anon_
16hr ago
Of course he did -- any D appointee would have. That wasn't some personal view he brought with him to HHS.
anon_
16hr ago
Even the ones just occupying the chair are producing a huge amount of value as compared to the replacement CEO that is actively tanking the company.
Paying an extra ten million for a lower risk of "destroys tens of billions" is not always the wrong move.
IOW, at that level it's not just about upside or actual job function/accomplishment.
anon_
3d ago
I mean, I agree directionally.
That said, there is such a thing as exploitation. The concept has been overused by the left but their dishonesty about it doesn't actually erase the subset of actual such cases.
anon_
3d ago
the discrepancy between the market value of labour and what you might call the utility value
The utility theory of pricing suggests that potable water (critical for life) should cost more than diamond necklaces (not important). That alone suggests it needs at least some nuance if it wants to make contact with reality.
I think if you want to be more coherent about theories of value, you should probably think a bit more about the margin and factor in include both substitutability & elasticity. Food as an entire category is essential, but on the margin the farmer's product can be substituted for the fisherman's or the shepherd's. Truckers as a category are essential, but on the margin if prices go way up people will ship less stuff. PUHO's super-performant code could be substituted instead for buying a bunch more hours on AWS.
I suppose the welfare state is basically ‘we don’t owe you this money but we’re going to give some of it to you anyway’.
I think there is a key question of filling in the reason why it's given anyway.
Some will say:
- ... because we want you to get on your feet and go back to being a productive member of society
Others will say
- ... because we care for you as an irreducible being worthy of grace
Yet others will say
- ... because otherwise the poor will degrade the quality of life for everyone
And so forth.
anon_
5d ago
The issue is that rare coincidence do happen and causality isn't well-defined on an individual scale anyway.
For example, a lot of farmers used glyphosate (roundup) and, of them, a number of them (somewhat proportional to the overall risk) got rare cancers. Then those folks sued on a theory of causality that most scientists roundly reject, but won anyway.
But consider a hypothetical second agent that we know beyond a doubt increases the risk of some rare cancer by 25% (a huge relative risk). 5 farmers get this cancer and sue. Of them, 4 would have gotten it anyway and 1 got it due to agent. It's not just that a scientifically ignorant jury can't figure that out -- there is no answer. We can't assign that down to the individual level in that way -- all we know is something about aggregate risk.
anon_
5d ago
It's worse than that -- as I see his successful confirmation would be a powerful advanced signal to those involved in the research and development of novel vaccines. Not just because of what he would literally do (although he could indeed have the FDA hold them up or otherwise increase the already-staggering cost of new treatments) but because of what it implies about the range of consensus views on vaccines.
At the same time, defeating his nomination would send a signal that his views are sufficiently out there that firms making vaccines don't have to worry about it.
Given the timelines of these things, these dynamics seem far more important than the specific FDA decisions to be made in the next 4 years (which, anyway, were baked-in years ago).
anon_
5d ago
This is insightful. Xavier Becera is a completely empty suit, devoid of any substantive (object level) merit. And somehow we're willing to chalk that up to normal politics.
In truth, I think it might actually be directionally correct. An actual idiot that does nothing and thinks nothing of substance may actually be preferable to someone that knows enough to confidently fuck up.
Call it the Sorcerer's Apprentice Curve -- the utility function is concave in intelligence.
anon_
7d ago
Oh, I totally agree on midwit policy makers.
I do think there is a funny kind of duality here -- in the west some moron can wreck your country but at least you can't personally be thrown in a dungeon for making fun of a politician on social media.
anon_
11d ago
And yet there is a large part of the base that has been reliably turning out and will feel jilted if the GOP abandons them.
anon_
11d ago
Sure, the supply of Chinese students graduating exceeds demand. But there are a couple million around LA man.
Plus, they can make beautiful wasian babies.
anon_
11d ago
I've been more than a dozen times. Beneath the glossy exterior there's a society where everyone's fate is at the hands of a midwit apparatchik.
Moreover, the fate of your kids is dismal.
anon_
11d ago
It's other way around, every Chinese engineer with a 120 IQ is aiming to live comfortably in California rather than raise their kids in a totalitarian dystopia.
If anything, it further underlines how essential it is that we return California to a state of at least half-decent quarter-decent government. Last week's moderate sweep in SF gives me a sliver of hope.
anon_
11d ago
I think Trump already started shanking the pro-life right with his comment about how great IVF is. That was a preemptive move.
It remains to be seen how his administration handles the inevitable push for a federal abortion ban.
anon_
12d ago
I believe Nick was responding (at least memetically, if not directly) at the barrage of Harris ads around reproductive which all ended with a sinister (of course old white) GOP politician saying "I got the most votes, it's my decision". Of course, those ads could have been crisper, they could have actually said "it's my choice" rather than "my decision" which would have been an appropriate anaphora.
And FWIW, pro-choice referendums ran >10 points better than Trump! So they were absolutely right that voters want reproductive freedom much more than they wanted Trump. Floridians voted 57% for abortion even though Trump won 56-43. Trump carried NV and AZ but they both passed abortion rights measures too.
So while Fuentes trolls the folks for whom reproductive freedom was a central plank of a losing battle, it's a double troll that he gets to claim that voters support him on the issue when ISTM that the issue wasn't as salient. Hence the split-ticket Trump+abortion voters.
anon_
12d ago
According to simulations, US is almost always losing the war anyway because it has no good missile defense, not enough interceptors and all local bases are in range of Chinese missiles.
I expect by 2030 that the US stockpile of hypersonics will compare or exceed China's and the calculus will change considerably. The US machine moves more slowly but once it gains momentum it tends to get there.
anon_
12d ago
I don't necessarily believe it's cope. A weak government (of either side) with no mandate is just less good than a clear victory (of either side).
Sure there's individual losers and winner (oil & gas especially), but I'd say there is a combination of a Trump bump specifically attributed to him with a bump for "someone has a mandate to govern decisively".
anon_
12d ago
"My model produces unhelpful outputs because it has bad inputs" is still only an excuse at the end of the day.
It's not a matter of the model having bad inputs. The model had all the publicly available inputs.
Why doesn't he have six figures to spend on his own poll and make his model better? Do none of his rich friends trust him enough to invest in him?
Anyone that would pay for that would want to keep the results private in order to better leverage them in some fashion. Otherwise why are they paying for better polling just to give it away to everyone? What return do they have to reap out of investing in a better prediction? The intrinsic value of better public polling?
I'd also comment that even polymarket was 50/50 for a while and then 60/40 in the days before the election.
anon_
12d ago
Pollsters don't want to be wrong, or at least not more wrong than the rest of the field, so if their poll shows results that are different than the average, they stick 'em in a filing cabinet somewhere and don't publish them.
We should require pre-registration of polls. Have some of the major news networks say they won't publish them unless they are registered, in advance, with a clear notion of when they will take place and when the results will be reported.
anon_
12d ago
It was one way or another. With superior knowledge you could've called it in Trump's favour. Maybe only Bezos and various Lords of the Algorithms, French Gamblers and Masters of Unseen Powers knew or suspected - but there was knowledge to be had.
That knowledge wasn't available to the model. A French gambler paying a hundred grand for a private poll specifically does so in order to possess information that others do not.
anon_
12d ago
That's surely true. But the point is that Trump will have the benefit of being able to walk away. If Biden decides that he wants a deal, he's got 60 days or so to nail it down.
Absolutely. I did not mean at all to suggest that we can allow people to self-id as exploited.
That doesn't mean there are no such cases or the concept is completely devoid of realization.
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