anon_
12d ago
Indeed. So Indiana has to lose on the legislative issue.
In a sane world, the plaintiff would have an uphill case to prove that the care given was so lacking as to be unconstitutional.
anon_
12d ago
The left-of-median-democrats were already a majority on Reddit/Twitter before the bookings.
That's kind of why the user base as a whole shrugged -- even though they wouldn't have agitated for ejecting anyone, they weren't going to get riled up over this particular instance.
anon_
12d ago
It was libertarian and anti-authoritarian back when being pro-liberty was pro-left and back when the right had some semblance of power. Back then naughty song lyrics and books with gay themes were sticking it to the man, now the man twerks to it in the corporate gay pride parade.
You can pardon me then for being cynical, but it seems pretty clear that it wasn't the kind of principled David Frenchism. Or at least that the real internet libertarians were a small fraction of the populace.
that.dune.quote.jpg
anon_
12d ago
Who said anything about a social network, you just said any community with a large percentage of members.
anon_
12d ago
The only solution is congress to declare that all kind of communities above in which above x% of US citizens participates are public foras with some congress mandated minimum and maximum user rights in relation to 1A.
Unless you chose a pretty small X, this is gonna cover at least the Catholic Church :-/
anon_
12d ago
I think that probably is a good idea going forwards, in the sense that the legislatures are probably not the right body to be making that determination.
It is sad that the professional bodies are beholden to nonsense, but at least they have the capacity to know what they are talking about and make the evidence-based call.
Ultimately, it seems like a choice between those that don't know and those that know better.
anon_
12d ago
I wonder though, can the legislature categorically decide what medical care is given prisoners consistent with the 8th/14th amendments? Seems like the answer is no, at least not in an unlimited sense.
In the specific case, I think obviously the plaintiff isn't entitled to the specific care requested. But I think that's a fact-specific thing that is subject to constitutional minimums
anon_
12d ago
The entire internet leaned left from the beginning.
I think you’re right that in the decades hence, self-selection has narrowed and polarized it much further .
anon_
12d ago
I think you’re mixing up two things. I agree there wasn’t a lot of pro-moderation demand or sentiment. But most of the users were still left of the median Democrat and were mostly ok that the weird maga crowd got booted.
anon_
12d ago
Well, I was confining myself to the anglosphere. I have no idea what the Chinese zoomers are doing on their social media (which isn't reddit anyway).
If you think there's a causal relationship here, millennials born in 85 were already 20 by the time Reddit launched. It seems much more parsimonious to explain their moderation policies as approximately reflecting the population-as-weighted-by-online-time than to claim that the moderation policies moved millions of people 1SD politically.
EDIT: I should add, the population-as-weighted-by-online time is not a uniform sample. The more well-adjusted aren't spending hours and hours online, especially not volunteering to moderate. It's a bit like Trace's wikipedia bit -- the platform belongs in a large sense to those willing to put in the work/effort.
anon_
13d ago
But it is left of center for San Francisco, which puts it far, far to the left of the nation.
Why is "the nation" relevant? It's not too far to the left of the subset of Americans that are very online.
Another way to think about is that if you look at the crosstabs the last election by age and compare with the average demographic of Reddit's readership you'll get the idea.
anon_
19d ago
but the degree of force has to be proportionate to the threat.
Right, this I understand.
So if someone attacks with fists, I'm allowed to respond with fists.
Either I don't understand this or it is inconsistent with the previous sentence. A person could be attacking me with fists but threatening me with a noose or threatening to throw me in a van.
The lower bound for the severity of the threat is what the attacker has already done, but a reasonable person might believe the threat is significantly higher based on the circumstances.
In the scenario you describe, where someone is being pummeled with fists while defenseless, then yes, I do believe that a self-defense justification would be appropriate. But that's not most attacks or scuffles, and it's not what happened here.
I think the issue here is that by the time that happens, the opportunity for self defense has already passed. A reasonable person does not wait until they are already on their back getting their head smashed into the concrete before escalating because they know that at that point successful self defense is unlikely.
Of course, one has to have formed a belief that the attacker is imminently likely to use serious force and that belief has to be reasonable under the usual tests. But there is no requirement that I can discern that requires actually waiting until that happens.
A quick flip through the caselaw doesn't seem so clear either. A jury did acquit Bernhard Goetz (except on the carrying without a permit charge) despite none of the attackers even punching him, with the notion that when a group of strangers says "give me $5", they are implicitly threatening serious bodily harm. And there's a few more less prominent cases of deadly force in response to unarmed attacker(s) that I found that seem to imply that reasonable beliefs about imminent threats that are not yet materialized count.
anon_
20d ago
That does not seem factually true or we are not talking about the same thing.
A person tackled on the ground then pummeled with fists while defenseless is likely to get a concussion or worse.Every single punch to the head is a spin of the roulette wheel.
anon_
21d ago
The second example is the question of why tickets to the Rose Bowl are so cheap. Lots of people want those tickets at their face value, way more people than there are tickets. Rather than just let the price rise to be market-clearing, they decide that they "have to" hold some back to make sure that vague Bad Things don't happen, and then they get the status of being in control of distribution. They can give something that is extremely highly valued to their buddies, acting like it's really a little thing, really of little value (the face value), but getting widely outsized personal benefits from gatekeeping/rent seeking.
There is a simpler explanation --it's fundamentally a tax harvesting operation. In particular, the tax deduction of a donation must be reduced by the FMV of anything received in exchange for that donation, so the scam goes like
- Donate $1000 to the University
- Receive ticket with a face value of $50, claim a $950 deduction on taxes for ~$400 or so
- University pockets $1000, buyer gets a $1000 ticket for $600, win win
In fact, there is a well-known football university that almost went through with a plan to take 5% of tickets and auction them off, with the proceeds in excess of face value going to some charitable cause. A storm erupted, you see, because an auction for the ticket gives the IRS a very clear starting point for fair market value. Suffice it to say, tickets will never be auctioned off.
anon_
21d ago
I think the threat posed by an attacker doesn't just mean the attack that has already happened, but what a reasonable person might believe will happen imminently if the attacker is not subdued. This is especially relevant when the ability to change the situation may decrease significantly.
For example, choking someone with a noose or a garrote for a minute or so will not produce any serious lasting injury but continue on another two minutes and it's irreversible brain damage. So I think the question is, if someone has you in a garrote, is it reasonable to perceive this as a threat of serious injury even if, as yet, they haven't crossed that line? And again, especially relevant given that the victim doesn't have a ton of time to wait and see before it's gonna solely be the aggressor's choice whether to stop before or after the line.
I don't know the intricacies of self defense law, but I think it's more than merely unfair if the law demands victims put themselves at the mercy of an attacker.
anon_
21d ago
Yeah, I agree here -- the officer showing more patience would have just lead to a video that was more flattering to the officer.
anon_
1mo ago
missing demographic on the Motte: married with children. They are too busy to comment here
We read the QCs tho ;-)
anon_
1mo ago
I think what you're describing resides within the civil service. Even Confucius understood that the Emperor is not likely to be the sharpest crayon on every topic and has to rely on ministers and advisors. The art of statecraft that he has to learn is very much more about how to lead that service, keep them in check and point them in the right direction. The art and science of how to actually do things is somewhat less useful at this.
Maybe what I mean is that governance is a meta-skill. And I think modern leaders are failing at it because they are optimized too much on electioneering (as you say), but I think I differ a bit in that I want them to be serious people about employing and empowering the right folks while curbing abuses of a civil service that has been left to fend for itself because the folks that are meant to be overseeing it are AWOL.
You’d probably rather build a business or financial empire or rocket ships or something.
Boy do I have a good story for you that I need to create as a top level post.
anon_
1mo ago
Ideally I would want to get a machine readable version so voting in person was as smooth as possible.
anon_
1mo ago
There are real concerns with absentee ballots, the inability to date them is hardly the most salient.
anon_
1mo ago
I think we shouldn't be relying on the date the voter puts on their ballot at all. In Bayesian terms, it's not very good evidence one way or the other.
But the law apparently required the State to give it credence. Which is silly.
anon_
1mo ago
Well, these days I live in a deep blue state that's completely eliminated friction at the enormous cost of serious doubts about the integrity of the election. But before, I'd say the largest friction points were:
- Narrow timing of in-person voting, sometimes just a single day that I couldn't make work
- Long lines on occasion, or at least uncertainty about wait times
- An inability to pre-fill choices on my own time and then go in person to quickly transfer them to an official ballot
I agree with all this. The unfortunate corollary is that even if the Arab world did reform, there's now enough crazies in the settlements to derail it from the Israeli side.
I don't think there was another viable option or anything, but I do think that we started with a Palestinian population that had altogether unreasonable preferences and their intransigence (as you point out) lead to the conditions where now there are unreasonable preferences given weight on the other side.
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