ControlsFreak
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User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
1d ago
Yes, I would oppose banning difficult-to-crack encryption even if that made it harder to get at the wokies.
That's how we know that we need to kill you and yours indiscriminately. You're not celebrating or showing any relief. Obviously, you have pledged fealty to the wokies.
From what I've heard through the grapevine from people at funding agencies, it's absolutely wild right now.
But they'd probably act that way if $1 was being cut, or they weren't getting an accustomed-to increase.
No, that is not at all what I've been hearing. Do you think the reality of the situation is that $1 is being cut or that they're just not getting an accustomed-to increase?
ControlsFreak
2d ago
My image of you is as a guy with a lot of red tribe values who lives in a deep blue tribe situation.
Nah. I have lived in more blue tribe situations (not coincidentally and most prominently at university), but I've got a nice red tribe situation going on these days.
but when they tried to compromise they kept getting shafted. Imperfect action is preferable to indefinite wheel spinning, and we have been spinning our wheels for decades.
I'm not asking for compromise. I'm not asking for nothing but perfect action. I'm asking for methods that are actually going to accomplish the goals rather than indiscriminate chemo that will only destroy stuff and be ineffective in actually changing behavior. And if you're someone who's in it for the brutality of hurting your ideological opponents, my suggestions will bring far more pain to their bad goals.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
because the fighters would immediately stop using that tactic as soon as the Americans started killing the fighters by shooting them through the human shields
...
refraining from shooting at an enemy soldier because he uses innocent (or maybe not) civilians as shields rewards and thereby encourages the use of human shields
The absolute key question here is to what extent the applied effects change behavior. It is good that you have found an example where shooting particular hostages (those directly attached to an enemy fighter as a shield) provides game theoretic incentives to change behavior and get to a better outcome. Certainly, there are other situations where shooting hostages randomly is not likely to have a similar effect. So, the question we have to answer is what methods actually affect the game theory such that they are likely to affect change and accomplish our goals. I comment on that here.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
You're buying into it being lazily-indiscriminate
The prevailing sentiment of the comments here are calling for it to be intentionally indiscriminate. This is a clear motte-and-bailey. The motte is, "We can stop some of the most egregious wokeness going on, including outright discrimination on the basis of race/gender," and the bailey is, "We've completely lost the ability to extend a single shred of trust or faith, so we're going to indiscriminately shut it all down, like we're performing chemotherapy."
FWIW, I proposed pretty damn harsh coercive measures to force universities to fix shit a while back. It would cause them vastly more pain at an organizational level, with almost no need to interrogate individual grants much. One might even say that the stick behind such coercion would be 'indiscriminate' (why should someone who is researching the material properties of some new alloy structure or whatever lose their funding because the fru-frus on the other side of campus are discriminating based on race/gender?), but it would be applying significant leverage with a clear demand. It would be vastly more effective at driving plenary change, with clear game theory involved. Rather than random, indiscriminate shutting down of everything, such that no one has any idea how they can change behavior in order to benefit, it would be clear that institutions which manage to clean house are going to make bank, especially since those institutions which can't manage to clean house are going to be shut out entirely. Moreover, it also changes the individual incentives. If you're a hard sciencer who doesn't give a shit about wokeness, you might still find yourself accepting a job at a woke-ass uni, because that might be the place that really enables you to get grants, have equipment/space, top students, whatever. If suddenly, it doesn't matter what you personally do/don't do in your research, but staying at a woke uni means you're forbidden from getting grants, while moving to a cleaned up uni means gravy train, the unis that manage to clean house are going to get showered in top tier talent. No more unis managing to somehow attract some set of possibly politically-neutral, bank-making talent that they skim from to fund their crazy wokies.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
I oppose the position of banning difficult-to-crack encryption for government convenience
Even to get at the wokies?! I oppose ridding ourselves of all research, even to get at the wokies.
I do think that's a lot of what's going on with the objections to the science stuff
Please speak to me as a person.
it's not indiscriminate
From what I've heard through the grapevine from people at funding agencies, it's absolutely wild right now. And people here are literally calling for it to be indiscriminate. If you disagree with them, then you agree with me.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
we don't trust you
I don't know who you think I am, so I don't know why you would or would not trust me.
I'm not sure what else to make of your comment. You think people are just being hyperbolic and angry, and that they're just saying dumb stuff that doesn't make sense? Uh, okay? Then why is all the research getting stopped/slashed?
is there anyone saying "we need to straight up ban tertiary education!"
Nah. Honestly, even that would be better tailoring. Plenty of chunks of those research dollars go to corporate research. There are sooooo many better things you could do if you're just pissed at the stupidity in academia.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
Anti-inductive system. You don't know where the developments are going to go. It's great the SV is doing a good job ATM. Their efforts are within the house of "trudging along", not a replacement for it.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
I don't think you know who my "ilk" is.
Nor do you know who the hard sciencers are.
If you mean things like the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative
Way beyond that. Let's go with an analogy. Instead of it being the UK gov't coming in and telling Apple that they've gotta shut down ADP, suppose that was one of the Trump administration's first moves. (It might still happen!) They've gotta get at those horrible wokies who are now using encryption to #resist against the true and proper administration. They just start slashing out at everything. Signal, Telegram, etc. It's all gotta go. Are you going to be first in line to celebrate... or at least show some relief? Glad that the President is taking the chemotherapy approach, so his FBI can go after all the wokies tryna hide their nefarious #resistance?
If the US is to fund telescopes in Chile, that money needs to go to telescopes in Chile.
I haven't looked at that grant, but I'm pretty confident that the vastly most probable reality is that it did exactly that. Again, look, I'm on board with taking away stupid throwaway sentences; I'm on board with way way way more than that! I'd be perfectly happy with what I mentioned in my previously-linked comment; you could conditional all federal funding on them not discriminating on the basis of race/gender... at the institutional level. This would be a huge huge thing, and it would hit everything that universities do, not even just what they put as a throwaway sentence in a grant application. This would actually be focused on the problem. Not just stopping everything, slashing all the funding agencies indiscriminately, and giving the chemo treatment. The prevailing opinion here is that it should all just be shut down, because "universities bad". And, frankly, I am super sympathetic, because there is so much of the universities that I hate. Not even just the wokeness; I complain about their gov't-enforced perfect price discrimination and their stranglehold on accreditation/certification and more. I would love to have so many things change in the intersection between gov't/academia. But, "We can't tell what's good encrypted communication research and bad encrypted communication research, so maybe we just shouldn't have any encrypted communication research," is not the way, in my opinion.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
I believe so. I don't see what the relevance of that really is, though? Is your point that now we should be more suspicious of what they're saying, because they have skin in the military funding game?
ControlsFreak
2d ago
Computer science is mathematics
Not the way most of your ilk view it. It's about information, use/transfer thereof. They claim to be in charge of information, so of course, they're extremely susceptible to politics. Basically every part of it. Even the politics that you like (the libertarian-bent crypto folks, for example). It's all politics, through and through. Not so with the hard sciences.
we have not seen some upswelling of support or even relief.
I was all sorts of ready for relief, until approximately day one of when that relief was supposed to come, and instead, all and any hard science was suddenly on the chopping block. "Cut it all, indiscriminately," I keep hearing over and over again. I would have loved to have some relief. I would have loved to cheer on the clean-up of any problems. I was genuinely excited. But those hopes were swiftly crushed. We got chemotherapy instead. I don't know how much you know about chemotherapy, but ya don't actually feel relief when you get the first dose. Like, maybe it'll work in the long run; I don't actually know yet. But it would be pretty dumb to unilaterally decide that someone needed chemo, force the drugs into them, then turn around and say that you're actually justified in just killing them entirely because they're not showing relief yet.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
The most important question for any such categorization system is where you put the 75% of spending that is the major entitlement programs. There is almost no point in even discussing whether one should approach the problem with fast, indiscriminate, chemotherapy-like measures or not without at least putting that one in a category.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
@jeroboam (Not at'ing you, bro. Just want to give props for a good comment.)
In 1913, the federal budget was only about 2-3% of GDP. It was funded almost entirely by tariffs.
Today, the federal budget is about 25% of GDP, funded mostly by taxes of individuals.
I missed this comment the first time 'round, and it's a great reminder of the scale of things. I'd like to add another observation. 75% of that current spending is the big entitlements (SS,Medicare,Health,Income Security) and interest on the debt, all things that were adopted post-WWI, which explains the lion's share of what is now a completely different beast of a federal government. If you killed everything other than current defense spending, you're still at 3.5% of GDP. This beast is not something that you can trim around the edges, maybe find some fraud or waste here and there, maybe fire a few bureaucrats, and call it a day. It's something completely different. It's not even about the government actively doing stuff for the most part. For the most part, it's just taking your money, putting it under some shells, mixing it around (sneaking a little out the back for the host), and giving it back to either you or other people who they prefer.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
Most of them [hard sciencers] are believers.
I'm going to shamelessly pull the "computer science isn't hard science" card and claim that you probably don't have actual knowledge of this.
The particular thing starting this thread is complaining about impacts to an internship program designed to discriminate against white and Asian men.
That's still not all that it is.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
I am heavily sympathetic to your concern, but research, especially military-related research (which is 40% of federal basic research), is not an area where we have much of an alternate mechanism, for reasons I outlined here. It's not like business, where a dispassionate economist can sit back and confidently believe that the market will appropriately determine winners/losers with showers of cash/bankruptcy, depending on whether they ultimately provide value to the market, in this case comforted by the fact that they are putting their own skin in the game.
Instead, we have a situation where your military is very very rarely 'tested' (in fact, ideally it is very rare). You very rarely get actual feedback. When you do, you do not have access to the counterfactual of what would have happened if you had invested differently. Yet, you almost certainly have to invest in this in the modern world. Your adversaries are investing, and from what I've read, the adversaries of the US are investing very specifically to counter existing US systems (and near-term planned systems they they've learned about via espionage). If you simply stop and they do not, it is highly likely that they will counter your systems, push further to develop overmatch systems, and proceed to be able to conquer you and yours.
As such, your problem is to determine how to invest. This is a wicked problem. As I said in the linked comment:
Knowing which large acquisition or force structure is going to be useful in future fights is probably just as impossible a task as knowing which research efforts will contribute to future acquisitions/force structures. There will be a plethora of "experts" who have their own opinions. Some top military folks in the early 1900s will think that airplanes are just toys, while others will tell you that they can change the nature of warfare; how do you know who to believe and where to put your money?
Those experts will have skin in the game. The general who thinks airplanes will change the nature of warfare? Probably part of whatever cluster of folks who became the Army Air Force. They were probably personally invested in aircraft. If their ideas were embraced, they were likely to be the people leading those efforts, in charge of said investments. If their ideas were not embraced, they were likely to be sidelined, a bit player in comparison to whoever else's theory of military progression was embraced. Those other people, with other beliefs, telling you that airplanes are just toys? Yeah, they have skin in the game, too. They think that there's some other thing (probably in their portfolio) that is going to be dominant in the next fight. Who do you believe? How do you invest? Do you just cut them all off because they have skin in the game? As discussed, that's probably not going to lead to better results, and you probably couldn't measure it with respect to the counterfactual even if it did.
It is fundamentally a wicked hard problem, especially because the nature of warfare is anti-inductive (as soon as you find and exploit something that seems to work, your adversaries notice and respond accordingly). Trudging along and trying to just make the best decisions for your research investments at each point in time, knowing that everyone who is trying to convince you of their vision of the future probably has skin in the game, is probably the best you can do. At least, I don't really see a better way to proceed. I also don't think the right response to realizing that there doesn't seem to be any good options other than trudging is to just give up and quit, either. I think that probably leads to China just countering all US systems and dominating militarily.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
Alternatively, as @jeroboam said in a follow-up to one of my prior comments, there were probably boomercons who just read it in BusinessWeek and actually believed that there was some untapped source of talent that was falling through some magical cracks or something. Over time, more and more people have wizened up, realizing that the magical gainz predicted simply have not occurred. It does take a little time for that realization to cascade (related?). Like, yes, congratulations to you, The_Nybbler, for realizing it earlier (as did I), but it's pretty insane to think that even the most milquetoast versions, at all time points in the cascade, were fealty pledges.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
All this is, is taking away the grants which include the praise of Stalin.
If that were all that it was, we would be in a good place. I think a majority of hard sciencers would be completely fine with that. Maybe some small set of gatekeepers at some set of institutions would be unhappy, but kinda who cares? But yeah, that's not all that it is.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
I didn't view my comment as a counter to yours. Just that it's something to keep in mind about the inherent difficulty of evaluating whether a system has achieved the goal of, "healthcare is very available and almost everyone can afford it".
Is your point that since caviar is expensive, poor people should starve?
Absolutely not. I don't see how that would make any sense.
Or that you don't want caviar to become cheap because then poor people could eat it and somehow that makes you lose?
This would also make no sense.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
healthcare is very available and almost everyone can afford it
Regular reminder that "healthcare" is not a monolithic thing. It's usually a question of "how much healthcare". Bandaids and aspirin are "healthcare". So is a novel $1M treatment. There is a huge, huge spectrum in between. One could have access to and be able to afford vast swaths of types of healthcare, but some folks want to say, "...yeah, but if they don't also have this, then they don't have 'access to healthcare'." One simply cannot put everything in a single bucket and then make a judgment as to whether people have 'access' to that entire bucket. One must necessarily start thinking about types and gradations of healthcare.
One example I like to give is what the medical response "should" be to someone who has a bit of soreness in their wrist. Something feels "not quite right", but it doesn't necessarily have any other significant indications of anything major going on. For the vast majority of people, the answer should probably be some form of, "Maybe heat/ice/whatever (I don't actually know or care what details), maybe an OTC painkiller if you want. Come back if it gets worse or doesn't get any better after X weeks." But if you're an MVP quarterback and you're nearing the playoffs, they might want to do an MRI and this and that and this and that (again, don't know, don't care about the details). Determining any information about the likely progression, whether it's likely to get worse if they play in the next non-playoff game, maybe tailoring what you do in hopes to shave even a week or two off of the full recovery time is immensely valuable to them. What is the One Monolithic "Healthcare" in this situation, such that we should ask whether it is very available and almost everyone can afford it? There is no such thing.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
The reason the opinion doesn't discuss the amendment as it would apply to anyone in the situation of a modern-day illegal immigrant is because such a situation didn't exist at the time the amendment was adopted.
Precisely. However, the concepts involved in the analysis existed. It's like in the oral argument in the violent video games case, where the question was basically posed to Scalia (I can't remember if it was another justice or what), some version of, "Do you want to know what James Madison thought about video games?" Scalia's response: "No. I want to know what James Madison thought about violence!" We can still consider the concepts of political allegiance/implied license/etc., as they apply to illegal immigrants today, even though they didn't have illegal immigrants then.
There might be an argument for this if the court hadn't ruled, but the court did rule
But they did not rule concerning how those principles come into play for anyone in the situation of modern day illegal immigrants. It just wasn't a question! You're heavily over-reading. I'm reminded of this old old exchange, where someone was heavily over-reading an opinion that simply did not consider an issue front-and-center, and thus, did not take the opportunity to really address it. That opinion may have still discussed principles which could have applied, but if one wants to be extra boneheaded, they could just imagine that it's implicitly settled. The extra fun part about that one is that we already had an opinion which clarified that, no, we didn't focus on that thing before. But we can still analyse it using the principles involved now that it's front-and-center.
you can't do this without overturning 130-year-old precedent.
In no way does one have to overturn the holding of Wong Kim Ark (that is, birthright citizenship for a resident alien) to say, "The Court in Wong Kim Ark acknowledged that the governing principles involve political allegiance and implied licenses, and since there was no such thing as a modern day illegal immigrant at the time, of course the Court did not find an exception for a category that they didn't even consider. But they obviously did not foreclose the question that they didn't even consider, and we'll proceed to analyze the current case using the same governing principles." From there, they'll inquire about the original meaning of 14A, including all the messiness of political allegiance/implied license, and we'll see what they come up with.
Let's clarify something directly. Do you reject the claim that the original meaning of 14A included some form of messiness about political allegiance/implied license?
ControlsFreak
4d ago
If the amendment, at the time it was adopted, includes aliens, congress can't go back years later and create a new class of "illegal" aliens who aren't covered, any more than they can write in any other exemptions.
Right here is the great big "if". Clearly, at the time it was adopted, political allegiance had something to do with it. At the very least, something about the "implied license under which they enter" had something to do with it. (All of this is clearly expressed by the Court prior to 1965.) Wong Kim Ark did not address the question of the original meaning of the amendment concerning anyone who is in the situation of a modern day illegal immigrant. I, for one, am excited to find out from the Court whether or not the amendment, at the time it was written, considering those factors that are expressly relevant, does or does not include illegal immigrants. I don't know! I don't think anyone knows! I think it's a huge open question! ...and I think, given the nature of this most recent comment, you've now come off the idea that it is just trivial, open-and-shut, by following Wong Kim Ark. It's not. It's messy. It's very very messy.
ControlsFreak
4d ago
Sounds more like "not so much a surplus", then. ...what would you say a "surplus" is?
ControlsFreak
5d ago
I'm very confused. I have it on good authority that:
There is actually a surplus of residency spots. Yes you heard me.
I'm becoming more and more of the opinion that approximately every use of the words 'shortage' or 'surplus', by anyone who is not an economist, is mostly self-serving BS to argue for some form of gov't protection/handout for their industry.
ControlsFreak
5d ago
if the child was being abused by their illegal immigrant parents, would the courts do anything about that?
...
In addition to that, illegal immigrants are regularly charged with crimes under state and federal law. Which, I would think, means they are 'subject to the jurisdiction'?
The question has never been solely about the ability to arrest someone (or to "do anything about that"). They were able to arrest John Elk when he was on non-tribal US land.
This is not to say that the correct answer is the other way, either. It is only to say that it is abundantly clear that things like "can you arrest a person" are not the sole determinant. The case law is extremely clear that what they called "political allegiance" has something to do with it. It's super messy once you get into that, but the fact is, one has to get into that if they want to take the case history remotely seriously.
ControlsFreak
5d ago
a close reading of Wong Kim Ark makes it crystal clear that there is no universe where this is necessary.
It really, really doesn't.
When the court mentions the classes that are exempt under the jurisdiction clause, they aren't listing examples of possible exemptions; they're listing the exemptions themselves. That's it. You don't get to add to the list.
Let's take a look at the text. The Court actually helpfully asks whether there are other exceptions. They cite The Schooner Exchange v. M’Faddon:
The reasons for not allowing to other aliens exemption “from the jurisdiction of the country in which they are found” were stated as follows:
When private individuals of one nation spread themselves through another as business or caprice may direct, mingling indiscriminately with the inhabitants of that other, or when merchant vessels enter for the purposes of trade, it would be obviously inconvenient and dangerous to society, and would subject the laws to continual infraction and the government to degradation, if such individuals or merchants did not owe temporary and local allegiance, and were not amenable to the jurisdiction of the country. Nor can the foreign sovereign have any motive for wishing such exemption. His subjects thus passing into foreign counties are not employed by him, nor are they engaged in national pursuits. Consequently there are powerful motives for not exempting persons of this description from the jurisdiction of the country in which they are found, and no one motive for requiring it. The implied license, therefore, under which they enter can never be construed to grant such exemption.
Yes, there are indicia in the opinion that go the other way, too. But it's definitely a not clear and complete bright line. What was "the implied license under which [illegal immigrants] enter"? Some see also. Yes, there is an intense debate, and the Court may now foreclose it, but it is definitely not just a trivial bright line rule that obviously and conclusively follows from Wong Kim Ark, with absolutely no possibility for any other exceptions.
Then by all means, make a real distinction.
Perhaps from your position. I have a bit more of an inside scoop. A bit of a grapevine, yes, but more specifics rather than just general complaints. In any event, I'm glad that you seem to be in agreement that just complete, indiscriminate, chemotherapy shutting down of everything would be bad; at this point, it sort of boils down to an estimation problem, which sort of boils down to one's sources of data signals.
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