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MathWizard

Good things are good

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joined 2022 September 04 21:33:01 UTC 

				
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MathWizard


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Good things are good

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 21:33:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 164


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've heard this "liberalism doesn't work" idea before, but never really been convinced by it. Equality of opportunity doesn't need to be taken so literally that you toss it all away when one person is born with 1 IQ point less than another. Treat people equally before the law, and generally socially and culturally. Treat people according to the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Most of the "counterarguments" I've heard are that if people are born with different talent or even just different inherited wealth from their parents then this doesn't work because they don't really have equality of opportunity, but... so what? If people are born with different circumstances then equality of opportunity doesn't inevitably lead to equality of outcome and that's okay. Set up a society in which everyone has an opportunity to thrive and carve out a happy healthy life for themselves, and let them sort themselves out. Maybe the 70 IQ person have a small apartment and a job at a fast food place while the 130 IQ person lives in a fancy manor and works at Google. Let them. I don't see how liberalism or the enlightenment prevent this. Instead, it is the regression from this ideal that wokeism represents that is the problem. We went from "people of the same skin color should share the blame and credit for each other's actions" to "people should be treated according to their own actions" back to "people of the same skin color should share the blame and credit for each other's actions". Wokeism is explicitly illiberal, not a failing of liberalism.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Do you have a link to people discussing and/or providing evidence on outer wilds? Because I definitely found it weird how he kept abandoning trails and ignoring leads but stumbling onto important locations anyway, but at the time chalked it up to some combination of luck and intelligence.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Pop is a verb. It means things. People use it to talk about non-beverages, creating potential collisions in language usage. While collisions in language happen all the time and are manageable, it's still a point against.


Coke is a horrible term to use, because Coke is a specific beverage. Use of brands for generics, like saying "Kleenex" for tissues only works when those things are interchangeable. If you ask someone for a Kleenex and they bring you a Puffs tissue you can just use that instead.  You might not even notice. If you ask someone for a Coke and they bring you a Sprite you're in for a rude surprise


Soda is clearly the superior choice. The only collision is for things like Soda Water, which is just carbonated water that they use in soda, or sodium compounds in chemistry (which the majority of people don't talk about).


You have been Culturally Imperialized, by the correct and dominant Empire. You are welcome.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So it's more an issue of extremism? The conservatives care about the environment in a balanced way with tradeoffs, while the progressives want to move fast and break things and damn the side effects? Because that generally tracks with my overall model of how the sides operate. But then why don't we hear more about moderate conservative conservation efforts?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But in practice I almost never hear conservatives talk about the environment or recycling or trying to impose climate agreements or sanctions on other nations with heavy pollution.


I suppose in practice my immediate family is reasonably conservative and cares about recycling and not littering. But I never hear about it from conservative politicians or political advocates.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But it doesn’t always line up. I think conservatives should be more afraid of climate change, for example. Particularly if you don’t want lots of immigrants coming.




It has always confused me why conservatives aren't the party of environmentalists and climate conservation. It's literally an attempt to prevent change. I can easily imagine a world where progressives are trying to build an economic utopia of plenty in order to make cheap goods for the poor, while the conservatives rail against the evil bureaucrats for destroying our god-given nature just to make numbers on a spreadsheet go up. And blaming foreigners for having terrible pollution and recycling policies (which they do).


You occasionally see this point trotted out as a counterpoint to liberal climate change policies (our country barely contributes to climate change, look at China's emissions), but always as a gotcha to shut down interventions, not because they actually care about China destroying the environment. It's weird. I don't understand why we live in the world we live in other than "left = government intervention" I guess. But the right usually supports government intervention if it's to prevent something they consider evil, and I would expect the destruction of nature to count.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 27, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you're reciting vows, make sure you have a printed copy of each person's vows and not actually two copies of your own vows, leaving your partner awkwardly confused at the altar until her sister manages to find a copy she was texted for review on her phone saving the day but leaving everyone slightly miffed at you.


...no reason in particular that comes to mind... Nope. Just something all people getting married should double check. Yup.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think the distinction matters all that much as far as I'm concerned. Way too many people conflate legality and morality. If anything, it being technically legal means they won't be punished via official routes and it's more important to impose social sanctions against them as a substitute. If a man murders my entire family, I'm making damn sure he gets arrested and convicted. If I discover that there's some obscure loophole in the law that made his behavior technically legal, but for all practical purposes he still deliberately murdered them as opposed to it being an accident, then I'm getting my gun.


So if the Democrat Party administration willfully defrauded the American people AND it's legal so they won't get in trouble for it via official routes, then I'm going to make sure they are penalized via whatever unofficial methods I have at my disposal: in this case never voting for them and using this to denounce them and convince other people not to vote for them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This. We need disprovability and statistical averages, not anecdotes. How many incidents that might plausibly create casualties that need laundered occur, how many accidents involving military personal happen, and then do these correlate with each other more than we would statistically expect?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think I mind the mythologizing all that much. There were a lot of brave people who helped slaves before and during the civil war, they deserve credit. As long as it's directionally true (Harriet Tubman did actually help slaves), I don't mind her being a stand-in for the credit that they deserve.


What I do object to is attempts to elevate her beyond that, especially in the role of a political leader, which she was not. Andrew Jackson was the President of the United States. He's on our money because we put Presidents on money (And Benjamin Franklin, because he was important in founding the nation). All of the leaders in Civ games are Presidents, Kings, Chiefs, etc: actual historical rulers, because you as the player are making the decisions controlling your nation. Harriet Tubman was not. Every single thing she said could be true and she still wouldn't belong on money or in Civ because, despite being a good person, she wasn't actually a political leader. It's a category error.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah. Trump's MO is usually to say exaggerated things and demand the moon to start from a strong negotiating position and then either get concessions and compromises for the things he actually wants, or at least have someone to point the finger at when he and his supporters don't get what they want.


My guess is this is mostly just because Trudeau is left-aligned so Trump wants to make him beg and plead to please not do this and then Trump will not do this (because he was never really intending to) but either get some sort of concessions out of it or just make himself look strong and Trudeau look weak.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				How to make me Instinctively Distrust You Part 3: Priming
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


So, when we are trying to decide who the liars are, it seems likely that Trump and Vance were speaking closer to the truth, even if the specifics were off, than everyone else...




That's generally my impression of Trump and the Maga phenomenon in general. Most of what they say is technically false, but an exaggerated version of something true and important. The Truth is 1, Trump says 2, his supporters say 3, and the Democrats/media say -3.


You can't literally take them at their word, but as tentative allies we might make some progress in that direction, which is better than the opposite.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Coverage mandates may be another issue. The government mandates coverage for treatment x, which adds $y to the premium. How many consumers, when fully informed, would a priori actually be willing to pay an extra $y per year for x to be covered?




I think this is part of what I mean about it being mandatory. It's not just that the government forces you and/or employers to buy some sort of insurance, but also that insurance has to have certain properties, which if applied universally across all of them prevents competition by undercutting.


So perhaps the analogy would be if all foods sold must contain at least 2% caviar by weight. The store is going to sell potatoes for $10 per pound because they have to in order to cover the costs of the caviar that comes with it, and they can't be undercut because all the other stores have similar prices for the same reason. Maybe I decide to forgo potatoes and buy carrots instead, but those come with caviar too. It's only 2% of your diet, but it ends up being a much larger percent of your budget.


I do agree with your other points about things contributing to the cause. Lack of price transparency is also an issue (although the latter is tied to the role insurance companies paid, since they're the ones paying rather than customers, leading to principal agent problems). But if it was normal for the majority of people to not have health insurance then there would be strong pressures for more transparent prices and I think that issue would resolve itself.


Regulations requiring overly limited medical degrees is also an issue that this would not resolve. Although is similarly the government's fault.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"Convincing" is a subjective property, a function that varies based on the listener, as opposed to something like "correct" which is mostly objective. I certainly find it convincing, but if people are not convinced by it then tautologically it's not convincing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Part of this might also just be typical mind fallacy. I was a weird introvert who liked reading books and playing videogames more than going out partying with friends. I never even befriended party friend people anyway because they didn't like me and I didn't like them. I never did drugs as a kid, I never had sex as a kid, I never drank as a kid, and I considered myself morally and intellectually superior to all the degenerates who did.


I had issues, got into fights, got in trouble, but typically it was either spats with my brothers when they annoyed me or I annoyed them, or being lazy and then getting angry and lashing out when I had to do boring, time consuming, and unfulfilling things like clean my room or waste hours going to a museum that could have been spent reading or playing videogames.


I would be great at raising a kid who was exactly like kid me. I know me, I understand me, I'm pretty introspective and, above all, I really really like me and respect me and my values. And I think I would emphasize and know how to explain the importance of things that little clone me wouldn't want to do. I would be able to explain game theory way earlier which would make social things make so much more sense to little me's brain.


I would have absolutely now idea how to raise an extrovert, or a sports jock, or a depressed goth, or a slut. My explanation for why not to do drugs is because "drugs mess with the health and integrity of your body, and they're expensive, and don't accomplish anything you can't get from videogames, and worst of all, you'd have to hang out with the kinds of icky people who do illegal drugs, and you're better than them."  And a lot of people would not find that convincing and in fact might rebel harder because it makes me sound like a jerk. But it's how I convinced myself. And while I'm confident on illegal drugs, I'm not sure how to handle other things like sports. What if my kid wants to play football? Football is stupid and gives you head injuries, also the equipment is expensive, but everything has tradeoffs. How can I tell how important that is in comparison to the potential positive value (both extrinsic as a form of exercise and financial opportunities if they're good, and intrinsic via letting them do a thing they enjoy), when my own valuation for it is negative. It seems stupid and boring and pointless to me even without any injury risk, but obviously a kid asking to do it doesn't see it the same way and I don't know how to evaluate that. My instinctive response is "don't play football, it's stupid" and I can't disentangle all of the legitimate reasons from my instinctive gut response.


I think a lot of the "not knowing what it's like to be a kid" is actually typical mind fallacy in disguise. There are lots of different types of kids, and each parent was only one of them. If they think that's how kids are then they won't understand when their kid diverges from that, and the reasons in their own head that convinced them to not be that way won't be convincing to their kid.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That's merely the distinction between why they think it's wrong in the first place, not the harm reduction variable.


That is, a general form of the "Harm Reduction" argument says that if thing A is bad because it leads to bad outcomes, then a decriminalized harm reduction environment where it can be done more safely with fewer negative outcomes is good because, although the thing is still bad, it's less bad here and they were going to do it anyway.


The tradeoff is that you are implicitly endorsing the behavior in exchange for this harm reduction. This argument doesn't really depend on the type of harm involved. If someone is being non-consensually harmed by DV, and this is extra bad, then the harm reduction is even more good, and the implicit endorsement and incentives are more bad, and presumably these are proportional so it should still be worthwhile or not for the same reasons as with drug use.


I suppose you could try to make specific mathematical arguments about the tradeoff values where harm reduction facilities for DV would be less effective at reducing harm and more legitimizing to DV such that the net effect would flip signs for this but not for drugs, but we've never tried it before, nobody has that data, and nobody who advocates for harm reduction for drugs seems to do any math or acknowledge tradeoffs in the first place.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Mutual insurance already exists! Some of the biggest insurance companies of today started as mutuals, I think Liberty still is one.




I am immediately suspicious. Because if so why do they have so many ads? If they're not profit-driven, that seems negative sum.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is there some clever way that someone could make blockchain insurance? Like, a decentralized, transparent, nonprofit system where everyone pools money (probably in the form of some cryptocurrency) together, and then when someone makes a claim there's an algorithm to decide whether it's legitimate and how much money it should pay out (possibly variable depending on how much free money is in the system due to the frequency of past claims).


Legally and practically I don't think you could do this with health insurance due to patient confidentiality issues. But maybe for auto-insurance or homeowners insurance or something? Or if there's a mechanism to anonymize medical records prior to submission. And I've pretty much handwaved away the hard part which would be deciding which claims are legitimate to prevent bad-faith exploitation. But is that solvable? And would this actually be usable if it worked? The goal would be to remove the profit motive from insurance companies taking a cut as middlemen, as well as the adversarial relationship between them and both healthcare providers and patients. I suppose a mostly traditionally run but non-profit insurance company would have some of the benefits, but even those have some potential for corruption, and I'm wondering if a transparent and user-run blockchain thing would clear that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I agree with your opinions regarding violence. However I think the issue with insurance is when it becomes mandatory or defacto mandatory, because then you lose proper economic controls on the price via supply and demand. Demand for car insurance is artificially inflated by it being literally illegal to drive a vehicle without it. Demand for health insurance is artificially inflated by regulations requiring companies to provide it to employees, and tax penalties for private individuals who don't have any. Therefore, prices artificially inflate. (Similarly, healthcare prices are artificially inflated by regulations requiring severely limited-supply medical degrees).


Now, these regulations exist for reasons, but that doesn't undo the economic damage this causes to people. And then all the perverse incentives with their battles against healthcare providers and customers creates tons of paperwork and principal agent problems. I am wholeheartedly convinced that the existence of insurance companies and their role in our society is uniquely responsible for healthcare prices in the U.S.  Now, this isn't necessarily the fault of the CEOs, it's really the politicians who created this niche, but I definitely understand the anger people have for them.


Theoretically insurance could be a useful and legitimate service. But that requires it be voluntary so that people can choose of their own free will whether they think it's worth the cost or not, which in turn forces companies to provide a product worth paying for. Just like with every other good and service. The current system is extortion with extra steps.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Anyone have a good source on the false-conviction AND false-acquittal rates in the U.S. justice system? It's not especially important, I was just rewatching 12 angry men and was curious about it. Some quick googling says the false-conviction rate is estimated somewhere around 4% to 15%, but any attempts to find false-acquittal rates just talks about false-conviction rates. I understand that in practice that would be extremely hard to measure, because when somebody gets a not-guilty verdict and then new evidence comes out the government can't relitigate and then find them guilty in the same way they can for a false conviction. But informally you could still try to get a ballpark guess. Is it on the order of 4-15% also? 50%? 90%? Do we have any idea what fraction of people who actually committed a crime and choose to go to trial instead of plea-bargaining end up getting lucky and going free anyway?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Holy crap I just realized I'm in a sportsless filter bubble. I have literally never had a holiday discussion regarding the outcome of sports games. None of my immediate family care much about sports. My dad sometimes watches football, but mostly casually, and none of the rest of us do so what would there be a discussion about. And my extended family also don't watch sports except maybe occasionally. And I suppose this is strongly correlated, because the fact that my grandpa didn't care about sports influenced his children to not care about sports so it makes sense that all of them collectively don't care, which in turn is a component of why I don't care.


But also I spent several thanksgivings at a friend's extended family when I was away at college, and they didn't talk about sports. But my friend was a big nerd, nonrandomly because he was friends with me.


But also I recently got married and none of my in-laws care about sports. Again, this is non-random because I married a big nerd and while her family are not exclusively nerds, they're not sports people.


To be clear, there are a lot of things they talk about on the more normie side that I don't really care about: tractors and hunting and broadway and dogs. But sports is not on the menu, and I never really considered that this wasn't just luck, but also indirect correlations: non-sports people are more likely to be relatives of non-sports people.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That doesn't sound like the sort of position Scott would hold or endorse. I could be wrong though. I'm reading it more along the lines of his UBI post where he argues that because modern society has created all of these artificial restrictions in exchange for massive productivity increases, we owe a share of that to the people modern society has disadvantaged via this bargain. Just in this case its forgiveness/charity/social-services rather than cash.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 24, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This seems heavily confounded about the fact that honest people will communicate their brilliance in honest ways and use it towards pro-social ends, ie publishing scientific papers or teaching people, or just explaining their thoughts and intentions openly when queried. Meanwhile, brilliant but dishonest people will hide their brilliance and use it to gain power and wealth in sneaky ways. There are lots of politicians and high-level bureaucrats that are really really good at political manipulations, which requires a certain type of intelligence, even if they appear stupid when talking about object-level policies. Leaders of cults or Backscratcher Clubs are going to be very intelligent and also dishonest.  There are brilliant lawyers and CEOs and investment bankers who make tons of money and keep their secrets to themselves because the more people know what they know the less advantage their intelligence gives them. Literally anyone dealing with zero-sum interactions has an incentive to be smarter than the people around them, meaning to not broadcast their intelligence, and to deceive the people around them into doing the wrong thing so they can be exploited.


People at the extremes of rational/scientific/autistic intelligence are honest, because the thing that distinguishes this type of intelligence from the sneaker manipulative type of intelligence is the focus on truth and objectivity. The former is often the stereotype people think of when they think of intelligence, but if you define it this way then the connection between intelligence and honesty becomes tautological. If instead you define intelligence as the ability to perform cognitive labor and/or solve problems required to achieve one's goals then we notice this large class of anti-social and dishonest but very intelligent and successful people doing things that pay more than science does.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What's your point? Because in the real world we observe a lot of overly woke games and movies that just flop and lose a lot of money. And we see some that make money also. It's usually when they take a pre-existing franchise that has built an audience that likes what it already was and then change it to be more woke that, although might appeal more to more progressive audiences, annoys the existing audience and then makes way less money than a faithful continuation would have.


You can't explain this by just claiming they're flattering the politics of the audience for monetary gain. They're literally doing the opposite on both counts.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This. I think "don't ask don't tell" is an excellent policy that needs to be the norm in the entire culture. If I am not in or considering a romantic/sexual relationship with you, then I don't need to know about your weird fetishes, and you don't need to know about mine. Even if it's not weird, even if a straight man just really likes tits, I don't need to hear him announcing it and going on about it in public and making it his entire identity. It's tacky. Keep it to yourself, or talk about it in private with your close friends.