NullHypothesis
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User ID: 2718
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
I'm the guy who sits in on meetings with vendors trying to sell my company 'AI workflow solutions' that do things like write automated summaries (yes, even with graphs and charts!) of papers/legislation/articles/pdfs/powerpoints/etc that you feed into them, so that you can send executive summaries to your managers or post them online as marketing.
I wonder how long until we have AI products that is going to evaluate these AI marketing articles, and then we just have an entire system of AI products just rating each other with no humans eyes ever reading the produced content.
I'm really curious how that automated graphs/charts would work, wouldn't you need source data still? Based on how you describe it sounds like the tool should automatically generate charts/graphs if you plug in a pdf file, for example, but I can't see how it can generate anything useful unless you already have the graphs/charts created and the tool is just picking out the relevant one or at the very least have source data you can provide.
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
I think this is the most plausible theory. There are pollen samples from Syria that point to a dry age of 300 years just before the bronze age collapse. I believe the evidence actually suggests the bronze age empires were hit harder than the area the Sea Peoples came from.
As cjet79 pointed out, bronze requires both tin and copper. Copper is common, but tin is extremely rare. There was a tiny tin mine in Anatolia, Spain, and Italy, but not enough to supply the entire region. The largest nearby tin mines were in Britain and Afghanistan, but these are far distances to travel. So if the trade network collapses, there is no more bronze. With no bronze you can't have a Bronze age.
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
At least there used to be some sort of journalistic standard, and it was a major scandal when major news publications pushed outright lies. Opinion pieces were always a thing, but normally major news stories would at least have sources and there was an attempt to at least present the facts, even if it's in a dishonest manner.
You could argue these streamers also "pontificate from atop a heap of fraudulently-acquired positive effect" since you know, a lot of them create echo chambers by banning all dissidents, they tend to only promote other people that agree with them politically, and they present themselves as experts and speak in an authoritative manner on subjects they know nothing about. Having nuance actually outcasts you from the community. Destiny is a great example of someone who because he is willing to show some nuance on the Israel/Palestine situation gets shit on by a lot of far-left leaning political streamers.
You seem to be saying that these political streamers are superior sources of news than traditional mainstream media. There may be some standouts, but you can't seriously be telling me someone like Hasan Piker is a better source of news and a role model for political opinions than the mainstream news media.
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
They're one of the more popular youtubers/streamers that focuses on political content. If you only read news/articles you probably don't encounter these people, but they're prevalent on youtube/twitch/tiktok. Watch a few political videos and they start showing up on your recommended page. It's where a lot of young people get their political opinions and news from nowadays, since they aren't watching television news channels as much.
The Israel/Hamas conflict has actually been getting Destiny a ton of traction since he has a middle of the road take, and a lot of the political left-leaning streamers have a pro-Hamas take, so there's tons of videos/clips of arguments around the Israel/Hamas situation. Honestly not worth your time for anything but entertainment since it's incredible just how poorly informed and horrible some of their takes are. You can ignore them and not miss much, but it is a bit worrying that many people are getting their political opinions from people that are in no way qualified to be speaking about these kinds of situations.
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
I think so many of those weirdos don't even consider or realize to note that America's goal was not to wipe out Vietnam or Iraq.
Wiping out a nation is probably easier than trying to reform or subdue a nation. A major goal was trying to get those nations to become ideological aligned to America by bringing democracy and other western Ideas. If you're trying to get people to embrace democracy, you can't just kill everyone left and right.
I get the same feeling when people say there is no way American citizens can beat the US military in case of a civil war or insurrection. If the rebels are hiding in cities or rest of the population, you can't exactly bomb those cities indiscriminately. And there's the matter of public support, look at how much Israel gets criticized in their fight versus Hamas. You don't have to win in a straight up fight, you just need to hang on long enough until the fight becomes too expensive to be worth it or there is enough external pressure to stop the fighting..
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
I'm just going to assume your numbers are true. I agree, in the grand scheme of things, the kids being trans issue is not as important as compared to many issues you've identified in terms of scale and impact on our personal lives.
It's also not as small as you present it to be. First five sources I found had higher amounts. Here's one for example:
The number of children who started on puberty-blockers or hormones totaled 17,683 over the five-year period, rising from 2,394 in 2017 to 5,063 in 2021, according to the analysis. These numbers are probably a significant undercount since they don’t include children whose records did not specify a gender dysphoria diagnosis or whose treatment wasn’t covered by insurance.
There are also estimates that 300,000 of youths aged 13-17 identify as trans (Data up to 2020, the number is probably higher today). It's an issue because the numbers are growing.
You also bring up school shootings, which according to your numbers is nearly as small as the trans issue. Anyone can get shot? Well anyone can have kids and their kids might go on puberty blockers, which there seems to more and more evidence that these things are not fully reversible and may have permanent effects.
The trans issue seems to be pushed more and more into my face these days, from both an anti and pro trans perspective. There are examples that the trans issue is impacting our daily lives. For example, does your company enforce or encourage people to put pronouns on their email/profile? Why do we need to do that? For 99.99% of people it should be obvious what your gender is. I work with a lot of different companies due to my industry and more and more companies are implementing pronouns into their HR systems.
We're also seeing trans ideas showing up in our culture through movies, books, video games, tv shows, etc. And I'll be honest, more of then than not, the experience is ruined by the inclusion of a trans person, because it's usually forced into for the sake of diversity and inclusion rather than for the sake of telling an interesting story. The Japanese seem to do better job of exploring these ideas. Inside Mari is a manga I read many years ago that explores the idea of a man waking up in a woman's body. It displays the experience of dysphoria quite well, so a story that explores trans issues can still be interesting. But so many modern entertainment just want to push it into my face now, and it's executed horribly.
Do you care about women's rights/issues? The common example is the trans in women's athletic competitions. I don't know how anyone who claims to support women's right can also support having trans people in women's athletic competitions. We're seeing trans athletes dominate the space, taking away opportunities for women. There's a reason we have a women's only league/competition in so many different sports.
It's also impacting language and the way we speak. I know it's a bit of a meme, but there are people who can't even define what is a woman anymore. I'm pretty sure the attempt to remove gender from gendered languages e.g. saying latinx instead of latino/latina is related to the trans movement. It's no longer pregnant women, it's pregnant people, because now a man can get pregnant. If trans people are such a small percentage of the population, why are so many people trying to reshape our language and the way we speak to be inclusive of such a small percentage of the population?
And if you ever engage in a discussion about trans issues and say anything that could be anti trans, so many people seem to get offended and will even make attempts to dox you, get you fired, yell at you, scream in your face, call you Nazi scum, or any other myriad of rude and toxic behavior. And many of these people are activist types that try to change culture and society. The reason Jordan Peterson got famous in 2017 is because trans activist types recorded themselves confronting him about his views on Canada's Bill C-16. This is over 6 years ago, has the trans issue gotten better or worse since then? I remember reddit was fawning over this man around that time, now he's actively hated and despised. More and more young people support the idea that misgendering should be a crime. It seems to me that the trans issues have only become more prevalent in our lives.
I used to not care about trans issues. But when the trans issues start popping up over so many different areas of life, and many of the loudest proponents for the trans issues seem to be angry, anti-intellectual activist types, well it makes me want to be on the opposing side. Given the impact the trans movement has had on our modern culture and society, I'm not sure I can agree trans issues are no longer irrelevant in our lives anymore. It certainly doesn't seem to be going away any time soon.
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
I was watching a recent debate between Destiny and Actual Justice Warrior (AJW) and around 1 hour 24 minutes Destiny fact checks a claim from AJW on the federal budget/spending in Kentucky.
Here is the fact check from Destiny on federal spending in Kentucky:
Destiny: Department of Defense was number 3 at 8.3 billion 2 is the social security administration at 19 billion at and 1 is the department health and human services at a 116 billion dollars.
I'm not going into the argument between Destiny and AJW since my question is more on Kentucky federal spending data and fact checking. I believe the data Destiny mentioned comes from usaspending.gov which by all accounts is a reputable and reliable source, that provides information and transparency on federal spending in the United States. But where I start running into issues with this data is that this numbers here don't necessarily match up with numbers I see in other sources:
Usafacts.org says Kentucky received $3576.43 per capita in federal assistances in 2020, their source is the US Census Bureau.
According to the urban institute, which seems to be a pretty reputable nonpartisan thinktank:
According to the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO), Kentucky’s total expenditures in fiscal year (FY) 2022 were $45.4 billion, including general funds, other state funds, bonds, and federal funds.
Per the US Census Bureau, Kentucky’s combined state and local direct general expenditures were $46.0 billion in FY 2021 (the most recent year census data were available), or $10,203 per capita. (Census data exclude “business-like” activities such as utilities and transfers between state and local governments.) National per capita direct general expenditures were $11,087.
If you take 32.20% (the percentage of state revenue that is federal funds of Kentucky in 2020) and multiply that against the $10,203 per capita number from 2021 (yes I know 2021 and 2020 is not the same but there shouldn't be that large of a gap between the two years) you get $3570.014 per capita, which closely matches up. Other articles on Kentucky state funding seems to match this value much more than the value that you see on usaspending.gov.
So I looked more at the data from usaspending.gov and I start to see data that seems to bring up more questions. The data suggests that per capita, Kentucky people receive $34,552 YEARLY in federal assistance. This is an absurdly high value! Most of that amount comes from the Department of Health and Human Services. I looked at other state's data that rank high in terms of federal assistance:
| State | Total Amount | Per Capita |
|---|---|---|
| Kentucky | $153.9 Billion | $34,552 |
| West Virginia | $21.2 Billion | $11,661 |
| New Mexico | $35.7 Billion | $17,090 |
| Mississippi | $33.8 Billion | $11,343 |
| Alaska | $14.7 Billion | $19,820 |
| Vermont | $7.4 Billion | $11,907 |
| Montana | $12.3 Billion | $11,736 |
| Arizona | $102.5 Billion | $14,614 |
| Montana | $12.3 Billion | $11,736 |
| Maine | $18.7 Billion | $13,966 |
| Alabama | $58.0 Billion | $11,892 |
I only looked at the top 10 states based on their dependency on the federal government and Kentucky is a clear outlier. On the dependency ranking Kentucky ranks 5th, which is pretty high, but based on the numbers here I'd imagine it should be even higher.
As I examined Kentucky's data, I start to see other things that seem off. Jefferson county received $110.40B, or 71.73% of the entire state's funding. The next highest was Fayette county, at $2.61B. Jefferson county has a population of around 770,000, while Fayette has around 320,000. So I should expect to see a roughly 2:1 ratio, but here we see a 42:1 ratio instead. That means people in Jefferson county are getting roughly $152,857 per capita. The occum's razor answer would be that there is missing data, somehow the award counts got misattributed 100% to Jefferson county rather than being allocated properly, but in light of the extremely high $34,552 value I'm wondering if the data is correct at all. I did a quick spot check on the other states and their county percentage to population ratios seemed to match up.
So what am I missing exactly? Why are the numbers in USASpending.gov so high compared to other numbers that I've seen? Why is Kentucky's numbers so high? There must be something obvious I'm missing but I don't know what that something is. Is the US Government really spending that much money on Kentucky, and specifically Jefferson county?
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
They clearly have a poor understanding of data visualizations, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had above average IQ.
The management class seems to optimize for one thing, and that is to look impressive to other people in the management class.
On a more serious note, I would imagine the exact skills a manager needs depends on the organization and industry. They might not be able to read a graph but they will have the people skills to effectively advocate for the people under them and shield them from bureaucratic bullshit. Or maybe they're just good at presenting themselves to the people that can promote them, and those people are too busy to really look into how effective these managers are. In many areas of life you get further ahead by making people think you are competent than by actually being competent.
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
Yes, and another person pointed out, the statistics are not consistent on the same page. But considering the website did have sources listed, I doubt the numbers were completely made up, and as my research did show, there is an explanation for where these figures came from. It's also important to note how the different sources defined literacy, the source I found was looking at people's ability to understand what they read versus being able to recognize words/letters.
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
If a contractor fuck you over, is there any recourse?
I wouldn't mind paying extra if they do a good job, but if do a horrible job and overcharge you then that's pretty much a scam isn't it?
I think of IT support, where people willingly fork over hundreds for a repair that could've taken a 15 minute google search. People pay for ignorance, or just convenience. Why charge $10 for 15 minute of work, if people willingly pay $50 or $100?
I make enough now that I'd rather pay for a contractor than do something myself especially if it needs a ton of manual labor, but I haven't had much experience with contractors. I'll take your experience as a cautionary tale.
Bad data, or deliberate bending of facts?
I was looking into literacy rates and came across this article. Couple surprising things, like how my home state of California has the lowest literacy rate, or literacy for US adults is only at 79%. Normally I'd look into exactly how they defined literacy, but at the bottom of the article it says this:
About 77% of the African American population has moderate to high reading and writing proficiency in the United States.
66% of the Hispanic population has medium to high literacy in America, with 65% of whites having moderate to high literacy.
The numbers seemed clearly wrong to me, so I looked through all the referenced sources and couldn't find anything. I did more searching and found this article which has the inverse numbers:
| Race | % with low literacy skills | Non-American born % |
| White | 35% | 2% |
| Black | 23% | 3% |
| Hispanic | 34% | 24% |
| Other | 8% | – |
Some of the more data savvy of you may interpret this data correctly, but the chart in the article and the addition of the data in the 3rd column makes it extremely easy to interpret the wrong way.
I used these numbers and eventually I was able to find the source, an analysis by the National Center for Education Statistics using data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. If you look at figure 3, it becomes very clear that it's not 35% of whites that are illiterate, it's 35% of the illterate population that is white.
This isn't a data point that has gone viral or anything, but I can see someone doing casual research online can easily come to the wrong conclusion. The first article is completely wrong, the 2nd article has the correct data but presents it in an extremely horrible way, and the actual source has a very easy to understand graph.
I'm being a bit tongue in cheek with the question, I don't think anyone deliberately misrepresented data in order to make it seem like whites are doing worse than African Americans. But someone took the effort to create a new graph with the source data, and then someone else took it further and inversed those numbers to present the conclusion in a different way. And these authors aren't idiots, both of them are CEOs of their respective companies and have an education in a college/university.
But why, if you're the author of the 2nd article, would you turn a stacked bar chart into a freaking column chart, when a pie chart would have been the obvious go to? Perhaps he was trying to add in the data about non American born into a single chart, but in the process ended up creating a really bad chart. And the author of the 1st article, he's the only one with the inversed data I could find, so I'm pretty certain he deliberately inversed that data. How could you look at conclusion and not even question if those facts were true, then go actually publish it for the world to see? I realize these are not academic articles and are pieces to pull traffic into their website, but shouldn't you take some level of effort to make sure the information you present to the world to see is accurate, valid, and easy to understand?
So much of the culture war these days seem to be around if some event is even true or not, and if people can't even get information about literacy correct, imagine how easy it is for a malicious actor to not even make up data, just misrepresent data to push an agenda or perspective. Then this information goes on tiktok videos with absolutely no sources for millions to see. At least X's community post has been a way to combat misinformation, does tiktok have anything similar?
By the way, if anyone knows the exact name of the type of chart in figure 3 here I'd appreciate it.
I think the reference to Wonder Woman as a counter argument to the claim that gender pandering/wokeness is killing movies suggests that Wonder Woman is a gender pandering, woke movie, which implies that you think wokeness isn't a leading cause of the failures of the recent movies.
Maybe Wonder Woman is a gender pandering, woke movie (I haven't seen it), but is it as woke or pandering as the movies that are failing today?
There does seem to be a general societal trend against wokeness nowadays. Maybe people are looking to bash anything woke so anything that might go against that narrative can cause more friction that it would have years ago.
Probably should also take into consideration that the economy was doing much better in 2017 and superhero movies were in general doing well. Except for Barbie and Oppenheimer, I'm struggling to recall a recent movie that did well, so perhaps the movie industry as a whole is struggling right now.
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
I can see many benefits to willingly wearing body cams. Much less confusion around facts of any legal cases, no more false accusations of any kind, and protection against lies from police or witnesses. There are plenty of studies that support the idea that people behave better when they know they are being watched.
But a society where everything you do or say is recorded isn't one I'd like to live in. In the US, there are many state that require two party consent for something to be recorded, I'm sure one could find plenty of strong arguments for why that is the case.
You could argue we already reached this point, certainly nearly anything you do online is recorded, and in public there is no shortage of cameras and recording devices, but I think even just having it be something we can pretend to ignore allows a level of social ease. Once we reach the point of consciously wearing body cams, the cats out of the bag. Now everything you say and do is recorded. Maybe you personally wouldn't be impacted, but I think we're trading off security in exchange for social cohesion. Do you feel more safe in an area that has a million cameras and security forces, or in an suburban town/city that has no cameras because they don't need it. I think there's a reason why there are gated communities, where once you get past the gate you don't see any signs of security, because people don't want to feel like they live in an area they are constantly supervised.
Let's not forget, governments can change, just because the government now might be benevolent and not forcefully seize footages without warrants doesn't that they won't change the process for getting a warrant, or even ignore protocols all together.
Then there's the matter of security on these devices, cameras get hacked all the time and there are people that willingly look for people in embarrassing or sexual situations to share to the greater world.
A dashcam is mostly restricted to the realm of driving and I can accept that. A bodycam is on you always.
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
Considering your nephew is going to medical school he's clearly intelligent but it is shocking to hear that even intelligent individuals have that much issue with spelling, considering how often you'd come across someone complaining about bad grammar. People used to make songs/parodies about grammar and spelling, such as Weird Al's Word Crime or youtuber Jack film's Raping vs Rapping. I wonder if there is similar content being produced for entertainment nowadays poking fun at spelling/grammar, or if the next generation just don't care anymore.
I wondered if bad spelling or grammar can lead to a death, similar to how doctors' sloppy handwriting killed 7000 annually but I can't come up with a plausible scenario similar to the bad handwriting one, and there doesn't seem to be any such cases.
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
I see. I appreciate the insight into process. The level of discourse and communication is superior to many communications on Reddit, so I guess its working.
Are there any rules to reposting previously asked questions/posts? I'd like to have another go at my question on the publicly available federal spending data, since by the time that comment got approved we already had another Sunday thread. I'd probably split that up into 2 or 3 comments since I was rambling near the end into completely unrelated questions.
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
Is it possible to make more clear/transparent what the process for getting your account past the "new user filter" is? I figured nobody was interested in what I had to say but I checked the forums logged out and none of my comments are appearing, so I'm assuming nobody else would've been seeing my comments.
I understand the need to filter out trolls/bots and nobody is obligated to respond to your thoughts/messages but frankly speaking it is discouraging to ask questions/comment and to be met with complete silence. A simple message to new accounts saying "hey, as a new user you may need to be manually approved" or something would've been nice to have. Was there an obvious message/process that I just didn't see?
Are you able to orally recite word for word any stories, poems, epics, etc.? Maybe you know a few by heart, but you probably wouldn't be able to match what the Greeks passed e.g. the Iliad or the Odyssey, and even if you somehow did, most people wouldn't. That doesn't mean our memories are worse, it's just that there is no need to memorize word for word entire stories because you can just pick up a book, or your phone, and read it.
Similarly, spelling and punctuation just seems to be a skillset that's not as important anymore. When it took months for your message to get across to someone across the planet, you better hope you wrote your message properly. Writing in ink also meant fixing mistakes would be a laborious and expensive exercise. Now you can just edit to fix your post later, or clarify in a follow up tweet/text.
I'm not surprised spelling and punctuation has gotten worse. I'm probably worse at it today than I was back in high school or college. That's because my phone or computer will autocorrect 90% of my errors, so I'm not as careful anymore. Why get good at spelling if your writing device will fix it for you? Focus on the content/message instead.
Edit: I remembered something quite humorous, one Timothy Dexter from the 18th century, who wrote a book filled with misspelling and no punctuations, and in the 2nd edition just put a page full of punctuation marks to "pepper and salt as you please." See Sam O'Nella's youtube video for an entertaining summary.
Despite his complete lack of knowledge (or care) for writing and penmanship, he set out to compose a work that would out-wit Shakespeare, and rival the learnedness of Milton. His working title (which, of course, made absolutely no sense): “A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, or Plain Truths in a Homespun Dress.” The book was atrociously misspelled, and entirely devoid of punctuation — there were no periods, no commas, no dashes or semicolons — it was merely a jumbled mess of nearly incomprehensible writing.
Clearly people were just as capable of making spelling and grammatical mistakes in the past, we are probably filtered to look at the works of the most intelligent and well-educated people, and there probably was a greater cultural emphasis on proof-reading and editing. Even 50 years ago it would be quite an effort to publish something for the world to see, you'd probably need to be educated and have connections, now any random Joe can just tweet his thoughts to the world.
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
No, your experience is typical. Only the top 10-20% of companies offer these insane salaries. Not everyone gets into FANG companies and if you aren't in a place like San Francisco, New York, Boston etc then you shouldn't expect 100k+ as entry software engineer even today. Depending on where you live 120k a year as a software engineer is very impressive. If you want those high salaries you have to be willing to change companies every 1-2 years, move, and get very good at doing interviews.
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
I'm pretty sure if you asked the same question Singer proposed to a random person on the street, or to your family or to your coworkers a lot of them would have the same visceral disgust response, even if these are intelligent people.
Even if they were capable of thinking through the possibility rationally, why would they want to possibly associate yourself with someone that would ask a question like that, even if it was in context of something that would make sense? Perhaps they might think "well I'm okay discussing this, but maybe Susie or John from accounting might overhear and then think I'm a weirdo too." Better to not take the risk.
Maybe a more anonymous platform would some users to be more willing to engage in that discussion, but even on places like reddit or 4chan you see emotional outbursts all the time.
Besides, most people don't think strictly logically and rationally. See the conjunction fallacy.
Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.
Which is more probable?
- Linda is a bank teller.
- Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.
The majority of those asked chose option 2. However, the probability of two events occurring together (that is, in conjunction) is always less than or equal to the probability of either one occurring itself.
This is not an emotionally charged question and yet people aren't defaulting to logic, so it shouldn't be surprising that on a controversial question regarding zoophilia and animal cruelty people are not able to think about it objectively.
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
There are women where a certain number of men will find her very attractive but another group of men will find absolutely hideous. See this blog post about the mathematics of beauty.
Data is a bit old and from OkCupid blog, but this shows there are men that would rate women a 1/5 even if in my opinion they are fairly average. These same women get a lot of men that would rate her a 5/5. It goes on to show that being divisive on how attractive you are is an advantage compared to being a 7/10 to everyone (at least on OkCupid circa 2010s).
It's also possible that a lot of the people calling AOC/Zendaya ugly are influenced by their personal dislike of the individuals rather than by actual attractiveness of the two.
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
Desperate situations make people do objectively stupid things.
For example, Fred Smith, the founder of Fedex, gambled $5,000 in 1973 because he was unable to secure a loan from a bank and was desperate. In this case, his gamble paid off and he managed to win $27,000. Adjusted for inflation it is a much larger sum, roughly around $33,000, but blackjack has an expected negative net return.
It's hard to say how much this gamble is the reason he was able to turn fedex around considering the company was $11 million in debt at the time, but it's likely that if he lost that gamble the entire company would have 100% gone under.
Would the impact of the story be less if it was $5,000 in today's value? Maybe, but I think the intention and situation around the gamble make the story more interesting than the amount. I know you're asking specifically about the loss here, and maybe you're more interested in how the loss impacted/changed a person, but I think the situation/circumstances that led to the gamble are more interesting. I'd also argue that if the amount he gambled was much larger, say $500,000, it be harder for me to accept that it was a desperate situation versus a stupid impulsive decision, even if you win with that larger amount.
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
Hi, first time poster, long time lurker, so apologies in advance if I break any rules.
I was watching a recent debate between Destiny and Actual Justice Warrior (AJW) and around 1 hour 24 minutes Destiny fact checks a claim from AJW on the federal budget/spending in Kentucky.
Here is the fact check from Destiny on federal spending in Kentucky:
Destiny: Department of Defense was number 3 at 8.3 billion 2 is the social security administration at 19 billion at and 1 is the department health and human services at a 116 billion dollars.
I'm not going into the argument between Destiny and AJW since my question is more on Kentucky federal spending data and fact checking. I believe the data Destiny mentioned comes from usaspending.gov which by all accounts is a reputable and reliable source, that provides information and transparency on federal spending in the United States. But where I start running into issues with this data is that this numbers here don't necessarily match up with numbers I see in other sources:
Usafacts.org says Kentucky received $3576.43 per capita in federal assistances in 2020, their source is the US Census Bureau.
According to the urban institute, which seems to be a pretty reputable nonpartisan thinktank:
According to the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO), Kentucky’s total expenditures in fiscal year (FY) 2022 were $45.4 billion, including general funds, other state funds, bonds, and federal funds.
Per the US Census Bureau, Kentucky’s combined state and local direct general expenditures were $46.0 billion in FY 2021 (the most recent year census data were available), or $10,203 per capita. (Census data exclude “business-like” activities such as utilities and transfers between state and local governments.) National per capita direct general expenditures were $11,087.
If you take 32.20% (the percentage of state revenue that is federal funds of Kentucky in 2020) and multiply that against the $10,203 per capita number from 2021 (yes I know 2021 and 2020 is not the same but there shouldn't be that large of a gap between the two years) you get $3570.014 per capita, which closely matches up. Other articles on Kentucky state funding seems to match this value much more than the value that you see on usaspending.gov.
So I looked more at the data from usaspending.gov and I start to see data that seems to bring up more questions. The data suggests that per capita, Kentucky people receive $34,552 YEARLY in federal assistance. This is an absurdly high value! Most of that amount comes from the Department of Health and Human Services. I looked at other state's data that rank high in terms of federal assistance:
| State | Total Amount | Per Capita |
|---|---|---|
| Kentucky | $153.9 Billion | $34,552 |
| West Virginia | $21.2 Billion | $11,661 |
| New Mexico | $35.7 Billion | $17,090 |
| Mississippi | $33.8 Billion | $11,343 |
| Alaska | $14.7 Billion | $19,820 |
| Vermont | $7.4 Billion | $11,907 |
| Montana | $12.3 Billion | $11,736 |
| Arizona | $102.5 Billion | $14,614 |
| Montana | $12.3 Billion | $11,736 |
| Maine | $18.7 Billion | $13,966 |
| Alabama | $58.0 Billion | $11,892 |
I only looked at the top 10 states based on their dependency on the federal government and Kentucky is a clear outlier. On the dependency ranking Kentucky ranks 5th, which is pretty high, but based on the numbers here I'd imagine it should be even higher.
As I examined Kentucky's data, I start to see other things that seem off. Jefferson county received $110.40B, or 71.73% of the entire state's funding. The next highest was Fayette county, at $2.61B. Jefferson county has a population of around 770,000, while Fayette has around 320,000. So I should expect to see a roughly 2:1 ratio, but here we see a 42:1 ratio instead. That means people in Jefferson county are getting roughly $152,857 per capita. The occum's razor answer would be that there is missing data, somehow the award counts got misattributed 100% to Jefferson county rather than being allocated properly, but in light of the extremely high $34,552 value I'm wondering if the data is correct at all. I did a quick spot check on the other states and their county percentage to population ratios seemed to match up.
So what am I missing exactly? Why are the numbers in USASpending.gov so high compared to other numbers that I've seen? Why is Kentucky's numbers so high? There must be something obvious I'm missing but I don't know what that something is. Is the US Government really spending that much money on Kentucky, and specifically Jefferson county?
This leads into my second question on knowledge and fact-checking in general:
How do you decide that the information that you know or take for granted is in fact, correct?
I like to think I'm a somewhat intelligent guy, but this exercise has shown just how untrained I am in information gathering and fact checking. I supposed to the next step is to call or contact experts or at least the authors of these articles but honestly I feel like that is a lot of work for something that at the end of the day is just a result of me wanting to find the source of a fact mentioned in a random two hour debate from the internet. I suppose for informal discussions this level of research is more than can be reasonably expected, and if you were trying to write a book or video or anything that you want to share to the public, you should do your due diligence to make sure you aren't spreading misinformation.
But in every speech and conversation, we are constantly referencing a bank of information we have accumulated in our life times. And we shouldn't have to walk around having to fact check every little thing we come across, because knowledge is near limitless. I think Destiny is one of the more reasonable twitch streamers when it comes to political content, and for him a 30 second google search was enough to decide on the facts for a point in a debate, while I spent 15 minutes looking into the data only to come up with more questions than answers. I'd rather not have to go through this exercise every time I'm questioning what someone is saying, and perhaps the answer is stop listening to that person, but at the same time I'd also rather not disengage in conversation just because I'm being lazy.
And furthermore, there is so much wrong information online now. Whether it's a genuine error or deliberate attempt at misinformation, it's becoming more and more difficult to find the truth. A recent example comes to mind with the photo of the burnt baby in the Israeli/Palestine conflict. The website flagged that picture as AI generated, but other users used the same website and posted pictures of the website saying it wasn't. Well someone took it a step further and replaced the burnt baby with a picture of a puppy. To me the puppy picture seems extremely fake and it originates from 4chan of all places, but I saw people in twitter threads using the 4chan picture as proof that the burnt baby picture was fake. And let's not forget the fake Mr. Beast deep fake video that went viral a while back. I know the topic has been discussed at length here already but we have reached the point where AI generated pictures and videos is good enough to fool a good number of people, and that technology is only going to keep improving and improving.
Perhaps I'm better equipped to deal with comparing these realistic videos/photos to my previously accumulated bank of knowledge, but as I pointed out earlier even this bank of knowledge is unreliable. And as future generations grow up spending more and more time on the internet, where there seems to be more and more misinformation easier to generated, what defenses do we have against truth seeking versus falling victim to lies and falsehoods? I'd like to be a father one day, and there is a very high possibility that my future kid will grow up in a world where at a click of a button someone can create a video of someone they never met will be able to make that person say/do whatever they want. I don't want to be someone that completely shuts my kid off the internet, but at the same time I worry about how someone that will grow up with access to the internet will formulate their knowledge base on the world. Perhaps the best answer is spend time with your kid, take them out to real world events, make sure they have in real life friends, but I think you'd need a high trust society for that, and personally I feel like in the United States we are shifting more and more towards a low trust society. I lived in Los Angeles up until 9 years ago and spent half a year in San Francisco around 2017, but for many reasons I don't want to go back to either city despite friends and families in the area. So I guess this leads to a third question: If you had a job that was 100% remote, which US state/city in your opinion would be a good place to try to start a family?
NullHypothesis
11mo ago
I remember reading from a book a while back on how Japanese businessmen were able to conduct business more easily in English than Japanese due to the cultural norms in the Japanese language that made it difficult to disagree and argue which can be a key part of negotiation. Unfortunately I'm unable to recall exactly which book it was. I'll update this post if I can recall where exactly I read this, I will point it the book was probably not related to linguistic determinism itself but probably from a business book.
I did try looking online for examples but most articles talked more about the benefits of having English from a globalization perspective rather than from a language perspective. I did find this article from the CEO of Rakuten, who in 2010 decided to make English the official and required language for as its business language.
There is another benefit to using English in business: The language has few power markers. Its use can therefore help to break down the hierarchical, bureaucratic barriers that are entrenched in Japanese society and reflected in Japanese conversation, which could boost efficiency.
From the article, Mikatani points out how the hierarchical nature of the Japanese language is more easily avoided when speaking in English. I can imagine a scenario where a lower rank employee is unable to point out an issue in Japanese due to having to phrase everything politely, but is able to communicate the issue directly in English (possibly due to that employee focusing his mental energy in trying to speak in English and thus not focusing on politeness).
However, as a non-Japanese speaker who is not familiar with Japanese business culture and norms, it's hard for me to identify how much of this is due to the language itself versus the culture of Japan itself.
Are there any Japanese speakers or people who have worked in Japanese businesses that can qualify or deny the veracity of this claim?
I did find one thesis that discusses the use of English in Japanese corporations.
There is a tight connection between language and culture, and it is argued that they both play a major role in cross-cultural negotiation (Salacuse 1999). Hall (1976:57) goes even further with the connection between language and culture presenting the idea that culture is communication. Even if people are able to communicate in a foreign language, they tend to interpret meanings depending on their own culture and language (Peltokorpi 2007).
As Japan is considered a collectivistic culture, the welfare and harmony of a group is considered more meaningful than individuals’ opinions (Kowner 2002). In Japan, groups aim for long-term and consistent solutions, and therefore personal motivation is not so important (idib.). Listening and being able to adjust to others’ opinions is traditionally valued, and expressing one’s own opinion is not so much encouraged (Yoshida et al. 2013). Even if Japanese people have important information, it is not necessary to express it verbally (Hall 1981:67). Japanese people do not necessarily have to express their personal opinions in business situations, whereas western managers might be expecting Japanese people to tell their opinions (Yoshida et al. 2013). This often causes stress for Japanese people when communicating with western people (idib.). Furthermore, expressing unpleasant issues verbally is avoided by using indirect ways of communication (Eto 2006:91, Hara 2001).
Like many Asians, Japanese people pay a lot of attention to status differences (Peltokorpi 2007, Gudygunst 2013:62). According to Kowner (2002) this also affects business situations in which English is used. Japanese grammar and the way of speaking are different depending on people’s status (Peltokorpi 2007). In Japanese language, there are several levels of politeness. Different forms are used depending on the situation and relationships between people. According to Kowner (2002), Japanese people sometimes feel that their status is violated when speaking with foreigners, since foreigners’ communication style is often more direct and similar to high-status Japanese communication even though foreigners were on same level or lower in status.
It's hard to determine how much of this is due to the culture versus language itself, which the thesis points out:
It is argued that as language is part of culture, it is hard to distinguish the effects of language from the effects of cultural factors (Welch et al. 2005). Both language and culture play major roles in cross-cultural negotiation (Salacuse 1999). However, to understand the role of language, Welch et al. (2005) argue that it is necessary to study language as its own factor.
I tried to read further into the thesis to find more relevant examples, since the primary focus on this thesis is not the effect of the language itself.
The interviewee says that Japanese culture has an influence on the communication style also when speaking English. As Japan is a high-context culture, not everything is spoken. Moreover, it is hard for Japanese people to say ‘no’. The interviewee tells that foreigners face difficulties because they do not understand when Japanese people are saying ‘no’ indirectly. As an example, a phrase ‘I will think about it’, meaning ‘Good idea, but impossible’ is mentioned. Even if the interviewee understands the words, the meaning might be hard to understand.
Again, this seems to point more towards the culture having an impact rather than the language itself. I'm pretty sure it's possible to say "no" directly in Japanese, but seems to be a cultural limitation as opposed to a languistic one.
The sources/studies referenced in the thesis might be worth checking out.
Perhaps a better question is can culture be completely separated from language, and I wonder if Tom's point would have changed if he considered the dominant culture of the language or considered a language like Japanese.
Public trust in news media is at an all-time low, this recent poll Gallup shows only 7% of Americans have a great deal of trust in the media, and 27% have a fair amount of trust in the media. The public is as skeptical as it has ever been.
I'm not sure I agree with your point that having standards is harmful, much of the legacy media isn't following journalistic standards. It's the appearance of having standards but not following them that's harmful, not the existence of standards itself. It would be one thing if you were to argue specifics examples of standard are harmful, but to dismiss the entire notion of standards doesn't seem like the right solution either. You need some framework to make a judgment, and the legacy media's failure to meet journalistic standards is how you know they aren't doing a great job.
Many of these news organizations are unable to generate enough revenue and I say a large part of that is due to the increase in public distrust of news media. Many smaller ones have gone bankrupt, some examples: Gawker, Vice, Buzzfeed, Jezebel. Brian Stelter was basically fired from CNN cause his show couldn't attract viewers, and I'd say it's in large part due to his peddling of lies and disinformation. Lawsuits are a thing, plenty of examples of lawsuits you can find, even settlements and lawyers eat up money, and when your organization is struggling to make a profit you don't want to be spending money on lawsuits. It might not be to the degree you want them punished, but it's not like it doesn't happen either.
What percentage of stories from news media would you say are outright lies are bullshit? I'm not denying there isn't any propaganda, but I'd say 95% of the news is still factually accurate. You just don't remember those because those are mostly boring presentations of facts so there really isn't anything that can be a scissor statement.
The people who have the most trust in the media are old people, well they're getting older and will eventually no longer be here. So I'm more concerned about where the newer generations are getting their information from. They're getting it from social media and streaming services. Nearly 50% get it from social media daily and 48% never even look at cable or network news. You'll be hard-pressed to find a Gen Z kid who has full faith in legacy media, but many of Hasan Piker's viewers believe 100% what he says. So these people actually would be better off getting their news from legacy media because they'll be viewing it with skepticism.
His viewers don't need to qualify the information they got with "I heard this from Hasan", they'll just repeat his talking points as straight-up facts. If you question where they got that information from they'll just respond "educate yourself" and not even bother engaging in conversation. Where did they learn these tactics? From Hasan Piker and other political streamers. Hasan may not have any influence over the people who'll use that line, but he has a massive influence over younger people. And there are people peddling extremist, radical far left and right viewpoints online. I'd argue this is more dangerous than the agenda the legacy media pushes through.
By the way, it's not like the only options for news and politics are political streamers or legacy media. I didn't say people should only get their information from the legacy media, but if it was between getting news only from The New York Times or Hasan Piker, I'd pick The New York Times 100% of the time. And if it isn't clear, I'm not a fan of legacy media either.
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