MotteAnon12345
No bio...
User ID: 1551
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
First off, it's Chetty. Sorry! I got him confused with a paper on distributed deadlock detection.
Chetty managed to convince the IRS to give him detailed income data on... everybody. Yes, literally everybody. It's a sociologist's wet dream. Anyway, he did a bunch of analysis comparing parental vs. child incomes. The idea is that populations tend to mean-revert but they do so differently across races, etc... Whites mean-revert to a higher income level than blacks. It's a neat way of getting rid of the influence of starting conditions. The study itself is here: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/2/711/5687353. The precise graph I'm talking about is here: https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/201514598/qjz042fig5.jpg.
A lot of HBD arguments rely on the assumption* that Black underperformance is due to genes. However, there isn't much of a reason that Black women should consistently have better IQ-related genes than Black men (or at least none that I've heard yet). If outcomes between Black women and Black men diverge substantially, that implies that Black underperformance might not be related to their genetics after all.
- An assumption with a lot of at least circumstantial evidence behind it (imo)...
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
The Dune series is essentially an extended argument for this position. In fact, Dune makes a stronger point: without war, humanity would go extinct. Too much order (read: good times) lead to decay and death.
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
The punishment fits the crime? I get that the character is sympathetic (and attractive...) but she did spy for a foreign government when she was placed in a position of trust. Sounds like espionage and treason to me.
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
Ask the ninth circuit.
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
For me it was Chandy's research with IRS data that showed that income reversion to mean was the same for Black girls as for the White population. I suspect he's just doing something stupid but I can't dismiss the results especially since they are based on the largest sample ever collected in this space.
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
Assertion without evidence (I don't have time to read an entire book, sorry).
Russia was only getting more corrupt under its democracy and it's hardly the only example. Egypt had a brief fling with democracy that set it back decades. And all democracy seems to have done in South America is make it easier for the cartels to buy national governments.
As for Poland and the like, you seem to be forgetting that they were highly civilized functional countries in their fairly recent (generally non-democratic) past. A better explanation seems to be that those countries were doing well due to a myriad of reasons (good genes, cultural capital, etc...) until they got hit by the communism stick. After communism was gone, they reverted to their mean.
The comments on Ukraine are pure speculation. It's democracy certainly didn't seem to be helping given the multiple color revolutions and the constant conflict between it's two halves. Of course these would have been problems anyway but what's your evidence that Democracy made any of this better?
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
Feels like splitting hairs. How is supporting a highly unpopular opinions not covered? Because it's outside the Overton window in this case?
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
No. The location is also highly valuable. If a condo building stays completely unchanged but a major city springs up around it, the building values will massively appreciate. The low density of the condo building just implies slightly higher carrying costs.
Also, demolishing condos isn't that hard outside of CA. NYC rebuilds old skyscrapers all the time.
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
Wait, what? So, if Saudi Arabia passed a law against Christians and then prosecuted them (after full "due process" of course!), they wouldn't be eligible for asylum in the US?
The definition of asylum can't be limited to just due process. It has to account for the laws that said due process is upholding!
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
I don't really give a fuck what happens to the kind of scum that joins a criminal gang, to be perfectly honest.
Then execute them. There's precedent for this, even. After all, a gang is just an insurgency writ small. Corner them, and give them severe punishment followed by lifetime monitoring (and no association with their past gang members on penalty of death). Roger Trinquier perfected this system nearly half a century ago. The Israelis also have quite a bit of prior art to draw upon.
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
Why use the blunt tool of mass deportations when we have a much more precise tool in criminal law?
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
It's more useful than you might imagine. To get from Asia to the West, one needs to pay for the trip. The cost is high enough to serve as a sort of IQ filter.
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
Post hoc ergo propter hoc?
A better comparison would be democratic Russia vs. non-democratic Russia. Do you think Yeltsin's regime was less corrupt than Putin's (or Gorbachev's)?
And of course it's easy to find countries that mostly aren't democratic and are also less corrupt than the US. Liechtenstein in Europe is an example. So is Singapore really or Hong Kong when it was still under the control of the English.
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
Re. Condo owners: it depends on the legal structure. Some (many?) are set up so that the condo owners have a pro-rata share in the land the condo complex is built on.
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
Here you go: https://gordianknotbook.com/download/why-nuclear-power-has-been-a-flop/.
The guy also runs a substack that has the same information in easier bite-sized pieces: https://jackdevanney.substack.com/.
I suppose this is a good time to bring up a comment I made a while back: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/pitqan/comment/hc3utzv/?context=3.
I think this decision by SCOTUS is bad governance. I don't have any opinion on whether it's good law or consistent with the US Constitution, just that this ruling will have an overall negative effect on this country and more broadly that control of the media (and certainly social media) is an essential function of government.
I mean... at least with the traditional media, one could point to some semblance of professional ethics! I personally don't place much weight on these but it's something at least! Uncontrolled social media is a cesspool of lies, cancel mobs, and cat memes. If it isn't brought under control, it will create havoc in our society.
If social media is to be controlled, the only question is: by whom. And here, I claim that government is the only possible answer. Any non-government organization would amass so much influence that it's "non"-government status would become merely a polite fiction. The only choice here is between formal government control vs. informal government control (much like the argument I made in my last post).
To avoid repetition, please refrain from arguing for free speech as an end unto itself. I understand the argument. I just don't agree with it. In my opinion, free speech is a tool (for a more orderly and prosperous society). This is a disagreement on core values and we'll just have to agree to disagree. Now, if you want to argue about how effective a tool free speech is, have at it (spoiler alert: I don't place much faith in it).
[EDIT: it was pointed out below that this wasn't a decision by SCOTUS. Replace "SCOTUS" by "the courts" in the above. I don't think it makes a meaningful difference.]
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