quiet_NaN
5hr ago
From their links which do not go to youtube or what I presume are amazon pages of sex toys, it seems like the gist of the complaint is that some high school refused to remove two books from their library.
Sure, having a school which allows a book in their library which contains a crude comic of some guy (?) giving another guy (?) a BJ is exactly like the teacher of your daughter and 70% of your school board being fucking machines who are presumably going to rape her or something.
I mean, we had that story with a school district and some ruling wrt religious objections, but that sounded much more serious that this "random school has slightly naughty queer book, and even after possibly someone unsympathetic to these books being elected to some position, they still did not remove them. The soap box, the ballot box have failed, the jury box is just a waste of time so now it is time for the cartridge box!!!11"
quiet_NaN
5hr ago
Six members of the Milwaukee ICE ERO Task Force planned to take part in the arrest of Flores-Ruiz on April 18, 2025. This included ICE ERO Deportation Officer A, Customs and Border Protection Officer A, FBI Special Agents A and B, and Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) Special Agents A and B. The agents were generally dressed in plain clothes and intended to effectuate the arrest in as low-key and safe of a manner as possible.
No ATF? No FEMA? Not even the Coast Guard or the Marshall service? How could a mere six agents from only four federal agencies possibly hope to prevail against an unarmed immigrant?
And no, I checked, the badge of the "ERO Task Force" features a DHS seal with an eagle, not a scantly clad manga girl. Missed opportunity there. Sad!
quiet_NaN
5hr ago
I just abbreviated them:
Blablabla Antitrust Civil Process Act blablabla or [....]
Let me try to parse this.
-
[subject] Whoever,
- [intent] with intent to avoid, evade, prevent, or obstruct compliance, in whole or in part, with any civil investigative demand duly and properly made under the Antitrust Civil Process Act,
-
[act] willfully
-
withholds,
-
misrepresents,
-
removes from any place,
-
conceals,
-
covers up,
-
destroys,
-
mutilates,
-
alters,
-
or by other means falsifies
-
-
[object of act]
-
any documentary material,
-
answers to written interrogatories,
-
or oral testimony,
-
-
[required attribute of object] which is the subject of such demand [e.g. of the ACPA];
-
[alternative act] or attempts to do so
-
[alternative act] or solicits another to do so
So, for that paragraph to apply, we require
a) a civil investigative demand duly and properly made under the Antitrust Civil Process Act
b) someone acting with intent to avoid, evade, prevent, or obstruct compliance to that demand
c) that someone doing bad things to materials, interrogatories or testimony related to that demand (or incites others or attempts that).
To my knowledge, there was no ACPA demand, the judge did not act to obstruct compliance with such a demand, and a person is not a valid object to act on to fulfill the act being criminalized by that paragraph.
It looks to me that this is meant to criminalize "oh shit, we are under anti-trust investigation. Let us quickly shred all the documents, or cook our books". In one dimension it is extremely broad (anyone can commit it), but it requires intent (which is often hard to prove) and pertains only to something very specific (demands under the ACPA).
I have no clue why the hell Congress would put that specific case of destruction of evidence (of which there are certainly more, my guess is that you will also go to jail for shredding evidence you are required to surrender in labor, racketeering, or environmental investigations -- just not under that statue) with obstruction of justice.
quiet_NaN
7hr ago
Around me free public institutions are risking it all, to make sure kids can keep viewing cock sucking.
By internet standards, this feels like extremely tame. In fact, it is tame enough that the very article which is whining about it felt safe enough to include it in the very post without any pixelation on their presumably otherwise SFW website.
From the link:
Left-wing activists have sought to ban Lee's “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Salinger's “A Catcher in the Rye” and Twain's “Huckleberry Finn” for using language they say is "offensive" to Blacks and women. None of the three books includes any pornographic cartoon illustrations depicting gay sex.
Now, if the Genoa City Public Library has pulled these other books because some wokes were whining about it, then by all means call them hypocrites. But if they have not, I don't see the fucking problem of having a book with that picture in a library.
If it was required reading, then that would be bad, sure. If it was required reading for six-year-olds, very bad, even. But if it is just sitting in the youth or YA section of a public library, I am okay with it. The odd 8yo who will pick it up looking for more brutal comics will just go "eeew, gross!", not be traumatized for life. From the text, it does not even try to be jerk-off material. Not that there is not a lot of stuff which is borderline pornographic in literature, either.
A good library has someone to offend everyone. I think trying to get people to question their gender identity is generally bad, but I also think trying to push for "abstinence until marriage" is bad. So if that library also carries Twilight, that is already two ideas on offer which I don't agree with -- which is of course the purpose of a marketplace of ideas.
quiet_NaN
8hr ago
State-law judges don't have jurisdiction over federal agents executing federal functions.
The question is if they are required to render aid to federal law enforcement. Based on the warrant, it is generally illegal to "conceal an individual to prevent his discovery or arrest" and "obstructing or impeding a proceeding before a department or agency of the US". The latter requires corruption, force, or threats. The former seems prone to selective enforcement, I can't imagine the DA going after every grandma who conceals her grandson from the cops.
The affidavit states that it is very convenient for ICE to arrest people in courthouses because they know that they will be unarmed. This is of course the equilibrium if the worst thing which can happen to you in a court house is getting arrested for whatever crime you are accused of in the first place. Few fugitives accused of murder answer their court summons, after all. If the worst thing which can happen to you in a courthouse is getting shipped to some hellish megaprison in some country where human rights just are not a thing, then you might think twice about appearing in court unarmed. And while the affidavit claims that so far, ICE is restricting this practice to criminal defendants, it might already have a chilling effect on witnesses and participants in civil cases.
If an accused is willing to show up in court when summoned, that is saving the state system the resources they would otherwise have to spend on tracking, arresting and imprisoning that person. If the feds freeload on the state system, in the end it will be state police who will have to spend a lot of resources on tracking illegals wanted for some minor infraction like they are wanted for murder.
Of course, some other judge signed the arrest warrant, so it seems somewhat likely that they will make that one stick.
FWIW, 1505 reads:
Blablabla Antitrust Civil Process Act blablabla or Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States, or the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress— Shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, blablabla
1071 reads:
Whoever harbors or conceals any person for whose arrest a warrant or process has been issued under the provisions of any law of the United States, so as to prevent his discovery and arrest, after notice or knowledge of the fact that a warrant or process has been issued for the apprehension of such person, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; except that if the warrant or process issued on a charge of felony, or after conviction of such person of any offense, the punishment shall be a fine under this title, or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both.
From my layman's perspective, I think that it is probably more likely that they will get her for 1071. Escorting a known fugitive through a non-public area seems the kind of thing which qualifies.
For 1505, she obviously did not use threats or force, so she would have acted corruptly. Now, if she had learned in her function as a judge that there was a investigation against her defendant and then proceeded to warn him about that, this would be a textbook case of corruption.
However, it does not seem clear-cut that she learned of this due to her function as a judge.
The courtroom deputy observed Attorney A (the individual who had photographed the agents) enter and approach Judge DUGAN’s clerk. Attorney A stated that there appeared to be ICE agents in the hallway. Attorney A told the clerk where the agents were seated and what they were wearing. [...] The courtroom deputy reported that the clerk then got up and talked with Judge DUGAN.
Arguably, this constitutes a chain of gossip, not a formal court communication. (Of course, it could be that things learned through gossip are also subject to 1505, like if a cop learned through gossip that another cop was planning an arrest.) But then she proceeds to use her power as a judge to get the confirmation about who they are after, which seems really stupid of her -- because she no longer can claim that she did not know of the arrest warrant. So it seems likely that they will get her for that, too, if the FBI agent's account is substantially correct.
quiet_NaN
18hr ago
I am quite skeptical that anyone at all can pass while naked IRL, so the whole argument seems silly to me.
I think you and I mean different things by "to pass".
For me in that context, it means that a stranger is subconsciously inserting you into their mental categories of "men" or "women". If I were to go into a communal shower and saw a person of average statue with no facial hair, developed breasts and no dick and balls, I would place them in the category "women" -- and wonder if I am in the wrong shower.
The other interpretation of "to pass" is more adversarial. Something like "a stranger whose prior on you being trans is 0.5 will categorize you either as a cis-woman or a trans-woman following a close-up inspection of your naked body".
I would argue that for the shower situation, to pass in the first sense is sufficient. The prior of someone being trans IRL is low. If you see a cock in the woman's shower, that is certainly enough evidence to overcome the prior of "random person in the woman's shower is typical XX". But if someone is trying to pass to the point where they had bottom surgery, in most cases I would expect the subconsciousness to just put them in the "women" category.
I don't know what goes on in women's showers, obviously, but "excuse me, but can you stand still for a minute while I inspect your labia to determine if you are one of us or one of these god-awful pervert men who likes to spy on and/or rape women, (and in your case might have cut off his genitals to better to better hide among us)" is not a level of scrutiny I would expect in practice a lot.
quiet_NaN
1d ago
This is a bad argument. What the parent poster was claiming was that crossdressing does not imply sexualized lifestyle. What you are claiming is that sexualized lifestyle implies cross-dressing (a claim I don't follow btw, I don't think that there is that much cross-dressing in the straight vanilla hookup culture).
It is as if someone claimed to argue that skin contact does not imply sexuality, and you tried to refute them by (correctly) observing that almost all sexuality involved skin contact.
quiet_NaN
2d ago
This actually creates an interesting dilemma. Say neither Putin nor Ukraine want Trump's deal (-100, -100). If both refuse the deal, Trump might halfheartedly continue to support Ukraine so can continue to butcher each other (-50, -50). If only Ukraine refuses, Trump withdraws all support from Ukraine (R: +100, U: -200). If only Russia refuses, Trump will increase aid to Ukraine out of spite (R: -200, U: +100).
This is isomorphic to the prisoner's dilemma, except that "cooperate" is "refuse Trump's deal" and "defect" is "accept Trump's deal".
I am not sure that I buy that a deal can be made so terrible that both sides would prefer to slaughter each other instead -- sure, there are parts where the US wins (at the expense of the other parties), but given how negative-sum that war is, there should be the possibility of a zero-sum deal which is preferable to both sides. Of course, it also helps to negotiate with both sides (as well as other stakeholders like EU) to see what precisely they want instead of just announcing a your peace plan and demanding that everyone accepts it.
quiet_NaN
2d ago
Do you have any evidence that Zelenskyy would rather indefinitely feed Ukrainians into the meat grinder than risking losing an election?
quiet_NaN
2d ago
Invading from Ukraine has none of these problems. You can attack through the Sumy region along a wide front line and it’s just a straight shot of about 350 miles over flat open steppe and major road systems directly to Moscow. Additionally you can easily divide the Russian force from any potential Belorussian force.
Thanks, I did not realize that Moscow was that close.
Still, I think that 400km is still a lot of strategic depth, and trying to take that much quickly when your enemy has prepared fortifications seems over-ambitious.
I mean, look at Putin trying to take Kiev, which is half that distance to the border. From my understanding, Ukraine had not made it a top priority to defend against a Russian incursion before he attacked, and yet managed to fend off his initial attempt to take it. I do not think that NATO would manage to take Moscow from Kharkiv in a single decapitating strike, nor am I convinced that taking Moscow would cause Russia to surrender.
And all of that war gaming is contingent on nuclear fission magically stopping to work, because externally threatening the existence of the owner of the world's second largest nuclear stockpile seems like a utterly foolish thing to do.
Nothing Russia has is worth even the risk of getting bogged down in a conventional war like we see in Ukraine, never mind a nuclear war which would quickly escalate to an ICBM exchange.
I think that it is clear why Ukraine wants security guarantees. Putin already broke the Budapest Memorandum so I would totally expect him to alter the terms of any future agreement whenever it suits him.
I am less sure if Russia is justified in feeling threatened by NATO. There have been two incursions into Russia from Europe, Napoleon and Hitler, and both failed miserably (but at a high toll of Russian/Soviet deaths). Of course, the deaths of these wars would be small fries to what would happen if NATO marched towards Russia's MRBM bases and Putin would either have to use these nukes or lose them. Anyone arguing that NATO should invade Russia to bring freedom and democracy to them is out of their fucking minds in a way which makes Trump look like a wise fucking Zen master by comparison.
quiet_NaN
2d ago
Need to look into sending the kids to catholic (or other reasonable religious) school, especially in these hyper-woke areas.
If you are worried about "pedophile/groomer men", you might want to think twice about a system which is run by men who voluntarily opted out of the church-sanctioned way to have sex.
quiet_NaN
2d ago
I had sex education in fourth grade, around ten or eleven. I think my parents had told me about the basic process before that.
I would argue that a child deserves to know how puberty works (which entails the biological end-game, which is sex and pregnancy) before that child enters puberty herself or himself.
Today, the other thing to keep in mind is that at least some children will have unfettered smartphone access. Now, kids sharing random porn videos in the school yard is going to be damaging no matter what, but kids first encountering the very concept of sex when their classmate shows them a gross video is likely much worse.
quiet_NaN
2d ago
Well, "no pictures of Muhammad" is a sincerely held belief of a world religion. It is both fairly narrow in scope, too. So anyone who made a book about Muhammad and decided to include a picture of him would be trying to specifically piss of Muslims.
If someone decided to base their sex education around the theme "how Mary and Joseph had sex and Jesus was conceived", then we would also reasonably suspect that someones was trying to piss of Christians by violating a fairly narrow taboo. (By contrast, "how sex and pregnancy works" is an infinitely broader taboo which is much less rooted in faith.)
quiet_NaN
3d ago
Pizzaballa is young, not just for a pope but for a head of state in general.
Well, that is relative. He was born in 1965, so he is about 60. By comparison, Obama was elected president at about 48, Angela Merkel became Chancellor at ~51 and Jacinda Ardern became Prime Minister at about 37. Being the head of a state at 60 is only young if you take the last two US presidents as a baseline.
Also, the Pope is a head of state in the same way that he is the supreme commander of an armed force -- which is to say, that while he is both, he as a very non-central example of either. Presumably, even being just the bishop of a regular European city is coming closer to describing his day job. Being a head of state technically comes with the job, but it is a minor consideration -- no contender will run on a platform of "the Vatican should increase the minimum wage or reform health care".
quiet_NaN
3d ago
I think that the cliche is that most ship owners fly whichever flag is cheapest (at least until their ship get captured by pirates, then they don't call for the Panama Navy for help, but suddenly discover that they are EU or US or whatever), and that they employ the cheapest workers, which are likely from some developing country.
Taking a contract according to Panamanian law for what might be a living wage in the Philippines does not seem like a great deal for most US citizens.
A container ship will run on a giant two-stroke diesel engine. Depending on where you stand, this might qualify as "extreme amounts of dirt". The fuel oil these engines use is not like gasoline (which generally evaporates without much residuals). Cold, it is barely liquid, tar-like. And that is before you start burning that stuff in a two-stroke engine, and get all the usual fun stuff from Diesel engines, such as soot or nitric oxides. While you might get away with having the chimney of your oil-heating cleaned once a year, a ship will (in my estimation) require a lot more than that.
Of course, YMMV. If you are a nuclear technician on a US navy aircraft carrier (or sub), then you avoid most of these problems -- and will not even have to learn another language to understand your captain.
quiet_NaN
5d ago
People only wage war when they think it's in their best interests, to get some kind of superior peace treaty compared to not fighting.
While there is certainly much truth in that, I do not think that it is the whole story.
A nation which is prepared to fight a losing war just to make their invader bleed for every inch of land, Causal Decision Theory be damned, will obviously get worse outcomes in the case of a war. But if their pre-commitment is known beforehand, they are also much less likely to be invaded in the first place.
Also, there are outcomes which can be had from fighting which can not be had from agreements. Nations are not monolithic agents. There are a lot of outcomes which may be desirable to a government which are simply not feasible to achieve without war. For example, governments can use "we are at war" as an excuse to bypass normal decision making processes. "We may not be at war, but we negotiated that we will get 60% of all the benefits of being at war, so please curb your expectations with regard to decision making accordingly" will not fly domestically. Or take what the EU is getting out of the Ukraine war: depriving a belligerent Russia of its Soviet stockpiles and of the personnel which can be drafted with the least hassle. This is not something Putin could do politically without a war. Well, I guess he could promise not to use these Soviet stockpiles and soldiers against Europe, but if his promises could be trusted we would not be here in the first place.
quiet_NaN
6d ago
My understanding is that this is a federal matter because it involves interstate roads which were built with federal funds.
I think that a workaround would be to just charge tolls on non-federal roads. The people driving from and to Manhattan tend not to do so just to enjoy the view of the Hudson from a federal highway. They want to reach a destination in Manhattan, and they need to use local roads to get to it. So just charge them to use the local roads instead.
On the subject itself, I am a bit of two minds. On the one hand, I get that putting prices on things is probably the most efficient way to allocate rare resources. On the other hand, there is something delightfully egalitarian about public roads. It does not matter if your car is worth 500$ or 500k$, when it comes to traffic -- and especially traffic jams -- everyone is equal. Well, somewhat equal. Of course, sitting in a hot, cramped, terrible car waiting for the traffic to move is different than riding in a nice, air-conditioned car with some stop and go traffic assistance system, and that is different from riding in the back of a limousine drinking champagne with an escort and an 8k TV screen while occasionally berating your driver on the intercom. Still, unless you can afford to ride a helicopter to work you are stuck here with the rest of us.
quiet_NaN
6d ago
Imagine you’re on a flight where somebody tried to smuggle murder hornets and they got loose. Only three people were immune and survived: you, and a basement dweller who spent thousands of hours in MS Flight Simulator including the plane model you’re on, and a real fighter pilot who has never flown a commercial plane ever.
I find it very suspicious that two thirds of the people who just randomly happen to be immune to the murder hornets are both somewhat experienced with planes. The likeliest scenario is that they are both part of an operation to steal that plane.
Of course, given that, I have to wonder about myself. Did I survive because I was also part of the plot? The two others seem to have covered landing the plane at its new destination, so what exactly was my part in all of this? Did I bring the hornets on board? So many died. Why did I do this?
The best way to redeem myself is to make sure that their bloody operation will not succeed. My biggest asset for that is that my two co-conspirators are still believing I am on their side. At the moment we are still over the middle of the ocean, and both of them just went into the cockpit to set a coarse for Havana or Mogadishu or whatever.
I think about sabotaging the emergency oxygen system and then blowing out a door. I find a connected oxygen cylinder, but then I begin to wonder. What if the cockpit has a separate, redundant life support system? Ambient pressure at commercial plane flight levels is low, but not zero. And the cabin pressure is also not sea level. Also, they closed the cockpit door again, so I can't really count on explosive decompression to take them out. And probably whoever had to design the doors had the secondary objective of making sure that they are not easily opened while there is a pressure differential. Or I would just get blown out of the door without taking both of the other conspirators out. And if anyone can hang on to consciousness in hypox.. anox.. in low oxygen conditions while their plane does a free-fall descent of a few kilometers, then it is probably a fighter pilot.
I look at the painful stings all over my hands. At least I can't see my face, but my left eye it totally swollen. The antidote kept me alive, not comfortable. I wonder about what hellish species that is which can take out a hundred people in minutes. Some were only stung once or twice. Should stings lead to anaphylaxis and death with such certainty? Are they GMO and producing botox or something?
What happens with the hornets after the plane is landed? Am I looking at some Alien scenario? They are likely not an x-risk, but the span between erasing some 500 QALYs and x-risk is pretty large. How do hornets even reproduce? Probably nests with a large number with individuals, so they have a queen?
Nah, the tail end is simply too dreadful, new priority one is to make sure that none of these bloody beasts escape.
I consider my options. While cabin pressure is maintained, the hornets are trapped in here with me. If the plane lands without damaging the hull too much, I can tell radio the authorities and tell them to build a tent around the plane and fill it with some insecticide. Still hinges on me taking over the plane and making a non-catastrophic landing.
The safest way to destroy the hornets would probably be a controlled watering at Point Nemo -- where we put our space junk and dread Cthulhu lies. Even if there is a hull breach during impact, the hornets are probably not able to fly hundreds of kilometers over the sea. Unfortunately, we are nowhere near it. Landing in some smaller pond will kill the hornets only if the plane remains sealed until it sinks. The other obvious choice is rapid deceleration followed by a fuel explosion. What are the odds of the tail part breaking off and not being caught in the fireball? How reliable is the acceleration to kill these big ass hornets?
Anyhow, this brings me back to having to disable the other conspirators to take over the plane. The bigger danger by far is the fighter pilot. He may not have a ton of training in close quarter combat, but he is a lot fitter than I am. The basement dweller is closer to a fair fight -- not that I plan on giving him one.
That oxygen cylinder I found will have to serve as a blunt weapon. And it's contents could help me prepare a distraction. The third corpse in first class I check smells like a smoker, and indeed he has a lighter in his pockets, as well as a pack of cigarettes with a label "SMOKING KILLS", not that he has to worry about that now. Just as I have picked the ideal location for my little fire, I notice that one of the passengers does not have the swollen face of the others. Yes, she is not moving as the hornets crawl on her, but she is very faintly breathing. Shit, what now?
quiet_NaN
6d ago
If your goal is to entice someone to murder Hitler, that saying out loud that he needs shooting is not the most efficient way to go about it, because that kind of speech is quickly shut down. Either you become personally part of a conspiracy to murder him (which might not be practical, or you might not be willing to pay the price) -- in which case you do not make any public statements beforehand, or you try to stay on the right side of the law and depend on your listeners to connect the dots. So you say that Hitler will be the doom of the German people and that he is much more dangerous than Rosa Luxemburg (a communist who was shot in 1918) ever was.
(FWIW, I am rather strictly against murdering Trump. I will not pretend I would not be happy if he died of natural causes (heart failure after ingesting viagra would be lovely) tomorrow, or if he went the way of Joe Biden, but he would be a lot more damaging as a dead martyr than as a living president.)
quiet_NaN
6d ago
I would add that conveniently providing the residential address of people you don't like (e.g. health care CEOs) should definitely qualify.
quiet_NaN
7d ago
If a crowd of people clamor outside the courthouse for a man’s innocence or guilt, judges were and should be swayed by it.
Oh, we tried the will of the people thing in Germany. The legal phrase was gesundes Volksempfinden (the healthy moral sentiment of the people).
"Punished is he who commits an act which is made punishable by the law or which according to the rationale of the criminal code and the healthy moral sentiment of the people deserves to be punished".
It closed all the loopholes with minimal legislative effort. Of course, it also really lowered our ranking with regard to rule of law, so we were persuaded to give it up.
A judge should apply the laws, not bent them to what he perceives as the will of the people. If the outcome of a trial depends on whether there are demonstrators outside rooting for a conviction or an acquittal, then we can safe a ton of court costs and just let the mobs with their nooses run the show instead. (The popular sentiment will certainly influence the jury, but even there -- with the contested exception of jury nullification -- the task of the jury is to reach a verdict based on the evidence, not popularity. Arguing that someone is a terrible person and should be punished no matter if he did the act he is accused of is not how things should be done.)
If the framers of the constitution had wanted the judges to just follow the way the wind is blowing from the Trump administration with regard to immigration, they could just have given the president the right to replace any and all federal judges whenever he felt like it. They did not, and I do not think that was an oversight on their part.
quiet_NaN
7d ago
They decided on it because they noticed color-blind meritocracy wasn't getting the job done.
What job? To ensure that there are no racial or gender imbalances in the outcome?
This seems a silly ask.
Imbalances in outcomes can have two reasons:
(1) Cultural: this includes upbringing, parents financial situation, straightforward discrimination and so on. I think that I speak for the overwhelming majority (but feel free to correct me) when I say that these are bad, and that we should get rid of these barriers.
To a large extend, these barriers are bad because they lead to worse societal outcomes: if cultural factors such as plain old racism prevent Blacks from becoming doctors, then we end up with fewer or worse doctors than if it was otherwise.
(2) Inherent average ability (or -- in the case of genders -- interest): These differences exist, most obviously in gender and physical capability. They are the reason why most sport competitions are gender segregated. There are also physical capability differences between ethnicities, a few African peoples dominate long distance running, for example. The genetics of intelligence are complicated, and we get large variances, but there is a genetic component to intelligence. Should we just assume that while average height, skin color, long distance running aptitude, et cetera are all unevenly distributed over different ethnicities, intelligence is perfectly evenly distributed?
One has to be very careful attributing imbalances to (2), and has to notice the skulls of the people who came before. When the French Academy of Science did not admit women, they were certainly pleading something like (2), that women are intrinsically not suited to be scientists, not something like (1), that they were sexist pricks, while in retrospect it is clear that the latter was the case.
I am an utilitarian. In my utility function, women and men, Blacks and Caucasians, Danes and Madagascans all count the same. Being a doctor is good for the individual in question (student debts and insane work hours aside): it is a high status job which is paid fairly well. It is also good to society in proportion of how qualified the doctor is. The best solution overall is therefore for the people who will be the best doctors to become doctors. Predicting how good someone will be as a doctor is non-trivial, but certainly being good in science classes helps. Thus, I want the most qualified people to become doctors, regardless of any gender or ethnic balances.
(I would all have been for lightly putting our hands on the scales to make sure that we are not perpetuating effects caused by cultural effects, and thus permanently staying below the optimum. However, given how affirmative action is looking these days, I would argue that we are at the point where we are jumping on the scale as hard as we can, meritocracy be damned.)
If the meritocratic solution is that some ethnicities are mostly working low-paying jobs and some are well over-represented in high-paying jobs, then my utility sum tells me that I should not care (beyond making reasonably sure that (1) is not the cause). If you want to argue that the gap between low-paying jobs and high paying jobs is too high, because poor people could get out a lot more utility out of the marginal dollar than rich ones, then I am very sympathetic to that argument and open to ideas of how we can improve their lot without drawing the wrath of the Elder God called economy.
If the last part is not clear, imagine a feudal kingdom made out of nobles and serfs. Calculate its utility sum. Now imagine one of two scenarios: in the first, every noble magically takes on the physical appearance of an elf, pointy ears and all. In the other, the same total number of elves are created, but evenly distributed over both classes. How does the utility sum in either case change? Secondary considerations (perhaps elf ears are really bad at holding crowns, or perhaps most people have an elf kink and get a lot of utility from their partners being turned into elves) aside, it does not. It can not, because the utility sum does not weight your utility by the shape of your ears. (There is an argument to be made that the former scenario will lead to less meritocracy, because it limits the upwards mobility of the serfs, but I think "random people are in charge" is a closer model than "the best and brightest are in charge" for feudalism, i.e. that there is not much meritocracy going on in the first place.)
quiet_NaN
8d ago
"intelligence research isn't worth the social costs"
I think that this was basically the consensus for a long time. Have color-blind admission policies and don't care about the outcomes, and there is really no good reason for any decent person to wonder why there are more Ashkenazi than Black faculty members. Clever people like Scott Alexander might notice the trend, but they will also notice that the Gaussians overlap and not make undue updates towards intelligence estimates based on skin color, a nuance which would be lost on the wider population.
But then the wokes decided that a system which produces disparate outcomes must be unfair.
If you have to argue against claims that the NBA is favoring certain minorities, you will have a hard time if you also have to argue that every ethnic is equally good at basketball.
We do not know that this public library is woke.
Two kinds of libraries might carry offensive queer books:
(1) woke
(2) free speech
You can tell them apart by looking at how they treat books that the wokes hate. Did they get rid of Harry Potter because JK Rowling is a vile TERF? Did they get rid of Twilight because it perpetuates heteronormative and sex-negative stereotypes? If so, that is bad and they should just carry material which offends nobody, which will make them terrible libraries.
If not, then I think in a world where virtually every teen owns a smartphone and finding any act of bestiality just by entering it in a search engine prompt, the shock value of that crudely drawn BJ is minimal. Just write your own book in which two straight cis-gender characters do some chaste dating, marry in a church ceremony and then engage in unprotected PIV sex in their wedding night, and you get to draw a crude picture of that process as well if you like.
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