BANNED USER: By request
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Hyperbole is bad
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User ID: 92
Banned by: @netstack
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Hyperbole is bad
10mo ago
This isn't even remotely true. In fact I'd wager tech is one of the least meritocratic places out there
Why do you think that?
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11mo ago
Wow! I’m spending the holidays in China with my GF’s family. My home is near SF and I’m only 7000 miles away!
I’ll probably spend Christmas losing money playing Mahjong.
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Hyperbole is bad
11mo ago
Furthermore, the Canadian population has been heavily selected over 250 years for people who don't want to be Americans
What does this mean?
I guess people who think Cthulhu always swims left could make a similar comment about everyone pursuing conservative policies?
If not, what about this makes it a "bit"?
One must proceed on the assumption that the outgroup is not wrong
Practicing humility and extending charity is not the same thing as assuming your out-group is not wrong. You can politely disagree with someone while assuming they're not an idiot and without making unnecessary rhetorical flourishes to demonstrate how dumb you think they are.
The amount of charity/humility on TheMotte is certainly far lower than it was when /r/slatestarcodex was created. In the long run we're getting the outgroup engagement that we deserve (none).
When you correct for IQ, when you correct for tribalism, Jews are something like 30-50% of the elite population
You're using "correct for" in the exact opposite way it is normally used. Unless you're saying Jews actually make up 80% of the elite population, but half of it can be explained by their IQ and tribalism.
Sure, then the mods can remove the hot-take rule and be honest about that fact that proactive defense of claims is nice, but that they won’t/can’t enforce it.
I'm not interested in another conversation with the mod who thinks all I really want is to silence my outgroup. Happy to talk to literally anyone else, since at least two other mods have shown the ability to be charitable, even if they disagree with me. Also happy to not talk since it's unlikely either party will leave convinced.
I mean that the mods don't care about whether he says that, regardless of the fact that it's literally false and solely exists as rhetoric.
I don't hold voters or commenters on this site to any standard because the whole point of mods is that "the people" lack the coordination to have/enforce healthy norms.
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11mo ago
I consider the correct target for penalization/responsible for externalities to be the gay men who lied about having the disease (as in they were confident about it, not just at risk) and spread it to others. I mean, that's not just for gay men, anyone who non-consensually and knowingly infects anyone with anything deserves punishment.
I get where you’re coming from, but imo you’re mostly going to encourage people to not get tested. I think you’d have to punish people for spreading it unknowingly, which actually has the reverse effect (people will (hopefully) want to get tested regularly).
covid killed one million people in the united states. Yes, mostly old people, but we're talking about protecting old people here. No reason to pretend otherwise.
Unfortunately this site also gives him no reason to speak plainly.
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11mo ago
they see Israel as illegitimate because it's a Jewish country
This is tricky.
On the one hand, if Israel was in (say) previously-Canadian land I doubt Muslims or leftists would have a problem with it.
On the other hand I agree that most people who hate Israel probably hate Jews too (either due to poor decoupling or "friend of my enemy is my enemy" thinking).
On the other other hand, they probably wouldn't hate Jews if Israel was in Canada.
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Hyperbole is bad
11mo ago
Current tax laws encourage bubbles and poor investing. Just buy a garbage bond or shitcoin and uncle sam will barely touch it, but god helps you if you invest in a company actually making money.
I'm confused. Are rich people who choose to deliberately put their money in suboptimal investments because of the capital gains tax?
What's the evidence that the SR was worsened people's lives, and what metrics are being used to assess that?
That is what you're responding to -- a causal claim.
Yes, you avoided ever stating any of your observations were causal, but you're responding to a question about causation by citing correlations. Your comment is either implying your correlational claims are evidence of the causal claim or it is a non sequitur.
I never claimed the sexual revolution was "successful" (whatever that means). I'm saying that pointing out things that are worse in 2023 than in 1960 and automatically assigning blame to one specific factor is incredibly unprincipled, which would be obvious if it were something apolitical.
Look, you have to choose:
Either "the sexual revolution was a success" is a causal claim about whether it caused society to get closer or farther from its goals (compared to the counterfactual where it never happened).
Or "the sexual revolution was a success" is a "correlational claim" about whether the US in 2023 is "closer to its goals" than the US in 1960.
You are switching between both -- arguing for the second claim (the motte) is true, and then claiming the sexual revolution was responsible for all the social problems of the last 6 decades (the bailey).
The fact that conservatives have been blaming the sexual revolution for causing an era of unparalleled promiscuity but you're blaming it for the opposite should make you pause.
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Hyperbole is bad
11mo ago
I expect a crucial component is exact what is meant by "homosexuals". The decision to identify (either to yourself or publicly) certainly correlates with many other variables, many of which correlate with IQ (simply becaise few variables in social science are independent).
For example, if going to college makes you more liberal and more likely to identify as homosexual, then that would increase the average IQ of self-identifying homosexuals.
I'm skeptical you're actually interested in these, uh, incidental (?) correlations though? Which makes your question seem kind of poorly defined.
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11mo ago
If it was people being less afraid of and having more sex it's a failure. Younger generations are having a lot less of it and are more neurotic about it than ever.
A heck of a lot has changed between 1960 and 2023 and ascribing every social failure to "the sexual revolution" requires either a lot of work or a lot of caveats.
Blaming computers/phones/porn and the accompanying incessant optimizations designed to steal our attention away from all other aspects of life seem far more responsible to me for your first three points.
The meat of your objection is that wignats would have to violence to achieve their policy goals, but ... that's true for every political movement ever.
I hate to state the obvious, but just because Jimmy Carter and Joseph Stalin both used "violence" to achieve their policy goals does not mean I can't prefer Carter for killing fewer people and pursuing better policies than Stalin.
/u/TheBookOfAllan is making the entirely defensible claim that the cost of deporting/imprisoning/killing millions of Mexicans is incredibly high compared to typical policy goals and compared to the benefits. It's not helpful to respond that it's no different than enforcing vehicle registration.
What do you wish Trump et al could accomplish between 2024 and 2028? Is it mainly restricting low-skill immigration?
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1yr ago
Why should the chair’s name being Jennifer make me piss myself if I have pro-liberty biases?
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1yr ago
It dates to Nicholas Shackel in 2005. Scott's article mentions this (not sure if it did when it was published but I think it did).
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Hyperbole is bad
1yr ago
There is a big difference between a smart phone (video on <1% of the time and at your complete discretion) and a legally mandated, always-on body cam.
Why do you think it’s worse than in other industries though? I don’t think anyone was comparing tech to cybercrime when you claimed it was one of the least meritocratic places.
Is it less meritocratic than law firms? Newspapers? Hospitals? Academia?
My personal experience has genuinely been that the best people on people on my team tend to have the highest level (software engineer at Google). I would loathe to assume that my experience generalizes across the company (let alone the whole industry), but the mere fact that tech has interviews that are at least sensible proxies for ability automatically puts it way ahead of the curve compared to most industries.
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