Quantumfreakonomics
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User ID: 324
Quantumfreakonomics
2d ago
If they have secret actually-good evidence, then I invite them to show it. From what I’ve seen, the evidence presented has all the classic red flags:
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No proposed causal mechanism
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a plausible non-causal mechanism (pain and inflammation would be correlated both with Tylenol use and poor fetal health).
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tiny effect sizes.
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effects collapse when confounders are controlled (via sibling studies in this case).
Quantumfreakonomics
2d ago
If we had organ markets we would be able to track the damage in real time.
Quantumfreakonomics
2d ago
It means they didn't find shit.
Of course, they can't say that. You saw how the base treated Kash Patel and Pam Bondi when they came up empty-handed after the Epstein investigation. Much easier to put-out some face-saving press release. "Uh, it was the uh, the pills. You know, the red ones. That's where autism comes from. Tylenol. Yeah..." No one ever got fired for telling pregnant women not to take drugs.
Does this mean she will ask for clemency at the sentencing hearing? I don't want to say it's easy to say you forgive your husband's murderer at his own funeral, but there aren't actually any negative consequenses for saying that. I suspect that this is virtue signaling.
It's also bad game theory. "The Left" didn't kill Charlie Kirk, but Tyler Robinson DID kill Charlie Kirk. It's okay to retaliate against him specifically.
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
Grading on the curve of being a leftist podcaster/streamer I think Vaush is quality. He is legitimately funny and doesn't give off the kind of feminine energy that typically drives men away from the left.
It was fun watching him tee-off on the snowflakes in his chat about trying to get Jesse Singal banned from Bluesky for... something I guess?
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
I have a lot of nostalgia for The SkepticsTM and that entire era of YouTube talking head. (Often not even a head, just an avatar pic.) Now whenever I fish around for that level of quality, it simply isn't to be found.
I'm old enough to remember the time TheAmazingAtheist got in trouble for a leaked video of him sticking a banana up his ass. There are a lot of words one can use to describe that era of YouTube influencer. "Dignified" is not one of them.
Quantumfreakonomics
5d ago
because it's seemingly within the Overton window to both say "fascists should be shot", and "this person I don't like is a fascist, trust me".
But this has been the case for at least ten years, and the so-called "fascists" remained remarkably unshot until about a week ago. There is a sense in which politics has become higher stakes now, but that is a function of the underlying reality, not a function of the words we use to describe that reality. I think it's far more likely that Tyler Robinson was pushed over the edge by the (AFAICT accurate) report that the DOJ was considering a ban on transgenders owning firearms than he was by people on the internet calling Republicans "fascists" or "Nazis" instead of less offensive terms like "stupid" or "insensitive".
Keep in mind that Charlie Kirk might be the most assassinatable conservative in modern history. His whole schtick was going into hostile territory at universities across the country and holding open-air events in locations with great sniper cover and sightlines.
Quantumfreakonomics
5d ago
For reference, the video is here.
It was very strange. I do think she is overreacting, but the video crystalized for me why the reaction to Kirk's assassination has been so disproportionate. Every media personality and politics influencer to the right of Ezra Klein either knew Charlie personally or is close to someone who knew Charlie personally. That impacts their rhetoric. It impacts their state of mind. People are a lot more willing to throw the constitution in the trash when their friend is murdered than when state politician #586 is killed. I think the liberals are right that this is "unfair" in some abstract sense, but that's just how the world works.
Quantumfreakonomics
6d ago
But if they're state-run, people won't notice if they're losing money! Medicare/medicaid are massive money pits, and yet Trump became dominant not despite but because of his comittment to not cutting them.
Quantumfreakonomics
6d ago
Nybbler already pointed out that riots are pretty rare in the USA, so I am assuming that you are not American.
It wasn't the riots themselves, it was how the media -- not just the news media, but sports media, entertainment media, and social media too -- reacted. Everyone lost their minds. Those of us who had even a passing familiarity with the actual events got to see how the consent-manufacturing sausage was made.
Quantumfreakonomics
6d ago
It depends on if capital would have rallied around Donald Trump if the alternative was Sanders. I just don't think sophisticated people were ready to do that in 2016. I think Bernie could have won. If you think our timeline sucks, there's an alternate one where the United States ends up like Germany or the UK.
Quantumfreakonomics
6d ago
There aren't enough intelligent, thoughtful people in the country for a viable party to get away with only making valid arguments and espousing only reasonable policy positions. If you don't make a serious play for the stupid vote you just get creamed, and that means both parties end up making stupid arguments for stupid positions.
Quantumfreakonomics
6d ago
Here is a Twitter thread speculating on the specific regulatory mechanics and corporate interests at play here. This is quite an ingenious maneuver that the administration has employed several times now. If they try to use the stick to prod private corporations to do what they want, the companies will sue and win, but if they dangle the tasty carrot of deregulation in front of them, they get enthusiastic compliance.
Quantumfreakonomics
7d ago
Those viewers aren't coming back. NFL football ratings bounced back after dropping the politics stuff, but that was because there was massive demand for the product and no real substitute.
Quantumfreakonomics
7d ago
Good find. The author was quite prescient. One could make the argument that the Woke Era was brought about by progressives grabbing hold of the language we (or at least PMC types and elites) use and subtly shifting it into a worldview more favorable to them. The real question is why this tactic eventually failed.
Quantumfreakonomics
8d ago
”You cannot dox a conservative family and think it will be brushed off as ‘free speech.’”
What did she mean by this? I guess she’s referring to posting somebody’s address online, but that isn’t illegal! It’s not even about constitutional issues, you could probably get a narrowly-tailored anti-doxing statute past judicial review (factual circumstances have changed since Cox Broadcasting v. Cohn), but nobody’s done that yet. Does she think posting someone’s address is incitement to violence?
Quantumfreakonomics
8d ago
Inspired by this tweet, a thought experiment:
Imagine a a country with a two-faction democratic political system. Faction A is anti-free speech. Faction B is (currently and historically) pro-free speech. In the current environment, both factions are approximately equally matched, with majorities in government seesawing between either faction much like in our own government.
Question: Should Faction B also become anti-free speech?
I am interested in both, “would this be good for the country?” and “would this be good for the party?”
Some arguments I would imagine to hear as part of Faction B’s internal debate over the subject:
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“We’re suckers for letting Faction A speak when we control the government. They don’t let us speak when they are in charge, so why should we let them speak when we are in charge?”
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“We already get half the vote letting Faction A speak openly in favor of their policies. Imagine how much better we could do in the next election if we didn’t let them speak!”
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“When people aren’t worried about consequences for their speech it makes them feel more free. We get more votes when voters think we will make them feel more free than Faction A will.”
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“It is important for us to have honest feedback on our policies and the state of the country. If we didn’t let Faction A speak we would be flying half-blind.”
In case you need me to spell-out the subtext: a lot of discussion has been treating the free speech issue as a bargaining chip, rather than a straightforwardly good policy. I’m not sure how much I buy that argument. It sounds a little convenient, like people are looking for excuses to descend into an orgy of vengeance.
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
I wonder if there's a deeper interaction with left-wing ideology here. Leftists have to believe that the masses would totally want social democracy/communism if only they were educated and knew what was good for themselves. In this framework the individual propagandists are themselves the ones responsible for reactionary sentiment amongst the population at large. Right-wingers see the core problem as the undesirable demographics directly, so cheering targeted assassinations doesn't really fit.
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
P.S. has anyone else noticed this new “lawmaker” noun?
I actually like it. All 50 states have different legislative structures. Most use the typical terms "senator" and "representative" for members, but some don't. It's a lot easier to just use the generic term "lawmaker" for every state legislative body member. They could use the fancy term "legislator", but that means the same thing while being less understandable for those citizens who couldn't pass government class.
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
If you want to define your political categories in a way that allows you to avoid labeling as a right-winger a guy who commits a home invasion against Nancy Pelosi in order to get her to admit to the lies that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Convention have been using to undermine Donald Trump, then go ahead. You do you man.
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
Okay, I looked into why people think the Paul Pelosi attack was done by a right winger, and it took me five minutes to find the audio tape of his interrogation the day he was taken into custody. He starts by bringing up Hillary Clinton and the DNC spying on Trump, and how Nancy Pelosi was always lying on television. You can hear him break down when he talks about, "the record-breaking crime spree the Democrats have been on for the last four years." Then he says he wanted to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage to make her finally tell the truth.
All that stuff Schellenberger brings up sounds nice and convenient, and maybe back when he wrote the piece (the day after the attack) that was all the information the public had, but we have more information now. This isn't really a mystery anymore.
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
(Also: would you have accepted the same argument regarding the Nazis and their victims?)
Poland was legitimately way too uppity, as per usual. They can never be opposed to both Germany and Russia. It just doesn’t work geopolitically.
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
Israel is not going to hold a world democratic referendum on its own existence
Taken to the extreme, at some point Israel gets so unpopular that Western countries start arming the Arab states specifically to wage war against Israel.
Quantumfreakonomics
10d ago
Is it English/Writing? The only vocally woke professor I had in college was for Writing. You have to write about something, so that's the easiest place for them to shoehorn in social justice BS.
The theory I heard is that the call came down to “write Anti-ICE messages” on the bullets and the grunts took that extremely literally.
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