Throwaway05
11hr ago
Football is the most war simulator sport or in modern terms - Football is like Fire Emblem.
It's turn based. You go and then they go. Your units perform an action their units defend against that action. Your units have stamina, you rotate them throughout the game, some hero units need to be in for the whole game.
Understanding your units and the strategies that work well for them (and how they relate to the enemy units and their strategies) is critical.
Football more than most sports (with perhaps the exception of pitching in baseball) requires strategy, tactics, and "logistics" - roster building is fair and open (because of the salary cap) and unit selection and resource management is critical because even a dozen games at the tempo of one per week is too much for most human bodies. Basketball load management is trivial in comparison.
This complexity really rewards high level fan engagement, I know a guy who got a summer job out of emailing an essay on a bad game plan to one of the major NFL teams.
On the other hand without the higher level of knowledge it's pretty enjoyable, most partners I've had in my lifetime who are sports avoidant have gotten more into American Football - the attack and then defend structure makes it more understandable than a lot of Soccer for instance. I love watching the gradual grinding down of a defense or Spain midfield control but it isn't as enjoyable to casuals.
As you note the action is limited to a short span, but you know exactly when that span is, leaving the rest of the time for celebration, drinking, and chitchat. It's a much better on the background at a party sport, you can easily miss the only true action of a soccer game if you piss for thirty seconds.
Throwaway05
12hr ago
American Football is a very different sport. This is important to the appeal! In my mind Rugby is just a shittier version of soccer, that's reductive but it is true that sports like Hockey, Rugby and Soccer scratch similar itches with free flowing gameplay as an example feature. Tennis, Golf, American Football - these are all very different experiences.
An example of what this means practically - Football is chess, in the sense that the pieces have abilities but really it's all about the person moving the pieces (the coach) making choices. Football is a coaching battle and a roster construction battle. Yes your coach and roster matters in the other team sports but football is a bunch of different players basically playing an entirely different game (on the level of the difference between a goalkeeper and everyone else) but for every different position on the field.
It's crazy intricate and complicated.
Throwaway05
13hr ago
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You can't separate out the medication side of things and call it done. This is where a large part of the evidence base is. Medications are what's indicated for most moderate to severe pathology for example (with therapy as an adjunct if at all).
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As a physician I'm obvious more familiar with the medication side of things, but my understanding of therapy is that narrowly tailored therapy regimens work fantastically well. OP mentioned exposure therapy. DBT for Borderline is another classic. Therapy research is more complicated for much of the usual reasons - you can just give a patient Amlodipine and watch what their BP does. Standardizing therapy care for research is nearly impossible. That standardization applies to general clinical practice - you have a huge variation in proficiency of practitioners. Anyone who has exposure to high quality (read: expensive) therapy will tell you it is an incredibly effective modality and temporary. For many manifestations of things like Anxiety and Depression high quality therapy will be more effective than medication. This is not an indictment of medication.
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Don't make the mistake of looking at the online conversation about the discipline and assume that is at all applicable to the reality of things, for instance the criticism "they have made a habit of claiming that that old, well-tested, workable solutions should be replaced by new and improved solutions that will fix everything" is an extremely common patient fear but is incredibly rare thing in most practice settings. Yes shady high volume people are out there but most surgeons fetishize outcome metrics, most PCPs get a hard-on for saving their patients money and most psychiatrists want their patients to take easy to afford and obtain stuff so they actually take the medications. As a poster here you are probably higher education and income so you are more likely to encounter someone who is better at customer service than care who will sell you the new thing. That's out there. That's a small fraction of the care and overall pathology.
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Psychiatry has a specific problem - many mentally ill people are mad, can't understand they have a mental illness, believe they just have a medical problem, want Adderall or Cannabis as a drug of abuse and so on. These people complain about the field. They are not reliable narrators.
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The killing of Iryna and other similar events is a political problem. America has a very individual rights oriented approach to managing mental illness. Also things that are mental illness adjacent but not quite mental illness (like heavy substance use or personality disorders). If the judge says the patient has to be released, if there aren't state hospitals beds, psychiatry has limited options. Many severely mentally ill people get discharged and immediately stop taking their medication (which was working!) and go do drugs. An antipsychotic can't help with that. Send them to jail or lock them up for good in hospitals or give the doctors more rights to do things against their patients wishes. These all have costs. I don't know what's best, that's a complicated topic. Historically societies just killed them if they were poor. We don't do that anymore (which is good!) but we've replaced it with the actuarial risk of murder and other bad outcomes.
Throwaway05
14hr ago
Most forms of therapy and 'mental illness' treatment just don't really work, at least not at effecting permanent 'fixes.' Scott used to talk about this quite a bit.
You have to be very cautious about this, it's mostly an exaggerated self-deprecating meme - large subfields of psychiatry and psychology work great.
Criticisms are often stemming from narrow areas such as SLS (shit life syndrome) driven depression and through exaggerated posting by a heavily loud population of patients with serious mental illness and Anosognosia.
For instance medications work great for the traditional serious mental illness - Schizophrenia and related disorders and Bipolar. It helps that these are more directly biochemically mediated. Now patients relapse but it's usually through poor choices (stopping medication, drugs).
A more restrictive society does not have that problem. To some extent the other conditions have the same problem. If the treatment for your depression is to get off your ass and to stop smoking weed as much as it is taking an SSRI, then a society that doesn't keep you away from weed isn't going to be able to do shit.
Much of mental illness is as much a political and ethical problem as it is a treatment problem.
Even with the area where what you are saying is more true (the classic "SSRIs don't really do shit for depression and anxiety" critique) has a lot of nuance.
For example SSRIs are one of the worst treatment for depression. They are first line because they don't have side effects like "eat a certain type of cheese and die" or the image problem of ECT.
Scott likely writes about this less because he finds that the medications and treatment do actually help, and as a heterodox nerdy person he likely had a lot of exposure to people with personality disorders being treated with medication and with mild symptoms. Both types of people medicine doesn't have much to offer.
As your clinical practice expands you see stuff work and less marginal pathology.
The vast majority of doctors in the vast majority of specialities have consulted psych and watched them fairy dust some magic bullshit with a few pills. The average person is going to care about life satisfaction issues and mild to moderate depression and anxiety but that's a small fraction of the morbidity and nearly zero of the mortality.
Throwaway05
2d ago
It's become enough of a pattern that people are asking questions. It may not in fact be because you are gay, it could be because you've discovered a new subculture that makes you feel at home while you are going through a tough time and helps you connect with your brother (I think you said he was gay?) it could be something totally different. However it's usually because you are gay so even if that isn't it - it is certainly an impression you are slightly giving off.
Throwaway05
2d ago
I'm pretty sure that if the positions were reversed you'd see the left screaming about fascism, racism, and all kinds of other things.
It may be a pointless political move on Mamdani's part, but bitching about it is certainly legit.
Throwaway05
3d ago
IDK - but lots of people were far less mad at that than TLJ.
In his review for Odd he argues that the weird casting ends up being fine, if someone of his politics goes for that....
Throwaway05
3d ago
Yes, but 9/11 involved some weird stuff is relatively mainstream, flat earth is not (and to my recollection Joe argued against flat earth stuff).
Throwaway05
3d ago
You got a citation for any of this?
Flat Earth and Moon landing conspiracies are MANY orders of magnitude more questionable.
Throwaway05
3d ago
The reviews are stellar and I was served a Ben Shapiro review on YouTube and even he liked it. It's going to be a monster.
Throwaway05
4d ago
BTW your recent post on songwriters took something I thought I knew a reasonable amount about and taught me I didn't know shit.
Thank you for that (earnestly).
Throwaway05
4d ago
Based off of my family and social circle involved in this: be an upper middle to upper class white woman who went to an elite institution, get a semi-rigorous degree and be riotously far to the left and incredibly racist (anti-white).
The other people who got into that sort of role and were typical motivated by public service types, actual minorities and so on seem to bounce out but the ones that keep getting kicked up the ladder seem to match that description. The actual ownership class for the various firms is what you'd usually expect, but the people who do the stuff and middle management is pure Karen in my experience.
Throwaway05
4d ago
I think athletes are the exception? Probably because most wealthy need to become wealthy or inherit the expectations of the wealthy so they make better decisions.
Athletes are constantly caught in prostitute scandals, rape scandals, even ordering underage women via text message.
Throwaway05
4d ago
My apologies if I have missed any information to the contrary but what that is evidence of is the guy having "sex parties*" not of arranging for child sex or underage sex.
Which makes sense.
The vast majority of the value of such a service comes from providing something safe and legal**, working the margins of legality for blackmail tremendously increases risk without much actual proposed gain (considering the guy clearly was doing well with money and connections and pissing people off is unhelpful in that even if its lucrative).
*Where sex party means social activity where women who will want to have sex with you will be, without you needing to go out in public to make it happen or for money to exchange hands. This is a thing that clearly happens in finance and entertainment and likely has a well known process for those who are in the know.
**Safe and legal has value. I'm sure Robert Kraft is not alone, but he only got nailed because he made the mistake of going somewhere that made the government uncomfortable for unrelated reasons.
Throwaway05
4d ago
I mean do we have any actual evidence of third party sex crimes? All the actual evidence seems to involve Epstein's personal consumption, the rest is inferred.
Like we've talked about before their's enough rumoring about Bill Gates and a few others to suggest something but there isn't really a lot of evidence.
I do know there are some alleged victims but as we know with Kavanaugh that's not reliable unless someone skeptical actually thinks they are a victim.
Throwaway05
4d ago
The stance he describes in the rest of the interview is basically that something fishy may have been going on but at this point literally decades later (and Vance seems to assume after the first series of legal events everything dried up) no further evidence is around.
We do know various intelligence agencies have done a good job at throwing out documents and "forgetting" about things which complicate matters.
Vance also argues that even for things he wants to look into he doesn't necessarily have time to go knock on doors and be like "hey 20 years ago did you know this Epstein guy?" He also uses this excuse on the UFO thing.
I suspect if pressed a bit more Vance would argue that there wasn't an organized conspiracy, just that Epstein knew people in intelligence and leveraged those relationships. This would be certainly be consistent with the way he knew a lot of people, and if you believe the court stuff is above board it would explain things drying up after being acquittances but discovering the malfeasance. If you think the court stuff isn't above board it would explain him using relationships to get out of trouble but then being burned afterwards. Both of those require a lot less conspiracy stuff (in contrast with an organized operation).
Who knows what Vance actually believes, it's entirely possible this is just him politicking for various reasons.
Throwaway05
4d ago
This is the fun thread so we should quickly move past this but I would delicately suggest some consideration for the fact that some things are broadly funny or fun, some things are niche, some things fail to land, and some things would be considered the blackest of humors or outright horrifying (especially when in real life instead of fiction).
Throwaway05
4d ago
It's less about any particular instance and more about the pattern.
Throwaway05
4d ago
My guy, can you please explain to me what you find consistently entertaining about underage sex and abuse related litigation?
Throwaway05
4d ago
Very much agree, if you actual read the primary source documents (and some of our users have and passed the knowledge along) it really doesn't look like what the conspiracy theories say.
He even has a good excuse for all the connections and relationships. However - some shady financial business happening at least some of the time would make a ton of sense in a way the sex stuff never did.
Throwaway05
4d ago
Joe Rogan continues to provide some of the most interesting conversations in the world. Yes he seems to have gone down some conspiracy rabbit holes, but he gets interesting people in a seat and has a long ass conversation with them.
Recently he had Vance. A few things popped to me.
-You'll never convince me Vance isn't part of the SSC/Rationalist diaspora, when he goes off of politics he just oozes it.
-For the UFO fans he says he'll keep looking into it but he doesn't have a lot of hope.
-He did a good job defending some of his more questionable personal and political actions (the demon comment, election issues, the current Iran tactics). Less good with some other things like quashing the filibuster.
-Vance states he is an Epstein conspiracy theorist (but not in the popular way), in the interview he focuses more on the financial aspects of whatever Epstein got up to and focuses away from the pedophile stuff, hard to tell if he really believes nothing is there on that end.
-Joe Rogan's haters continue to be annoying and non-credible, he pushes Vance more than I remember seeing him come at most of the political guests I've watched (but is accused of being glazing).
I've been fortunate to be around for or involved in private conversations with "notable" people, it's fascinating. At the same time I'm not a notable person, so even when that's happened I have to just accept the circumstances and hang back. We live in a time where JRE and other things like "In Good Company" (and even smaller things like the brief podcast Enes Y did) give unprecedented access to the thoughts and plans of the profoundly powerful. Previously you had to sit for a public speech or pay for a dinner, now we can really get a bit of a slice of what Vance is about.
What a wonder.
Throwaway05
6d ago
You and other UMC professionals who do their own research are not representative of the super-majority of patients a typical doctor sees in clinics.
To add to this, some of the worst and most misinformed patients are those who come from a background like engineering and have become highly convinced of something that's very incorrect (with or without conspiracy stuff). The less educated and informed patients can be reasoned with or dictated to in a timely fashion where the higher intelligence or education patients who are confidently wrong need a lot of time and space to unpack the incorrect assumptions.
Throwaway05
8d ago
We shall not accept this false butter! For the lord hath clarified the butter, and it has become GHEE!!!!!
Throwaway05
8d ago
I've had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday through Friday plane!
Yeah you get the tempo pretty quickly (and you have an actual play clock that tells you when you have to go by).
You'd think so but the major lesson from the World Cup was that bitches over here love Haaland (because he's goofy). America football players offer more of a variety of good looking men (because each position requires a different body type) and the outfits show off the gents butts more. Both have sex appeal lol.
I love Soccer's evasion of stats and rules loose nature. I also love American sports nitty gritty and optimizable nature. Just as I suggest to Americans to enjoy the looseness of Soccer I think Football also has some value for things in the other direction.
So it's interesting, I think American Football most resembles a war simulator, European Football most resembles an actual fight. The simulator makes some things clear and explicit. Things have to happen, ambiguity is artificially reduced. People take turns slugging each other in the face. In contrast you have a free flowing game where nobody wants to get punched in the face, you push and pull, ebb and flow until you can safely strike without cost - or something slips up and things happen quickly. Things are rarely clear. Sometimes it just ends when it ends vs. goes on forever etc etc.
I bring this up not to explain which most resembles the territory, but point to which map is on display. You can enjoy both stylized maps without ever having seen the territory.
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