Quantumfreakonomics
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User ID: 324
Quantumfreakonomics
5mo ago
You could convict any important person of a felony if you pierce attorney-client privilege and prosecute hard enough. "Three felonies a day" isn't literally true, but my guess is most billionaires commit at least three felonies a year.
Quantumfreakonomics
5mo ago
…what? I admit I don’t have a great model of the federal government in 1860, but this seems like an insane claim to me.
Quantumfreakonomics
5mo ago
To preserve the illusion of federalism? Let the state legislatures feel in charge. Everybody knows the one thing Grill-Americans won’t tolerate is not having the D or R on the presidential ballot.
Quantumfreakonomics
5mo ago
I went on a big Titanic binge after that happened. Part of the intrigue is that there is just so much content out there. You can read the transcript of the official investigation. Apparently they had stenographers back then?
Quantumfreakonomics
5mo ago
I would have a much easier time believing his, “Aw shucks, I had no idea we were signing that. Must have been those silly lawyers,” routine if there wasn’t a long history detailing Altman’s penchant for plausibly-deniable power grabs.
Quantumfreakonomics
5mo ago
No one thing Sam Altman has done sticks out as evil. You have to have followed events for some time in order to get a feel for the pattern. I get SBF vibes from him. He does seem cleverer and more well-adjusted than SBF, but fundamentally he is making the same kind of gamble. Sam Altman thinks that there is a non-negligible probability that AGI will destroy the world, but he is building it anyway.
Quantumfreakonomics
5mo ago
Are Teslas any good? I need a new car soon and I’m thinking about getting a Tesla. What is autopilot like? Is listed range legit? Is maintenance a nightmare? How do they hold up to wear and tear? Will Elon throttle me if he finds out I’m short Tesla stock?
Quantumfreakonomics
5mo ago
In the two minutes of Paw Patrol footage I watched in response to this comment, it feels more like propaganda for Apple or Tesla than anything. Every single problem no matter how minor was solved by deploying a neat technological gadget.
Quantumfreakonomics
5mo ago
Is it instability if Israel just wins? Do any Iranian officials really want to spearhead a new anti-Israel campaign? Sounds like a death wish.
Quantumfreakonomics
5mo ago
It's eerie to see a twitter thread like that one these days that isn't overflowing with noticeposting. It's easy to forget that the Austrian School focus on individual human motivation and action is by no means universally held. To see concepts like "white flight" or "the car lobby" tossed out as explanations as if they are fundamental forces of society, and not simply the aggregate preferences of individual actors, is jarring. The real questions are, why are the white people fleeing? and why was the car lobby so popular?
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
Still on Human Action.
Given how much I like Austrian Economics, I figured I should actually read(listen to the audiobook of) this.
The entirety of the first 90 minutes was spent belaboring the same two or three points about human nature. Yeah, these points are foundational to the entire discipline, and some core insights are genius, but I stand my my take that SBF was right about books.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
It's the old MetaMed problem. Anyone who understands enough about the object-level issue to weed out the total scams is someone who understands enough to just do it themselves.
If it's any consolation, I was pretty notable around these parts for not having much luck with women, but I did eventually meet my current gf on Bumble. Your experience may vary, but I don't think the apps are quite as bad as everyone says.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
From who's point of view? The voters? The average global citizen? Surely in Trump's own subjective experience getting assassinated is worse than going to prison.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
...why? This feels like a complete non-sequitur.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
The Justice Department. Jack Smith. Alvin Bragg. You know, the people currently prosecuting him for felonies.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
Remember the Ground Zero mosque? Fox News and Jon Stewart milked that non-story for months. That discourse would last about 8 hours in 2024.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
What is the current prevailing Israeli opinion of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange? I can sort of imagine what the steelman would be at the time, but given what we know now, does anyone still seriously defend this?
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
That specific scenario may or may not be plausible. I don’t know how the federal government’s payroll software works, but that is the level that these things need to be analyzed on if you want a clear or definitive answer.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
What does it mean for "the rest of DC" to say something?
APA review, NEPA review, Hiding the relevant documents from the president and hoping he forgets, lawsuits, injunctions, protests; if Trump succeeds in firing a large portion of the entire civil service, you think tens of thousands of intelligent, well-connected people in the same city all pissed off at the same guy won’t be able to do anything about it?
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
If Trump can't bring in competent staffers to implement his plans, and he doesn't have a well of 'replacement' workers to step up and actually give the old ones the boot, 4 years is almost certainly not enough to significantly cut down the Federal Bureaucracy.
Think about it. How many competent, respectable people want the job of being Trump’s lackey to fix the X department? In the unlikely event that you aren’t fired and are even somewhat successful at purging the entrenched civil service, you have a good chance of literally going to jail once the next administration gets in.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
I don’t doubt for one minute that Trump had classified documents, but it does suggest that the intended audience for the indictment was the American Electorate rather than a federal judge. Thinking back to the political situation at the time the charges were unsealed, Jack Smith and the Justice Department probably thought this was the kill-shot for Trump’s campaign.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
For what it’s worth, I thought you were going to say that news cycles have shortened.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
Much like the SAT requirement rollback, I suspect what happened was that internal metrics/vibes were so laughably bad that everyone started to hate it. Nobody actually wants to read that drivel anyways.
How far down the rabbit hole should they have to go for it to be the "same" crime? What if there are two separate alleged incidents that both fall under the same legal citation? Is that the same crime? Should that count? If half of the jury thinks that crime X happened on Monday, and the other half thinks that crime X happened on Thursday, should that count?
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