Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
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User ID: 1864
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
16d ago
Premiums are only one component of healthcare costs. A "straight line" is one thing, the slope of the line is what matters. Family premiums are up 89% since 2008, compared to ~43% cumulative inflation.. Outcomes and features have degraded since ACA, I'd argue.
The initial argument was:
So really, health insurance companies can't just deny claims and keep the money. They only way for them to make more money is to let the cost of everything skyrocket, raise premiums sky high, and then keep 20% of a much larger pot.
I agree, the slope of the line is what matters. If your argument is that Obamacare increased premiums, you would expect to see the slope of the line increase after the ACA was passed, correct? Do you agree that that is not what we see, and that the post I was replying to was incorrect, pending them making some kind of rebuttal?
Do you have any data about outcomes deteriorating? That doesn't seem like a straightforward thing to measure.
However, I don't think "things continued to get way worse at the same rate" counts as a victory.
It doesn't, it counts as Whiningcoil being wrong. You're making a new argument and moving the goalposts.
Obamacare accelerated the inevitable failure of this healthcare system and was only engineered to be a pernicious trojan horse for single-payer.
Maybe. No offense, but I'll believe it when I see data.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
16d ago
Except you haven’t shown me any of these things.
Do you want papers?
I can't and am not trying to tell you that everyone on SickTok is sick. All I'm saying is that EDS is almost certainly a real disease, and not even as ambiguous a diagnosis as some other things that are less controversial.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
16d ago
We used to have our more clinically-focused research meeting Monday mornings. Everyone would rotate through every few months, and people seemed to think the best way to show off the importance of their research was to present graphic images of their patients suffering. One doctor studied some immunodeficient patients, and insisted on showing this one woman's vagina exploding with genital herpes Every. Goddamn. Time.
The EDS guy always showed his patients bending their thumb down to touch their forearm, which was disquieting in it's own way.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
16d ago
If you see someone on tiktok who never shows you concrete evidence of any of the symptoms above and claims to have EDS, be skeptical and say social contagion.
If I can show you that loss-of-function mutations in collagen or collagen-related genes lead to a syndrome characterized by defects in collagen (i.e. joint hypermobility, esophageal issues, frequent dislocations, weaker blood vessels and organ tearing) with a very high penetrance and that tracks in families, if I can compare mutant and wild-type forms of those proteins in in vitro functional assays and show a difference, if I can either knock those genes out or induce the same mutations in various animal models and show the same syndrome and you're still skeptical of the existence of EDS I'd say you're an [expletive redacted].
If I can't show you a genetic mutation for a subset of patients that still have many of the symptoms above, well, sure, some people may be lying. But...you understand this is true of many diseases, right? Like, do you not believe in lupus? Clinical depression? Rheumatoid arthritis? Many (possibly the majority, or all) diseases have extreme monogenic forms and milder polygenic (we assume) forms. Similar to Alzheimer's patients with mutations in PSEN, APP, etc. who get an aggressive, familial form of the disease in their 30s versus most Alzheimer's patients who show up ~60-75.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
16d ago
They only way for them to make more money is to let the cost of everything skyrocket, raise premiums sky high, and then keep 20% of a much larger pot. Which is more or less what has happened the last 15 years since the ACA was passed.
Do you have any data to support that argument? I'm not an expert, but 5 minutes on google makes it look like premiums have been increasing in a straight line since at least the late 90s.
See figure 1.12 and also this reference.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
16d ago
I'll note that the euthanized woman was described as having Ehlers Danlos. Anyone that has casually explored "SickTok" in the past few years will have surely heard of this condition. While I'm sure it's a real disease in some cases, there is undeniably a trend among young women sharing this concept with each other. I actually first encountered this disease when exploring the twitter of a porn model (so sue me) at least a dozen or more years ago. It struck me at the time as an obviously invented attention-seeking condition that allowed her to post hospital selfies every few weeks and be continually weak and bedridden with no obvious externally visible symptoms.
Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is absolutely real, and monogenic in many cases which provides a clear, objective diagnosis. Then there is a bucket of patients with hypermobile joints, issues with their digestive tract and random pain/other things. That being said, seeing someone flex their pinky backwards past 90 degrees, or their thumb way down to their wrist is profoundly disconcerting and also somewhat objective.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
17d ago
What is the evidence of this? People here and elsewhere argued that Floyd was a boon for democrats in 2020, and they won fairly convincingly four months later.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
17d ago
Nobody will choose to harm the outgroup "as much as possible" if that means literally as much as possible regardless of the harm to themselves in the process. What they will do is harm the outgroup as much as they can without too much harm to themselves...You've also thrown a few things in there that don't even harm the outgroup; a January 6 style protest against Trump winning the election wouldn't harm anyone in the outgroup (and the actual January 6 didn't harm anyone either, it was just an excuse for a left-wing crackdown).
Okay; explain to me why left-wing protesters can't simply have George Floyd level riots and burn DC, NYC and every other major US city to the ground in response to Trump's election? You believe that sympathetic AGs in all of those very blue districts will fail to prosecute them, correct? What harm will come to stochastic terrorists, when I've been assured that it's very easy to do this kind of damage to infrastructure and hard to track the perpetrators? As far as I'm aware, no public health official has suffered legal other major professional consequences, so what harms did they personally suffer to make them stop pushing lockdowns and vaccines?
Perhaps I'll add, why didn't democrats rig the 2024 election given that nobody suffered consequences for rigging the election in 2020?
When you say 'without too much harm to themselves,' you've essentially watered your argument down to democracy/populism, given that most of your proposed consequences come from the ballot box. Or at least given yourself enough of a loophole to drive a George Floyd-style riot through. At which point, if my model of the world is that elected officials largely try to do things that are popular with the electorate (at least when those actions are legible to the public), and that a majority of Americans aren't particularly motivated by harming the outgroup, please give me concrete examples where our predictions about the world would differ?
while the conversation about the current state has certainly been productive, it seems to me that rationalization on either side is always a failure mode, and the cure is predictions:
Indeed. I've seen you post half a dozen times here something along the lines of (and feel free to correct my paraphrasing): 'My model of the world is that the ingroup will consistently choose to harm the outgroup as much as possible. In 2020, protesters burned down billions of dollars worth of homes/businesses to harm the outgroup. When Red-tribe Kyle Rittenhouse tried to defend innocents he was attacked and then tried by the Blue-tribe Justice system that refused to prosecute the crimes of the rioters.
When the pandemic happened, Blue tribe health officials instituted draconian lockdowns that minimally impacted the white-collar laptop-class but wrecked Red tribe laborers and Red tribe parents.
My model of the world predicts these events perfectly! Do you have a better model, and if so, does it accurately predict the world?'
To which I would say, would your model predict:
- Trump wouldn't prosecute Hilary in 2016?
- The lack of major civil unrest, stochastic terrorism, or any major backlash to the repeal of Roe v. Wade aside from some Democratic electoral wins in 2022?
- The end of vaccine mandates in public and private spheres and the end of lockdowns?
- The utter lack of any major protests, civil unrest, or loss of faith in the electoral system after Trump beat Harris? (you want comments that aged like milk - look at the people who were claiming election fraud the morning of November 5th and even through that evening)
- The utter defeat of abolish the police and any of the George Floyd era movements?
- The lack of significant stochastic terrorism (remember the breathless doomposting about how easy it would be for disaffected lone wolf Red Tribers to blow power substations and other critical infrastructure?) through a year of electoral campaigning and the actual election?
To be clear, I doubt I could have predicted these events with any accuracy. But my observation is that you couldn't have done that either. If you want to prove me wrong, make some concrete predictions about the next four years. Will Trump incarcerate Biden or some other major democrat? Trump assassinated by an activist? Significant uptick in lone wolf attacks? World War III?
The only thing your model has going for it is that nobody pays attention to things that don't happen, even when that's the critical evidence against your argument. But whenever something controversial happens, you pop up and point towards the big flashing sign saying 'EVERYTHING SUCKS.' It's the same sensationalism that governs journalists, wrapped in a Bayesian/rationalist worldview.
Biden family's alleged corruption has evolved over time, here and in the broader public, and the specific events and disclosures that have shaped that conversation. My perception is that many of the arguments made to defend Biden, his family, and the conduct of the investigations into their activities have aged exceedingly poorly.
I admit to being disappointed in Biden, the pardon is deplorable and shouldn't have happened. I remain unconvinced that Joe Biden is particularly corrupt (...pardon notwithstanding), and I'm skeptical that Hunter is particularly corrupt by the standards of DC.
In particular, it seems to me that this saga has been an excellent example of a common pattern of group behavior wherein the facts, as they emerge, consistently break against the tribal narrative. This pattern seems to me to be a good indicator of entrenched tribalism attempting to deny reality, and likewise a good demonstration of the limits and shortcomings of that tribalism, which should guide us to a better understanding of how the Culture War is likely to play out.
One tribal narrative was that Biden was corrupt and abused his office to get rich. The other tribal narrative is...well, that the Bidens aren't particularly corrupt. Setting aside which direction the facts are consistently breaking, one tribal narrative has to be false in order for the other to be true. In your model, since you clearly believe Red Tribers are correct, are entrenched Red Tribalists denying reality?
edit: well, OP changed substantially after I hit post.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
18d ago
Pretty pathetic. I thought he genuinely cared about the rule of law and his legacy, as you point out, but it seems I've been insufficiently cynical. I suppose politicians will only be honest insofar as voters can punish them for defection.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
25d ago
Last April, you said:
Israel cannot survive unless Iran is destroyed now. There’s basically no scenario where the tit for tat won’t escalate into an unending front of infinite Iranian resources in Lebanon, Gaza, and/or the Golan Heights,as well as constant back and forth air and rocket fire.
And Iran can't be destroyed unless the US implements a draft of millions of Americans which would start a civil war and end the US.
...
So after this move, basically the only thing that can save them from a death spiral is a major US invasion, which the US would lose militarily without a draft...
Such A draft that would cause a violent revolution/civil war in the US... A civil war that would quickly become ww3 as Chinese and Russian Assets egged on the US collapse and the US military tried to reply in kind.
...
This is probably WW3 Friends. stock up now. End of the age.
Do you think this was wrong? If so, how did you learn/update from the last 7 months?
You have also repeatedly predicted WWIII as well as a major civil war with >1,000,000 dead in the United States following the election. While you still have 50 odd days left for some assassination scenario or Biden to nuke Moscow, do you think the lack of violent protests (or serious protests at all, really) or the general acceptance of Trump's victory mean this was also a bad prediction? Is the point to be edgy clickbait or...do you genuinely believe the things you write?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
28d ago
The daily podcast yesterday laid out what they expected would have happened. Senate democrats would have asked Gaetz if he had ever paid women for sex (illegal in Florida and most of the US), whereupon he could have:
- Deny ever having done it. The leaked documents combined with the alleged testimony of the women already show that the vast majority of people would see that as perjury.
- Admit it, in which case you have a candidate for AG admitting to committing a crime just prior to being sworn in.
- Plead the fifth, which would also be remarkable and apparently a bridge too far even for Trump.
Perhaps I'm being overly cynical, but I'm surprised democrats wouldn't hold onto this until Gaetz had been confirmed so they could use it as a cudgel against the Trump administration. Maybe they genuinely think he'll wreck the DoJ in a way that his substitute may not.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
30d ago
In conclusion, for the moderates and centrists: Your signal is jammed, and only extremism will be boosted on either twitter or bluesky.
So why use it at all? Why use any social media aside from linkedin and a facebook/whatsapp account for messaging? There seems to be a broad agreement in the rat-diaspora that social media is a plague that wrecks attention spans, leads to skyrocketing teenage mental health issues and erodes any kind of political discourse, yet people still seem to use it.
Just read books and build community in meatspace instead of using Twitter/Bluesky. Whatever benefit you derive probably isn't worth the exposure to memes and toxic ragebait.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
A number of diseases have been functionally eliminated in the USA; polio, measles, diphtheria, rubella. One person foregoing the vaccine gives them some small value with negligible cost, although who knows, maybe the value proposition is still there if you plan on traveling to the third world. Some of these things are really nasty if you get them as an adult.
The entire population foregoing vaccines would lead (eventually) to these diseases becoming endemic again. Polio alone was paralyzing 15,000 kids a year prior to the vaccine and killing a fraction of those. I suppose we could decrease the amount of vaccination to allow a little bit of endemic disease back just to improve the value proposition for individuals and please the economists. Thankfully, our forefathers knew that was Fucking Stupid as they watched kids dying of preventable diseases and made vaccines as mandatory as they could.
So, if you want to translate the above into econ-speak - where is the positive externality? And if you agree that eliminating diseases via vaccination is preferable to the alternative, how would you like to give pharma companies enough of a profit motive to make the things?
While we're on the subject, COVID notwithstanding, vaccines are horrifically underfunded for this exact reason. The USA vaccine market was 29 billion in 2024, and pre-COVID was only 17 billion. As an aside, the entire biotech ecosystem in the USA is only ~800 billion; just over half the market cap of Meta, a single tech company. The MMR vaccine costs 100$ and you get two doses over your entire life. This isn't exactly some massively profitable scheme whereby Big Pharma is fleecing hapless poors, it's just a convenient punching bag that plays well with the base.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
To be fair, I did a gentler version of this with my now-ex and she said he was going to repeal Roe and the ACA. I told her there was no way they'd get Roe past the supreme court, and, well, we had insurance through work so the ACA wouldn't hit us. She ended up being fairly accurate...
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
This isn’t some kind of video game where once Trump gets his brains splattered by a pink haired trans twenty-something from Brooklyn all the MAGAs shrug and go home. What you're suggesting is extremely counterproductive; it would just make a martyr of Trump and make the ascendance of turbo-Trump even more likely. The only people stupid and determined enough to do what you're describing tried already.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
For every anti-lockdowner, there was someone just as rabidly clamoring for more restrictions. We could easily be sitting here with Trump hammering Biden on killing grandma while he was the one who made the vaccine, and people here talking about how stupid Biden was for splitting his coalition on COVID. I mean, Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings tried it, and it's not like that ended in a celebratory parade.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
Obama 2008 was a blowout year, 2012, 2016 and 2024 had a lot less enthusiasm, and between 2008 and 2020 the population grew by 10%. That gets you halfway there, more if that growth was skewed democratic.
Not to mention the vast majority of fraud claims would be in the thousands to tens of thousands of ballots in swing states, not literally 15 million votes across the country. How can you possibly envision fraud on that scale? Literally every dem leaning county dumping tens of thousands of fake ballots and none of the election officials turned up concrete evidence?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
No, I would say they are bad candidates. Why would you say they're not bad candidates? What positive qualities could you name? Are they great orators? Especially charasmatic? Wonkish? Great leaders? I'm really struggling to see what your argument would be here.
It's difficult to say without defining your terms. Do good presidents craft legislation, compromise and build coalitions while good candidates just win elections? I believe the majority of the electorate doesn't care about policies (and honestly, I include myself in this category - I care, but I rarely have time to educate myself properly on any given bill or proposal) and is more into vibes and public persona, so again, what is a good candidate/president? But whatever, I can answer in kind.
Biden is not a good speaker. But I do believe Biden (or his team) has a great nose for politics. He was smart enough to distance himself from the BLM riots early on when many other democrats weren't. He went through with the Afghanistan pullout despite what I bet was enormous pressure internally in DC to keep troops there, in a way that I believe was immensely net positive for the country. He pushed immigration bills (crafted in collaboration with some pretty conservative senators) in the last 6 months in an attempt to blunt Trump's attacks on that issue, when I doubt many progressives or democrats were willing to do so. His experience over decades allowed him to compromise and shepherd large bills on infrastructure (which Trump failed to do) and industrial policy through congress during historically polarized times. There are one or two other moments over the course of the campaign where I was impressed with his foresight on issues years ago that paid dividends this year.
I also liked Hillary and Obama. At the risk of undermining my own point, I was less excited about Kamala although I think she mostly inherited a bit of a mess. Most agree that she won the debate against Trump, and regardless of whether you're sour grapes about the moderators, I don't think Biden, Hillary or the entire Republican primary field in 2016 can say the same. She was disciplined with her messaging. And unfortunately, I've run out of time to continue this comment but I may revisit it.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
And yet she was evidently damn good at her job, and it seems to me that it ain't the same working class, nor the same neoliberalism, nor the same world for that matter. She fought for liberty and against bureaucracy and communism.
She was good at her job based on what, winning elections? Justin Trudeau won as many, after breaking 9 years of conservative rule, yet I doubt you think he's a particularly good candidate or Prime Minister.
As for fighting against bureaucracy and communism, these are just partisan buzzwords. 50 years ago, our ancestors were sitting in a pub bemoaning the sorry state of British politics and the terrible candidates and the country going to hell in a handbasket because the new generation was a bunch of pussies.
Not to mention it's telling that you picked a politician from 50 years ago that (I assume, based on the apparent age of your children) you were barely alive for in a country you never lived in. I'm willing to bet that 50 years from now our grandchildren will lionize the greatness of Obama and Trump without having to deal with the shitty day-to-day reality we inhabit. I'm willing to bet that very few people think [current year] politicians are particularly talented.
I'm pretty sure I wasn't. I was planning to vote for Hillary until Trump cinched the nomination, because I wanted the neoconservative wing of the Republican party destroyed forever. She was quite unpopular in much the way Trump is, but 2016 was a very close election.
Whatever - without guessing the particulars of who you have voted for, would you agree that my characterization fits a broad swathe of the at least the American public, and likely the local commentariat?
As for the 'historical unpopularity' that gets thrown around constantly - this absolutely drives me up the wall. Look at favorability polls (first figure). Insofar as Trump and Hillary were historically unpopular, they're just continuing a 70 year old trendline with vanishingly few exceptions. Do you think our politicians suddenly became retarded and unlikable in the 90s? Here's a bet for you - the next pair of candidates for both major parties will be historically unpopular (say the bottom quartile of favorability). Want to take it?
I am pretty sure that I have never agreed with the moderate talking point that Hillary was a uniquely bad candidate and the only one the Dems could have picked that would have lost to Trump.
I actually largely heard this from progressives and the right, not the center? If anyone liked Hillary it was the center. Bernie bros ain't moderates.
And Progressives sticking their fingers in their ears about it is how he was allowed to vegetate in office, which is why they had to dump him at the eleventh hour, couldn't get their actual talent to sign on, and were left with running Kamala.
Because if we had 25th'd Joe out (presumably he wasn't about to leave on his own)in the middle of the COVID and inflation shitshow and let Kamala run things for 2 years, this election just would have gone swimmingly for democrats? If you think 'the actual talent' refused to sign on this year, they 100% wouldn't have signed up in your hypothetical. Not to mention you'd be sitting here lecturing me about how stupid it was to 'allow' Joe to get elected in the primaries in the first place, or something.
And...you think progressives like Joe Biden? Is this just some Overton ploy to define Joe as a progressive such that everyone to his left is some insane fringe radical, while Trump and Vance live in the center? Public figures endorse him because they hate Trump, but Joe Biden was not the progressive candidate of choice in 2020.
And sure, I claim Biden was a bad president, because I think the record pretty clearly shows that his policies had numerous woeful effects in the real world. The exception, of course, was the Afghanistan Pullout, which I think was a masterful achievement and which I will defend against all comers.
I disagree. With the exception of inflation (and who knows whether the counterfactual recession would have been better or worse than inflation, or whether there actually was a center path that avoided both) I think he's been on point and centrist for the most part. CHIPS act and infrastructure are both great (though we'll see if either can actually be implemented in a meaningful way, there seems to be a lot of grift), the economy is doing well (just watch - the economic doomerism on the right is about to evaporate with the election alongside the voting fraud narrative), he tried to push immigration reform. The manufacturing sector is doing better under Biden than Trump. But I imagine this is an entire separate discussion.
I'm not on your side.
We're all on the same side here, brother.
Progressives have suffered multiple, severe unforced errors due to believing their own bullshit. Their control of the consensus narrative has made them lazy, and now that this control is failing, they're stuck in a position where the main effect their spin is having is to compromise their own decision-making. Biden was in fact too old, as was RGB when she tried to hang on till Hillary. They should have picked a running mate who could actually run for his VP, but they were too busy playing identity bingo, and besides, it was an article of faith that he was sharp as a tack. They did this to themselves.
And what was that mistake, not being leftist enough to inspire the workers revolution (cf Freddie De Boer, Bernie bros)? Not being centrist enough (cf Tracingwoodgrains, stupidpol, I'd guess some MSM outlets in the next few weeks) to win the suburban wine mom vote? You all agree that progressives are stupid and lazy and mistakes were made, you just completely disagree about the directionality.
Here's a different narrative - in 2020, Biden wasn't senile yet and won the primary. In 2020, the focus was on winning the election in front of you, because there's four years to worry about the next one. He governed well, although Harris got some tough assignments and the optics for both of them were bad with COVID/inflation/Ukraine/Gaza. Ending lockdowns would have enraged one section of the population as much as enacting them would another. Bombing the shit out of Gaza or taking a hard stance against Israel both would have pissed off a core constituency. Refusing to fire up the money printers may have triggered a recession that would have lost the election just as surely as inflation/idpol/whatever else actually did.
As an aside, you say identity bingo, analysts say lock down the black vote because you're an out-of-touch old white man. For all you know Biden would have lost in 2020 with a different VP pick.
I am pretty sure it is in my direct interest for Progressives to see things the way you do.
Y'know, the funny thing is Trump will probably push policies that benefit me more personally. Please cut my taxes and kill my competition from China, what do I care?
Whatever. Anyways, you think I'm an arrogant, complacent and intellectually lazy progressive who can't see the flaws in his own party. Leaving aside whether any of those are true, I just think the arguments here are lazy, superficial and mostly ignorant of the realities of governing and winning elections in America. Discussing politics is >95% hindsight bias.
I predicted a Trump win, with weak confidence, based on a lot of factors that seemed to be leaning his way. This does not appear to have been a coin-flip election; pretty much every state in the country shifted right by significant margins, with Donald Trump as the candidate.
If it wasn't a coin flip election, why did you have such weak confidence? And given your uncertainty, why would you say running Kamala was a mistake if you (and presumably the dem machine) couldn't have predicted her loss in advance?
But as I said above, I am pretty sure that Progressives doubling down further is pure advantage for my side. By all means, don't let me dissuade you.
Four years from now, conditional on the Trump faction losing the general election, will you be here saying you guys fucked up and Rs had better learn from their mistakes? Somehow, I doubt you'll take that L particularly gracefully if past experience is any indicator. I know the drill - time to reach for the fourth box, the election was rigged, America will be destroyed by a communist dictatorship.
I hope Trump is as successful as you think he will be, and that our country flourishes over the next four years.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
Thank you for the sources. To be clear, I was being facetious, although I think it's a better argument than most of the 2020 fraud ones that I've seen.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
Do you think if she ran a campaign and lost, the commentariat here (and elsewhere) would say I know she lost, but damn, she's a fine politician?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
I think I'm missing your point... are you suggesting that we can't criticise politicians
No, I think you do get my point - it's just a bit funny that you dismiss my criticism as superficial for Thatcher and Vance, but (and I make some assumptions here not knowing you) would accept my criticisms of Harris as being a historically bad candidate. Probably Clinton as well.
The point is that almost all of these 1-2 sentence comments about Harris being an unlikable whore who sucked her dick to the vice presidency is about as substantial and knowledgeable as me saying Vance is a 1%er puppet of the SV elite. I don't think these people know anything about politics, have never worked a political campaign or crafted a bill or written a political speech.
But hey, it sure is easy to wake up the morning after and rant about how the losing candidate was historically bad and the dems are a bunch of morons.
are you saying that you can't criticise the Dems for consistently running poor candidates since Obama?
I'm saying they weren't bad candidates, depending on what you mean by bad candidate. If you strictly mean they lost elections, well, I guess Biden wasn't a bad candidate? Or do you mean something else?
Isn't this pretty much true for every US election ever?
Maybe to put it differently, would you have taken 50-50 odds for Biden v. Trump in 2020? Or would you have taken 50-50 odds for Obama v. McCain?
So far as anyone could tell, it seemed like a true toss up last night. People with money and reputations on the line with access to similar information as the most of us agreed those were the odds.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
Ah, Margaret Thatcher, universally loved and respected across the political spectrum. Not to mention a bizarre choice for a Trump supporter given her antipathy for the working class, out-of-touchness robotic character and neoliberalism. This smacks more of someone you agree with rather than an objective measure of quality or intellect, no?
Vance? Silicon valley, VC 1%er Vance who happens to have a convenient origin story and connections to an ecosystem of companies weaponizing AI to surveil our citizens?
You're missing the point. 8 years ago you were sitting here writing that Clinton was a historically unpopular candidate, manipulative, stupid, whatever. 4 years ago you were sitting here writing how useless Biden is, he can't even leave his basement to campaign, dementia means he doesn't have two functional brain cells left to rub together. 4 years from now you'll be sitting here writing that Pete Buttigieg was the worst candidate in history, who tries to nominate a goddamn secretary of transportation man, at least Kamala ticked some diversity boxes and had some funny coconut memes or something.
Most criticism of politicians is hopelessly facile and ignorant (I assume, this isn't my field) of the realities on the ground or the workings of the system we've created. And most criticism in general is just people playing Monday morning quarterback to feel smart.
Kamala was a candidate who, so far as anyone could tell, had a 50% chance of becoming president yesterday. Sure, hopefully the dems learn from the experience (insofar as they really had that much control over events), but I don't believe the over-the-top criticism of Kamala and Hilldog is warranted.
Hoo boy, do I have some bad news for you.
Molecular biology works fine for messing around with neurons in a tissue culture dish, but it provides remarkably little insight into a complex system like the brain. It's good for saying if I knock this gene out we lose action potentials, therefore this gene is at least required for that process (how it fits in with the 1000s of other genes involved in that process? Often much less clear).
Anytime you zoom out to a broader systems-level view, or anytime you disconnect your work from some ground truth we're inevitably left with woo. If it weren't for clinical trials enforcing some measure of 'woo' colliding with reality, probably the entirety of the life sciences wouldn't be that far off from phrenology-level fMRI experiments.
Anyways. Sure, the social sciences are a waste of time from a scientific standpoint. I'd argue they have other uses, but that's a bit beside my point - the majority of research in the life sciences as a whole is largely subjective bullshit. It's always a shock to fresh students coming in how arbitrary and ineffective a lot of what we do is when they're used to textbooks having all the answers and making science out to be some dispassionate, objective endeavor.
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