ControlsFreak
No bio...
User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
I got the right answer, but I always forget the simple way of thinking about it that you mentioned and do these problems the hard way.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
I would expect there to be an investigation
It appears from the following comments that most of this paragraph is tilting at windmills and, frankly, seems to be fundamentally about partisan misdirection. It's hard to understand how any of it is relevant to the comment I made. Are you literally just trying to completely change the topic to be something about whether there should have been any investigation whatsoever? That seems like a silly thing to do, because not only is it completely unrelated to my comment, but if you had bothered to ask what I think about whether there should have been any investigation at all about certain things, you'd have discovered that I agree that some sort of investigation should have happened (and reasonable people can obviously quibble as to what that investigation should have looked like). Instead, this is presented as some sort of gotcha, that I apparently "don't have an argument" at all, which is pretty bizarre, because you've completely avoided saying a single thing about the argument I made. It's entirely avoidant misdirection, and I'd appreciate it if you spoke plainly about the actual thing I focused on - do you think that Trump was personally culpable for Russia's actions taken against the United States (including their collaboration with Manafort, who was their agent for purposes of FARA), or do you think that Trump was a victim of such?
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
Chinese Asset in NY State Government
Linda Sun was born in China, moved to the US with her parents at the age of five, and later became a US citizen. She rose up to become the Deputy Chief of Staff for the governor. I know plenty of folks who maintain dual citizenship with other countries, but I don't know how serious the USG was/is about making Chinese nationals "really" renounce their Chinese citizenship in order to become US citizens, nor do I have any idea if Sun did/did not.
She was a subject of interest starting in at least 2020, when she was interviewed by the FBI about her trip to China. While not knowing whether she's categorized a dual citizen (which I do know, for many purposes, the security apparatus of the USG treats as synonymous with "foreign national" for many purposes) or simply a former Chinese citizen with Chinese heritage, I also don't know what the state of these sorts of FBI inquiries are. Have they become a more routine/random matter, where they just occasionally drag some folks in this category in to question them and see if anything comes up? Or did they already have some reason to be suspicious of her in 2020? Her recent indictment acting as a foreign agent, visa fraud, alien smuggling, and money laundering conspiracy includes events going back to 2015 (quite a few in the 2018-2019 years), but it's not clear at what point the FBI or anyone else became aware of any of them or to what extent they motivated the 2020 interview. NYT describes it as "questions were repeatedly raised".
This took years and a significant quantity of behavior bubbling up to get to the point where she was finally fired (March 2023). I can't currently find any details of the firing, but the NY governor's press secretary said that she was fired for "misconduct". Another year and a half, and we got an indictment. This may all be a very plausible timeline for how these sorts of things generally go.
So. Paul Manafort. He joined Donald Trump's campaign in March 2016 (when they were likely scrambling to get any sort of organization going), was promoted to campaign manager three months later in June, then fired two months after that in August, essentially immediately after Trump received his first security briefing.
To this day, there are still people (some even in TheMotte) who think that Paul Manafort is the smoking gun of Trump's culpability with Russia. That Trump obviously must be guilty for having that guy on his campaign. That it proves that "Trump's campaign" was working with Russia, and that it's Trump's personal fault.
On the other side, I personally believe that Paul Manafort and his Russian collaborators made a victim out of Donald Trump, and I can remain perfectly consistent in saying that I think that Linda Sun and her Chinese collaborators made a victim out of the NYS governments that employed her.
I think someone could make a plausible argument that both Trump and specific folks in the NYS gov't were culpable, though I probably would be pretty skeptical; as I said, I think the timeline in the Sun case is plausibly fine. But I would need an absolutely phenominal argument to support the proposition that Trump was personally culpable for Manafort, but that individuals in the NYS government were not culpable for Sun... otherwise, frankly, I would have to chalk such a position up to pure partisanship.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
Registering that I've been considering going down the route of trying to do something like this for a while, and I would love to have any updates that could be encouraging me to finally move it toward the top of my list.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
rates of severe endemic poverty among old people were massive even pre-Depression, which is what led to support for Social Security in the first place
I wonder how much of this is genuine econometrics/history, how much was and is pure political posturing (either to drum up support for programs like SS or to maintain that general zeitgeist), and how much is just "actually, basically everyone was just poor back then". Looking at figures like this, I lean toward "everyone was just poor back then". James T Patterson wrote:
If one applied the standards of 1977 (or even of 1937) to Hunter’s time [1900], only a very small percentage of Americans would be defined as living above the poverty line.
with some numbers that are in various year real dollars, comparing how different 'standards' for poverty have changed significantly over time. Were old people poor back then? Almost certainly; everyone was poor back then. It's the absolutely phenomenal success of American capitalism that has made us just absurdly wealthy in comparison that has been the major change. It's extremely difficult to 1) actually break out detailed age-based numbers in that era and tell a significant story about what did/didn't "work" in the context of universal poverty, and 2) have any sense for whether something "working/not working" in the context of universal poverty says much about a world where we have literally 10x more wealth.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
Agreed. Another plan of attack is to point out that these "societal conversations" will actually be completely managed by Party members, for the purpose of giving good outcomes only to Party members in good standing, judged primarily on how influential you are in the Party. I think that's a follow-on conversation that happens once they're at least open to the idea of tradeoffs, and you can introduce them to the concept of public choice theory. If they're still in the completely fresh phase of "some outcome seems unfair in the world", you'll have to warm them up to thinking about how different systems manage that tradeoff better/worse.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
There is a lot of tension in the problem statement that has been pointed out a few times. To what extent can "low IQ normies" actually understand somewhat complex topics that require a fair amount of marinating and perspective? So, I guess I'll contribute one little route that helps with one little ingredient that can go into the marinade and hopefully help them gain perspective over time. Hopefully, it's a simple enough contribution that it can actually somewhat stick with a normie. It's not meant to be a "now you oppose communism" point, but just a little contribution to make them slightly less susceptible and slightly more likely to fit other pieces into the puzzle. The first part is heavily lifted from Russ Roberts talking to Mike Munger in EconTalk.
The issue is that many have a very naive understanding of "fairness", as other folks have pointed out here. They imagine that you can just just elect the right politicians to grab the "fairness" knob and turn it toward "good", with no ill consequences. They obviously wouldn't be willing to trade off "fairness" for something as cold as "economic efficiency", which sounds like how capitalists exploit everyone. So, the point is to use two examples to argue that 1) Yes, you absolutely would give up some amount of fairness for some amount of efficiency, and 2) In fact, we have easy-to-understand historical examples of the relentless drive toward "fairness" being wildly harmful. The first proceeds with a theoretical exercise that feels practical enough to be within every normie's daily experience, and the latter hopefully helps connect the idea to practice in case they think it's just too disconnected and theoretical.
The first is a simple question about your morning commute. You come up to an intersection, and other cars come up to the same intersection at about the same time. Who should get to go first? Well, right now, you might think that it's just whatever the stoplight says or some local custom about how to deal with stop signs, but is that fair?! You're going to work, which you need to do to feed your family. Surely, you deserve to be able to pass through before some high school senior who's off on summer break and just picking up some coffee and donuts before spending his day just hanging out in the park, maybe playing some volleyball with his friends or something. At the same time, someone else may have more of a need. Their somewhat-senile elderly mother just called them, and they're worried that she's going to accidentally cause harm to herself with what she's up to. So, how do we figure out the fair way to make sure everyone in the intersection gets proper priority? We could have everyone get out of their car and have a little discussion about where they're going and why and then implement some group decision-making procedure in order to allocate priority fairly. Then repeat at the next intersection, and the next intersection, and the next intersection, all the way to work. Even normies can realize that this would be ridiculous. Really press them to make sure that they agree that they are willing to be "not fair", to make the guy going to his mother wait for the high school kid at the light, because the light system is vastly more efficient at moving everyone to their destinations, even if it's "not fair".
(A bonus here is if you can find a suitably shortened clip of a guy asking a commie prof if he can have a playstation in the prof's commie world. Commie prof was all like, "Well, we'd have to have a societal conversation..." and just point out that this is for everything. Stop and have a societal conversation when you want a playstation, when you want to buy a new game, when you want some DLC, when you stop at a traffic intersection, hell, even if you want to pick up some more charcoal for your grill, you're gonna need to stop and "have a societal conversation" about whether "society" is willing to let you have any of those things.)
The bonus could actually be a good connection to the second thing, which is a real-world example of exactly how the commie logic goes. Not only can you not do any of the fun things in life (or even get through an intersection to get to work), but you certainly can't acquire anything that could even help you do work. The Khmer Rouge took commie logic as logic, "fairness" above all else. Absolutely no chance that any Big Men of Capitalism could arise. In order to do that, you simply have to ban free enterprise. No one can hoard goods or money if they can't build an evil Big Business. If you let them just go start a business, they might make a bunch of money, and then we get inequality and unfairness. So, everybody works on the State farm, and they're definitely not allowed to do stuff that makes them rich, unequal, and unfair. At least, not without one of those "societal conversations" (don't ask when those actually happen, but spoiler, it's only when we want to give Party Insiders extra goodies). Don't even think about getting a computer; if you had a computer, you might program something and start a tech company, which might make you rich, unequal, and unfair. Hammers? Ladders? Literally anything that could be used to make money with? Banned, unless it's owned by the State, for use on State projects, which have presumably had a "societal conversation" approving them. Hell, the Khmer literally banned people who wanted to have a little more food for their family (because they apparently weren't satisfied by the outcome of the "societal conversation") from going out into the countryside and picking berries. Because that's "hoarding goods", and besides, you might try to sell them for other stuff, acquiring extra wealth, becoming rich, unequal, and unfair.
The result is hopefully that they can see that, while there is often an intuitive drive toward "fairness" (and some amount of this intuition may be fine), it actually gets extremely wonky as you blow it up in scale. It's directly connected to how it would negatively impact their normie life and a historical example of exactly that happening. They'll hopefully realize that they will, deep down, be willing to trade some amount of "fairness" for some amount of "efficiency", and I think that's enough of an accomplishment for a normie who is commie-curious. They'll definitely need more marinating to go much beyond that.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
If you can point to a single example of a biological male who grew into becoming a biological female or vice-versa, we can perhaps have a conversation about what to do in that case.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
When I was bike commuting, I had a pretty safe path to work. I'm not actually sure what the numbers would be on risk of death/lowering stress, but I could see it being either a small factor or maybe even going either way. Exercise definitely has a inherent reduction-of-stress effect that would need to be overcome.
Commuting by car did not, however, save me time. I was in a kinda similar situation; 20min drive, 40min ride. The gym was right on the way to work. I could treat the ride as a warm-up/cool-down and not have to do those things in the gym. I could ride hard and just have it be a full cardio workout. I did spin class sometimes for cardio, so substituting riding to work for spin class was a pure time savings of the time I would have spent sitting in the car doing nothing. Public transport was very not available for my commute, for, uh, reasons.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
Hat tip Tyler Cowen, the Brazilian military has some amount of reliance on Starlink. What are the chances that this is actually stemming from weird, completely internal politics about military interdependence with anything US, with one faction wanting to increase ties and the other faction wanting to decrease them... and this being a simple power play by the latter faction? X itself may not be an actual target, but a means to this end.
That is, one completely plausible scenario is that it's just a crazy authoritarian turn. Another plausible scenario is that factions in the gov't/military are fighting over things like Starlink, and the anti-Starlink faction is losing on that direct, internal fight (e.g., can't get the military to give it up, no matter how much they try to throw around political weight internally). So, the anti-Starlink faction finds an alternate means. The value they get from increasing authoritarianism WRT X, proper, may be a lot, a little, or even slightly negative, so long as they think the value they get from winning the Starlink fight is higher.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
I don't have any strong political/culture war opinion, so I just want to convey a personal opinion.
I used to live in an area where many of the roads had nice big shoulders. In addition, there were some great hills nearby, but also some flat routes if preferred. It was glorious. I loved getting out, getting some fresh air, getting some cardio in. For a while during COVID, it was basically my only allowable means of recreation/exercise (I personally hate running). I even commuted to work by bike for a while, as my father did before me (in yet a different area).
I have since moved. This area is not lacking in land, but it is lacking in snow, and I think that's a big reason why there aren't shoulders anywhere. They don't use the extra land for bike lanes, either. To boot, there aren't any good hills nearby, either. It's horrible. I've mostly given up on riding as being too scary/dangerous. I'm not quite resigned enough to sell my bike, and I'm clinging on to a few low-frequency use cases. My cardio has definitely taken a hit.
I really don't have a political angle to this. I know that different areas have different geography, different populations, different population preferences, different commute times, etc. There's even that city in Georgia that has a golf cart network. I hope they're satisfied with their local solution. There's no real global optimum that can be rolled out everywhere. Some people could sneer that I'm just a hobbyist with a children's toy, while others could sneer that I'm not doing enough to support the cause which could improve things for people in whichever local situation. Whatever. I'm not agitating for change here; I'm fine with the tradeoffs "they"ve made, and I'll live with them. (At least they're getting housing policy mostly right.) I'm just sad that that's something I used to enjoy but can't really anymore.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
“less favourable”
I think you're resting a lot on this, but the court document only mentions this once, with reference to CEDAW (not SDA), saying that it
refers only to discrimination that places women in a less favourable position than men. It therefore does not cover the kind of discrimination that Ms Tickle alleges in this case, which is discrimination that placed her in the same position as men.
They don't really say anything about SDA having some form of "less favorable" test; they talk about "disadvantaging", and they don't really grapple how that would really work WRT a claim of gender identity. What is the set of possible "gender identities" in question? What is the reference class? It's a conceptual mush. I know it's approaching a reductio, but what if someone gender identified as an attack helicopter (substitute less ridiculous, but still nonbinary or whatever), but appeared male, then tried to access Giggle. Indirect gender identity discrimination?
Perhaps @Gillitrut was completely barking up the wrong tree when claiming that the 'authoritative document' had anything to do with it, but we're still left with a different kind of mess... and one that I point out, still leaves yardsticks on the table. You can fit almost anything into "other status".
It also reopens your hypo:
a breastless transwoman desperate for a mammogram, or something. I could see that happening. But I’m reasonably confident our medical jurisprudence allows doctors to decline providing frivolous care. It certainly lets insurance opt out.
I don't see why, with this ruling, it would be considered frivolous or allow an opt out. Could even have one with implants or just barely large enough 'moobs'. The only way would be to say, "Mammograms are for the female sex," but then we're exactly back in the same position Giggle is. There's no reason to disadvantage MtFs in terms of getting to see imagery of their chest, if that's what they want. We don't actually have a reference class to compare them to, anyway. In order to show that Tickle was disadvantaged in comparison to some other reference class, I'd want to know what that reference class is, and once we know that, then maybe we can check to see if denying MtFs mammograms does/doesn't disadvantage them WRT the same reference class.
If there's anything I've learned from learning about BIID, it's that people can be very very serious about demanding a treatment that others may see as kind of silly or potentially even harmful. Are you going to import some "someone might think it's actually silly/harmful" exemption? Like, if a doctor simply asserts, "I think this would actually be silly/harmful, for whatever reason," then they're okay? Well, sure, Giggle can simply say that they think that someone who looks that much like a man is being silly or actually going to harm themselves, because they're gonna like get made fun of or something. I don't think it's easy at all to surgically (heh) slice out the cases that you personally think are silly/unlikely, because that's a ridiculous ad hoc test where the rule is that every time something comes up, we have to ask you whether it's silly or not.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
Thanks for getting me to take another look at it fresh.
the law shall prohibit any discrimination and guarantee to all persons equal and effective protection against discrimination on any ground such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
I have decided that “gender identity” comes within “other status” in Article 26
Questions about yardsticks are back on the table. The Status Games are alive and well in Australia. What an absolutely incoherent mess we keep getting ourselves into.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
My brother in Christ—the entire question of this thread is about the government designation creating a government-enforced legal requirement on third-party service providers to respect the drivers-license-sex. If you'd like to say that the government designation creates no legal requirement for doctors, then it should equally make no legal requirement for this digital app.
Otherwise, you have to make a distinction - from the law - for why it creates a legal requirement for some private service providers and not for others.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
I mentioned a while back that when I visited, I was shocked that basically every person I talked to brought up immigration, unprompted. I wouldn't be at all surprised anymore to see that the conversation has developed even further in that direction in the last year.
What kind of hit me yesterday, though, was that these last several years may legitimately change Canada's demographics in a significant way, effectively forever. The shift was so rapid and so significant in numbers in such a short time, partially masked from public scrutiny by COVID, and now the culture may never be the same again. It's hard to describe how I feel about it except to make comparison to an immigration policy version of a coup d'etat. The facts on the ground changed so fast, partially hidden from view, and now the new reality is a fait accompli. It's a weird feeling.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
Then by all means, please describe the additional government purposes you have in mind.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
The patient didn’t request it.
The patient was unconscious, so that was never on the table.
the different service was never on the table ... The diagnosis didn’t suggest it.
It sure was, and it sure did, if the chosen method of identifying sex was reversed.
There’s nothing less favourable about giving the medically correct treatment.
...we're all the way back to, "What is correct?" Are you saying that the sex listed on the authoritative document is "incorrect"?
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
What service is being withheld on the basis of sex or gender?
The different service that would have been provided to the other sex. At this point, I almost feel compelled to ask whether you think Giggle would have been perfectly legally fine if they had simply put males on the 'male server', talking to other males, and females on the 'female server', talking to other females. Then, in response to a complaint, would you be perfectly happy dismissing it by just observing that there is no service that is being withheld on the basis of sex or gender? Because to draw the line here seems to cut against the entire zeitgeist.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
Don't need an analog, at least not according to the standard you've set forth. You just said that the "only purpose" a government sex classification serves is as a shorthand. They saw the shorthand, they determined that other facts were known, and they used the other facts. Amusement parks did it, emergency rooms did it, and digital apps did it. Unless you have some extra, currently hidden government purpose, these cases seem precisely analogous for the test you've set forth. There's nothing in your current test that says that some sorts are okay and other sorts aren't.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
In the emergency room context the only purpose a sex classification serves is as a shorthand for certain other biological facts that may be relevant for treatment.
One could just as easily say that in a digital app setting, the only purpose a government sex classification serves is as a shorthand for certain other biological facts that may be relevant for treatment. If you already know those other biological facts it's not clear to me what further information one is getting from someone's legal sex classification. In any case apps should determine digital treatments on the basis of the relevant biology, not the legal sex classification. Where does your argument fail?
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
I don't follow. Here you said that "[t]here’s no discrimination lawsuit in using the actual indicators for a treatment". So, I must ask again, given that there's a specific law calling out gender identity and sex discrimination,
Suppose the doc, a private service provider, proceeds according to the authoritative document and not the measurements, and B happens to die. Is that a successful lawsuit by the estate, according to pure law brain? Suppose the doc proceeds according to the measurements and not the authoritative document, and B happens to live. Is that a successful lawsuit by B?
We have a specific law. It is applied to private service providers. The document is authoritative.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
the government's purposes ... other purposes
What are the purposes of such marks when it comes to private service providers, say, like amusement parks and emergency rooms?
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
I think you might be sounding like a transphobe. Tests, forms, doctor's notes, medical gatekeeping?
But no worries, I think @Gillitrut's position can come to your rescue. See, you don't have to actually make any decisions about what test/forms/notes/gatekeeping will occur. You can sit back, remain completely agnostic about any underlying Big T Truth, and just be law-brained enough to observe that different jurisdictions will make different choices. Some jurisdictions, we can call them the Transphobe Jurisdictions, have rulers and tests and stuff like you might want. Other jurisdictions, the Nontransphobe Jurisdictions, don't. Australia happened to choose already that they are a Nontransphobe Jurisdiction, having no rulers, no tests, no nothing. They have a much simpler process that lets you quickly and easily change the authoritative document, which declares, with authority (thus the adjective), how the law views the situation. One can then just sit back, be law-brained, and see that the conclusions follow from the premises.
...but now, Person B is considering going to a local amusement park, a private service provider. There happen to be two amusement parks in the area. Amusement Park Z is run by young, hip folks. They have electronic controls everywhere. You can scan your driver's license and swipe your credit card at the entrance, and then just use the nifty electronic system to access any rides you desire. Amusement Park X is run by old fogies, practically boomers. You have to hand physical tickets to the white guy standing next to the ride, and he points to the sign that says, "You must be this tall to ride." Can Person B sue Amusement Park X for not caring about the authoritative document and simply observing, "Your head don't touch the top of the ruler, dawg"?
After riding a ride that mayyyyyyyyyybe wasn't super safe for short people, Person B isn't feeling so good. B makes his way to the emergency room. B tells the doc everything about what's happened in the time period leading up to that moment. B's last physical act is to pull an insurance card out of a pocket and hand it to the doc, but since it was right next to B's driver's license in the pocket, both are grabbed and passed to the doc. (Can insert/remove a hypo here about B's last words being, "Please help me doc; do anything you need to.") Then, B passes out.
The doc runs a bunch of tests. In the process, they strip off B's clothes and replace them with a standard hospital gown. They can't help but happen to notice B's genitals in the process. The hospital bed automatically provides B's weight. Maybe even in the future, there's a ruler built into the bed, too. The tests come back, and they happen to include chromosomes and other indicators. All of the medical indicators correlate perfectly toward B having a particular sex, height, and weight. But the doctor noticed that B's drivers license disagrees on some/all of these things. The only problem is that the next step that the doctor has to take depends on one or more of those things. Perhaps it's just a dosage selection; perhaps it's an even more significant change in the course of treatment.
Suppose the doc, a private service provider, proceeds according to the authoritative document and not the measurements, and B happens to die. Is that a successful lawsuit by the estate, according to pure law brain? Suppose the doc proceeds according to the measurements and not the authoritative document, and B happens to live. Is that a successful lawsuit by B?
I'm pretty law-brained for a lot of things, but when it comes to these issues, I cannot escape the phrase, "Live not by lies." If we bake lies into the premises, the principle of explosion surely follows. It is utterly unsurprising that if we start off with baked in lies, then attempt to simply close our eyes to the entire realm of truth and try to proceed purely by law-brain, contradictions will follow.
ControlsFreak
2mo ago
Does one exist? Is anyone serious mooting one around in the world of think tanks?
I saw one discussed by William Spaniel. Though I have no other reference by which to determine whether the authors are "serious people", it seemed that Spaniel, who is definitely no Trump/right/conservative/whatever shill, seemed to think it was at least in the land of plausibility.
I disagree. Maybe this is the reason I "always forget" the simple route; because I'm not sure it's actually right. I did this two different ways, my renormalization route (thinking of things as a tree with info sets) and just brute reproducing the wiki entry on using Bayes to solve it.
Method 1: Renormalization
There's a 1/3 chance of picking each box, one which has a 100% chance of giving you a gold on the first draw and the other has a 1/11 chance (ignoring the option with zero chance of getting a first gold), so the chances of me being in each relevant box at the current state are 1/3 and 1/33. To renormalize, I need to multiply by the reciprocal of their sum, 1/3 + 1/33 = 12/33.
So my chance of being in the GG box is 11/12 and my chance of being in the G10S box is 1/12.
Method 2: Straight Bayes, yo
Just shutting up and calculating, reproducing the wiki article directly.
P(GG|see gold) = P(see gold|GG)*(1/3) / [P(see gold|GG)*(1/3) + 0 + P(see gold|G10S)*(1/3)]
P(GG|see gold) = (1/3) / (1/3 + 0 + 1/33)
= (1/3) / (12/33)
= 11/12
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