MotteAnon12345
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User ID: 1551
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
That's the thing... It's really not! You take a giant vat of nuclear "stuff" and just let it do its thing! I oversimplify but only a little. Here is an example where Devanney compares coal and nuclear plants: https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/what-is-nuclears-should-cost. The radiation levels from a typical plant release (including TMI and Fukushima) are so small that sheltering indoors for a few days and throwing away contaminated milk are enough to negate the vast majority of the radiation risk. The reason nuclear looks complicated is because we make it complicated by worrying about non-risks like Tritium leaks.
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
Oh. A knowledgeable person! A question for you then: what if the US Navy abandoned requirements for secrecy and just came up with a public spec for a warship? Maybe the military bits (cannons, AWACS, etc...) could be built by the usual MIC suspects but the ship itself would be built by a commercial shipyard presumably in South Korea or something. Could it achieve something like commercial shipping results? Do you think it would be worth it? Does the ship design really need to be secret if you can have ten times as many of them?
Thanks.
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
At least from reading the supreme court opinion, that is not the impression I got. Of course, most doctors won't read the opinion. Instead, they'll get their information from rags like ProPublica so you might well be right.
But... assuming that doctors do read the SCOTX opinion, the rule is that as long as any reasonable doctor agrees that an abortion complies with the restrictions of the law, the doctors are in the clear. That sounds like a pretty lax standard to me? As in, as long as the defendants are able to produce any medical authority in good standing that agrees with them, they're in the clear.
The specific situations in the lawsuit back this up. The women in the lawsuit were not in any danger of impairment/death (beyond the usual pregnancy risks). A late-term miscarriage carries some probability of infection and it's not even clear this is a high probability (thoughts from actual doctors?). It does seem like an unnecessary risk (and imposition) to the mother imo but that's where my comments on the heartbeat law come into play. The guidelines for doctors at least seem to be clear.
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
Me in my original comment:
Most of the articles were about as bad as the one described in the above comment.
Let's not waste time on things we already agree on.
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
Thanks! That's useful. However, that document does not address the situation that the plaintiffs (and I) brought up which is a non-viable fetus that is still alive (e.g. a spontaneous late-term miscarriage).
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
Following up on a past comment on abortion by @naraburns: https://www.themotte.org/comment/250966?context=3#context.
ProPublica really found a fertile topic with this one and my liberal friends (i.e. all of them, I live in a major city) keep bringing them up. Most of the articles were about as bad as the one described in the above comment but they did lead me to Zurawski v. State of Texas: https://www.txcourts.gov/media/1458610/230629.pdf.
As expected, the lawyers on both sides need to deal with a judge instead of newspaper readers so the arguments are considerably more reasonable. The court ruled in favor of the state but some of the suggested changes to the law sound pretty reasonable to me? The one big change was to the heartbeat law: there are occasionally pregnancies which are "clearly" terminal but the fetus' heart is still beating. The example brought up in the case was a late-term miscarriage. There doesn't seem to be much of a point to delaying abortion in that case. Any comments from the more medically inclined members of this forum on how common and obvious such situations are?
Aside: this felt like an argument against judicial independence to me. Extreme cases of fetal demise can be complicated (right?). Ideally, the legal regime around them would be flexible and account for the individual nuances of every case. How could this be implemented in practice? Easy: by appointing a reliable third party to examine individual cases and make a reasoned determination. I.e. a judge! And we do this all the time! So, why did the Texas state legislature feel the need to enshrine such a restrictive standard (no fetal heartbeat) into the law? Obviously "politics" but the politics needs to come from somewhere and the source here i think is activist judges. Because judicial independence is just a nice way of saying that judges are out-of-control and cannot be disciplined in practice (as the ninth circuit loves to remind us). The only means of control left are occasional reversals by superior courts (which themselves aren't under legislative control) and extremely precise laws. In a hypothetical tyranny, judges could be subject to fine-grained discipline and therefore trusted with far more responsibility.
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
This is DoA just like all other nuclear efforts in the US. The nuclear establishment is completely controlled by the feds (specifically the NRC and a tiny bit by the EPA as well). The incentives these agencies have are positively perverse. The NRC derives no benefit whatsoever from new nuclear power hitting the market. And of course, they're completely exposed (PR-wise at least) if there are problems with said plant. Rather, they are paid licensing fees during the approval process. I.e. the longer they drag out commissioning and constructing the plant, the more they get paid. And boy do they have the tools to do this! It starts with blatantly ridiculous radiation limits and goes all the way up to changing standards in the middle of construction and forcing completed assemblies to be ripped out and re-built. It's a miracle Vogtle cost only a few multiples of its initial budget.
Until the US removes idiotic regulation like LNT and abolishes/significantly reforms the NRC, I'm an infinite seller of nuclear power in this country.
A really quick intro to this problem: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power-construction
A far more detailed look into the problems: https://gordianknotbook.com/
The author of the above book also has a good substack. This is a good place to start: https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/the-two-lies-that-killed-nuclear
And this one is just fun: https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-two-ships
(Aside: I have an ongoing bet with my friends that not a single new nuclear plant is going to get built out of all the current hype about major tech companies pushing for nuclear, not even a SMR. You're welcome to join it in spirit.)
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
Ten years is more than enough warning to develop alternatives and just the crazy fast ramp-up of nat-gas plants shows that power generators are more flexible than people give them credit for.
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
Quick follow up to this (I'm a licensed pilot though I don't fly that frequently).
Class B is the really important one in the usual course of business (but all bets are off when TFRs come into play). Class C and D are pretty small and used for regional airports. If you accidentally fly through one, tower won't be happy but you won't get in serious trouble for it. And they're so small that accidentally flying through them is pretty hard anyway (the only real reason to enter them is to land at the airport in the center). And if you do want to fly through them, you just need tower to acknowledge your presence somehow. Easy.
Class B is special. It's used for the major international airports. The upper section measures sixty miles across (i.e. typically the entire city the airport is a part of). It has huge amounts of jumbo jets with hundreds of passengers each. And the government has absolutely no tolerance at all for any shenanigans in there. Students are mostly not allowed in without explicit permission from their instructor. Any plane entering needs explicit permission from ATC before entering and always has an assigned altitude and vector while there that they are not allowed to deviate from (barring genuine emergencies). And violating any of these rules has severe penalties.
MotteAnon12345
1yr ago
That's the contradiction at the heart of all liberalism. They want to be tolerant. But that requires discriminating against "the intolerant." They want everyone to be equal. But that requires unequal power to impose unequal treatment on the naturally unequal. And crits want to get rid of all cultural superiority but that requires themselves to hold cultural superiority.
MotteAnon12345
2yr ago
That is the fundamental problem with Democracy. People love to bring up the list you crazy/awful/incompetent dictators but The People can also be just as crazy/awful/incompetent and often are.
MotteAnon12345
2yr ago
To be clear, as part of MS's initial investment, they got access to all the source code and all the model weights. They aren't losing anything. See https://stratechery.com/2023/openais-misalignment-and-microsofts-gain/.
MotteAnon12345
2yr ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification
Carthage-like destruction is a fairly accurate summary of what the Allies did to Germany after WWII.
MotteAnon12345
2yr ago
The rot runs deep.
Take a look at this paper. Here's the abstract:
It is incorrect to consider tidal power as renewable energy. Harnessing tidal energy will pose more severe problems than using fossil fuels. This study provides quantitative estimates to show how using tidal energy can destroy the environment in a short amount of time. Tides are induced by the rotation of the Earth with respect to the gravity of the Moon and Sun. The rotational energy of the Earth is naturally dissipated by tides slowly. Consuming tidal energy further reduces the rotational energy, accelerates the energy loss rate, and decelerates the rotation of the Earth. Based on the average pace of world energy consumption over the last 50 years, if we were to extract the rotational energy just to supply 1% of the world's energy consumption, the rotation of the Earth would lock to the Moon in about 1000 years. As a consequence, one side of the Earth would be exposed to the Sun for a much longer period of time than it is today. The temperature would rise extremely high on that side and drop extremely low on the other side. The environment would become intolerable, and most life on Earth could be wiped out.
Do read the paper. It's not long and it's a good test of one's bullshit detector1. For the impatient:
The paper's isn't that interesting once you spot the trick. But it does bring up two interesting thoughts:
- If the NYT picked up this story, do you think they'd have the nuance to highlight the shall we say questionable assumptions in this paper? Or would they just blare a giant headline stating "TIDAL POWER WILL KILL US ALL!" (Sub-heading: solar and wind the only way forward...)? Would they even link to the original paper? I think the world's complexity has surpassed the abilities of the average MSM reporter/editor/reader. Even if journalists are perfectly honest and impartial, they are too susceptible to manipulation to be trusted. Barring a drastic change in our media, the information content of the typical news article is now capped at zero.
- How far can we extrapolate from this example? This guy's apparently a professor at Stanford and apparently he's been teaching there for some time (the paper refers to a grad-level class in 1993). And it's... pretty easy to find garbage papers. Here's another one. For a broader perspective, consider the replication crisis, accounts like this one, and digging back to the ancient year of 2009, Climategate. This is why for example I think Global Warming/Climate Change/etc... is nonsense. That we have the tools to model the Earth's climate at all is (imo) an outlandish claim (it's a complex dynamical system the size of the planet with billions of poorly understood interactions!). That we can project this model forward a hundred years (with all of its many intrinsic dependencies on other complex systems like human civilization) is another outlandish claim. And that we should restructure all of society based on these projections is yet another outlandish claim (with a side-helping of massive conflicts of interests). And at the bottom of it all are people like our dear Dr. Jerry.
1 I suppose this is technically consensus building. If you think the paper's arguments are reasonable, I'd be happy to discuss that as well...
MotteAnon12345
2yr ago
Fair point. Thanks.
MotteAnon12345
2yr ago
Good catch on white women vs. white men. I wonder what causes the difference. I do think your comment on Asians is a bit of a non-sequitur.
MotteAnon12345
2yr ago
It's not a decision by SCOTUS.
You're right. Thanks for the correction. s/SCOTUS/courts.
Thank you Joe Goebbels.
Ad Hominem? Or not even...? Guilt by association? I'm not even sure which logical fallacy this falls under.
That's the theory. But so often, particularly in the United States, we find that when it appears this is happening, the actual government has really put its thumb in. That's what was happening here.
That's... not even a counter-argument? It's little surprise the government wants to... govern!
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.]
MotteAnon12345
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr ago
Ask the ninth circuit.
MotteAnon12345
2yr 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
2yr 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?
This is just wrong. The court opinion is very clear that loss of major bodily function would be a sufficient justification for an abortion (and the loss need not be imminent, just addressable by abortion).
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