Question for med-stats people: Can the sensitivity and/or specificity of diagnostic criteria be estimated based on its inter-rater reliability? If so, how? If not, why not?
What innovations have happened in poker strategy in the last 20 years? Are there strategies that are known to be the best now that go against the previous wisdom?
Speaking as somebody who played professionally for a while maybe 15-20 years ago, there have been *significant* changes at the "shark" or "can win several real tournaments a year" level.
Poker could be thought of as "solved" now, in the sense that computer / AI players are stronger than pretty much all human players and are carefully policed, and this has changed and informed things, but I'm actually unsure how much ongoing insight mining is going on there by human players. There's been significant evolution of thought at the top WSOP levels.
Modern Poker Theory by Michael Ossivado is a good intro to some of the new strategies.
I was reading those international IQ posts from January, and my position now is that on a population wide level, intelligence / IQ is kind of overrated.
It's useful for every society to have a handful of people who are amazing at abstract reasoning and logic and so forth, and it's generally useful for everyone to be smart enough to e.g manage their own personal budget. But the intelligence you'd need to balance a budget or figure out how to plan an intercity trip is a floor, which can be lowered with technology and design of user friendly systems. It's very much sufficient for the general population to meet the floor but not bother striving for the ceiling.
The truth is, most people who aren't necessarily super smart can live productive and functional lives by leaning on their social strengths, and by copying what successful people do. Not everyone has to be a revolutionary thinker - it's perfectly acceptable to ask someone else for ideas or simply observe what works and ask.
In fact, I'd argue that often, a method or a model passed through and improved by a hundred or so average intelligence people may outperform something derived from first principles by someone who's got high IQ, because outside of very abstract things - pure mathematics or logic - the former can capture lots more real-world edge cases and variations. Maintaining the kind of social relationships where you can comfortably share information and mutually refine methods is much more important than generating good ideas ex-nihilo.
IQ is good for winning chess games. A lot of things may look like chess games in abstract (business strategy! Building a railway!) but upon closer inspection, every single chessboard is unique.
The boards don't always have the same number of squares, sometimes it's not even square shaped overall, sometimes entire bits are missing which you don't realise until you try to move a piece, also you're blindfolded and can't tell what any of your pieces really are, and you think your opponent is eating your pieces when you're not looking but then they accuse you of doing the same thing and then you both realise that there had been a racoon that has been swiping pieces at random the whole time. But also sometimes a Monopoly token clatters onto the board. And someone else drops in and messes up all the pieces every now and again.
It's still better to know chess strategies than not, but by itself it's definitely not going to win the game. If I had a choice between studying chess (as played on normal boards) and talking to other Chaos Chess players, talking to other players will usually be much more fruitful, because there are game states that you cannot derive from first principles unless you literally know everything and even the highest IQ folk among us have to specialise.
I do consider myself to have slightly higher than average IQ. The main personal benefit this confers is that school was a bit easier and as an adult I occasionally game credit card reward programs for fun, redeemable for 1 - 2 interstate return flights each time, and I can guess how much I'll get paid after tax withholding. A lot of these things are trivially reproducible using websites, apps, or copying what my smarter friends do.
A high IQ farmer probably designs the farm based on best scientific principles to maximise yield, possibly experimenting a little. A cunning farmer goes around the place near harvest time and copies what the highest yield farm is doing. A sociable farmer is friends with everyone, and receives the best tips everyone else cares to divulge. It's actually not obvious to me that the high IQ farmer is necessarily going to do best - it kind of depends on the model they're using, whereas if Cunning successfully copies everything relevant (in places where that's possible), they'd probably do decent despite having zero understanding of the underlying principles. Similarly, Sociable receives a huge trove of data points to try, also without needing to understand underlying principles.
And as I get more professional experience, I'm finding that understanding underlying principles is a bit overrated - your model ends up needing so many inputs that the effort to measure / monitor / process becomes disproportionate. The black box approach makes a lot of sense most of the time, and black box approaches don't really need much IQ, you just need to figure out what to look at and who to talk to.
If people had higher IQ on average they would have a better understanding of economics and physics. Then rent control would not be a policy with any kind of backing. Energy policy would be a lot sharper.
Example: the airplane on a treadmill. If you bring that up in an average space, you end up with interminable arguments and squabbling. If you bring it up in a higher IQ space then it settles very quickly once the key arguments are presented and understood. Lots of policy discourse could be that way!
"If people had higher IQ on average they would have a better understanding of economics and physics."
From my life experience spent mostly in environments dominated by high-IQ individuals -- and since I'm old enough to remember rotary telephones this is shall we say a decent-sized sample -- that is a pretty hilarious prediction.
Also I literally LOLed at this: "If you bring it up in a higher IQ space then it settles very quickly once the key arguments are presented and understood."
Not trying to sound cynical here, I'm really not, but honestly -- how many actual very-smart people have you observed interacting with each other in real life?
They are human beings not robots; their IQs are just one variable in how they behave and not the dominant one; etc.
Just really here and on DSL. And not once have I seen someone argue that chemtrails are real, or vaccines cause autism, or that the earth is flat, or that you can cure aids by having unprotected sex with a virgin. All things that are believed and debated in lower IQ spaces. I don’t believe I have seen someone argue for rent control either.
I had a college roommate, literally the smartest individual I met in four years at one of the nation's most-selective colleges, who argued seriously and at length that vaccines were the reason Americans were dying of lung cancer and the warnings on cigarette packs were just governmental nonsense. (And he wasn't even a smoker!)
A former colleague of mine holding two PhDs in the hard sciences was calmly certain not only that Area 51 was real but that the film "Independence Day" (featuring a POTUS discovering that Area 51 was real) was in fact a slick deflection/coverup for the actual Area 51.
The single looniest individual I've ever been acquainted with is a former employee of a relative of mine in the tech sector, a brilliant programmer whose sheer brainpower awed experienced software engineers, and who had to be begged to remember to wear both pants and underwear to the company's offices. (He would remember one or the other, at random as far as anyone could tell, but not both.)
My sister attended the University of Chicago as a student and then joined the staff of a highly-prestigious publication headquartered on campus, and has ten stories similar to the three I just mentioned.
Etc etc. People, not robots. That's all of us regardless of IQs.
High IQ people do better on Econ and physics tests. They understand Econ and physics better. Are you saying there is zero correlation between understanding economics/physics and having sensible opinions on economics/physics?
How do you reconcile your anecdotes with Mallards linked study?
The ACX/SSC community is largely formed of people with nontypical neurological traits which cause them to prize truthseeking even when it's socially maladaptive, inhibits personal profit, cognitively discomfiting, or otherwise deleterious to the individual, in a way that neurotypical people broadly do not.
I don't see anything patterns here that leap out. Does MA have a better policy environment than HI? TX and NY have about the same averages, and wildly different policy; same for CA and LA.
No, it couldn't. Once money, or personal gain more broadly, becomes involved, the intelligence resources are diverted to inventing new excuses for the policy that will benefit each given speaker, new contrived explanations for why the correct answer about the treadmill actually isn't true in spite of being observable. Otherwise, why do you think concretely totally discredited ideas like socialism are still given credit academically? Or to take an even clearer example, it's blatantly obvious that sex changes are physically impossible, but due to the nature of their mental illness, transsexuals still crave the counterfactual really strongly, so they bend all their ingenuity toward trying to deny the self-evident. The only distinction between the stupidest and the cleverest in this group is the quality and amount of their sophisms.
No offense, but you're making the classic mistake of naive utopianism here.
(EDIT – also, it's arguable that this is the original purpose of intelligence evolutionarily: not truth-seeking, but persuasion as a way to accrue more resources for oneself and one's offspring, at the expense of others.)
How does your hypothesis hold up when tested against empirical data? For example, how strong is the correlation between a country's GDP or median income and the average IQ of its citizens?
Personally, I think you have a wrong mental image of people with high IQ, especially when you're saying things like
> […] a handful of people who are amazing at abstract reasoning and logic and so forth […]
> IQ is good for winning chess games.
> A high IQ farmer probably designs the farm based on best scientific principles to maximise yield […]
High IQ entails so much more than being good at games with simple, known rules. A better description would be "ability to solve problems". For example, you say:
> A cunning farmer goes around the place near harvest time and copies what the highest yield farm is doing. […] successfully copies everything relevant […]
How do you think this "cunning farmer" is able to decide which other farmer used better methods vs. who just got lucky due to circumstance? Or which methods of another farmer are worth copying vs which are ineffective?
> […] black box approaches don't really need much IQ, you just need to figure out what to look at and who to talk to.
Uh, yeah, "just figuring out what to look at and who to talk to" requires intelligence.
1) Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government
Primary Reading
Article (Kahan, Dawson, Peters, Slovic):
Motivated Numeracy & Enlightened Self-Government
Optional Video
TED Talk: on Cognitive Bias and Numeracy
Background & Extended Summary
(A) Context and Rival Hypotheses
The authors probe why we see persistent public controversies—on gun control, climate change, etc.—despite seemingly overwhelming scientific evidence. They pit two main ideas against each other:
Science Comprehension Thesis (SCT): Claims conflict stems from a public deficit in scientific literacy or logical reasoning. Better education in math/science should reduce polarization.
Identity-Protective Cognition Thesis (ICT): Argues that group identity can overshadow even robust analytical skills. People often interpret data to conform with their cultural or partisan affiliations—particularly on issues coded with “tribal” significance.
(B) The Experiment
Setup: Participants had to interpret the results of an (allegedly) data-driven experiment displayed in a 2x2 contingency table. In reality, the data were designed so that the correct interpretation could be easily masked by heuristics.
Conditions:
Skin-Rash (neutral scenario): Showed whether a new cream helped or hurt patients.
Gun-Control (politicized scenario): Showed whether a city’s ban was linked to increased or decreased crime.
By toggling the headings, they made the “correct answer” either more or less politically comfortable for different ideological groups.
(C) Key Findings
Skin-Rash Condition: Higher numeracy correlated with better performance in data interpretation. SCT supporters might say, “Yes, see? More math skill = less error.”
Gun-Control Condition: However, more numerate participants used their quantitative prowess selectively. They were most accurate only if the correct interpretation matched their existing political stance (e.g., “liberal” participants best interpreted data showing a gun ban reduces crime, “conservatives” best interpreted data showing it increases crime).
Numeracy didn’t help cross partisan lines; it often hardened them, as high-math individuals used logic to reinforce identity-aligned conclusions.
This deepens our sense that polarization can be exacerbated by sophisticated reasoning tools when issues become entangled with cultural or partisan identity.
(D) Broader Implications
Simply boosting STEM education or “critical thinking” may not guarantee cross-partisan consensus on contentious topics (climate, health measures, etc.).
De-polarizing an issue—removing its identity-based cues—might be the more critical step to unlock people’s willingness to process data impartially.
The phenomenon highlights “expressive rationality,” where it’s individually beneficial to remain group-aligned, even if collectively it impedes evidence-based policymaking.
Motivated Numeracy Discussion Questions
Math Skills vs. Bias
Have you seen debates in which the most “informed” or data-savvy voices seem the most entrenched? Why might greater expertise sharpen factional divides rather than foster agreement?
Identity and Cost
The authors suggest maintaining identity is crucial for social standing. How might we reduce the “social cost” of accepting facts that differ from your group’s position?
Role of Communicators
If objective evidence alone isn’t enough, how can science communicators, journalists, or educators frame data in ways that mitigate cultural triggers?
Applications Beyond Guns
Do you see parallels in other conflicts (e.g., vaccines, nuclear power, economic stimulus)? Where might the same dynamic appear?
Implications for Self-Government
The paper’s title references “enlightened self-government.” Under what conditions can democracy thrive if so many policy questions can become “identity-charged”?
2) Lynn Stout’s Critique of Shareholder Primacy
Reading Links (Evonomics)
All from Lynn Stout’s collection: Evonomics: Lynn Stout Articles
How the Dominant Business Paradigm Turns Nice People into Psychopaths
Why Wall Street Isn’t Useful for the Real Economy
How Economists Turned Us Blind to Our Own Goodness
The Myth of Maximizing Shareholder Value
Background & Extended Summary
(A) Lynn Stout (1957–2018)
An influential figure in corporate law, governance, and business ethics, Stout questioned whether the mantra of “maximize shareholder value” is legally required or even beneficial. She believed:
Shareholders don’t “own” corporations (a corporation is an entity that owns itself); they own shares.
Corporate law seldom mandates boards to single-mindedly chase short-term share price—that’s more an ideology (Friedman/Jensen & Meckling) than a legal fact.
(B) Articles Overview
How the Dominant Business Paradigm Turns Nice People into Psychopaths
Argues we’re not “homo economicus” in everyday life, but the standard corporate message (“focus solely on profit”) can crowd out altruistic or ethical impulses in investing and board decisions.
Mentions “socially responsible funds” as evidence many shareholders care about ethics, yet too many structures and norms push managers and investors into maximizing short-term returns above all else.
Why Wall Street Isn’t Useful for the Real Economy
Critiques the assumption that hyperactive trading always aids “efficient resource allocation.”
Points out only a small fraction of financial activity goes to underwriting new securities (i.e., raising real capital for companies). The vast majority is secondary market trading, which often adds limited societal value but extracts large fees and fosters short-termism.
How Economists Turned Us Blind to Our Own Goodness
Explores how the “incentive” model of policy (assuming humans are rationally selfish) can overshadow moral suasion and conscience.
Cites experiments on social dilemmas showing how easily contexts can make us either more cooperative or more selfish.
Warns that focusing too heavily on extrinsic rewards can “crowd out” prosocial norms that hold organizations and societies together.
The Myth of Maximizing Shareholder Value
Chronicles how the concept gained steam in the late 20th century, especially after Friedman’s and Jensen/Meckling’s essays.
Debunks the idea that corporate law requires maximizing share price, or that it’s always beneficial for all shareholders.
Suggests “satisficing” multi-goal governance—balancing stakeholder interests, growth, employee loyalty, R&D, etc.—can yield better long-term outcomes for both society and many shareholders (especially the diversified, patient, or ethically driven ones).
(C) Collective Takeaways
Stout sees “shareholder primacy” as oversimplifying business realities and ignoring humans’ capacity for moral concern, trust, and long-term relationships.
She dissects how the dominant economic paradigm can ironically degrade shareholder returns overall—akin to “fishing with dynamite,” short-term profit for some but harmful to the system’s health.
A broader perspective on corporate purpose might encourage “sustainable capitalism,” robust corporations, and ethical leadership—contrary to one-size-fits-all share price obsession.
Discussion Questions for Lynn Stout’s Critique
Psychopath vs. Prosocial
In daily life, we show empathy and fairness, yet in markets, we act purely self-interested. Why? Are laws and norms pushing different mindsets?
Wall Street’s Real Value
How can we reconcile the claim that modern finance is essential with the reality that speculation can overshadow real capital formation?
Conscience, Law, and Incentives
If overemphasizing extrinsic incentives crowds out altruistic instincts, how can policy or corporate governance harness pro-social motivations?
Satisficing vs. Maximizing
Stout endorses “satisficing” multiple goals (employee welfare, environment, stable relationships, etc.). Critics say that leads to “fuzzy accountability.” Are there ways to measure or structure multi-stakeholder success without devolving into chaos?
Policy Reform or Cultural Shift?
Should laws be changed to end illusions about “shareholder ownership,” or is the deeper fix about corporate culture, board norms, and investor expectations?
Walk & Talk
We will conclude our main discussion around 4 PM, then transition to an hour-long walk. Feel free to join in for an informal extension of the discussion or casual conversation. Everyone’s welcome, whether you prefer to debate economic paradigms or talk about local events.
Share a Surprise
As usual, if you’ve encountered any surprising articles, personal experiences, or side projects that spark intellectual curiosity, bring them along for our open-floor sharing.
Looking Ahead
Future Topics? We love suggestions—be they theoretical readings or real-world case studies.
Guest Contributors: If you’d like to co-facilitate or highlight a specific area of expertise, let Michael or any ACXLW regular know.
We Look Forward to Seeing You on February 8!
Should any questions arise, please contact Michael Michalchik at the email or number above. Both “motivated numeracy” and Lynn Stout’s insights on corporate ethics promise a lively, eye-opening meetup. Join us for an afternoon of deep and wide-ranging discussion. See you soon!
Forget all this "AI will destroy us" silliness: an actual sweet meteor of death is coming for us in 2032. In just the last 24 hrs the impact probability increased from 1% to 2.3%. This is... moving in a wrong direction... and fast.
It is the nature of impact-probability math that the impact probability increases at each reevaluation, until suddenly it drops to zero. There is a 2.3% chance that it will instead go to unity, but *only* a 2.3% chance. That the impact probability was ~1% last time we checked, only means that there was then a 50-50 chance that it would go to zero on the next evaluation, which didn't happen.
And if the asteroid does hit, it will be a sub-Tunguska event; the asteroid will not reach the surface, the damage will be localized, and we will have known the approximate impact area for weeks or months ahead of time. No one will die unless they are both massively unlucky and very stupid.
I’m partially jesting, but only partially. Of course it won’t kill us all, but I’m not sure why you think it won’t reach the surface. The bloody thing is 54 meters across! It will be a nuke without the radiation.
I just looked up Chelyabinsk. 18m diameter, so let's assume 27 times as big. Chelyabinsk was estimated to be 30 Hiroshimas, so this would be around 900. Not great! OTOH, Chelyabinsk was est. 400-500 kilotons of TNT equivalent, so 30 times that is 12-15 megatons. Tunguska was est. 20-30 megatons as of 2019.
So, still sub-Tunguska (assuming about the same velocity; I don't know how safe that assumption is).
One could imagine the event being extremely destructive if that blast happens to be over a city, but I have it on good authority that cities are even harder to hit than the earth itself.
Yeah I don’t think I’ve ever seen the impact probability that high. I agree with J. S. that it’ll likely drop to more typical e-6 level, but… maybe not…
Some of them might actually be good, if you can compartmentalize and ignore the political messaging. Russian Cinema has been amazing since the very beginning, and despite claims to the contrary, Soviet cinema was incredible. You just have to be able to compartmentalize.
I wish I could find the propaganda videos about how all Europeans were freezing and starving during winter 2022.
I remember seeing a video that seemed like an ad, and it showed "European Winter 2022", "European Winter 2023", "European Winter 2024" with progressively less light on the Christmas tree, and I think in the third video the family ate their hamster.
But there was also a serious news report, naming various European countries and their capital cities (including e.g. Paris and Berlin), describing how people living in these cities have no electricity during Christmas, and how all women need to prostitute themselves to get some food.
Due to the brief fake Trump-Canada trade war I was inspired to learn about Canadian whiskey. Here's where I started and what I learned!
Where I started:
- I'm Canadian
- I don't really drink American whiskey anyway, I mostly like scotch (e.g. Glenfiddich for a popular one or Laphroaig for a peat-smoked one), so this was partly just academic, but still I was curious.
- Back in the day when I was 19 I started with e.g. Crown Royal and Canadian Club from the LCBO, but didn't actually like whiskey until I got into scotch.
- I knew that Canadian whiskey is often called rye. I knew that Canadian whiskey doesn't get the respect it once did. I knew that Canadian Club used to be seen as prestige, like it's the stuff Al Capone smuggled during prohibition and that people like Don Draper liked (he's fictional but it was accurate), but now it's the cheap second-shelf stuff in a plastic bottle at LCBO. So what gives?
What I learned (some details vague, double-check any specifics):
- Once upon a time, way back when, Canadians were drinking wheat whiskey (nobody drinks wheat whiskey anymore), but then Dutch and German immigrants started adding a bit of rye and people liked the little bit of a kick it gives. We called it "rye" even though rye was only a minor ingredient.
- Back in the day, I guess up to prohibition and maybe a bit past then(?), American whiskey would have been pretty rough, e.g. moonshine or young corn whiskey, and Canadian blended whiskey was aged longer and was seen as higher quality and smoother. And of course once prohibition started, smuggled Canadian whiskey was the best stuff Americans could get. Canadian whiskey is still seen as being "smooth."
- Canada legally allows you to call your whiskey "rye" as long as it still has the same general taste and character as this tradition, even though it was never mostly-rye, and even whether or not there's actually any rye in it at all. E.g. Don Draper's assistant calls Canadian Club "rye" even though it's actually mostly corn (canonically, I wonder if he knew?). In contrast, American "rye" legally has to be >51% rye.
- In modern times whiskey fans don't care as much about smooth anymore, they want complexity like you get from an old scotch. Also Americans later got good at making whiskey too like bourbon. These, plus the lack of as-strict standards about ingredients, both contributed to Canadian whiskey not getting the respect it used to.
- There are also some more recent high-rye Canadian whiskeys, though, like Lot No. 40 really is a 100% rye and is reputedly one of Canada's best whiskeys. I just bought a bottle and it's delicious.
- Even for the classic smooth style I guess there's variation, like maybe Wiser's or Forty Creek is better than Canadian Club Original (and also brands have different bottlings, like Canadian Club Classic 12 Year is probably better than Canadian Club Original). And even the cheap stuff is fine if you like that, and it's still good for mixing e.g. with soda or ginger ale.
- (Fun fact, what Canadians sometimes drink and call a "Rye & Ginger," New Zealanders love and call a "C. C. & Dry." I don't know why nobody's made it rhyme, calling it a "Rye & Dry"!)
In my 20s I would take a 16’ Lund from Nelson’s Resort on Crane Lake (Minnesota) through the Namakan Narrows to a weird little Canadian liquor store to buy Cutty Sark on the cheap. No US duties so it was a bargain compared to US prices. Probably saved 5 bucks
In my 30s I went through a Glenlivet phase. Occasionally when I’d order it neat in a bar they would try to pass Cutty Sark off as the pricier quaff. Yuk. Who were they trying to kid?
Present day they all taste pretty yucky.
Recently I went to a scotch tasting with work pals at a local joint calling itself Merlin’s Pub. They were going for a British Isles ambience, the sort of place where you could buy shepherds pie for dinner and see a ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ sign on the wall.
The taste organizers were talking about things like ‘maritime notes’ but I was tasting ‘industrial paint thinner’.
I've been thinking about that issue about which prison criminal transpeople should be sent to. I think there probably isn't a single right answer to that question. You can't put a transwoman sexual offender in a woman's prison for example, but you also also can't put a very feminine post-op transwoman in a man's prison.
Seems like an instance where the decision should be left to the judge.
Also, there must be at least a few lesbian rapists, I wonder how the hell they handle that.
This is a no-brainer. Although I'm sure you are merely posting this to be an edgy bad boy, you actually got this one right. All you have to do is let physically separated inmates call each other on the phone and they won't go insane, the way such confined people otherwise tend to do.
Isn't that person at an especially high risk of getting raped? I think "people" here stands for a specific political faction that apparently now thinks they represent all America.
Liberals aren't particularly fond of trans people either. Something about them compromising women's rights, allegedly. They're not going to bend over backwards just to protect them. It's just the progressives that are a problem, and the new administration seems quite intent on purging them from every position of power in the country.
You're talking about a particular subset of liberals that is A: rather small and B: not particularly influential in liberal circles. And I suspect even most of them do not want to see transwomen being raped in men's prisons.
I don't take in much from news commentators. But I have been listening/ (some watching) to the senate confirmation hearings. OMG some great theater. I've lost most of my respect for Bernie. (I mean he's still Bernie, but he's also now a died in the wool Dem.) And John Kennedy from Louisiana is perhaps now my favorite senator. (He reminds me of J. Stewart from "Mr. Smith goes to Washington".) A few days ago, I sent in a request to my state to change my voter registration. I think I'll probably change it to Republican. (I want to send the biggest FU I can to my former Democratic party.) I know this is a mostly anti-Trump space. (And I think Trump is an asshole, (and when I tell my Trump loving friends this, they mostly agree... yeah he's an asshole.)) But I want to just ask you all to give him and team Trump a chance. (I think the first thing we should agree on when talking about politicians is that they all are doing what they see as the right thing for our country. Yes they may have bad ideas, and yes they will all make mistakes, but to first approximation, they are not evil.)
After some thought, I realized that making a serious attempt at talking about the disconnect I see here would be instructive for both of us.
"I think the first thing we should agree on when talking about politicians is that they all are doing what they see as the right thing for our country. "
This right here is part of it. I think that is true for the median politician. I think that might even be true for politicians in the 10th percentile of integrity and decency. I don't think it's true for Trump. Or rather, I don't think Donald Trump's brain maintains any sort of a conceptual separation between "what's good for the country" and "what flatters Trump's ego." In particular, I think the idea that he could EVER help the country by stepping down, stepping back, genuinely cooperating with those that oppose him or effacing himself in any manner is utterly alien to his thinking. And that's exactly what it would take for me to "give him a chance." A very rough, non-exhaustive list of the sort of necessary behavior that would be required for "giving him a chance" to be even a morally acceptable thing to do (in my judgement) might look like this:
--Immediately re-enter the U.S. into the Paris Climate agreement, publicly acknowledge the truth and seriousness of climate change and apologize for his error. Start working with congress on a modest-but-serious package of *additional* climate measure the U.S. will take above and beyond what the agreement calls for, as a mea culpa to the rest of the world and an attempt to make up for lost time[1].
--Publicly admit that Joe Biden was the rightful winner of the 2020 election, and that his own repeated denials of this fact (long after his legal challenges were dead) were dishonest, self-serving and an unacceptable attack on the integrity of the nation's electoral process. Make monetary restitution (from his own personal funds) to the families of all those killed in the attack on the U.S., including the rioters and the police who later died by suicide. Make it clear that the restitution is intended as an apology for the major roll he played in creating and fueling that dangerous situation.
--Immediately divest himself of all his personal properties and investments, placing them in a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest while he was president. Apologize for not doing so in 2016 and work with congress to draft legislation plainly requiring future presidents to do the same.
--Publicly apologize to the people of Panama, Denmark, Canada and Mexico for his various insults and attacks on their sovereignty. Publicly reverse his position on the tariffs on those countries, and pledge not to repeat the error. Disavow his use of emergency powers to circumvent congress' power to levy taxes and duties.
--Make a real, good faith attempt to convince justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to step down from the Supreme Court, and work with BOTH parties in congress to select replacement justices who are highly qualified, have impeccable records of personal and professional conduct and are broadly agreed to be politically moderate.[2] Begin attempting to propose and study (but NOT enact) a solution to extreme the politicization of the Supreme Court, likely involving some sort of more bipartisan and less exploitable justice selection process. Have a recommendation ready before the start of the 2028 primary season so primary candidates can take positions on it and the American people can use it as part of their selection process.
--Work with congress (again, BOTH parties) to attempt to craft a bi-partisan compromise on immigration as should have been done 20 years ago. "Compromise" here meaning that it still includes immigration restrictions, provisions for enforcing them and reasonable border security, but doesn't try to militarize the border or use heavy-handed and inhumane tactics in doing so.
--Retract his proposed plan for ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, apologize to the people of Gaza for saying so, and make a real attempt to stay out of the conflict in Gaza, adopting a maximally neutral position anywhere that his presence is unavoidable.
--Apologize to the U.S. victims of COVID for his poor handling of the initial phases of the crisis, work with congress to improve the U.S. future pandemic preparedness and response and work more closely with health organizations elsewhere in the world. Donate a substantial portion of his personal wealth to some sort of charitable cause helping those harmed by COVID, by way of restitution for the lives his incompetence failed to save.
I'm guessing your reaction will run to something like "wow, that's completely unreasonable." But it really, really is not. There a great many things that I could have put on here but didn't. Everything here is chosen to be geared towards amending some specific harm he has personally done to the U.S. body politic, and I certainly wasn't exhaustive when considering all the harms. None of these involve giving wholly to Democrats in a major way (except the climate change one which is LONG overdue), but rather attempt to build the bipartisan cooperation that has largely disappeared in the past 20 years. And no, nothing less would be sufficient. Abusers are very, very good at convincing people to give them one more chance and ignore past behavior. People of real integrity own up to their mistakes, apologize for them and attempt to make them right. The BARE MINIMUM for Trump to be a morally acceptable president is to offer substantial proof that he can act like a person of integrity, and not an abuser.
[1] Alternately, I could be persuaded that anthropocentric climate change is not happening and that Trump's actions here were correct (though not justified at the time). This would, at a minimum, take something in the nature of a worldwide scientific revolution in which large amounts of new evidence and improved models reshape the field. Or it would take me acquiring a serious concussive injury or an RFK style brain worm.
[2] Note that this would still leave the Supreme court with a Republican advantage, but one in which at least one moderate was needed to agree with any ruling.
So... in order for you to believe that Trump is doing what he sees as the right thing for the country... he would basically have to abandon his politics and those of the people who voted for him, in favor of your politics? That's what credibility looks like to you, adherence to liberal dogma? Wow, way to fail the idological Turing test, there.
Or if not, explain what e.g. a Republican politician who does not countenance rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement but does have the best for America as he sees it foremost in his mind would look like to you?
" he would basically have to abandon his politics and those of the people who voted for him, in favor of your politics? "
People who are capable of basic reading comprehension will have noticed that this point was already explicitly address. This would not be him abandoning his politics in favor of mine. This would be him attempting to make genuine restitution for the harmful things he's done, and to make a real effort to arrest the bipartisan fissuring that is rapidly poisoning American political life. YES, that means making compromises. The fact that you cannot tell the difference between a compromise and a capitulation is exactly the problem.
"Or if not, explain what e.g. a Republican politician who does not countenance rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement but does have the best for America as he sees it foremost in his mind would look like to you?"
That Republican politician should
1. Actually educate himself on the realities of climate change in a way that I guarantee that neither Trump nor most of the Republicans in congress have done.
2. If, after educating themselves, they have actual, reality-based criticisms of the Paris Agreement that don't involve brazen denials of established scientific truth, they may present those to the world and try to hash out an alternative that's more acceptable.
Yes, doing a minimally adequate job of governing does indeed require accepting basic truths of reality that have been well-known for four decades. If you cannot do that much than asking ANYONE to "give you a chance" is nothing more than a con-job.
"The fact that you cannot tell the difference between a compromise and a capitulation is exactly the problem."
The problem with your suggestions, yes. I did indeed read your assertion that it isn't unreasonable and understand that you meant it, I'm trying to explain to you how extremely preposterous this looks from the other side of the aisle. Out of your suggestions, the *only ones* that could be legitimately called compromise positions are admitting that Biden won 2020 and putting his assets in trust for the duration of his presidency with an apology for not doing it sooner. The rest legitimately just look like demands for Democratic politics from a Republican because you're angry that he's too Republican, no matter how you try to lampshade it. In particular, the bit about trying to reverse the appointments of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh – something which he wasn't even particularly responsible for and which would have happened regardless of which Republican had beaten Clinton – is wholly absurd and can seemingly only be motivated by blind rage at you/the left losing that contest, not least since Gorsuch especially is a conscientious upholder of the Constitution and its principles, a far better jurist than any one of the last three Democratic appointments to the court and less prone to vote as part of an ideological block. (Sotomayor in particular I can't recall voting against liberal orthodoxy on legal grounds one single time in her entire tenure, although I speak under correction here as I am not a staunch SC watcher.)
As to your other point, I think you grossly overestimate the importance of politicians educating themselves and having reality-based opinions, because approximately none of them on either side use that as a basis for decisionmaking – a rhetorical bludgeon at most. What matters to me is that I and many others with me prefer Trump's stance here because *we have reality-based criticisms* of the accords and he's willing to *act* on that which is what matters when push comes to shove. When you suggest that in order to be credible he would have to abandon acting on our preference in favor of not only acting on yours but prostrating himself, and that this would constitute compromise rather than a humiliating surrender, you're demonstrating a myopia which is exactly the problem.
"As to your other point, I think you grossly overestimate the importance of politicians educating themselves and having reality-based opinions, because approximately none of them on either side use that as a basis for decisionmaking – a rhetorical bludgeon at most."
This right here. This is the ENTIRE problem. ALL of it. 100%.
Not because what you said is true. But because it is false. It is extremely, extremely false and you believing it makes it *quite thoroughly impossible* to have any productive dialog.
YES, people DO have principled beliefs and reality based opinions and YES some of those people are politicians and YES some of them bloody well do use those as a basis for decisionmaking. When you say "none of them on either side" I think that is quite telling. I think you are seeing uncommonly clearly out of one eye. I think you are looking at the people on your side, going "wow, yeah, they're all scumbags who don't care what's true" and projecting that to the other side because if it's true of the people who are FOR you, then how much more true *must* it be of people who are AGAINST you.
Now, don't think for a second from what I said that I don't think many Democratic politicians are also scumbags. I've never been a Democrat. I've never liked the Democrats. When I lived in the U.S. I would grudgingly hold my nose and vote for Democrats fairly often--we'll get to why in a second--but I never thought for a minute they were great people. They were adequate. HOWEVER, they were scumbags in the way that all politicians are scumbags. They'd sometimes do shady deal, dirty tricks, lack spine just when you wanted them to have it, talk out of both sides of their mouths, and have scandals that proved that they lacked moral fiber. I could write quite a number of words on the failings of one Joseph Biden, for example, who I am proud to have never voted for.
But the difference when I looked across the aisle was night and day. Not the difference in run-of-the-mill scumbaggery, mind you. Count up the shady deals and dirty tricks and maybe you'd come out with advantage D and maybe you'd come out with advantage R. The difference was exactly what you say is true of all politicians. Only it isn't. There was an ALARMING lack of reality-based opinions on the right. Climate change denial is the largest, most alarming one of those: this is understanding-the-world on easy mode and you guys are FAILING IT SO BADLY. Fifty years, man. This has been known and studied for fifty years. But no shortage of other examples abound: COVID takes the gold star for the *fastest* retreat from reality that I've ever seen any group do, but things like well-understood facets of American history[1], basic contours of current events...the list goes on. Democratic politicians sometimes waffle or weasel or lack spine, but they tend to stick largely in the vicinity of the truth, and their policies reflect it. Republican politicians will shoot of into cuckooland if their base demands it--not all of them mind you, Mike Pence kept his spine and "his side" literally tried to kill him for it--but far too many. How many "2020 election truthers" are there among today's elected officials? How about sometime Qanon followers or Pizzagate belivers[2]? Fewer, for sure, but one would be too many. I'd have loved to live in a world where I could vote against the scummy Democrats, but the only alternative I was ever offered wasn't just unpalatable, it was downright loony.
And then I talk to the voters that put them in office, and I see why. Anyone with spine gets primaried out. Or, y'know, has an angry mob try to hang them. The thing that I started this with, the "there's no reality-based opinions, just rhetorical bludgeons thing?" That's not the politicians. That's the voters. That's the Trumpers. Literally yesterday there was someone in the comments of Scott's government-spending thread basically saying "well clearly I'm not going to believe it any time a liberal says something will cause a bunch of deaths." That's a damn GOVERNMENT PROGRAM. The records are meticulously kept and open to the public. You can CHECK. Any time of Facebook I see anything posted about climate change or COVID or the scientific process in general there's a *flood* of comments about how "scientists always find whatever they're paid to find." I don't have to ask what party those people are from. And that. View. Is. INSANE. It is nuts. I've spent much of my life around scientists: most of them won't shut up about the minutia of their fields unless you shout at them. Nearly all of them could be making better money elsewhere. And all the really important scientific conclusions are shared by the *worldwide* scientific community. And again, I could go on. A certain fraction of the U.S. right wing seems to have convinced itself that there is NO TRUTH, ONLY POLITICS. The the ONLY thing you need to know about someone to gauge their trustworthiness or evaluate ANY claim they make is their political affiliation. And so *of course* they discover that more and more of the scientists are against them: if you can't even *conceive* of there being objective truth, how can anyone from the community of people who devote their lives to figuring it out *ever* reach you?
"The rest legitimately just look like demands for Democratic politics from a Republican because you're angry that he's too Republican, no matter how you try to lampshade it."
Mate, the fact that you believe this is TERRIFYING. Do you know what I would have done if Hillary Clinton had tried to overturn the 2016 election? I'd have denounced her. As loudly and publicly as I could have. A great many people who opposed Trump would have joined me. Do you know what I felt when I heard someone had taken a shot at Trump? Horror and dismay. I hate Trump more than I've hated almost anyone I can think of, and I would have given *absolute hell* to any Democratic politician who did anything other than denounce the assassin. If I discovered Obama or Biden had used the privileges of their office to ply foreign leader for dirt on Trump? I'd have called for THEIR impeachment too. If the Democrats had tried to pack the Supreme court, I'd have been out there writing paragraphs about how "yes, I know they started it, but this is a flatly unacceptable escalation."
" In particular, the bit about trying to reverse the appointments of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh – something which he wasn't even particularly responsible for..."
Right, remember where I started? About "wanting what's best for the nation." Sometimes leaders have to fix problems that are *not* their fault. Sometimes they have to take one for the team. Sometimes they have to make it not all about them. And yes, Gorsuch wasn't his fault and has been a decent jurist in many ways: McConnell was still in the wrong when he left that spot open, and hasn't even made a pretense of not being a hypocrite on that one. But Kavanaugh was a Trump pick and the issue isn't "Republicans got another supreme court justice," it was "Republicans decided they were going to ram the appointment through before the midterm, no matter how much basic decency they had to throw away." If Trump had made a different pick from day 1, or withdrawn Kavanaugh and picked someone with a modicum of integrity--who would have been confirmed after the midterm, Republicans kept the senate--he'd not be mentioned here. Again, the issue isn't "Republicans got to pick too many justices," it's "Republicans have been more and more open about manipulating the selection process for political power, and a body that was supposed to be considered somewhat impartial now appears flatly untrustworthy to many" And I'll grant that Republicans also had feeling about the court in the Obama years. Hence "finding some actual moderates to put on the court, while keeping the balance tilted towards Republicans." Hence "offering solutions to help the selection process produce a trustworthy court--trustworthy to *everyone.*" It is really, really BAD if a large portion of Americans (on either side) feel that the deepest root of their justice system is fundamentally unjust.
The things on my list were carefully chosen. The common denominator isn't "Democratic politics" and the fact that you think they were is, once again, terrifying. The point is that I'm watching the country I once called home *tear itself to pieces* and any time I try to COMMUNICATE THAT I get sneers and derision and an insistence that I'm trying to trick you. No, the things that you are calling "Republican politics" are not normal and usual, and OK. Bush was a crappy president in my eyes, but he'd have threatened his allies, denied a deadly pandemic, whipped up a mob to try to steal an election or call for fucking ETHNIC CLEANSING. I'd take eight guaranteed years of Romney or the ghost of McCain over one more year of Trump in a heartbeat. There are lots of issues near and dear to my hear that were nowhere to be seen: nothing about abortion, nothing about guns, nothing about taxes, nothing about the ordinary drop-some-bombs-on-backwater-countries-for-iffy-reasons sort of foreign policy. Republicans are going to do things I don't like in all of those areas, and they *should* if they win: that's what votes are for. But there are lines that should not be crossed, and Trump has spent eight years shitting on every one of those lines he could reach. Everything on that list, EVERYTHING was about one of three things: fundamental truth, basic human decency or bipartisan cooperation. The things that WILL destroy American if you keep treating them as conveniences to be discarded any time you think it will score you another win.
[2] I can already hear the retorts about wacky things Democrats believe. Please stop before you type them. Take a breath. Consider. Are they *really* on the same level as a literal troll story made up by 4chan?
"YES some of those people are politicians and YES some of them bloody well do use those as a basis for decisionmaking"
Thats awful cute. I remember being in high school. Get back to us once you've graduated, or the Dems have won the government back and mysteriously nothing you wanted happens but AOC buys a house the size of Wisconsin.
"When you say 'none of them on either side' I think that is quite telling. I think you are seeing uncommonly clearly out of one eye. I think you are looking at the people on your side, going 'wow, yeah, they're all scumbags who don't care what's true' and projecting that to the other side"
Absolutely incorrect, the Democrats are by far the worse if anything. They've always been the party of filth and political sleaze, something you would know if you were older than 18. Guys like Vance at least believed in something once, and understand that acting on those beliefs that are still sincerely held by their voters is functionally an obligation. I've never in my life been able to identify any real ideological conviction or principle in a Democratic politician besides selfishness, even when I voted for them. Nancy Pelosi made like $100 million off insider trading and defends the right of Congressmen to continue insider trading to this day. Bill Clinton? Don't make me laugh, he executed a retarded guy for political expediency. Obama talked a big game about hope and so on, then dronebombed Afghanistan, ruled by executive order and started all the border programs that Trump then got attacked for from the left-wing press. I could go on all day like this.
But, in order not to imitate it, as to the rest of your excessively long screed, I will confine myself to pointing out that you forgot to insert footnote 1. Enjoy the next 4-12 years!
" But I want to just ask you all to give him and team Trump a chance."
The entire nation already did that. It ended with an attack on the nation's capital, attempting to end a two-century old democratic tradition. I'm generally pretty forgiving, but if you can't look at that and say "uh, maybe no more chances for that guy in particular," you've gone well past forgiving and well into quokka. It's not like there weren't dozens of other people the Republican Party could have tapped who *didn't* have a history of doing that, if that was something they actually found in any way upsetting.
Oh Bernie is right about a lot of things. (Take over by big corporations, which have taken over much of government.) He could easily get on the Trump train... but he's somehow infected with TDS from those around him. I'm perhaps a Bernie bro having watched him on Rogan.
I think it's completely logical for Bernie to hate Trump. Bernie hates people who have a lot of money, that has almost always been his position. He's very consistent that way.
Welcome to the ass end of Hollywood. You work for the least desirable developement company that gets any work at all, so you really can't afford to be choosy.
Your latest assignment is to come up with a film that includes the following bit of dialog.
"Have I served in combat? You should understand that I serve on an Ohio-class submarine. We don't get in gunfights with raghead militias. We're the gatekeepers of the apocalypse. We fire one missile, we wreck a country. We fire the full stack, we destroy the world. So no, I have not served in combat."
Small-town teen comedy featuring wacky neighbors. This line is coming from the absurd redneck stereotype who drunkenly uses his military experience to hog the karaoke machine.
An action movie where terrorists with a stolen nuclear warhead have taken over [insert thing with lots of civilians here], and the only available people who can Save the Day are the brand new Public Affairs lady for [thing with lots of civilians] and Civilian guy Attending [Thing] who happens to be a retired US Navy Chief Missile Technician and thus is the only person who can Disable the Nukes Before the Terrorists Can Use Them
(The MT would have had some weapons training as a member of the security force, so he can be at least somewhat credible threat to the terrorists).
Edited; Thing With Lots of Civilians should be a Entertainment Company That is Definitely Not Disney-like Cruise (good luck getting the Mouse to buy off on this), Attractive Female Lead (formerly Public Affairs Lady) should be one of the assistant producers for all the shows (so you can explain her knowledge of the ship and where to go) and Attractive Male Lead (formerly Civilian Guy) should be there as the Best Man for his Sister's Wedding, who has always loved Entertainment Company That is Definitely Not Disney's shows and wanted to get married on their cruise (so you can explain why he's there but also leave him single for the inevitable romance)
Adaptation of The Producers with a low-end barroom braggart substituted for Hitler. Opening number features corny, earnest Ohio workers on lunch break at the Ohio-sub factory. Nose of the sub sticking out of the building and daisies popping up everywhere. Lying barroom drunk staggers among the singing worker-dancers, and they're popping daisies in his pockets.
The guy who said that is only three ounces below the Navy's upper weight limit, has a neckbeard, and has paid thousands of dollars for Andrew Tate conferences and subscriptions.
A film about a grizzled, down-on-his-luck Hollywood screenwriter who has been forced descent to working on a rewrite of an execrable submarine-themed action movie to make ends meet, who ends up drunk in a bar, quoting the worst lines of dialogue from the original script contemptuously to the bartender, prompting him to start trying to turn his life around with unexpected results.
The first thing that occurs to me is to file the serial numbers off of The Hunt for Red October. Some kind of spy thriller involving submarines and rogue captains, maybe reverse the plot and have an American boomer captain forge false orders and go rogue. Depending on where he's going with it, the heroes could be a CIA/Navy joint team trying to get ahead of the sub, sneak on board somehow when it puts into port, and retake control of it.
Failing that, make a romantic comedy or goofy buddy movie where two of the lead characters are an enthusiastic but naive young man who befriends a jaded submarine crewmember while he's on leave and they get into hijinks together.
"Chief Johnson Goes to Washington puts a bit of backspin on an old formula. Johnson (J.K. Simmons) retires from the Navy after a long career, and runs for office in an obscure congressional district. He wins and heads to DC determined to fix the mess with a bit of directness and common sense, which he has plenty of. Several misadventures later, Johnson has discovered that complicated problems defy simple solutions, and ugly compromises have powerful constituencies defending cherished entitlements on both sides.
"The resulting film is hard to recommend. Simmons does what he can and his younger costars put in the work, but the film is talky and the camera work is static. There are a lot of people monologuing in offices. The one bit that does shine is the fidelity to the underlying material. Both of the script writers are former congressional staffers, and it really shows when they dive deep into obscure details of housing policy and water rights, to name just two areas. This one seems destined to be a cult favorite of armchair policy wonks, but everyone else should go watch something else."
What projects are pushing forward "data structures + algorithms = programs" *with funding*; stl is kinda getting old and I doubt stepov will do a major rewrite, it seems like no one does computer science where the goal is to produce programs with less code gets paid. Its all ai, cryto, new languages with hype, etc.
I strongly suspect rust implements a subset of the stl that they can convince a compiler is memory safe; which truth be told is not a goal I think will be fruitful
"I spend months and wrote a research paper about how to convince a rust compiler to work on my doubly linked list" is less good *by allot* then "I spent an hour on a doubly linked list its over there, heres all my algorithms and data structures that are all in the same style"
It seems like the official death toll for the Bihar Famine was 2353 (maybe the real number is higher), and that seems to be the last famine that caused widespread death in India. The bengal famine caused around 4 million deaths, before that there was 1876 famine that has an 8.2 million deaths, again under the British raj (during which wheat was still being exported to London at regular rates). If you just want a history of all the grievances Indians have towards the British Raj, any school textbook in India will suffice. Countless Indian Historians and economists have written papers and books on this. I think it's more useful to analyze the incentive structure that leads to these extreme misgovernance.
The British people I do not think were uniquely evil, they still valued justice, kindness and all other good virtues that most populations valued. They were racist, that is true, but racism was the norm of that time, and racism alone cannot explain the bad governance of the British Raj. Maybe it can explains the average humiliation they made Indians endure, or the lopsided justice system every time a Brit was involved but there are bigger problems to look at.
The fundamental issue is that the colonial system hired administrators whose career was beholden to a fickle group in London far more than the population they ruled, and once they were done, they left and often went back to London to end their lives, without having to deal with any of the havoc they caused in their territory. If anything good resulted from their administration, it had to happen due to their sense of honor that regularly was at odds with directives from London, or it happened because of their fondness for the land, which while present was clearly not enough as none of them actually chose to live in the country they administered unlike every other king, in human history. If Lee Kuan Yew was administering Singapore for China and went back to China after his 5 year term, he might consider all these policies reasonable:
1. Singapore can best function as an agricultural exporter to China, since China is industrializing well and it doesn't make sense to compete with China that clearly has more resources.
2. He can play the Malays off against the Tamils, so that they are too distracted fighting each other and make his administration easy.
3. During wartimes or emergency, all resources in Singapore need to be diverted to protect the motherland, because that is what matters the most.
If you change the incentives and tell Lee that his faith is forever sealed with Singapore, you end up with the opposite conclusion in each of these policies.
Prior to 1920 or so, irrigation collapsed in British controlled india. The consequences were dire. This was an astonishing fact for me, because maintaining proper irrigation is kind of the main task of any government beyond basic military defense.
The British would build shiny new dams in nodes of their profitable trade network, and leave the rest of the country to rock
To summarize for those who don't like to click links:
Andreas Koureas on X argues that the Bihar Famine was not caused by Churchill's neglect or malice. He claims the famine was caused by a natural disaster, compounded by an inability to bring in food from Singapore, Burma, Malaya, or the Philippines because they were currently occupied by the Japanese. Japanese ships were a significant threat to shipping in the Bay of Bengal, capturing or destroying merchant vessels. The British Empire's shipping capacity was stretched to the limit at the time because of WWII. Despite this, as soon as Churchill heard about the famine he authorized 100,000 tons of grain to be shipped from Australia to India, despite the risk of Japanese raiding. Between August of '43 and the end of '44 1 million tons of grain were shipped to India. In April of '44 Churchill sent a telegram to Roosevelt asking for US assistance in shipping grain to India, which was refused because US shipping was at capacity due to the war. Andreas then argues that while Churchill said several racist things about Indians he did not have malice towards them.
This is a good analysis. Occasionally I see arguments for colonialism from right wing people as a solution to certain third world countries consistent underdevelopment, but it always ignores this (extremely important critique).
Even if extremely competent and just administrators are put in charge, there’s literally nothing stopping them from exploiting the colonial nation in ways that utterly disregard the colonized people. At least if your local warlord is ruling over and exploiting you, it’s *your* local warlord, who presumably can’t easily flee to luxury overseas if things go bad (although a lot of African dictators seem to do this with billions at the end of their rule).
"At least if your local warlord is ruling over and exploiting you, it’s *your* local warlord, who presumably can’t easily flee to luxury overseas if things go bad (although a lot of African dictators seem to do this with billions at the end of their rule)"
Will he be *your* warlord, though? The kind of place likely to have been colonized also was the kind of place lacking in national identify in the first place, so while their may have been someone who was from nearby, they may not have been of the same ethnicity. In the case of India, I am aware of a defense of the Raj from apparently very right-wing Indian elements that prior the Raj, the Indians suffered from the worst of *both world*: brutal, exploitative, colonial administrators who stayed for 1000 years (eg Muslims). At least the Raj left, after all-the Mughals are still there.
It isn’t that simple. Akbar was a tolerant Mughal Ruler, who decided to invent his own religion when ruling over the land. Mughals had times of relative peace between the religions. It’s just that when the Brits came, they were witnessing Aurangzeb who was probably the worst Mughal ruler in all of India, who decided to wage the most expensive war in Mughal History against South India, not win that war which eventually led to a dissolution of the Mughal empire into the Marathas and other small parts.
There was not an Indian Identity, but there was a civilizational identity. For example Hindus used to still gather for the “Kumbh Mela”, every 4-12 years like clockwork through all the different rulers they’ve had, they often had to cross kingdoms to do this pilgrimage.
The question is were the colonial rulers better/ worse than previous rulers India had. Of course the British view, and the dominant view of the 19th and 20th century is that they were the best rule India ever had. And yet when they left, India was one of the poorest countries in the world, not just Asia. There were few periods in history that had worse Hindu-Muslim Tensions than when British left, which led to the disastrous partition. They also created an Anglicized Socialist Ruling Class, that was determined to convert India into the next Russia or something similar, though to be fair, Russia and China beared the worst of that dynamic. It’s hard to look at the facts and think India was some well ruled country.
The only argument I see that might hold some water, was this was something that even happened to China that was never fully colonized by the west, so it was just something that happened even under capable rule. It’s a counterfactual we won’t know the answer to. I don’t fully buy it.
>Even if extremely competent and just administrators are put in charge, there’s literally nothing stopping them from exploiting the colonial nation in ways that utterly disregard the colonized people.
TBH that doesn't seem like a problem confined to colonialism, at least not any more. Plenty of senior politicians and civil servants in western democracies end up with lucrative positions in international corporations, more or less entirely insulated from conditions in the country they used to help run. When Rishi Sunak unexpectedly called the last British election, there were people suggesting he had a job lined up at some American firm and wanted to leave office quickly so he could take it up; I've no idea if this was true, but the fact it was considered credible tells you a lot.
I can't think of any examples of a prominent US politician who left office and then wound up living and working in a foreign country. I'm certain it has happened occasionally, but I am skeptical that it is common. Working for the US office of a large multinational corporation, yes, *that's* quite common, but that still leaves one pretty strongly coupled to the conditions in the US. As does having your extended family living in the United States.
Yes, it's mostly non-American politicians moving to America, for reasons others have said. But I do think that "conditions in the US" is too broad a brush. The sort of conditions that are good for, say, BlackRock or Goldman Sachs might not be good for your old constituents in Nowheresville, West Virginia.
My mind pretty quickly summoned the example of John C. Breckinridge. Admittedly, that was during a rather unusual time in US history, not at all common, just as you qualified.
As the richest country in the world, we don't need to go overseas to earn big bucks; they come to us and give us the big bucks. And there's no shortage of politicians and Formers that get paid by foreign entities for lobbying (John Allen getting paid by Qatar comes to mind immediately, as does Sue Mi Terry, although she was getting paid shockingly little for her services).
You can make both more money and gain influence in the US than any other Western country. You could work for some NGO in London and have a respectable amount of influence but you won't make a lot of money. You could work for some think tank in Dubai or Singapore and make tons of money but won't have any influence. America is the perfect place for both, so you will see some politicians from other Western countries move to the US but rarely the other way around.
Right, so the "exploiting the colonial nation in ways that utterly disregard the colonized people" dynamic being discussed, really doesn't work in the United States. And probably doesn't work terribly well in the rest of the industrialized world. Nobody with any sense is going to "utterly disregard" the people of the country they are going to finish out their career in, and that their grandchildren are probably going to grow up in. That doesn't make them benevolent altruistic civil servants, but it puts a cap on their villainy that isn't there for colonial administrations.
Perhaps there’s something of value when one has strong ethnic and cultural ties to the land. For the same reason a white leader of an African country would be accused of not representing the interests of the people, so is Sunak in the land of the Anglo-Saxons.
British elites loved their empire so much that when they lost the land they just invited in all their former subjects. Don't think they expected that within a generation their former subjects will become their rulers lol(Apparently Indians own more property in London than whites and the British finance sector in my experience nowadays is disproportionately Indian as well).
- my Personal Moral Responsibility for helping avert ASI dystopia
Hear me out.
I am seriously anxious with AGI/ASI. If we were all going to die and it was certain, I could theoretically accept that. But "NOT KNOWING WHETHER OR NOT I CAN use my mind and flesh to help avert catastrophe", that keeps me up at night. No really, it's torturing me. Imagine if you were living in Ukraine and the bombs were falling and you had computer skills... how could you look yourself in the mirror if you didn't work in some "technological warfare" operation?
Meanwhile, there is 1 thing in this world where I have some "unique planning and insight": A simulation game of the Middle Ages. I've been planning it for 4+ years.
How could these possibly be related?
With Alignment, doesn't at least SOME of the problem come down to "weights/opinions/value-judgements" as well as "how to most beneficially conceptualize reality" Doesn't AI Alignment require "keeping more of the AI agents weighted in a 'vaguely-defined beneficial way' than not"?
And won't it be an ongoing problem? And if so, couldn't "we all" contribute, in a way, by molding our concepts, discourse, and cultural-expression in a more pro-social way?
Enter the "game"....................................................................................
If you've ever played historical strategy games, you know they can be overly-focused on hard power: becoming the largest, richest, widest.
While this reflects a certain truth about civilization, it is VERY incomplete. Individuals-and-groups also seek beauty, stability, justice, moral good, truth, honor, reputation, comforts, etc. Not all dreams are so "imperial".
AND
People don't always seek them in the order of Maslow's Pyramid. People can and DO sometimes sacrifice things "at the bottom" for the sake of things "at the top". Sometimes temporarily. Sometimes permanently.
I have plans for a game that's more complex: one that doesn't hide the "brutishness", but is still life-affirming and pro-social. I want a game where it is just as fun and interesting to "build peace", "build justice" or "build culture" as it is to build empires.
It's not that the game would introduce any new views of history that don't already exist on the web... but if it successfully influences other developers and players... maybe it can magnify these particular views... like a sort of "Grand Suggestion" to our culture and AI. Maybe not enormous in impact, but large compared to what I could achieve by commenting on ACX :-P.
If one suffers from war in Ukraine, they might leave. It's not that one's support might allow Ukraine decisively win. Comparing ASI fears to the war is gloomy.
(and in case it's not clear, deep down I'm seeking answer to the following...)
IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE I CAN DO TOWARDS HELPING AVERT ASI DYSTOPIA?
Is there anything REALISTIC that someone ELSE can do? (which I can contribute to?) (granted, I live with a disability and my days can be hell or at least very unproductive sometimes)
Not on that timescale. But I would say his administration's actions since inauguration are a much better support of the flight 93 election case made 9 years ago than his first term. You could reasonably assess what he is doing now as having lots of two way risk ( high rewards actually possible) without being MAGA.
None of that was plausible in his first term. It was more like choosing to masturbate as the plane went down (if you wanted to embrace the premise that the plane was in fact going down)
Yes, I'm actually beginning to like him now. I figured his second term would just be him running in circles giving outrage speeches for 4 years. Who knew a President could actually do things? Lord knows where it'll all end up but it sure is fun to watch for now.
I don't want the US responsible for Gaza, but his proposal is 100% the correct one and it's refreshing to see a President with the balls to actually say it. Palestine is a failed state and will never be viable. Put it in the dustbin of history where it belongs.
Yes, forced removal of an entire population is B-A-D. Not the least because it WILL involve murdering a large number of them. Guaranteed. If people with guns come to forcibly remove you and your families from their homes, fighting back is clearly, *obviously* an act of self defense.
If basic human decency is not a reason for you to oppose this, public opinion really ought to be. Much of the rest of the world does not share your cavalier attitude about forcing civilians from their homes at gunpoint and murdering those that resist. The international reputation of the U.S. WILL be badly damaged by such a move. There will be economic, diplomatic and military consequences for many, many years to come.
If they don't have to die then ethnic cleansing isn't that bad. The only reason it gets a pearl-clutching response is because people view it as a synonym for genocide.
If that's your definition then the partitioning of India was ethnic cleansing.
I hope Gaza gets power-washed. It's a failed state and nothing can change that. Let it die. It's better for the Gazans and it's better for the world.
Question for med-stats people: Can the sensitivity and/or specificity of diagnostic criteria be estimated based on its inter-rater reliability? If so, how? If not, why not?
What innovations have happened in poker strategy in the last 20 years? Are there strategies that are known to be the best now that go against the previous wisdom?
Speaking as somebody who played professionally for a while maybe 15-20 years ago, there have been *significant* changes at the "shark" or "can win several real tournaments a year" level.
Poker could be thought of as "solved" now, in the sense that computer / AI players are stronger than pretty much all human players and are carefully policed, and this has changed and informed things, but I'm actually unsure how much ongoing insight mining is going on there by human players. There's been significant evolution of thought at the top WSOP levels.
Modern Poker Theory by Michael Ossivado is a good intro to some of the new strategies.
I was reading those international IQ posts from January, and my position now is that on a population wide level, intelligence / IQ is kind of overrated.
It's useful for every society to have a handful of people who are amazing at abstract reasoning and logic and so forth, and it's generally useful for everyone to be smart enough to e.g manage their own personal budget. But the intelligence you'd need to balance a budget or figure out how to plan an intercity trip is a floor, which can be lowered with technology and design of user friendly systems. It's very much sufficient for the general population to meet the floor but not bother striving for the ceiling.
The truth is, most people who aren't necessarily super smart can live productive and functional lives by leaning on their social strengths, and by copying what successful people do. Not everyone has to be a revolutionary thinker - it's perfectly acceptable to ask someone else for ideas or simply observe what works and ask.
In fact, I'd argue that often, a method or a model passed through and improved by a hundred or so average intelligence people may outperform something derived from first principles by someone who's got high IQ, because outside of very abstract things - pure mathematics or logic - the former can capture lots more real-world edge cases and variations. Maintaining the kind of social relationships where you can comfortably share information and mutually refine methods is much more important than generating good ideas ex-nihilo.
IQ is good for winning chess games. A lot of things may look like chess games in abstract (business strategy! Building a railway!) but upon closer inspection, every single chessboard is unique.
The boards don't always have the same number of squares, sometimes it's not even square shaped overall, sometimes entire bits are missing which you don't realise until you try to move a piece, also you're blindfolded and can't tell what any of your pieces really are, and you think your opponent is eating your pieces when you're not looking but then they accuse you of doing the same thing and then you both realise that there had been a racoon that has been swiping pieces at random the whole time. But also sometimes a Monopoly token clatters onto the board. And someone else drops in and messes up all the pieces every now and again.
It's still better to know chess strategies than not, but by itself it's definitely not going to win the game. If I had a choice between studying chess (as played on normal boards) and talking to other Chaos Chess players, talking to other players will usually be much more fruitful, because there are game states that you cannot derive from first principles unless you literally know everything and even the highest IQ folk among us have to specialise.
I do consider myself to have slightly higher than average IQ. The main personal benefit this confers is that school was a bit easier and as an adult I occasionally game credit card reward programs for fun, redeemable for 1 - 2 interstate return flights each time, and I can guess how much I'll get paid after tax withholding. A lot of these things are trivially reproducible using websites, apps, or copying what my smarter friends do.
A high IQ farmer probably designs the farm based on best scientific principles to maximise yield, possibly experimenting a little. A cunning farmer goes around the place near harvest time and copies what the highest yield farm is doing. A sociable farmer is friends with everyone, and receives the best tips everyone else cares to divulge. It's actually not obvious to me that the high IQ farmer is necessarily going to do best - it kind of depends on the model they're using, whereas if Cunning successfully copies everything relevant (in places where that's possible), they'd probably do decent despite having zero understanding of the underlying principles. Similarly, Sociable receives a huge trove of data points to try, also without needing to understand underlying principles.
And as I get more professional experience, I'm finding that understanding underlying principles is a bit overrated - your model ends up needing so many inputs that the effort to measure / monitor / process becomes disproportionate. The black box approach makes a lot of sense most of the time, and black box approaches don't really need much IQ, you just need to figure out what to look at and who to talk to.
If people had higher IQ on average they would have a better understanding of economics and physics. Then rent control would not be a policy with any kind of backing. Energy policy would be a lot sharper.
Example: the airplane on a treadmill. If you bring that up in an average space, you end up with interminable arguments and squabbling. If you bring it up in a higher IQ space then it settles very quickly once the key arguments are presented and understood. Lots of policy discourse could be that way!
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289610001133
"If people had higher IQ on average they would have a better understanding of economics and physics."
From my life experience spent mostly in environments dominated by high-IQ individuals -- and since I'm old enough to remember rotary telephones this is shall we say a decent-sized sample -- that is a pretty hilarious prediction.
Also I literally LOLed at this: "If you bring it up in a higher IQ space then it settles very quickly once the key arguments are presented and understood."
Not trying to sound cynical here, I'm really not, but honestly -- how many actual very-smart people have you observed interacting with each other in real life?
They are human beings not robots; their IQs are just one variable in how they behave and not the dominant one; etc.
Just really here and on DSL. And not once have I seen someone argue that chemtrails are real, or vaccines cause autism, or that the earth is flat, or that you can cure aids by having unprotected sex with a virgin. All things that are believed and debated in lower IQ spaces. I don’t believe I have seen someone argue for rent control either.
I had a college roommate, literally the smartest individual I met in four years at one of the nation's most-selective colleges, who argued seriously and at length that vaccines were the reason Americans were dying of lung cancer and the warnings on cigarette packs were just governmental nonsense. (And he wasn't even a smoker!)
A former colleague of mine holding two PhDs in the hard sciences was calmly certain not only that Area 51 was real but that the film "Independence Day" (featuring a POTUS discovering that Area 51 was real) was in fact a slick deflection/coverup for the actual Area 51.
The single looniest individual I've ever been acquainted with is a former employee of a relative of mine in the tech sector, a brilliant programmer whose sheer brainpower awed experienced software engineers, and who had to be begged to remember to wear both pants and underwear to the company's offices. (He would remember one or the other, at random as far as anyone could tell, but not both.)
My sister attended the University of Chicago as a student and then joined the staff of a highly-prestigious publication headquartered on campus, and has ten stories similar to the three I just mentioned.
Etc etc. People, not robots. That's all of us regardless of IQs.
High IQ people do better on Econ and physics tests. They understand Econ and physics better. Are you saying there is zero correlation between understanding economics/physics and having sensible opinions on economics/physics?
How do you reconcile your anecdotes with Mallards linked study?
The ACX/SSC community is largely formed of people with nontypical neurological traits which cause them to prize truthseeking even when it's socially maladaptive, inhibits personal profit, cognitively discomfiting, or otherwise deleterious to the individual, in a way that neurotypical people broadly do not.
Basically, autism causes vaccines.
ACX commenters comprise a subculture within a subculture. Not representative.
I think Anonymous has the right read here.
Just by small way of illustration; it's hardly authoritative, but here's average IQ by state.
https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/average-iq-by-state#map
I don't see anything patterns here that leap out. Does MA have a better policy environment than HI? TX and NY have about the same averages, and wildly different policy; same for CA and LA.
Those are pretty small differences in IQ. Does Papua New Guinea have worse policy discourse than New Zealand?
"Lots of policy discourse could be that way!"
No, it couldn't. Once money, or personal gain more broadly, becomes involved, the intelligence resources are diverted to inventing new excuses for the policy that will benefit each given speaker, new contrived explanations for why the correct answer about the treadmill actually isn't true in spite of being observable. Otherwise, why do you think concretely totally discredited ideas like socialism are still given credit academically? Or to take an even clearer example, it's blatantly obvious that sex changes are physically impossible, but due to the nature of their mental illness, transsexuals still crave the counterfactual really strongly, so they bend all their ingenuity toward trying to deny the self-evident. The only distinction between the stupidest and the cleverest in this group is the quality and amount of their sophisms.
No offense, but you're making the classic mistake of naive utopianism here.
(EDIT – also, it's arguable that this is the original purpose of intelligence evolutionarily: not truth-seeking, but persuasion as a way to accrue more resources for oneself and one's offspring, at the expense of others.)
I didn’t say ALL policy, I said “lots of policy.”
And, many of the things that are currently tribal shiboleths would have been nipped in the bud with a higher IQ population.
We'll have to agree to disagree on that second point.
How does your hypothesis hold up when tested against empirical data? For example, how strong is the correlation between a country's GDP or median income and the average IQ of its citizens?
Personally, I think you have a wrong mental image of people with high IQ, especially when you're saying things like
> […] a handful of people who are amazing at abstract reasoning and logic and so forth […]
> IQ is good for winning chess games.
> A high IQ farmer probably designs the farm based on best scientific principles to maximise yield […]
High IQ entails so much more than being good at games with simple, known rules. A better description would be "ability to solve problems". For example, you say:
> A cunning farmer goes around the place near harvest time and copies what the highest yield farm is doing. […] successfully copies everything relevant […]
How do you think this "cunning farmer" is able to decide which other farmer used better methods vs. who just got lucky due to circumstance? Or which methods of another farmer are worth copying vs which are ineffective?
> […] black box approaches don't really need much IQ, you just need to figure out what to look at and who to talk to.
Uh, yeah, "just figuring out what to look at and who to talk to" requires intelligence.
OC ACXLW Meetup 86 1) Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government & 2) Lynn Stout on the Dominant Business Paradigm
Saturday, February 8, 2025
2:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Location:
1970 Port Laurent Place, Newport Beach, CA 92660
Host & Contact:
Host: Michael Michalchik
Email: michaelmichalchik@gmail.com
Phone: (949) 375-2045
1) Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government
Primary Reading
Article (Kahan, Dawson, Peters, Slovic):
Motivated Numeracy & Enlightened Self-Government
Optional Video
TED Talk: on Cognitive Bias and Numeracy
Background & Extended Summary
(A) Context and Rival Hypotheses
The authors probe why we see persistent public controversies—on gun control, climate change, etc.—despite seemingly overwhelming scientific evidence. They pit two main ideas against each other:
Science Comprehension Thesis (SCT): Claims conflict stems from a public deficit in scientific literacy or logical reasoning. Better education in math/science should reduce polarization.
Identity-Protective Cognition Thesis (ICT): Argues that group identity can overshadow even robust analytical skills. People often interpret data to conform with their cultural or partisan affiliations—particularly on issues coded with “tribal” significance.
(B) The Experiment
Setup: Participants had to interpret the results of an (allegedly) data-driven experiment displayed in a 2x2 contingency table. In reality, the data were designed so that the correct interpretation could be easily masked by heuristics.
Conditions:
Skin-Rash (neutral scenario): Showed whether a new cream helped or hurt patients.
Gun-Control (politicized scenario): Showed whether a city’s ban was linked to increased or decreased crime.
By toggling the headings, they made the “correct answer” either more or less politically comfortable for different ideological groups.
(C) Key Findings
Skin-Rash Condition: Higher numeracy correlated with better performance in data interpretation. SCT supporters might say, “Yes, see? More math skill = less error.”
Gun-Control Condition: However, more numerate participants used their quantitative prowess selectively. They were most accurate only if the correct interpretation matched their existing political stance (e.g., “liberal” participants best interpreted data showing a gun ban reduces crime, “conservatives” best interpreted data showing it increases crime).
Numeracy didn’t help cross partisan lines; it often hardened them, as high-math individuals used logic to reinforce identity-aligned conclusions.
This deepens our sense that polarization can be exacerbated by sophisticated reasoning tools when issues become entangled with cultural or partisan identity.
(D) Broader Implications
Simply boosting STEM education or “critical thinking” may not guarantee cross-partisan consensus on contentious topics (climate, health measures, etc.).
De-polarizing an issue—removing its identity-based cues—might be the more critical step to unlock people’s willingness to process data impartially.
The phenomenon highlights “expressive rationality,” where it’s individually beneficial to remain group-aligned, even if collectively it impedes evidence-based policymaking.
Motivated Numeracy Discussion Questions
Math Skills vs. Bias
Have you seen debates in which the most “informed” or data-savvy voices seem the most entrenched? Why might greater expertise sharpen factional divides rather than foster agreement?
Identity and Cost
The authors suggest maintaining identity is crucial for social standing. How might we reduce the “social cost” of accepting facts that differ from your group’s position?
Role of Communicators
If objective evidence alone isn’t enough, how can science communicators, journalists, or educators frame data in ways that mitigate cultural triggers?
Applications Beyond Guns
Do you see parallels in other conflicts (e.g., vaccines, nuclear power, economic stimulus)? Where might the same dynamic appear?
Implications for Self-Government
The paper’s title references “enlightened self-government.” Under what conditions can democracy thrive if so many policy questions can become “identity-charged”?
2) Lynn Stout’s Critique of Shareholder Primacy
Reading Links (Evonomics)
All from Lynn Stout’s collection: Evonomics: Lynn Stout Articles
How the Dominant Business Paradigm Turns Nice People into Psychopaths
Why Wall Street Isn’t Useful for the Real Economy
How Economists Turned Us Blind to Our Own Goodness
The Myth of Maximizing Shareholder Value
Background & Extended Summary
(A) Lynn Stout (1957–2018)
An influential figure in corporate law, governance, and business ethics, Stout questioned whether the mantra of “maximize shareholder value” is legally required or even beneficial. She believed:
Shareholders don’t “own” corporations (a corporation is an entity that owns itself); they own shares.
Corporate law seldom mandates boards to single-mindedly chase short-term share price—that’s more an ideology (Friedman/Jensen & Meckling) than a legal fact.
(B) Articles Overview
How the Dominant Business Paradigm Turns Nice People into Psychopaths
Argues we’re not “homo economicus” in everyday life, but the standard corporate message (“focus solely on profit”) can crowd out altruistic or ethical impulses in investing and board decisions.
Mentions “socially responsible funds” as evidence many shareholders care about ethics, yet too many structures and norms push managers and investors into maximizing short-term returns above all else.
Why Wall Street Isn’t Useful for the Real Economy
Critiques the assumption that hyperactive trading always aids “efficient resource allocation.”
Points out only a small fraction of financial activity goes to underwriting new securities (i.e., raising real capital for companies). The vast majority is secondary market trading, which often adds limited societal value but extracts large fees and fosters short-termism.
How Economists Turned Us Blind to Our Own Goodness
Explores how the “incentive” model of policy (assuming humans are rationally selfish) can overshadow moral suasion and conscience.
Cites experiments on social dilemmas showing how easily contexts can make us either more cooperative or more selfish.
Warns that focusing too heavily on extrinsic rewards can “crowd out” prosocial norms that hold organizations and societies together.
The Myth of Maximizing Shareholder Value
Chronicles how the concept gained steam in the late 20th century, especially after Friedman’s and Jensen/Meckling’s essays.
Debunks the idea that corporate law requires maximizing share price, or that it’s always beneficial for all shareholders.
Suggests “satisficing” multi-goal governance—balancing stakeholder interests, growth, employee loyalty, R&D, etc.—can yield better long-term outcomes for both society and many shareholders (especially the diversified, patient, or ethically driven ones).
(C) Collective Takeaways
Stout sees “shareholder primacy” as oversimplifying business realities and ignoring humans’ capacity for moral concern, trust, and long-term relationships.
She dissects how the dominant economic paradigm can ironically degrade shareholder returns overall—akin to “fishing with dynamite,” short-term profit for some but harmful to the system’s health.
A broader perspective on corporate purpose might encourage “sustainable capitalism,” robust corporations, and ethical leadership—contrary to one-size-fits-all share price obsession.
Discussion Questions for Lynn Stout’s Critique
Psychopath vs. Prosocial
In daily life, we show empathy and fairness, yet in markets, we act purely self-interested. Why? Are laws and norms pushing different mindsets?
Wall Street’s Real Value
How can we reconcile the claim that modern finance is essential with the reality that speculation can overshadow real capital formation?
Conscience, Law, and Incentives
If overemphasizing extrinsic incentives crowds out altruistic instincts, how can policy or corporate governance harness pro-social motivations?
Satisficing vs. Maximizing
Stout endorses “satisficing” multiple goals (employee welfare, environment, stable relationships, etc.). Critics say that leads to “fuzzy accountability.” Are there ways to measure or structure multi-stakeholder success without devolving into chaos?
Policy Reform or Cultural Shift?
Should laws be changed to end illusions about “shareholder ownership,” or is the deeper fix about corporate culture, board norms, and investor expectations?
Walk & Talk
We will conclude our main discussion around 4 PM, then transition to an hour-long walk. Feel free to join in for an informal extension of the discussion or casual conversation. Everyone’s welcome, whether you prefer to debate economic paradigms or talk about local events.
Share a Surprise
As usual, if you’ve encountered any surprising articles, personal experiences, or side projects that spark intellectual curiosity, bring them along for our open-floor sharing.
Looking Ahead
Future Topics? We love suggestions—be they theoretical readings or real-world case studies.
Guest Contributors: If you’d like to co-facilitate or highlight a specific area of expertise, let Michael or any ACXLW regular know.
We Look Forward to Seeing You on February 8!
Should any questions arise, please contact Michael Michalchik at the email or number above. Both “motivated numeracy” and Lynn Stout’s insights on corporate ethics promise a lively, eye-opening meetup. Join us for an afternoon of deep and wide-ranging discussion. See you soon!
Forget all this "AI will destroy us" silliness: an actual sweet meteor of death is coming for us in 2032. In just the last 24 hrs the impact probability increased from 1% to 2.3%. This is... moving in a wrong direction... and fast.
https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/details.html#?des=2024%20YR4
It is the nature of impact-probability math that the impact probability increases at each reevaluation, until suddenly it drops to zero. There is a 2.3% chance that it will instead go to unity, but *only* a 2.3% chance. That the impact probability was ~1% last time we checked, only means that there was then a 50-50 chance that it would go to zero on the next evaluation, which didn't happen.
And if the asteroid does hit, it will be a sub-Tunguska event; the asteroid will not reach the surface, the damage will be localized, and we will have known the approximate impact area for weeks or months ahead of time. No one will die unless they are both massively unlucky and very stupid.
I’m partially jesting, but only partially. Of course it won’t kill us all, but I’m not sure why you think it won’t reach the surface. The bloody thing is 54 meters across! It will be a nuke without the radiation.
I just looked up Chelyabinsk. 18m diameter, so let's assume 27 times as big. Chelyabinsk was estimated to be 30 Hiroshimas, so this would be around 900. Not great! OTOH, Chelyabinsk was est. 400-500 kilotons of TNT equivalent, so 30 times that is 12-15 megatons. Tunguska was est. 20-30 megatons as of 2019.
So, still sub-Tunguska (assuming about the same velocity; I don't know how safe that assumption is).
One could imagine the event being extremely destructive if that blast happens to be over a city, but I have it on good authority that cities are even harder to hit than the earth itself.
> 12-15 megatons
Good guess. The estimate on NASA's website says 7.8 megatons (see link shared by 1123581321, look at "Energy").
We should race to ASI so that it can build a meteor-destroying super-laser!
… or maybe not. 2,3% is indeed worryingly high, I wonder what it would take to mitigate damage if we knew for certain it was headed to hit the Earth?
Yeah I don’t think I’ve ever seen the impact probability that high. I agree with J. S. that it’ll likely drop to more typical e-6 level, but… maybe not…
apparently back in 2004, the impact probability of 99942 Apophis got as high as 2.7%...
Where could I find these Russian propaganda movies?
https://united24media.com/anti-fake/why-russian-cringe-propaganda-painting-the-usa-as-the-main-enemy-is-on-the-rise-in-russia-2435
They sound like good candidates for "so bad, it is actually good".
Some of them might actually be good, if you can compartmentalize and ignore the political messaging. Russian Cinema has been amazing since the very beginning, and despite claims to the contrary, Soviet cinema was incredible. You just have to be able to compartmentalize.
Here's an example: Russian air defense shoots down Santa Claus (no I'm not making this up) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEuF3uXHug4
The sick irony is that this came out right at the same time as they shot down an actual passenger plane (Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243).
I wish I could find the propaganda videos about how all Europeans were freezing and starving during winter 2022.
I remember seeing a video that seemed like an ad, and it showed "European Winter 2022", "European Winter 2023", "European Winter 2024" with progressively less light on the Christmas tree, and I think in the third video the family ate their hamster.
But there was also a serious news report, naming various European countries and their capital cities (including e.g. Paris and Berlin), describing how people living in these cities have no electricity during Christmas, and how all women need to prostitute themselves to get some food.
EDIT: I found the second one: https://old.reddit.com/r/RussiaUkraineWar2022/comments/zl2dhp/russian_propagandists_report_that_european/
Due to the brief fake Trump-Canada trade war I was inspired to learn about Canadian whiskey. Here's where I started and what I learned!
Where I started:
- I'm Canadian
- I don't really drink American whiskey anyway, I mostly like scotch (e.g. Glenfiddich for a popular one or Laphroaig for a peat-smoked one), so this was partly just academic, but still I was curious.
- Back in the day when I was 19 I started with e.g. Crown Royal and Canadian Club from the LCBO, but didn't actually like whiskey until I got into scotch.
- I knew that Canadian whiskey is often called rye. I knew that Canadian whiskey doesn't get the respect it once did. I knew that Canadian Club used to be seen as prestige, like it's the stuff Al Capone smuggled during prohibition and that people like Don Draper liked (he's fictional but it was accurate), but now it's the cheap second-shelf stuff in a plastic bottle at LCBO. So what gives?
What I learned (some details vague, double-check any specifics):
- Once upon a time, way back when, Canadians were drinking wheat whiskey (nobody drinks wheat whiskey anymore), but then Dutch and German immigrants started adding a bit of rye and people liked the little bit of a kick it gives. We called it "rye" even though rye was only a minor ingredient.
- Back in the day, I guess up to prohibition and maybe a bit past then(?), American whiskey would have been pretty rough, e.g. moonshine or young corn whiskey, and Canadian blended whiskey was aged longer and was seen as higher quality and smoother. And of course once prohibition started, smuggled Canadian whiskey was the best stuff Americans could get. Canadian whiskey is still seen as being "smooth."
- Canada legally allows you to call your whiskey "rye" as long as it still has the same general taste and character as this tradition, even though it was never mostly-rye, and even whether or not there's actually any rye in it at all. E.g. Don Draper's assistant calls Canadian Club "rye" even though it's actually mostly corn (canonically, I wonder if he knew?). In contrast, American "rye" legally has to be >51% rye.
- In modern times whiskey fans don't care as much about smooth anymore, they want complexity like you get from an old scotch. Also Americans later got good at making whiskey too like bourbon. These, plus the lack of as-strict standards about ingredients, both contributed to Canadian whiskey not getting the respect it used to.
- There are also some more recent high-rye Canadian whiskeys, though, like Lot No. 40 really is a 100% rye and is reputedly one of Canada's best whiskeys. I just bought a bottle and it's delicious.
- Even for the classic smooth style I guess there's variation, like maybe Wiser's or Forty Creek is better than Canadian Club Original (and also brands have different bottlings, like Canadian Club Classic 12 Year is probably better than Canadian Club Original). And even the cheap stuff is fine if you like that, and it's still good for mixing e.g. with soda or ginger ale.
- (Fun fact, what Canadians sometimes drink and call a "Rye & Ginger," New Zealanders love and call a "C. C. & Dry." I don't know why nobody's made it rhyme, calling it a "Rye & Dry"!)
In my 20s I would take a 16’ Lund from Nelson’s Resort on Crane Lake (Minnesota) through the Namakan Narrows to a weird little Canadian liquor store to buy Cutty Sark on the cheap. No US duties so it was a bargain compared to US prices. Probably saved 5 bucks
In my 30s I went through a Glenlivet phase. Occasionally when I’d order it neat in a bar they would try to pass Cutty Sark off as the pricier quaff. Yuk. Who were they trying to kid?
Present day they all taste pretty yucky.
Recently I went to a scotch tasting with work pals at a local joint calling itself Merlin’s Pub. They were going for a British Isles ambience, the sort of place where you could buy shepherds pie for dinner and see a ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ sign on the wall.
The taste organizers were talking about things like ‘maritime notes’ but I was tasting ‘industrial paint thinner’.
Fun tangent about an early 2000s Canadian Club ad campaign, where originally they wanted to avoid any mention of dads and it being an old brand, but then leaned into it: https://www.printmag.com/branding-identity-design/sex-design-behind-canadian-club-whiskeys-brand-revival/
I've been thinking about that issue about which prison criminal transpeople should be sent to. I think there probably isn't a single right answer to that question. You can't put a transwoman sexual offender in a woman's prison for example, but you also also can't put a very feminine post-op transwoman in a man's prison.
Seems like an instance where the decision should be left to the judge.
Also, there must be at least a few lesbian rapists, I wonder how the hell they handle that.
Maybe, and I know this is crazy but just hear me out: we should try to prevent all people from being raped in prison
What's the path for that in America?
I don’t know. But if we are ok with cisgender people being raped then why not trans people?
Making all prisons exclusively solitary confinement would be a start.
This is a no-brainer. Although I'm sure you are merely posting this to be an edgy bad boy, you actually got this one right. All you have to do is let physically separated inmates call each other on the phone and they won't go insane, the way such confined people otherwise tend to do.
Well yeah, I'm not even the first person here to suggest that.
And I really am not just trying to be edgy. If I was, I would've said what that other commenter posted...
How old are you?
> but you also also can't put a very feminine post-op transwoman in a man's prison
I mean, you absolutely can. People would be pretty happy with that solution.
Isn't that person at an especially high risk of getting raped? I think "people" here stands for a specific political faction that apparently now thinks they represent all America.
Liberals aren't particularly fond of trans people either. Something about them compromising women's rights, allegedly. They're not going to bend over backwards just to protect them. It's just the progressives that are a problem, and the new administration seems quite intent on purging them from every position of power in the country.
You're talking about a particular subset of liberals that is A: rather small and B: not particularly influential in liberal circles. And I suspect even most of them do not want to see transwomen being raped in men's prisons.
I think people here stands for the prisoners. Anomie likes to be edgy like that.
I don't take in much from news commentators. But I have been listening/ (some watching) to the senate confirmation hearings. OMG some great theater. I've lost most of my respect for Bernie. (I mean he's still Bernie, but he's also now a died in the wool Dem.) And John Kennedy from Louisiana is perhaps now my favorite senator. (He reminds me of J. Stewart from "Mr. Smith goes to Washington".) A few days ago, I sent in a request to my state to change my voter registration. I think I'll probably change it to Republican. (I want to send the biggest FU I can to my former Democratic party.) I know this is a mostly anti-Trump space. (And I think Trump is an asshole, (and when I tell my Trump loving friends this, they mostly agree... yeah he's an asshole.)) But I want to just ask you all to give him and team Trump a chance. (I think the first thing we should agree on when talking about politicians is that they all are doing what they see as the right thing for our country. Yes they may have bad ideas, and yes they will all make mistakes, but to first approximation, they are not evil.)
After some thought, I realized that making a serious attempt at talking about the disconnect I see here would be instructive for both of us.
"I think the first thing we should agree on when talking about politicians is that they all are doing what they see as the right thing for our country. "
This right here is part of it. I think that is true for the median politician. I think that might even be true for politicians in the 10th percentile of integrity and decency. I don't think it's true for Trump. Or rather, I don't think Donald Trump's brain maintains any sort of a conceptual separation between "what's good for the country" and "what flatters Trump's ego." In particular, I think the idea that he could EVER help the country by stepping down, stepping back, genuinely cooperating with those that oppose him or effacing himself in any manner is utterly alien to his thinking. And that's exactly what it would take for me to "give him a chance." A very rough, non-exhaustive list of the sort of necessary behavior that would be required for "giving him a chance" to be even a morally acceptable thing to do (in my judgement) might look like this:
--Immediately re-enter the U.S. into the Paris Climate agreement, publicly acknowledge the truth and seriousness of climate change and apologize for his error. Start working with congress on a modest-but-serious package of *additional* climate measure the U.S. will take above and beyond what the agreement calls for, as a mea culpa to the rest of the world and an attempt to make up for lost time[1].
--Publicly admit that Joe Biden was the rightful winner of the 2020 election, and that his own repeated denials of this fact (long after his legal challenges were dead) were dishonest, self-serving and an unacceptable attack on the integrity of the nation's electoral process. Make monetary restitution (from his own personal funds) to the families of all those killed in the attack on the U.S., including the rioters and the police who later died by suicide. Make it clear that the restitution is intended as an apology for the major roll he played in creating and fueling that dangerous situation.
--Immediately divest himself of all his personal properties and investments, placing them in a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest while he was president. Apologize for not doing so in 2016 and work with congress to draft legislation plainly requiring future presidents to do the same.
--Publicly apologize to the people of Panama, Denmark, Canada and Mexico for his various insults and attacks on their sovereignty. Publicly reverse his position on the tariffs on those countries, and pledge not to repeat the error. Disavow his use of emergency powers to circumvent congress' power to levy taxes and duties.
--Make a real, good faith attempt to convince justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to step down from the Supreme Court, and work with BOTH parties in congress to select replacement justices who are highly qualified, have impeccable records of personal and professional conduct and are broadly agreed to be politically moderate.[2] Begin attempting to propose and study (but NOT enact) a solution to extreme the politicization of the Supreme Court, likely involving some sort of more bipartisan and less exploitable justice selection process. Have a recommendation ready before the start of the 2028 primary season so primary candidates can take positions on it and the American people can use it as part of their selection process.
--Work with congress (again, BOTH parties) to attempt to craft a bi-partisan compromise on immigration as should have been done 20 years ago. "Compromise" here meaning that it still includes immigration restrictions, provisions for enforcing them and reasonable border security, but doesn't try to militarize the border or use heavy-handed and inhumane tactics in doing so.
--Retract his proposed plan for ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, apologize to the people of Gaza for saying so, and make a real attempt to stay out of the conflict in Gaza, adopting a maximally neutral position anywhere that his presence is unavoidable.
--Apologize to the U.S. victims of COVID for his poor handling of the initial phases of the crisis, work with congress to improve the U.S. future pandemic preparedness and response and work more closely with health organizations elsewhere in the world. Donate a substantial portion of his personal wealth to some sort of charitable cause helping those harmed by COVID, by way of restitution for the lives his incompetence failed to save.
I'm guessing your reaction will run to something like "wow, that's completely unreasonable." But it really, really is not. There a great many things that I could have put on here but didn't. Everything here is chosen to be geared towards amending some specific harm he has personally done to the U.S. body politic, and I certainly wasn't exhaustive when considering all the harms. None of these involve giving wholly to Democrats in a major way (except the climate change one which is LONG overdue), but rather attempt to build the bipartisan cooperation that has largely disappeared in the past 20 years. And no, nothing less would be sufficient. Abusers are very, very good at convincing people to give them one more chance and ignore past behavior. People of real integrity own up to their mistakes, apologize for them and attempt to make them right. The BARE MINIMUM for Trump to be a morally acceptable president is to offer substantial proof that he can act like a person of integrity, and not an abuser.
[1] Alternately, I could be persuaded that anthropocentric climate change is not happening and that Trump's actions here were correct (though not justified at the time). This would, at a minimum, take something in the nature of a worldwide scientific revolution in which large amounts of new evidence and improved models reshape the field. Or it would take me acquiring a serious concussive injury or an RFK style brain worm.
[2] Note that this would still leave the Supreme court with a Republican advantage, but one in which at least one moderate was needed to agree with any ruling.
So... in order for you to believe that Trump is doing what he sees as the right thing for the country... he would basically have to abandon his politics and those of the people who voted for him, in favor of your politics? That's what credibility looks like to you, adherence to liberal dogma? Wow, way to fail the idological Turing test, there.
Or if not, explain what e.g. a Republican politician who does not countenance rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement but does have the best for America as he sees it foremost in his mind would look like to you?
" he would basically have to abandon his politics and those of the people who voted for him, in favor of your politics? "
People who are capable of basic reading comprehension will have noticed that this point was already explicitly address. This would not be him abandoning his politics in favor of mine. This would be him attempting to make genuine restitution for the harmful things he's done, and to make a real effort to arrest the bipartisan fissuring that is rapidly poisoning American political life. YES, that means making compromises. The fact that you cannot tell the difference between a compromise and a capitulation is exactly the problem.
"Or if not, explain what e.g. a Republican politician who does not countenance rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement but does have the best for America as he sees it foremost in his mind would look like to you?"
That Republican politician should
1. Actually educate himself on the realities of climate change in a way that I guarantee that neither Trump nor most of the Republicans in congress have done.
2. If, after educating themselves, they have actual, reality-based criticisms of the Paris Agreement that don't involve brazen denials of established scientific truth, they may present those to the world and try to hash out an alternative that's more acceptable.
Yes, doing a minimally adequate job of governing does indeed require accepting basic truths of reality that have been well-known for four decades. If you cannot do that much than asking ANYONE to "give you a chance" is nothing more than a con-job.
"The fact that you cannot tell the difference between a compromise and a capitulation is exactly the problem."
The problem with your suggestions, yes. I did indeed read your assertion that it isn't unreasonable and understand that you meant it, I'm trying to explain to you how extremely preposterous this looks from the other side of the aisle. Out of your suggestions, the *only ones* that could be legitimately called compromise positions are admitting that Biden won 2020 and putting his assets in trust for the duration of his presidency with an apology for not doing it sooner. The rest legitimately just look like demands for Democratic politics from a Republican because you're angry that he's too Republican, no matter how you try to lampshade it. In particular, the bit about trying to reverse the appointments of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh – something which he wasn't even particularly responsible for and which would have happened regardless of which Republican had beaten Clinton – is wholly absurd and can seemingly only be motivated by blind rage at you/the left losing that contest, not least since Gorsuch especially is a conscientious upholder of the Constitution and its principles, a far better jurist than any one of the last three Democratic appointments to the court and less prone to vote as part of an ideological block. (Sotomayor in particular I can't recall voting against liberal orthodoxy on legal grounds one single time in her entire tenure, although I speak under correction here as I am not a staunch SC watcher.)
As to your other point, I think you grossly overestimate the importance of politicians educating themselves and having reality-based opinions, because approximately none of them on either side use that as a basis for decisionmaking – a rhetorical bludgeon at most. What matters to me is that I and many others with me prefer Trump's stance here because *we have reality-based criticisms* of the accords and he's willing to *act* on that which is what matters when push comes to shove. When you suggest that in order to be credible he would have to abandon acting on our preference in favor of not only acting on yours but prostrating himself, and that this would constitute compromise rather than a humiliating surrender, you're demonstrating a myopia which is exactly the problem.
"As to your other point, I think you grossly overestimate the importance of politicians educating themselves and having reality-based opinions, because approximately none of them on either side use that as a basis for decisionmaking – a rhetorical bludgeon at most."
This right here. This is the ENTIRE problem. ALL of it. 100%.
Not because what you said is true. But because it is false. It is extremely, extremely false and you believing it makes it *quite thoroughly impossible* to have any productive dialog.
YES, people DO have principled beliefs and reality based opinions and YES some of those people are politicians and YES some of them bloody well do use those as a basis for decisionmaking. When you say "none of them on either side" I think that is quite telling. I think you are seeing uncommonly clearly out of one eye. I think you are looking at the people on your side, going "wow, yeah, they're all scumbags who don't care what's true" and projecting that to the other side because if it's true of the people who are FOR you, then how much more true *must* it be of people who are AGAINST you.
Now, don't think for a second from what I said that I don't think many Democratic politicians are also scumbags. I've never been a Democrat. I've never liked the Democrats. When I lived in the U.S. I would grudgingly hold my nose and vote for Democrats fairly often--we'll get to why in a second--but I never thought for a minute they were great people. They were adequate. HOWEVER, they were scumbags in the way that all politicians are scumbags. They'd sometimes do shady deal, dirty tricks, lack spine just when you wanted them to have it, talk out of both sides of their mouths, and have scandals that proved that they lacked moral fiber. I could write quite a number of words on the failings of one Joseph Biden, for example, who I am proud to have never voted for.
But the difference when I looked across the aisle was night and day. Not the difference in run-of-the-mill scumbaggery, mind you. Count up the shady deals and dirty tricks and maybe you'd come out with advantage D and maybe you'd come out with advantage R. The difference was exactly what you say is true of all politicians. Only it isn't. There was an ALARMING lack of reality-based opinions on the right. Climate change denial is the largest, most alarming one of those: this is understanding-the-world on easy mode and you guys are FAILING IT SO BADLY. Fifty years, man. This has been known and studied for fifty years. But no shortage of other examples abound: COVID takes the gold star for the *fastest* retreat from reality that I've ever seen any group do, but things like well-understood facets of American history[1], basic contours of current events...the list goes on. Democratic politicians sometimes waffle or weasel or lack spine, but they tend to stick largely in the vicinity of the truth, and their policies reflect it. Republican politicians will shoot of into cuckooland if their base demands it--not all of them mind you, Mike Pence kept his spine and "his side" literally tried to kill him for it--but far too many. How many "2020 election truthers" are there among today's elected officials? How about sometime Qanon followers or Pizzagate belivers[2]? Fewer, for sure, but one would be too many. I'd have loved to live in a world where I could vote against the scummy Democrats, but the only alternative I was ever offered wasn't just unpalatable, it was downright loony.
And then I talk to the voters that put them in office, and I see why. Anyone with spine gets primaried out. Or, y'know, has an angry mob try to hang them. The thing that I started this with, the "there's no reality-based opinions, just rhetorical bludgeons thing?" That's not the politicians. That's the voters. That's the Trumpers. Literally yesterday there was someone in the comments of Scott's government-spending thread basically saying "well clearly I'm not going to believe it any time a liberal says something will cause a bunch of deaths." That's a damn GOVERNMENT PROGRAM. The records are meticulously kept and open to the public. You can CHECK. Any time of Facebook I see anything posted about climate change or COVID or the scientific process in general there's a *flood* of comments about how "scientists always find whatever they're paid to find." I don't have to ask what party those people are from. And that. View. Is. INSANE. It is nuts. I've spent much of my life around scientists: most of them won't shut up about the minutia of their fields unless you shout at them. Nearly all of them could be making better money elsewhere. And all the really important scientific conclusions are shared by the *worldwide* scientific community. And again, I could go on. A certain fraction of the U.S. right wing seems to have convinced itself that there is NO TRUTH, ONLY POLITICS. The the ONLY thing you need to know about someone to gauge their trustworthiness or evaluate ANY claim they make is their political affiliation. And so *of course* they discover that more and more of the scientists are against them: if you can't even *conceive* of there being objective truth, how can anyone from the community of people who devote their lives to figuring it out *ever* reach you?
"The rest legitimately just look like demands for Democratic politics from a Republican because you're angry that he's too Republican, no matter how you try to lampshade it."
Mate, the fact that you believe this is TERRIFYING. Do you know what I would have done if Hillary Clinton had tried to overturn the 2016 election? I'd have denounced her. As loudly and publicly as I could have. A great many people who opposed Trump would have joined me. Do you know what I felt when I heard someone had taken a shot at Trump? Horror and dismay. I hate Trump more than I've hated almost anyone I can think of, and I would have given *absolute hell* to any Democratic politician who did anything other than denounce the assassin. If I discovered Obama or Biden had used the privileges of their office to ply foreign leader for dirt on Trump? I'd have called for THEIR impeachment too. If the Democrats had tried to pack the Supreme court, I'd have been out there writing paragraphs about how "yes, I know they started it, but this is a flatly unacceptable escalation."
" In particular, the bit about trying to reverse the appointments of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh – something which he wasn't even particularly responsible for..."
Right, remember where I started? About "wanting what's best for the nation." Sometimes leaders have to fix problems that are *not* their fault. Sometimes they have to take one for the team. Sometimes they have to make it not all about them. And yes, Gorsuch wasn't his fault and has been a decent jurist in many ways: McConnell was still in the wrong when he left that spot open, and hasn't even made a pretense of not being a hypocrite on that one. But Kavanaugh was a Trump pick and the issue isn't "Republicans got another supreme court justice," it was "Republicans decided they were going to ram the appointment through before the midterm, no matter how much basic decency they had to throw away." If Trump had made a different pick from day 1, or withdrawn Kavanaugh and picked someone with a modicum of integrity--who would have been confirmed after the midterm, Republicans kept the senate--he'd not be mentioned here. Again, the issue isn't "Republicans got to pick too many justices," it's "Republicans have been more and more open about manipulating the selection process for political power, and a body that was supposed to be considered somewhat impartial now appears flatly untrustworthy to many" And I'll grant that Republicans also had feeling about the court in the Obama years. Hence "finding some actual moderates to put on the court, while keeping the balance tilted towards Republicans." Hence "offering solutions to help the selection process produce a trustworthy court--trustworthy to *everyone.*" It is really, really BAD if a large portion of Americans (on either side) feel that the deepest root of their justice system is fundamentally unjust.
The things on my list were carefully chosen. The common denominator isn't "Democratic politics" and the fact that you think they were is, once again, terrifying. The point is that I'm watching the country I once called home *tear itself to pieces* and any time I try to COMMUNICATE THAT I get sneers and derision and an insistence that I'm trying to trick you. No, the things that you are calling "Republican politics" are not normal and usual, and OK. Bush was a crappy president in my eyes, but he'd have threatened his allies, denied a deadly pandemic, whipped up a mob to try to steal an election or call for fucking ETHNIC CLEANSING. I'd take eight guaranteed years of Romney or the ghost of McCain over one more year of Trump in a heartbeat. There are lots of issues near and dear to my hear that were nowhere to be seen: nothing about abortion, nothing about guns, nothing about taxes, nothing about the ordinary drop-some-bombs-on-backwater-countries-for-iffy-reasons sort of foreign policy. Republicans are going to do things I don't like in all of those areas, and they *should* if they win: that's what votes are for. But there are lines that should not be crossed, and Trump has spent eight years shitting on every one of those lines he could reach. Everything on that list, EVERYTHING was about one of three things: fundamental truth, basic human decency or bipartisan cooperation. The things that WILL destroy American if you keep treating them as conveniences to be discarded any time you think it will score you another win.
[2] I can already hear the retorts about wacky things Democrats believe. Please stop before you type them. Take a breath. Consider. Are they *really* on the same level as a literal troll story made up by 4chan?
"YES some of those people are politicians and YES some of them bloody well do use those as a basis for decisionmaking"
Thats awful cute. I remember being in high school. Get back to us once you've graduated, or the Dems have won the government back and mysteriously nothing you wanted happens but AOC buys a house the size of Wisconsin.
"When you say 'none of them on either side' I think that is quite telling. I think you are seeing uncommonly clearly out of one eye. I think you are looking at the people on your side, going 'wow, yeah, they're all scumbags who don't care what's true' and projecting that to the other side"
Absolutely incorrect, the Democrats are by far the worse if anything. They've always been the party of filth and political sleaze, something you would know if you were older than 18. Guys like Vance at least believed in something once, and understand that acting on those beliefs that are still sincerely held by their voters is functionally an obligation. I've never in my life been able to identify any real ideological conviction or principle in a Democratic politician besides selfishness, even when I voted for them. Nancy Pelosi made like $100 million off insider trading and defends the right of Congressmen to continue insider trading to this day. Bill Clinton? Don't make me laugh, he executed a retarded guy for political expediency. Obama talked a big game about hope and so on, then dronebombed Afghanistan, ruled by executive order and started all the border programs that Trump then got attacked for from the left-wing press. I could go on all day like this.
But, in order not to imitate it, as to the rest of your excessively long screed, I will confine myself to pointing out that you forgot to insert footnote 1. Enjoy the next 4-12 years!
" But I want to just ask you all to give him and team Trump a chance."
The entire nation already did that. It ended with an attack on the nation's capital, attempting to end a two-century old democratic tradition. I'm generally pretty forgiving, but if you can't look at that and say "uh, maybe no more chances for that guy in particular," you've gone well past forgiving and well into quokka. It's not like there weren't dozens of other people the Republican Party could have tapped who *didn't* have a history of doing that, if that was something they actually found in any way upsetting.
Why did you respect Bernie at all in the first place? The guy has always been a loon in my view.
Oh Bernie is right about a lot of things. (Take over by big corporations, which have taken over much of government.) He could easily get on the Trump train... but he's somehow infected with TDS from those around him. I'm perhaps a Bernie bro having watched him on Rogan.
I think it's completely logical for Bernie to hate Trump. Bernie hates people who have a lot of money, that has almost always been his position. He's very consistent that way.
Yeah sure, But I thought he'd have a lot in common with Bobby.
During the Space Race, what was the general opinion that Soviet intelligence held about the U.S. space program and how accurate was it?
Welcome to the ass end of Hollywood. You work for the least desirable developement company that gets any work at all, so you really can't afford to be choosy.
Your latest assignment is to come up with a film that includes the following bit of dialog.
"Have I served in combat? You should understand that I serve on an Ohio-class submarine. We don't get in gunfights with raghead militias. We're the gatekeepers of the apocalypse. We fire one missile, we wreck a country. We fire the full stack, we destroy the world. So no, I have not served in combat."
What do you have in mind?
Small-town teen comedy featuring wacky neighbors. This line is coming from the absurd redneck stereotype who drunkenly uses his military experience to hog the karaoke machine.
An action movie where terrorists with a stolen nuclear warhead have taken over [insert thing with lots of civilians here], and the only available people who can Save the Day are the brand new Public Affairs lady for [thing with lots of civilians] and Civilian guy Attending [Thing] who happens to be a retired US Navy Chief Missile Technician and thus is the only person who can Disable the Nukes Before the Terrorists Can Use Them
(The MT would have had some weapons training as a member of the security force, so he can be at least somewhat credible threat to the terrorists).
COOL Card for MT, to describe the skills they get in training: https://www.cool.osd.mil/usn/rating_info_cards/mt.pdf
So, Die Hard meets Crimson Tide, basically
Edited; Thing With Lots of Civilians should be a Entertainment Company That is Definitely Not Disney-like Cruise (good luck getting the Mouse to buy off on this), Attractive Female Lead (formerly Public Affairs Lady) should be one of the assistant producers for all the shows (so you can explain her knowledge of the ship and where to go) and Attractive Male Lead (formerly Civilian Guy) should be there as the Best Man for his Sister's Wedding, who has always loved Entertainment Company That is Definitely Not Disney's shows and wanted to get married on their cruise (so you can explain why he's there but also leave him single for the inevitable romance)
So now it's Speed 2 meets Crimson Tide
Adaptation of The Producers with a low-end barroom braggart substituted for Hitler. Opening number features corny, earnest Ohio workers on lunch break at the Ohio-sub factory. Nose of the sub sticking out of the building and daisies popping up everywhere. Lying barroom drunk staggers among the singing worker-dancers, and they're popping daisies in his pockets.
A remake of the Last Detail, except the Navy guys are all submariners for some reason.
The guy who said that is only three ounces below the Navy's upper weight limit, has a neckbeard, and has paid thousands of dollars for Andrew Tate conferences and subscriptions.
A film about a grizzled, down-on-his-luck Hollywood screenwriter who has been forced descent to working on a rewrite of an execrable submarine-themed action movie to make ends meet, who ends up drunk in a bar, quoting the worst lines of dialogue from the original script contemptuously to the bartender, prompting him to start trying to turn his life around with unexpected results.
"No one ever got kicked off a rationalist forum for taking the meta option."
The first thing that occurs to me is to file the serial numbers off of The Hunt for Red October. Some kind of spy thriller involving submarines and rogue captains, maybe reverse the plot and have an American boomer captain forge false orders and go rogue. Depending on where he's going with it, the heroes could be a CIA/Navy joint team trying to get ahead of the sub, sneak on board somehow when it puts into port, and retake control of it.
Failing that, make a romantic comedy or goofy buddy movie where two of the lead characters are an enthusiastic but naive young man who befriends a jaded submarine crewmember while he's on leave and they get into hijinks together.
"Chief Johnson Goes to Washington puts a bit of backspin on an old formula. Johnson (J.K. Simmons) retires from the Navy after a long career, and runs for office in an obscure congressional district. He wins and heads to DC determined to fix the mess with a bit of directness and common sense, which he has plenty of. Several misadventures later, Johnson has discovered that complicated problems defy simple solutions, and ugly compromises have powerful constituencies defending cherished entitlements on both sides.
"The resulting film is hard to recommend. Simmons does what he can and his younger costars put in the work, but the film is talky and the camera work is static. There are a lot of people monologuing in offices. The one bit that does shine is the fidelity to the underlying material. Both of the script writers are former congressional staffers, and it really shows when they dive deep into obscure details of housing policy and water rights, to name just two areas. This one seems destined to be a cult favorite of armchair policy wonks, but everyone else should go watch something else."
What projects are pushing forward "data structures + algorithms = programs" *with funding*; stl is kinda getting old and I doubt stepov will do a major rewrite, it seems like no one does computer science where the goal is to produce programs with less code gets paid. Its all ai, cryto, new languages with hype, etc.
Nobody working on eg Rust std lib has the same philosophy and is getting paid?
I strongly suspect rust implements a subset of the stl that they can convince a compiler is memory safe; which truth be told is not a goal I think will be fruitful
"I spend months and wrote a research paper about how to convince a rust compiler to work on my doubly linked list" is less good *by allot* then "I spent an hour on a doubly linked list its over there, heres all my algorithms and data structures that are all in the same style"
I’m old school. I still occasionally pull a volume of Knuth’s off the shelf.
The guy wrote the book(s)
https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Programming-Volumes-1-4B-Boxed/dp/0137935102/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=203P61BSKKPNN&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.W1yshZHh5h7sw9X5XePy5MffIFE1vIz_nl8Mp033lujlC5xx-mSlcN0uNASshclQD6KS11JAVyk05r0t2lx3vz6Riugr2QgELsfA3dxYDPDMlJ7yNUZkLLAbqUqzBrVg9BKj2n7lw7LynOs8z0Caw1gtK7ZQa42VxSc6pWoGpKM7r9rg4taoo5259UN_3BpCEORrzLX-qHyb9x30UW47_g.5eri0hUhJneyzENQUFygN62b7h6fijvVFVmJzV_pSUI&dib_tag=se&keywords=donald+knuth+algorithms&qid=1738789074&sprefix=donald+kn%2Caps%2C133&sr=8-1
I’ll write my own damn doubly linked list, thank you.
It seems like the official death toll for the Bihar Famine was 2353 (maybe the real number is higher), and that seems to be the last famine that caused widespread death in India. The bengal famine caused around 4 million deaths, before that there was 1876 famine that has an 8.2 million deaths, again under the British raj (during which wheat was still being exported to London at regular rates). If you just want a history of all the grievances Indians have towards the British Raj, any school textbook in India will suffice. Countless Indian Historians and economists have written papers and books on this. I think it's more useful to analyze the incentive structure that leads to these extreme misgovernance.
The British people I do not think were uniquely evil, they still valued justice, kindness and all other good virtues that most populations valued. They were racist, that is true, but racism was the norm of that time, and racism alone cannot explain the bad governance of the British Raj. Maybe it can explains the average humiliation they made Indians endure, or the lopsided justice system every time a Brit was involved but there are bigger problems to look at.
The fundamental issue is that the colonial system hired administrators whose career was beholden to a fickle group in London far more than the population they ruled, and once they were done, they left and often went back to London to end their lives, without having to deal with any of the havoc they caused in their territory. If anything good resulted from their administration, it had to happen due to their sense of honor that regularly was at odds with directives from London, or it happened because of their fondness for the land, which while present was clearly not enough as none of them actually chose to live in the country they administered unlike every other king, in human history. If Lee Kuan Yew was administering Singapore for China and went back to China after his 5 year term, he might consider all these policies reasonable:
1. Singapore can best function as an agricultural exporter to China, since China is industrializing well and it doesn't make sense to compete with China that clearly has more resources.
2. He can play the Malays off against the Tamils, so that they are too distracted fighting each other and make his administration easy.
3. During wartimes or emergency, all resources in Singapore need to be diverted to protect the motherland, because that is what matters the most.
If you change the incentives and tell Lee that his faith is forever sealed with Singapore, you end up with the opposite conclusion in each of these policies.
Prior to 1920 or so, irrigation collapsed in British controlled india. The consequences were dire. This was an astonishing fact for me, because maintaining proper irrigation is kind of the main task of any government beyond basic military defense.
The British would build shiny new dams in nodes of their profitable trade network, and leave the rest of the country to rock
https://x.com/AndreasKoureas_/status/1639329604996325379
https://xcancel.com/AndreasKoureas_/status/1639329604996325379#m
To summarize for those who don't like to click links:
Andreas Koureas on X argues that the Bihar Famine was not caused by Churchill's neglect or malice. He claims the famine was caused by a natural disaster, compounded by an inability to bring in food from Singapore, Burma, Malaya, or the Philippines because they were currently occupied by the Japanese. Japanese ships were a significant threat to shipping in the Bay of Bengal, capturing or destroying merchant vessels. The British Empire's shipping capacity was stretched to the limit at the time because of WWII. Despite this, as soon as Churchill heard about the famine he authorized 100,000 tons of grain to be shipped from Australia to India, despite the risk of Japanese raiding. Between August of '43 and the end of '44 1 million tons of grain were shipped to India. In April of '44 Churchill sent a telegram to Roosevelt asking for US assistance in shipping grain to India, which was refused because US shipping was at capacity due to the war. Andreas then argues that while Churchill said several racist things about Indians he did not have malice towards them.
I pine for a time like the 1950s when conservative Americans were implacably opposed to colonialism.
The right truly got cucked.
>Andreas Koureas on X argues that the Bihar Famine was not...
*Bengal famine.
This is a good analysis. Occasionally I see arguments for colonialism from right wing people as a solution to certain third world countries consistent underdevelopment, but it always ignores this (extremely important critique).
Even if extremely competent and just administrators are put in charge, there’s literally nothing stopping them from exploiting the colonial nation in ways that utterly disregard the colonized people. At least if your local warlord is ruling over and exploiting you, it’s *your* local warlord, who presumably can’t easily flee to luxury overseas if things go bad (although a lot of African dictators seem to do this with billions at the end of their rule).
"At least if your local warlord is ruling over and exploiting you, it’s *your* local warlord, who presumably can’t easily flee to luxury overseas if things go bad (although a lot of African dictators seem to do this with billions at the end of their rule)"
Will he be *your* warlord, though? The kind of place likely to have been colonized also was the kind of place lacking in national identify in the first place, so while their may have been someone who was from nearby, they may not have been of the same ethnicity. In the case of India, I am aware of a defense of the Raj from apparently very right-wing Indian elements that prior the Raj, the Indians suffered from the worst of *both world*: brutal, exploitative, colonial administrators who stayed for 1000 years (eg Muslims). At least the Raj left, after all-the Mughals are still there.
It isn’t that simple. Akbar was a tolerant Mughal Ruler, who decided to invent his own religion when ruling over the land. Mughals had times of relative peace between the religions. It’s just that when the Brits came, they were witnessing Aurangzeb who was probably the worst Mughal ruler in all of India, who decided to wage the most expensive war in Mughal History against South India, not win that war which eventually led to a dissolution of the Mughal empire into the Marathas and other small parts.
There was not an Indian Identity, but there was a civilizational identity. For example Hindus used to still gather for the “Kumbh Mela”, every 4-12 years like clockwork through all the different rulers they’ve had, they often had to cross kingdoms to do this pilgrimage.
The question is were the colonial rulers better/ worse than previous rulers India had. Of course the British view, and the dominant view of the 19th and 20th century is that they were the best rule India ever had. And yet when they left, India was one of the poorest countries in the world, not just Asia. There were few periods in history that had worse Hindu-Muslim Tensions than when British left, which led to the disastrous partition. They also created an Anglicized Socialist Ruling Class, that was determined to convert India into the next Russia or something similar, though to be fair, Russia and China beared the worst of that dynamic. It’s hard to look at the facts and think India was some well ruled country.
The only argument I see that might hold some water, was this was something that even happened to China that was never fully colonized by the west, so it was just something that happened even under capable rule. It’s a counterfactual we won’t know the answer to. I don’t fully buy it.
>Even if extremely competent and just administrators are put in charge, there’s literally nothing stopping them from exploiting the colonial nation in ways that utterly disregard the colonized people.
TBH that doesn't seem like a problem confined to colonialism, at least not any more. Plenty of senior politicians and civil servants in western democracies end up with lucrative positions in international corporations, more or less entirely insulated from conditions in the country they used to help run. When Rishi Sunak unexpectedly called the last British election, there were people suggesting he had a job lined up at some American firm and wanted to leave office quickly so he could take it up; I've no idea if this was true, but the fact it was considered credible tells you a lot.
I can't think of any examples of a prominent US politician who left office and then wound up living and working in a foreign country. I'm certain it has happened occasionally, but I am skeptical that it is common. Working for the US office of a large multinational corporation, yes, *that's* quite common, but that still leaves one pretty strongly coupled to the conditions in the US. As does having your extended family living in the United States.
Yes, it's mostly non-American politicians moving to America, for reasons others have said. But I do think that "conditions in the US" is too broad a brush. The sort of conditions that are good for, say, BlackRock or Goldman Sachs might not be good for your old constituents in Nowheresville, West Virginia.
My mind pretty quickly summoned the example of John C. Breckinridge. Admittedly, that was during a rather unusual time in US history, not at all common, just as you qualified.
As the richest country in the world, we don't need to go overseas to earn big bucks; they come to us and give us the big bucks. And there's no shortage of politicians and Formers that get paid by foreign entities for lobbying (John Allen getting paid by Qatar comes to mind immediately, as does Sue Mi Terry, although she was getting paid shockingly little for her services).
You can make both more money and gain influence in the US than any other Western country. You could work for some NGO in London and have a respectable amount of influence but you won't make a lot of money. You could work for some think tank in Dubai or Singapore and make tons of money but won't have any influence. America is the perfect place for both, so you will see some politicians from other Western countries move to the US but rarely the other way around.
Right, so the "exploiting the colonial nation in ways that utterly disregard the colonized people" dynamic being discussed, really doesn't work in the United States. And probably doesn't work terribly well in the rest of the industrialized world. Nobody with any sense is going to "utterly disregard" the people of the country they are going to finish out their career in, and that their grandchildren are probably going to grow up in. That doesn't make them benevolent altruistic civil servants, but it puts a cap on their villainy that isn't there for colonial administrations.
Perhaps there’s something of value when one has strong ethnic and cultural ties to the land. For the same reason a white leader of an African country would be accused of not representing the interests of the people, so is Sunak in the land of the Anglo-Saxons.
British elites loved their empire so much that when they lost the land they just invited in all their former subjects. Don't think they expected that within a generation their former subjects will become their rulers lol(Apparently Indians own more property in London than whites and the British finance sector in my experience nowadays is disproportionately Indian as well).
no shortage of English or Canadian politicians using America as a potential bolthole though
I have braided together 2 delusions:
- the Perfect Grand Strategy Game
- my Personal Moral Responsibility for helping avert ASI dystopia
Hear me out.
I am seriously anxious with AGI/ASI. If we were all going to die and it was certain, I could theoretically accept that. But "NOT KNOWING WHETHER OR NOT I CAN use my mind and flesh to help avert catastrophe", that keeps me up at night. No really, it's torturing me. Imagine if you were living in Ukraine and the bombs were falling and you had computer skills... how could you look yourself in the mirror if you didn't work in some "technological warfare" operation?
Meanwhile, there is 1 thing in this world where I have some "unique planning and insight": A simulation game of the Middle Ages. I've been planning it for 4+ years.
How could these possibly be related?
With Alignment, doesn't at least SOME of the problem come down to "weights/opinions/value-judgements" as well as "how to most beneficially conceptualize reality" Doesn't AI Alignment require "keeping more of the AI agents weighted in a 'vaguely-defined beneficial way' than not"?
And won't it be an ongoing problem? And if so, couldn't "we all" contribute, in a way, by molding our concepts, discourse, and cultural-expression in a more pro-social way?
Enter the "game"....................................................................................
If you've ever played historical strategy games, you know they can be overly-focused on hard power: becoming the largest, richest, widest.
While this reflects a certain truth about civilization, it is VERY incomplete. Individuals-and-groups also seek beauty, stability, justice, moral good, truth, honor, reputation, comforts, etc. Not all dreams are so "imperial".
AND
People don't always seek them in the order of Maslow's Pyramid. People can and DO sometimes sacrifice things "at the bottom" for the sake of things "at the top". Sometimes temporarily. Sometimes permanently.
I have plans for a game that's more complex: one that doesn't hide the "brutishness", but is still life-affirming and pro-social. I want a game where it is just as fun and interesting to "build peace", "build justice" or "build culture" as it is to build empires.
It's not that the game would introduce any new views of history that don't already exist on the web... but if it successfully influences other developers and players... maybe it can magnify these particular views... like a sort of "Grand Suggestion" to our culture and AI. Maybe not enormous in impact, but large compared to what I could achieve by commenting on ACX :-P.
If one suffers from war in Ukraine, they might leave. It's not that one's support might allow Ukraine decisively win. Comparing ASI fears to the war is gloomy.
One can also leave the crazy cult convincing one that AI is going to kill everyone. It's a choice to stay in the cult.
I find this offensive and nonsensical as climate change denial.
It's 100% my true opinion after giving the issue very much considered thought.
Sometimes I don't know whether the best thing I can do is "work on my game project",
or if there's something more substantial I can do... and hence the project is a waste of this One Life.
(and in case it's not clear, deep down I'm seeking answer to the following...)
IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE I CAN DO TOWARDS HELPING AVERT ASI DYSTOPIA?
Is there anything REALISTIC that someone ELSE can do? (which I can contribute to?) (granted, I live with a disability and my days can be hell or at least very unproductive sometimes)
Has anyone changed their mind about Trump in the past few hours?
Not on that timescale. But I would say his administration's actions since inauguration are a much better support of the flight 93 election case made 9 years ago than his first term. You could reasonably assess what he is doing now as having lots of two way risk ( high rewards actually possible) without being MAGA.
None of that was plausible in his first term. It was more like choosing to masturbate as the plane went down (if you wanted to embrace the premise that the plane was in fact going down)
Yeah I agree. He actually seems to be TRYING this time, and has built a cadre of at least seemingly competent people that can get things done.
I actually really don't like the whole Gaza thing, but I have to admit he's far more agentic in his second term, so far.
This is basically my vibe
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ8WmiD4WUk
Yes, I'm actually beginning to like him now. I figured his second term would just be him running in circles giving outrage speeches for 4 years. Who knew a President could actually do things? Lord knows where it'll all end up but it sure is fun to watch for now.
I don't want the US responsible for Gaza, but his proposal is 100% the correct one and it's refreshing to see a President with the balls to actually say it. Palestine is a failed state and will never be viable. Put it in the dustbin of history where it belongs.
I don't see how you go from "Palestine is a failed state" or "the two-state solution is not viable" to "and therefore, ethnic cleansing is justified."
It's not ethnic cleansing. No one is suggesting murdering everyone. The population would be resettled and the horrible mess erased.
Stop misusing inflammatory terms just because you don't like the proposed outcome.
Literally the first line of the Wikipedia article. Feel free to check the edit history if you think that's a recent addition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing
Yes, forced removal of an entire population is B-A-D. Not the least because it WILL involve murdering a large number of them. Guaranteed. If people with guns come to forcibly remove you and your families from their homes, fighting back is clearly, *obviously* an act of self defense.
If basic human decency is not a reason for you to oppose this, public opinion really ought to be. Much of the rest of the world does not share your cavalier attitude about forcing civilians from their homes at gunpoint and murdering those that resist. The international reputation of the U.S. WILL be badly damaged by such a move. There will be economic, diplomatic and military consequences for many, many years to come.
Forcibly relocating an entire population based on ethnicity is a form of ethnic cleansing. They don't have to all die for it to be ethnic cleansing.
If they don't have to die then ethnic cleansing isn't that bad. The only reason it gets a pearl-clutching response is because people view it as a synonym for genocide.
If that's your definition then the partitioning of India was ethnic cleansing.
I hope Gaza gets power-washed. It's a failed state and nothing can change that. Let it die. It's better for the Gazans and it's better for the world.
How many of the 2 million people in Gaza would need to die in the process of power-washing it for you to think it was a bad decision?
E.g. people with guns come to move a family, the family resists, and some of the family dies?