whatever else I was doing even if urgent, and do that for hours on end instead". But this matches my intuitive definition of what "demand avoidance" should be about, so that’s not surprising?)
But when I discuss my issues with my therapist, I usually see a broader kind of akrasia: the main narrative I’m exploring is something like "I have low confidence, so I don’t dare to do stuff, and end up doing boring things because I didn’t dare to actually give my brain work". I also see around me a lot of people — often with far less free time than me! — writing blogs, starting really cool projects, while I don’t: It’s again likely that I simply don’t dare to seriously consider that I could do it too, even when I intellectually know my best bet is to give it a try? :-(
Also worrying is the non-procrastination part of executive dysfunction: I often feel like I have trouble thinking, connecting ideas together, thinking in a strategic/goal oriented way rather than daydreaming. That, I simply cannot make sense of: I know a bunch of people with ADHD, it doesn’t make them brain-dead? Maaaayybe again something something understimulation and boredom?
And maybe I’m grossly exaggerating how terrible my EF is by comparing myself to very smart and driven people? (Many of whom openly have ADHD, though?).
I guess that’s why I started wondering about my therapist’s idea that I should take stimulants instead of just going to ask a doctor for the pills: surely, stimulants would only work on my ability to get things done, not on my confidence to try things in the first place or whatever. Maybe I just have two separate issues and they’re not both EF-related.
(Don’t necessarily feel too obligated to answer that, I’ve (as usual!) written a lot… But your answer was very useful!)
The set of problems you’re describing isn’t one where it makes sense to look for one Culprit, in the form of a diagnosis. There are too many easy-to-spot feedback loops involved — e.g., it’s pretty natural for someone who has trouble getting themselves to do stuff to have low self-confidence, and also for the causality to go in the other direction.
I think what you should do is look for interventions that target one trouble spot, and work hard on breaking up that part of the logjam, then see how things look — how many of the other problems remain if you make substantial progress on one. I’d say the most promising trouble spot to start with is akrasia. Look for CBT practitioners that mention that as a speciality of theirs (they might call it procrastination, stuckness, or some such, and they may call what they do something like behavioral activation).
Do you spend a lot of time online, and especially do you spend a lot of time gaming? Consider the possibility that online activities are interfering with your ability to invest fully in your non-online life. Even if you aren’t exactly *addicted* you may have developed a sort of reduced investment in the non-online world because the internet offers distraction, challenges, and the ability to switch activities whenever you feel like it. It will also distract your from your guilt and worry about things like not writing your cover letter for the application for your masters degree.
As for psychopharm: The trouble with adderall is that it makes most people feel energetic and optimistic. I am positive I do not have ADD, but I love the way adderall makes me feel, and take it very occasionally for fun, or to help me get a big project done. So if you take it and love the way you feel, you have not learned that what your brain needed all along was adderall — but you will probably want to keep taking it. So I wouldn’t recommend it as a first thing to try. (I doubt that it will be terribly hard to get, though, if you are determined to try it first.) If you want to go the psychopharm route I recommend googling “psychopharmacologist specialize in autistic spectrum disorders” and go see one of them. That’s likely to work out much better than generic psychopharm. If you are in a university town there will be some ASD specialists.
Oh, and about daydreaming: Introspect and maybe keep some notes on what you’re daydreaming about. They might tell you something about what what’s sapping your vitality. Could it be that you’re unmotivated to get your masters degree because you’re not enthusiastic about what you’re studying?
>"it makes most people feel energetic and optimistic."
That sounds better than not feeling energetic and optimistic. Is it just concern about side effects and/or tolerance that stops you from taking it more often? That would be entirely reasonable, but I wouldn't explain it in term of "not having ADHD."
I don't have side effects from it. If I take it in the morning and am reasonably physically active during the way I don't even have trouble sleeping that night. I avoid taking it more because of a general feeling that it's probably not good for me, and concern about becoming addicted to it. Also, it's easy to get a few from friends, but would be hard to get a regular script for -- I'd have to go to a doc and lie, and I don't like the idea of that.
This is similar to what I felt for a long time and Wellbutrin (bupropion) was extremely helpful to me. I think it's because not only does it have some of the stimulant effects of Adderall, etc. (albeit milder), but it also helped me feel more self esteem and general optimism. I still do things I did before, but I get less of the feeling of being "blocked" by self-defeating attitudes. I feel like my brain has "opened up" again in a way I haven't felt since my late teens -- I literally feel my cognitive pace moving faster and holding onto trains of thought longer.
I also generally enjoy things more, especially things I already enjoyed doing before in theory but generally felt too low energy to really do and feel totally engaged with. It's a very great feeling compared to the years of vague... inertia towards inaction? I had before :)
Of course pay attention to the people saying to avoid N=1 anecdotes, but if you're looking for something easier to get than stimulants, it's easy (in the US) to just tell your PCP "I'm depressed (even if you're not) and want to avoid low-libido side effects (even if you don't). Can I get on bupropion?" without having to jump through the controlled-substance hoops
They aren't ADHD drugs, they are stimulants.
Stimulants are used to treat some symptoms of ADHD.
To the extent that other disorders produce those same symptoms, it's standard practice to treat them with teh same stimulants.
You just say 'My therapist recommended stimulants to treat my symptoms of executive dysfunction stemming from ASD' and let them do whatever tests of execute dysfunction they want (if they even bother).
Good point
I'd recommend https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ and https://lorienpsych.com/2020/10/30/adderall/ and just looking at some studies.
Also, do not pay too much attention to anecdotes. E.g., one paper I looked at found that 50% of people were helped a lot by Adderall. I recently started taking Vyvanse (basically long-acting Adderall), and it doesn't really help me. There are no side effects, though. But obviously, my experience is worth much less than a study.
Also, ADHD is probably not "real." It's just being better or worse at executive function/ ability to concentrate (https://lorienpsych.com/2020/10/30/ontology-of-psychiatric-conditions-taxometrics/). So don't worry too much about whether you really have it or not.
Whether you can get stimulants for ASD, you should probably just ask your therapist if they think you can get a prescription; they probably know best.
Here's my personal (N=1) experience.
Adderall: makes me jittery, increased my resting heart rate to 80 (normally it's under 60), walking heart rate to 110 (normally its 85). This also decreases the quality of sleep, which has negative impact on your wellbeing. Helped to be more focused in general, didn't help to be more focused on actual work. Also numbs my emotions and makes it hard to connect with people.
Vyvanse: long-release version of Adderall (Scott had a post explaining this in better detail). Didn't make me as jittery as Adderall but otherwise same negative effects. Didn't help focus on actual work.
Modafinil: increases my heart rate but not as badly as Adderall. In my experience works better for actually forcing me to get work done. But if I take it more than once a week it starts impacting my short-term memory, so I try to take it rarely.
Cocaine: surprisingly works pretty well for productivity if you take a single dose in the morning. But all the usual caveats about addiction potential and health harms apply. If you don't have an unusually low potential for addiction, I wouldn't recommend trying it.
Xanax: makes me want to take a nap for an hour or two, afterwards working is a lot easier as it removes most anxiety. Unfortunately benzos have horrible side effects with long term use and apparently lots of people get addicted to them, so likewise a poor long term option.
Phenibut: recommended on the ACX survey. I've tried 500mg and 1g doses, didn't feel much of a productivity boost. But apparently it does work for some people.
Rhodiola Rosea: didn't feel much of an effect.
Phenylpiracetam: best productivity nootropic I've tried so far. Does increase my heart rate but not as badly as Adderall or Modafinil. Helps me focus but doesn't blunt emotions. Based off my research taking it twice a week is acceptable health-wise. Biggest downside is that it's a somewhat obscure Russian drug with poor research on long-term health impacts.
Things I haven't tried yet that apparently worked for some people: Noopept (another racetam), Semax, Ritalin, Bacopa Monnieri. You can get any of the above substances by ordering online, some can be ordered by credit card, some require Bitcoin/Monero.
Lots of my local doctors, both GP's and psychiatrists, told me over the phone that they don’t prescribe adderal, and that’s speaking as someone with a previous diagnosis who had an active prescription before moving. If anyone tells you adderal/Ritalin/etc. is akin to a strong cup of coffee, they’re straight up pulling your leg. Having experienced the side effects and after seeing how much effort it was gonna take to get another prescription, I’ve decided against it for now. Goddamn is it some good stuff though!
I don't know how atypical I am in this regard: Adderall doesn't make me feel good; I would even gag at the unpleasant chalkiness of the pills. Adderall makes me calm and less anxious. I wouldn't describe it as good stuff, it's just neutral. I continue to take it because it makes executive function at work merely challenging, as opposed to near heroically difficult when unmedicated.
Just to point out that I didn’t mean that adderral was anywhere near like coffee, just that caffeine is also a milder stimulants and maybe someone wants to say "coffee is enough for me", or "coffee is worse/better than adderral in those ways beyond just being a stronger substance". That’s partly bc adderral is both hard to get and has side effects that I’m curious about other things worth looking into
I would pay substantial money for something I could add to coffee to prevent me developing resistance to. Have you ever quit coffee for a while, then had it fresh? That stuff is goddamn miraculous.
Is the age of formal classroom schooling entering a long secular decline? And if so - apart from the growth of homeschooling - what could possibly replace it as the primary means by which society teaches its children? https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/teach-your-children-well
>what could possibly replace it
Epic Rap Battles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjqjoehA7kM
Seconded.
I predict nothing would change in schools within the next 30 years, unless of course we get AGI and all human knowledge will cease to have any economic value. Most of the pro- or anti- public school hysteria is among the "highly online" people, 90% of society doesn't care all that much.
We might see more private/charter schools thanks to school choice laws but fundamentally these private schools don't work all that different.
When both parents are at work, they need babysitting for their kids. Therefore, schools.
Smart people have many options other than being teachers. Even if some of them decide to be teachers, there are dozens of them, and the education system needs thousands of teachers. Therefore, schools that suck.
In some sense, "schools that suck" are our collective revealed preference. It's not that we literally want schools that suck -- it's just that anything else is considered too costly.
Private/charter schools seem to mostly work better because they can pick better kids. The same is probably true for alternative schools (Montessori, Waldorf, etc.) with the difference that they work better when they are new, so only the parents who are actively looking for something new send their kids there; once they become "normal" and normies start sending their kids there, they revert to the mean.
A recipe for a great school is probably the following: be very picky about which kids you accept, then hire the best teachers (you don't even have to pay them more, they will probably be happy to work with the best kids). Everything else is secondary; for example, you could give the kids lots of homework and they will handle it well, but if you don't give them any homework, they will turn out great, too. The obvious problem is that this recipe does not scale.
The next big story, likely to come out in 2-3 years is the thus far invisible collapse in public school effectiveness. Literacy levels, classroom order, as well as basic empathy/decency among children is so stunningly poor that anyone working outside of public schools can scarcely imagine it. Right now we have a situation of teachers sounding the alarm and no one listening because everyone hated school and claims that adults always complain about children, and no drastic global decline in focus, behavior, and performance is likely or possible.
Basic empathy and decency? I've heard, anecdotally, that kids are nicer and less mean than in days of yore. They definitely teach the Social Emotional.Learning, even if the academics are failing.
But it probably really values by school.
What do you think is causing this? Is it something about the schools, about the children/home environment, or both?
Arbituram touched on the major and most obvious reasons (selection effects for parents, Ipad kids, etc.) but in my experience it's the inexplicable collapse of punishment and reward systems at all levels of child rearing (which I've observed in schools all around the world!)
Students don't get kicked out of class and when they do they don't get sent to anyone with any power to punish, and then if they are punished they're simply sent home (which is often just using their iphone as they always do) and then soon enough they're right back in school exhibiting the same behaviours.
There has been a cultural shift, no doubt bound up with the shift away from having children in general, into a perverse kind of worship of children. They are simply never presented with real consequences, at home, at school, or in any other capacity they might start to bump up against the 'real world'. They do, sadly, get emotional and inconsistent outbursts of aggression from their parents, but that does not constitute good or 'strict' parenting.
For thousands of years, child rearing was founded upon the cruel, hard, rock of physical punishment. I'm no advocate of harsh physical punishment, but from all I've observed our society has a gaping physical punishment sized hole at its heart, because there is now simply nothing the 'teaching' class can do to control the millions of children to whom they are supposed to socialize and 'teach' for a generation of hopelessly screen-addicted parents.
The kids state this openly. They do whatever they want and don't study because they feel secure in the knowledge that nothing bad will happen as a result of this.
A good system is one that uses punishments rarely -- it is the *threat* of punishment that does most of the work. But when you ban the punishments (taking the "using punishments rarely" part to its extreme), the threats become empty.
As an analogy, I have never been in jail, but there are many rules that I follow, because the alternative is to pay a fine, the alternative to paying the fine is having my property taken away, and the punishment for resisting having my property taken away is jail. To avoid this entire sequence, I follow the rules (most of the time; and I pay the fine occasionally).
But imagine a system where there is no jail, and the fines are voluntary. I would probably still follow most of the rules, because I am a nice person, and many rules are about not hurting others, or about coordinating with them better. But sometimes I simply would not bother; I would stop paying taxes, and probably most things that require paperwork. And that's still me being a nice person; many people would go much further. (Then at some moment, some kind of vigilante "justice" would appear, or the criminal gangs would start managing "their" territories.)
There is the idea that you should discuss everything rationally with your kids. Which is nice... when possible. But often it's not. The kids are kids, which means that their capacity of rational thinking is evolving, just like their self-control, etc. Sometimes you just have to override their desires and say "no more chocolate today" or "put away your smartphones, now we are going to do math". And you better have a good response for when they say "no", because sooner or later it is going to happen.
I don't know what's causing it (I have extremely speculative hypotheses, at end) but at least in the UK it is pretty clear there's *something* going on with parents getting worse at parenting (1), and long term teachers reporting really bad absenteeism (2) and behaviour(3), particularly since COVID.
(1) A *quarter* of incoming reception (kindergarden) children aren't potty trained this year, a dramatic increase, and which was basically unheard of a generation ago outside of very special needs children.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/education/2024/feb/28/one-in-four-school-starters-in-england-and-wales-not-toilet-trained-say-teachers
(2) Absenteeism is way up. I know a lot of people here had bad experiences in school, and are pro homeschooling, but let's be clear here that most parents letting their children hang out at home are not providing (or even capable of providing) high quality education. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/mar/16/one-in-five-pupils-in-england-were-persistently-absent-in-past-school-year
(3) "Suspensions for physical assault, threatening behaviour and verbal abuse have increased, with even primary schoolchildren being defiant and refusing to follow simple classroom instructions, such as to get out their books."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/education/2023/oct/06/disruptive-behaviour-in-english-schools-worse-since-covid-says-outgoing-ofsted-head
Speculation time!
I've come to see the different articles on collapsing birth rates and collapsing childrearing schools as, effectively, the same trend; certainly in my social circles, almost no one I know has children (I have two, and that makes me the most fertile of my extended social group. I'm in my late 30s.)
If the people who should be having children (high conscientiousness) aren't, that leaves the impulsive and the religious people to have children, with behavioural outcomes we would expect.
Screens also make it easier to be a bad parent; I'm horrified by the number of prams I see with a phone or tablet strapped in front of the child like some kind of hypno device, and playing on that device is absolute muck, often not even human generated.
I do fear for the future sometimes.
Anecdotally, in our mixed-income Sacramento-area public school the biggest problem is that discipline is nonexistent. My children (5th and 8th grade) report that in some classes nearly no work gets done because students are verbally disruptive and they are apparently not allowed to send them to the principal's office at all (or they are simply sent right back). Since there are no consequences for misbehavior and no teacher ability (in these cases) to control the classroom, anarchy results.
These issues have gotten markedly worse since the post-Covid return. My sense is that simply investing the teachers with some of their previous authority would work wonders. However in the current climate this is unlikely to happen.
Here's one thing-- there was a fashion for "whole language" as a method of teaching reading for some 30 years.
Phonics seems to work for a majority of students. Whole word (visually recognizing the word rather than doing letters and sounds) works for some students.
Whole language is teaching the child to look at the first letter and *guess* and the rest of the word. It can appear to work with picture books and a lot of hand-holding by the teacher up to about the third grade, but it effectively produces illiterate people.
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/05/1096672803/reading-recovery-research-schools
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_language
John Taylor Gatto has a lot to say about Whole Language in "An Underground History of American Education", available here:
https://archive.org/details/JohnTaylorGattoTheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanEducationBook/mode/2up
A very interesting book.
In California there are 977 school districts each with its own school board and curriculum. Meanwhile there is this feeling of scarcity and competition and median house in California is 8.6 times family income. It seems like your kid needs to be uber successful in order to live the dream so parents are neurotic about their children's futures. Then schools really screwed up during the pandemic (In Europe they hardly closed schools), nearly all kids are addicted to tech, and schools are leaders in creating bureaucracy and group think while being culture war battlefields. It makes it seem like a shit show, but I doubt it is that bad.
For many years now, phonics and whole have both been used. They call this a blended approach. But right now phonics is really being pushed hard in the US. I seriously doubt the prescribed method of reading instruction has anything to do with a perceived decline in children and schools.
Why are there so many school districts? Is this the way it works in every state of the US?
Yes, pretty much. Primary education is administered at the local rather than state or federal level, usually funded by local property taxes. Just like each city or county has its own police department and fire department, they have their own K-12 schools. The State governments can set standards and provide support, but they don't have the bureaucratic infrastructure to exercise operational control of the schools directly.
Local school boards are democratically elected, and at a scale where individual votes matter and concerned citizens can expect to directly meet the candidates, which *should* result in the school districts being highly responsive to the parents' desire for well-educated children. Historically, that worked pretty well. But see elsewhere in this thread re: Parents These Days.
There were decades of teaching an especially bad method. Blended is probably best, especially if it's tweaked for the individual child rather than expecting all children to learn both ways.
Yes you'll find a lot on that - both in America and the UK - in https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/teach-your-children-well
There isn’t much literature on this, so I’m asking here: if you were on 150mg Wellbutrin and 60 mg buspirone, would you avoid nonalcoholic beer (defined as less than 0.5% ABV)?
All literature agrees you should avoid alcohol on these medications. Studies haven’t really been done on NA beers like Athletic Brewery which are increasingly popular. Any thoughts, inferences, or guidance is appreciated.
I think the alcohol + bupropion interaction is mentioned out of an extreme abundance of caution but probably won't matter for most people (reasoning: modern preparations of bupropion don't seem to increase seizure risk, alcohol doesn't cause seizures in most people, and I would expect this interaction to be linear-ish, plus sometimes people recommend bupropion as an alcoholism treatment and nobody worries about seizures!) The buspirone interaction is even weaker.
Based on this, I would say don't worry AT ALL about non-alcoholic beer.
I just started on wellbutrin for ADD and tried 2 drinks, and had a pretty bad night of sleeplessness, uneasy dreams, and heart racing. now that this has happened twice, I'm staying away from alcohol for a while. But I see on reddit other folks who do just fine with drinking.
None of this answers your question, I just wanted to vent out what I was going through. I can't imagine non-alcoholic beer would be a problem.
Thank you!
I used to read the Economist, but lately I have less time and can only get to "Politics this week". I like it a lot, but on its own it's not worth the subscription. Does anybody know of a good replacement? Something to tell me the important news from the recent week around the world, in very brief form?
They've got an app called "Espresso" which is basically this. It has a few minutes of reading a day, and four short articles a week. As a bonus, they've spun off their American political coverage into a separate app, which means I DON'T SEE IT!!! :-D
I used to read The Week which is exactly that. https://theweek.com/
I'm a fan of wikipedia current events: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
Provides more global news than most sources and links to the news article and the relevant Wikipedia article for context.
Proposition 1 adds additional criminal penalties to homelessness and nothing justifies that. The state has not shown a willingness to abide by restrictions it places on itself, so a promise to provide services in exchange for making certain things double illegal is really just a promise to make things double illegal.
Can you explain the additional penalties on homelessness? I haven't seen anything about them in most summaries of the proposition, eg https://lao.ca.gov/BallotAnalysis/Proposition?number=1&year=2024
Perhaps I misremembered. I may have confused it with an initiative to provide drug treatment but issue higher sentences for drug use if treatment was refused.
That's Prop F, a local SF proposition.
https://www.kqed.org/voterguide/sanfrancisco/proposition-f#:~:text=Proposition%20F%20would%20allow%20the,be%20evicted%20from%20city%20housing.
What does that have to do with homelessness?
The problems are commonly associated in people's minds, so I guess I associated them too.
I'm not sure this is a bad thing? Homeless people harassing passerby in California is a pretty big problem.
Pretty big in comparison to what? The punishment is wildly disproportionate.
Pretty big in comparison to all problems that exist in other first world countries, I guess?
Big enough that it should be the first thing on anyone's mind when deciding whether to live in, or to visit, California?
It doesn't bother me any, and I probably am around it more than you.
I'm sorry, no. "You can't walk down the street without getting harassed by crazy homeless people or walking over people doing drugs in public" is a pretty huge problem with living somewhere.
No? Get over it. Not everywhere can be a golf course.
What's the relevant punishment and case? On the margin I would prefer more enforcement on street people not harassing passers by. It depends on the details (general rule of thumb is that increasing consistency is better than severity) but I can't figure out what the punishment details are in this case.
For the local SF proposition that actually is doing this (Prop F), the proposal is that anyone who gets cash payments from the city (about 5,700 people total, separate from state welfare) will have them withheld if they are abusing substances and not in approved treatment.
That doesn't seem like the actual issue. Harassing passersby is thie same thing as using drugs and not being in approved treatment.
They're probably pretty correlated in practice though
I'm not sure what you mean; I am not trying to say that the proposed measure will do anything about harassing passersby. The actual proposition is just about mandating substance abuse treatment.
If people want more enforcement on harassing passersby, they'd want a different piece of legislation.
Can someone who knows the science please explain to me: Does IQ matter?
Many years ago I read Stephen Gouldings The Mismeasure of Man, where he says there have been many attempts to measure human intelligence on a straight line, and they have all been flawed. And that IQ is just one of the latest of these. He said IQ had been created to separate children needing special attention from other kids, and was not meant to be used for individuals.
But in recent years, there have been many people claiming IQ is important. The chief proponent I remember is Jordan Peterson who claims IQ is the main indicator of how much you will earn, and if your IQ is less than 80 even the US Army won't hire you. This 2nd claim got some criticism online and some people said it was a made up fact.
But I dont know enough about this field--how relevant is IQ? Is it really as important as many people are claiming it to be?
Stephen Jay Gould is misrepresenting science. You shouldn't trust him.
As a basic sanity check -- look at the people you know. Have you ever met someone who was quite dumb? Have you ever met someone who was quite smart? If your answer is "yes" to both, how likely it is that there is actually no such thing as intelligence?
People usually object by saying that there is no such thing as being generally intelligent, only having a specific talent. For example, Scott has a specific talent for writing; nothing more. Oh, he also has a specific talent for statistically evaluating scientific studies about medicine; what a coincidence! Also, he seems to know a lot of interesting facts about various topics, such as politics, prediction markets, artificial intelligence, economics, etc. (At this moment I start to suspect that he is also rich and has a harem of girls.) Would it be too unthinkable to suggest that perhaps Scott is... a smart guy, generally speaking?
Which doesn't mean that Scott is necessarily great at everything, of course. To be great at something requires also a lot of study and practice, and even the smartest people only have 24 hours a day, which limits the number of subjects they can study and practice. However, I assume that if you chose a subject at random, for example "French architecture of 12th century", and told Scott that he has 6 months to master the subject or he dies, he would probably do a quite good job, even if under normal circumstances he might never learn anything about this specific subject. He has the possibility of mastering many things, even if only a tiny fraction of this possibility actually becomes a reality.
There are also people who are the opposite of this, and if you told them they have 6 months to master something or they die, they simply would die, unable to do even a mediocre job.
And this all doesn't mean that people don't have their specific talents and weaknesses. It's just that it makes more sense to model the specific talents and weaknesses as something they have *on top* of their general intelligence. For example, "dyscalculia" doesn't simply mean that someone sucks at math. It means that someone sucks at math *surprisingly*, considering their general intelligence. For example, if someone is mentally retarded, it is not surprising if they also suck at math. It's when someone is generally smart, and then seemingly inexplicably fail at very simple math, that we diagnose them with "dyscalculia".
> there have been many attempts to measure human intelligence on a straight line, and they have all been flawed
There have been many flawed attempts to do *anything*. Does the existence of alchemy invalidate modern chemistry? Do the ancient philosophers speculating that everything is water make particle physics suspicious? The important question is whether the current answers are right or wrong. The fact that people in the past believed wrong things is, I guess, very frequent.
Gould compares craniometry to IQ testing. Well, craniometry is measuring the skull, and speculating on the impact on the mental skills. IQ testing is measuring the mental skills themselves. The difference is like reading one's horoscope and speculating on their personality type, versus giving them a personality test where you directly ask them how they behave and what they prefer.
> He said IQ had been created to separate children needing special attention from other kids, and was not meant to be used for individuals.
Yes, historically the first use of IQ tests was to determine which kids are ready for school. They measured which 6 years old kids were mentally comparable to other average 6 years old kids, which ones were below that level (and might benefit from starting the school a year later), and which ones were above that level.
Then it turned out that the kids who significantly mentally exceeded their peers at the age of 6, usually continued to exceed their peers for the rest of their lives. And therefore psychologists started to measure the IQ of adults, too.
It doesn't matter what the test was originally meant for. Science is the process of gradually figuring things out, rather than coming with the right answers from the start. Also, the original IQ tests had many obvious flaws (for example they also measured the fluency of English language and familiarity with American culture), and yes, the scientists have noticed these flaws and tried to eliminate them, which is why the modern IQ tests contain the abstract patterns instead.
> But in recent years, there have been many people claiming IQ is important.
It's more like, people always knew that being smart is often an advantage. Then it became a taboo to say that. Now people are pushing back against the taboo. It's not like Jordan Peterson invented any of this stuff; he is merely saying what psychologists who study IQ have been saying all the time.
> how relevant is IQ? Is it really as important as many people are claiming it to be?
That depends on what exactly which people are claiming. IQ is quite important, but it is also possible to make exaggerated claims. There are statistics about how IQ is linked to income, crime, educational success, etc.
As I see it, higher IQ allows you to handle greater complexity, and thus it "unlocks" for you certain topics that would otherwise remain inaccessible. (For example, if you have IQ 100, you probably shouldn't study quantum physics, because it will turn out to be too difficult for you.) It also helps you learn faster.
But of course intelligence isn't everything. To succeed at life, you also need emotional balance, social skills, financial support, and good luck. Even highly intelligent people can be sabotaged by depression, autism, poverty, bad luck, racism, sexism, random bullying, etc. High intelligence is a necessary -- but not sufficient -- condition for intellectual success.
Here, a cheap target for the opponents is to point at Mensa, which selects for people with IQ over 130, but also seems to unintentionally select for various kinds of dysfunction, simply because the more functional smart people will find a better use for their time than sitting at the Mensa meetings. So, yes, one can point at Mensa and laugh. But if you removed the self-selection aspect -- if you simply took all kids in one city and measured their IQs and then traced their life outcomes, then I believe that the kids with IQ over 130 would turn out to be more successful on average (and most of them would never join Mensa).
This is how I understand it: An IQ test score is to intelligence what a 100-meter sprint time is to athleticism. If you run a good time, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll also be good at boxing. Or pole vaulting. But it indicates a physical fitness that could translate. And good 100-meter runners are typically better at pole vaulting and boxing than those who sprint poorly.
Among the brave few who objectively study human intelligence, it appears many of them prefer a measure called G-Factor, which can be measured in tests such as the Stanford-Binet. Nevertheless G still closely correlates to IQ. And both correlate strongly to overall life success but to me that’s not surprising in a world predominantly shaped by people who excel at tasks related to these measures to reward people of the same type.
As a side, I don’t think there’s any brand of discrimination more problematic, widespread, and less recognized than discrimination against the less intelligent. I think this problem becomes increasingly relevant as advances in AI could potentially transform the most brilliant people on earth into relative idiots.
As someone who considers himself to already be in the dumber half of the population, I’ve considered the idea of forming an advocacy group for the self-determination of stupid people, but I can’t land on a strategy for filling the leadership positions.
IQ isn't a true underlying trait of a person, it's a score on a test. It's an imperfect measure of some underlying trait of the person, which is "ability to answer the sorts of questions you get on IQ tests".
This turns out to be heavily correlated with the ability to do a lot of other things. If someone has a high IQ score then you can reasonably predict they're pretty good at all other mental things; if someone has a low IQ score you can reasonably predict that they're pretty bad at all other mental things. Sometimes these predictions will be wrong. That's about all you can say about it.
I'd suggest starting with Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns by the American Psychological Association. It's a short read.
I think this is a neat way to visualize the IQ and salary data: https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1763312772408807823 . This doesn't prove that IQ causes the salary, but since variance in adult IQ is mostly genetic I think the causation is most likely that direction (although you could come up with various galaxy-brained ways around it).
I've heard a lot of bad things about Gould (see eg https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BahoNzY2pzSeM2Dtk/beware-of-stephen-j-gould ) and wouldn't really trust him.
Nassim Taleb argues that it's basically useless on the upper end except as a measure of ability to sit still and take a test. He does say that it's very useful for spotting learning difficulties.
At the upper end it's not much use for the same reason that any other noisy measurement is. If you try to use an IQ test to identify the top 10% of the population you'll do pretty well, if you try to use it to identify the top 0.1% of the population you'll do a bad job, mostly getting a random sample of the top couple of percent.
Remember what the IQ test actually measures -- the ability to solve a particular bunch of puzzles at a particular time on a particular day. Anyone who has ever done particularly well or particularly badly on a test should be able to understand that there's going to be a reasonable degree of natural variation from test to test.
https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2019/09/replies-to-taleb/
Yeah that’s what Stephen Goulding said as well- because the person who created the IQ test did it to separate special needs children. Which is why I’m surprised why it’s come back into fashion
His name wasn't "Goulding", and he was extremely unreliable, so one shouldn't be surprised that reality is at odds with his claims.
It does matter if what you are measuring is the kind of intelligence that IQ measures. This isn’t a put down - while IQ is a proxy for intelligence and not the an actual thing there is plenty of evidence that it correlates strongly with academic and life success. Gould is generally assumed to be political here, he was a Marxist.
IQ and intelligence are not affected by genetics alone however, so don’t take the endorsement of IQ to be an endorsement of someone like Richard Lynn.
>Gould is generally assumed to be political here, he was a Marxist.
_Groan_.
I was trying to avoid being political, which is why I avoided mentioning the racist history of IQ testing, and the political beliefs of those pushing for it
Ok. Well Scott presented a link to Gould’s flaws anyway - it would be hard to separate his views from his opinion on IQ anyway.
Groan, indeed.
Do you want an actual answer here or not? Are you arguing in bad faith?
It’s pertinent that Gould might have been affected by his political beliefs on this, and by bringing him up you are implicitly bringing his politics into it. If you don’t want an answer here, except one that confirms your original proposition, why post.
I suppose he wanted an object level argument instead of meta-level ad hominem.
A friend who is a little further left than I am but who I trust a lot has shared her picks for California ballot:
U.S. Senate: Katie Porter
Representative, CA district 12: Lateefah Simon
State Senate District 7: Jesse Arreguin
State Assembly District 14: Buffy Wicks
Alameda County Board of Supervisors District 5: John Bauters
Superior Court of Alameda County Office 12: Michael Johnson
Proposition 1: No
Alameda County Measure A: Yes
Alameda County Measure B: Yes
Oakland Measure D: Yes
I might just copy her answers unless someone here makes a good argument against.
I'll make an argument for Steve Garvey for Senate. If it's Porter vs Schiff, then Democrats end up spending tens of millions more dollars on a general election that doesn't matter. If it's Democrat vs Steve Garvey then the Democratic candidate wins anyway.
Unless you strongly prefer one Democratic candidate vs the other, it's better to vote for Garvey.
Also I'd still argue you're better off voting for Schiff. While he will likely vote exactly the same way as Porter as a Senator he is slightly more economically literate (or at least, his public person is more economically literate than hers). For instance, Porter has been all in on the corporate greed theory of inflation, while Schiff has acknowledge supply chain disruptions and restrictive housing policy.
I would never, ever, ever, vote for Jesse Arreguin for any office. His NIMBY nonsense not only slowed down perfectly reasonable housing from being built in Berkeley, but also cost the city a huge amount of money in legal fees, all for a quixotic quest the city attorneys told him he was bound to lose.
I did not consider him an acceptable mayor of Berkeley, I sure as hell won’t vote for him for higher office.
Is there a better candidate though?
I was also very upset and disappointed with Arreguin's NIMBY nonsense early in his tenure. My impression though is that he has come around on this, if not to a fully YIMBY position, at least far enough pro-housing that Berkeley has been permitting new housing at the fastest rate in decades https://www.berkeleyside.org/2023/07/25/berkeley-housing-boom-construction. So I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that his early NIMBYism was more a way to cater to the notoriously NIMBY Berkeley homeowners than a personal conviction, and that he's legitimately changed course on this.
I mostly agree with your friend's answers, but I would look into voting for Schiff instead of Porter. Since you are less left than your friend, his politics are probably closer to yours. Also he's a much more experienced and IMO more effective legislator than Porter.
It's also worth thinking about the strategic voting option of voting for Garvey. Not to actually support him, but since he has no chance of winning in November, a vote for him is basically a vote for having a low stakes Senate election between him and either Schiff or Porter (probably Schiff). Whereas if the general election ends up being Schiff vs Porter we'll have to be subjected to many months of tiresome Dem infighting.
Schiff built his career on warmongering and xenophobic conspiracy theories
If this is your belief, you should probably vote for Barbara Lee. She has by far the strongest anti-war credentials with her lone vote against use of military force in Afghanistan. And I'm not sure what you mean by xenophobic conspiracy theories but this sounds like something she is also very much against.
Edit: Also, for anyone else reading, this is the sort of Dem infighting that you'll get less of if the general election is D vs R instead of D vs D.
Question for libertarian and libertarian-adjacent readers: What laws or parts of government would you want to take down first?
I would pretty much legalize all drugs (except antibiotics!). We could collect some tax dollars and cut off an enormous source of funding for some of the most destructive people in the world. The harm reduced by moving the supply chain into the hands of regulated businesses instead of anonymous sociopaths would likely outweigh the harm caused by widespread availability. Retail prices for many drugs would also fall by orders of magnitude because the production cost is dwarfed by the cost of having everyone involved in the distribution network risking life and liberty every step of the way, which would prevent non-wealthy heavy drug users having to choose between keeping up their habit and paying the rent.
For every 10 people on Social Security or Medicare that die, the 9 oldest people not yet eligible become so.
They're the deepest holes we're still actively digging, but a sudden stop could be catastrophic. Putting them on a gradual trajectory to evaporate takes care of both prongs.
Does this *intentionally* incentivize SS-age people to scurry around murdering each other?? This should totally be the plot of a book.
That is not a point I'd considered.
I also considered shifting eligibility from a fixed age to a percentile (e.g., eldest X%) with X dwindling over time, but rejected it for complexity of implementation; I suppose that would also create a similar incentive.
Yeah, honestly I think the best you can do is try to instill some cultural movement towards radical independence / taking one for the team / when it's your time, you choose to go out on the ice floe or whatever.
Essentially NOBODY wants to "Who By Slow Decay" the last decade or two of their lives - yet huge amounts of people do, due to inertia, or "family" or simple ignorance of safe, effective suicide methods.
There ought to be *some* solution to that that preserves dignity and independence in old age, where you can voluntarily check out before you enter the "slow decay" stage, but I'm not sure any country in the world has got this right so far.
Inuit and Russians don't count in my book - ice-floeing yourself to death isn't a thing any more, and that or drinking yourself to death (the Russian male method) are both absolutely terrible deaths, and no other society that I know of does this at an appreciable scale.
>Essentially NOBODY wants to "Who By Slow Decay"
Agreed (though I'm sure there is an exception somewhere)
>the last decade or two of their lives
With the exception of the horror of Alzheimer's and (some?) of the other dementias, many people are able to get enjoyment from their lives up to a lot closer to their deaths than 10-20 years.
I've read that roughly half of deaths are "expected" - the result of some illness with a reasonably predictable course. And, yes, the endgame of most fatal illnesses are pretty miserable. From family members that I've outlived, I'd guess that typically the period that, with perfect information, one would want to skip, would be months to a year.
Does anyone have better information? One can't expect a neat graph of "fraction of time spent with negative quality of life" vs "fraction of population"... Is there some plausible surrogate?
>With the exception of the horror of Alzheimer's and (some?) of the other dementias
Yeah, I was specifically thinking of dementia and mental degradation - even if we solved the biggest hurdle and safe, effective suicide methods were widely known and available, if your mental capacities decay enough, you're not going to be able to avail yourself of them, legally or practically. But your body can just keep trucking along for decades after that point, especially if you're in a directly adversarial environment designed to prop up and sustain your shambling corpse as long as possible to juice monthly money out of it. Hello, nursing homes!
I've always wanted a Lickert scale on drugs across a large and representative sample - something like this should be in Cochrane reviews, but it's not. We should have a similar Lickert scale for medical conditions, and we could aggregate across time to at least broadly infer the info you're looking for. Too bad it's not a standard practice anywhere.
Abolish all victimless crimes
If you're talking about literally removing parts of the government, then I think I'd start with the BATF, the DEA, and the TSA. To the extent that we need government involvement in those things, it should mostly be at a lower level and the limited requirement for direct Federal enforcement should be reduced to a scale that the FBI can handle in its spare time.
More controversial, and requiring more thought, would be doing away with the EPA and the NLRB, and their state equivalents. I think the ideal state would require *some* level of legally-mandated environmental protection, but if the choices are "none at all" vs "everything we've got now plus everything that's going to be enacted in the next ten years", I might actually go with "none at all".
And on the taxation front, I'm open to replacing what we've got with either a flat income tax above a certain floor, or a national property tax. But not to overall tax cuts, until the current national debt has been at least mostly paid off.
But I'm really not a big fan of all-or-nothing solutions if there's any reasonable alternative. On the environmental front, for example, I want the reasonable middle ground and not unchecked "Drill, baby, drill!" So, less taking down parts of the government, and more reforming or restricting them.
It's been a long time since I thought about this, but the BATF had a very bad reputation, and it seemed like the best thing to do would be to eliminate it entirely, fire everyone involved, and fold any necessary responsibilities into other agencies. There didn't seem to be any principled reason for the feds to have their own enforcement arm (goon squad) for what should be state matters.
The existence of the national government. But I decided I was really a decentralist rather than a libertarian years ago.
I consider myself ex-libertarian. But it's decades of cruft that I'm sloughing off. Weight my comment as you will.
Much like the practical personal financial advice that tells you, "no, you will not return to a sustainable household budget by eliminating Starbucks", I think libertarians (and everyone else) has to squarely deal with the fact that our arrangement of ultra-popular entitlements, aka The Welfare State, is unsustainable. Raising FICA taxes (Medicare and Social Security contributions) is a must.
That said, libertarians (the sane fraction) pride themselves on finding win-win solutions...IOW, eliminating dead-weight loss where something that the government does both retards economic growth AND mechanically diminishes government revenues.
One classic solution is to "broaden the base" of taxpayers by letting in more working-age immigrants. (With more taxpayers, everyone's burden could be lower.)
Here are some other ideas I retain from my libertarian days:
- The Fedgov should not own huge tracts of land, e.g. owning 80+% of Nevada. Auction it
- Most labor regulation is at minimum gratuitous, could better be handled by states, and probably radically retards economic growth. Deregulate the labor market just by sending it to the states.
- The Department of Education. We didn't have one until 1979. Is education better than it was in 1979? Permit me to seek medical attention that I should avoid literally dying of laughter.
- Many other federal departments: Commerce, FTC, FEC, SBA. We can kill these. These are just change in the couch cushions but it's important to pare back the administrative state or you get self-crowning tyrants like Lina Khan who just destroy liberty and national wealth through a haughty wave of their Yale-Law-School educated fingers.
I'm rambling here, so let me quit. But the truth is that we need a top-to-bottom accounting from something like Jimmy Carter's Zero-based-budgeting or Ronald Reagan's Grace Commission. The skyrocketing federal debt is a national security issue second only to the rise of China.
Nancy, let's hang out the next time I'm in Philly!
Medical care is a huge topic, and the US bad-lucked into a remarkably inefficient way of supplying it. I'm not sure what pieces should be taken down first.
Yes, let's. Let me know when you're going to be in town.
Medical care is enormous.
While I'm sure I don't have a complete answer, I think I have a good idea where to start. Physicians in the US earn twice as much in compensation as doctors in the second-best paid country. That's a glaring problem. While I'd be open to persuasion, I think it's indefensible.
I think we should import more doctors (from countries whose medical education systems are up to snuff) until wages equalize. This could also help ameliorate local doctor shortages in the US.
Technology changes, society changes with it, and government must follow suit. Back in ye olde 1600s, the military didn't have an Air Force, yet today it does. Education used to be a luxury (most people could get by with what they learned on the farm), yet today it is a necessity (even on the farm). Commerce used to be local and conducted in cash, but today it is global and conducted using a variety of computation-mediated financial instruments. Science used to be the province of rich eccentrics, today it is the long-term driver of the economy. Medicine is a lot trickier than leeches and turpentine. What I'm saying is that I don't mind having extra departments, as long as they work well. If they are working poorly, they may need to be rebuilt or consolidated into one smaller department, of course.
I would automatically issue Green Cards to graduates of the 500 best engineering schools in the world. Land use, nuclear, labor law, etc, are nice to reform, but getting the best engineering minds in the world should be our biggest priority.
Welfare. All the parts that exist only to take money from someone's pocket and put it in someone else's.
I would replace all taxes with a single "flat fee" membership model.
The average federal income tax payment is $13k. Do you want to replace that system with... everyone paying $13k? Presumably anyone who can't afford that (and I certainly couldn't have for the first 6 years of paying my taxes) is out of the "membership model". Do you deport them to Mexico or what?
I'm in Australia so it would probably be Papua New Guinea for us. But they could move to any country that would take them, we'd just make a deal with PNG. But they could go to any country that's willing to take them, they just can't stay here.
In the US, Mexico would seem like fair play turnabout.
The thing is that as the number of people incapable of supporting themselves decreased, that $13K would decrease as well.
>they just can't stay here
Setting aside any other question about this proposal, do you really see this as _libertarian_? To my ear, this sounds like a large increase in government force, not a decrease.
This would have the same consequences as the most brutal ethnic cleansing, even at its most efficient. Do you think that's more sustainable than an expensive welfare state?
This is in no way ethnic.
Ultimately this is what I'd do, it's not what's politically feasible. People won't vote for it in any existing country. But if a new country were to pop up that used this as a founding principle, then that country would become incredibly wealthy. Perhaps it's something to think about for future space colonies.
I doubt it. The problem is, your tax is most punishing to the least productive sectors. Low productivity is often stubborn like in the construction sector: difficult to automate (like manufacturing), not possible to decouple from the constraints of the physical realm (like software), lack of economics of scale and cost reductions through learning.
In your hypothetical society, productivity gains are free meaning that the chronically low-productivity industries will over time make up an increasingly large proportion of the tax base.
Then your society will degenerate in one of the following ways:
1. The alternative place where you get deported if you can't pay the flat fee is horrible: in this case workers in low productivity industries will work for scraps in order to avoid deportation. You get a caste society where AI-enhanced megabrains enslave destitute peons. This is no longer a libertarian society as it basically forces people into contracts which they would not enter without coercion.
2. The alternative place is decent: you get turbo-charged Baumol's disease. Most of the low productivity sector workers just leave, constraining supply. Prices for goods and services from these industries will go through the roof. You have AI-enhanced megabrains who can't afford housing. This is no longer a wealthy society.
I'd like to see the fourth amendment taken more seriously. We seem to be trampling all over our individual 'rights' in the name of making us all more safe or something.
I'd institute a flat income tax, eliminate all deductions and credits, and fire 90% of the IRS' staff. I'd also institute a UBI that could only be used for approved types of expenses (housing, food, medical care, child care), and every adult would get the same UBI payment each month regardless of their income.
I'd abolish the Veterans Administration, sell off all it's assets, and give veterans vouchers to spend on private sector health care providers. The VA is one of the most wasteful, corrupt, and inefficient of all federal agencies.
I'd drive a stake through the heart of needless occupational licensing laws.
OK the problem with a flat tax is what you define as 'income'. Are capital gains income?
Yes, I would consider it income. However, for the purpose of taxation, monetary inflation would have to be taken into account when calculating the real capital gain.
Oh boy, I sell my house that I've owned for ~20 years... and now I've got to adjust the 'income' to account for 20 years of inflation. Sounds complicated.. and that is an easy example. I just think it's hard to calculate 'income' for someone who doesn't have the bulk of their income reported on a W-2.
Another change I'd make is to make something like TurboTax available for free, so you could easily do that kind of calculation.
My normal, boring answers would be land-use regulations and burdensome environmental reviews. The sort of "death by a thousand cuts" red tape that prevents modern economies from quickly building out necessary infrastructure. Particularly since the purported benefits of those regulations do not, IMO, outweigh the negatives.
I'm going to answer based on my own country and it's declared expenses (https://www.aft.gouv.fr/fr/argent-public) :
-Culture (2.6%)
-Housing subsidies (1.5%)
-"other" subsidies (2.6%)
-familiy subsidies (4.1%)
That's just the stuff i'd cut entirely , and it already accounts for 10.8% of the budget.
Then there "environment"(1.7%), "economic affairs" (5.8%), "unemployment benefits" (3.3%), totalling 10.8% as well which could probably get a >50% cut before hitting something that need to be done by the state.
And finally retirement (26.2%) and health (19.5%) which should get a TBD cut (retirement a large one, we're the only country where pensioners got a higher income than workers).
All in all, assuming 50% for the 2nd list, 25% for retirement and 15% for health, we're reaching ~25%.
Good list. In particular, I agree cutting culture expenditures is basically a no-brainer. These policies basically amount to taking money from the poor and using it to fund "high brow" culture mostly enjoyed by rich people.
I wonder about family subsidies, though. France is one of the few countries that has successfully maintained a birth rate close to replacement level. I presume that has to do with its family subsidies (especially the large tax credits?). Any ideology that discourages having children must vanish eventually - so it is an issue libertarians should address somehow.
Does paying for sports stadiums count as cultural subsidies?
Yes.
Depends on the country. In Sweden, I'd remove rent control, as the rental market there is completely broken in the places where people want to live. In Malta, I'd liberalize immigration for people from rich countries (e.g. JP, KR, US, CA & TW), as those immigration restrictions are causing a lot of hassle for no good reason.
As a libertarian, I honestly can’t give you a halfway decent answer for this, since it seems like the powers that be are fully entrenched to play both sides of the field (privatization or “social democratization”) almost equally well. My natural inclination for an answer is just to gesture frustratedly at the behemoth.
The reason I’m a libertarian is not so much because I think the free market is the end-all-be-all for wealth generation (all though it very well might be the best we can do). The bigger concern I have is that the modern economy is clearly doing an excellent job at hedging people’s pet political passions against their economic best interests. For example, we’re moving towards renewable energy, which is definitely a passion of mine, but it’s being done in such a way as to ensure the OG economic winners cement their place at the top of the pyramid for all of eternity. This has always gone on to some extent, but it seems to have been turbocharged in recent decades. Instead of taking steps to decentralize our infrastructure, which, while yes, would make it somewhat less efficient with less consolidated profits for shareholders, would also make it more robust and tailored to the needs of the local economies it serves. Instead it’s being tailored to big business, so overseas manufacturing (China) can benefit from selling us buttloads of solar panels, and meanwhile our (somewhat) more local oil&gas billionaires are well positioned to sell us extra-premium-priced natural gas, via the multi-step intermediary of a natural gas fired power plant, for when solar isn’t producing and people need *need* electricity just to heat their homes through the night (in new construction that mandated all electric appliances...) I know I know, this isn’t so much a specific policy solution as vague gesturing, but it’s an example of how they’re using the general trend among voters pushing us *away* from economic interests, as a way to screw us in the most ironic ways possible.
When it comes to specific policy positions, there does seem to be some low hanging fruit, like zoning as Shaked Koplewitz points out. With so many millennials living in their parents basements, it’s seems like a no-brainer to re-examine those policies which mostly seem to satisfy the interests of busybody HOA board members at the expense of basically everyone else...
Libertarian-adjacent conservative here. There's a problem with the question in that at the moment the answers will differ if you interpret the question as "which parts of the government are unnecessary?" versus "which parts of the government need immediate reform?" (And you can add on another layer as "which parts of the federal government would be better handled at the state or local level?)
Reforming America's education system is one of the things I'd want to tackle from all three categories, though rather than take down public education entirely at the start, I'd want the initial goal to be school choice plus removing the federal Department of Education rather than complete privatization. Once there, in addition to making it easier to get out of generational poverty, you've removed the one of the major drivers in pushing up a lot of land values in the better off areas, reduced the disproportionate influence the teacher's unions have in local politics, and removed one of the major battlefields in the culture war.