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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   3116 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 2, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Does anyone know a good substack/blog on mainly micro economics and finance mainly for western Europe and UK?

This is really bugging me and I think someone here will know: I'm trying to find an article, I think written by one of the Scotts, which mentioned the existence of an obscure monk who invented the concept of algorithmic runtime complexity in the 1900s and was completely ignored for being way too far ahead of his time. Can anyone link me to it?

I just had this experience in a discussion with someone, and I saw a pattern or script of responses I’m sure some of you have seen before. Intelligence came up, and I was met with “everyone is unique, with their own unique set of abilities, there is no such thing as intelligence.” [Mention IQ] “Oh, wasn’t that debunked by some studies recently?” [Disagrees] “Well IQ tests are just biased towards rich people that know about regattas.” [Deny the regatta myth] “Well all they are measuring is ability to take IQ tests” etc etc etc

I’m not really expecting to persuade somebody to change their mind, but the feeling of going up against this was so daunting. I just felt like I was going up against a castle built by decades of anti-intelligence messaging, and in a Bayesian sense their priors against the very concept of intelligence were so strong that just nothing I could say would even budge them. How do you respond to this? Probably the answer is just walk away. I’m not even sure what I am looking for since I know persuasion really isn’t on the table, but just how do you respond when this comes up in conversation? The person I was speaking with was extraordinarily civil, and not at all upset by my statements fwiw

Just get good at rhetoric?

"Of course you are not saying that every person has the same innate ability right? We are aware that people who have been exposed to lead experience cognitive decline, or what about child geniuses, do you really think the average 5 year old can be just taught calculus like {insert child prodigy}?"

Iterate that 100 billion times over. Citing psychometric papers won't work, the gap is in the fact that he doesn't believe that "brainpower" is something that can vary! Let alone that IQ test scores correlate with that. First establish the foundations required, then build on top of that..

Basically map out in your head what are the assumptions you take for granted to believe what you believe, then see what assumptions he is lacking. You will have to convince him of the presuppositions/assumptions first before you can convince him of the conclusion.

Convincing someone of anything is an extremely long/difficult/low success rate process. And to be honest with you, most people don't believe things on principle or theory, they believe what their community believes. So the ultimate long con is that you appear as a good faith actor in and outside of the dialogue and he ultimately begins trusting you more and opens his mind towards what you are peddling. Sometimes words and arguments can only do so much.

I usually mention that IQ is good at making predictions and correlates to lots of interesting things, and people typically accept that. Usually it's not necessary to press the intelligence/IQ thing too hard, but I guess it depends on what exactly the point you were hoping to make was.

Someone who completely disagrees with you, remains civil, and does not walk away from the discussion? Neither should you! Explore the source of your differences.

A somewhat related question, but just how does this outright denial of intelligence as a concept square with every day experience? I don’t even understand how this quasi religious taboo can hold up. I mean, are dogs not less intelligent than humans? Do dog breeds not differ in intelligence? Have they ever interacted with someone vastly less or more intelligent than themselves? When you interact with someone maybe 40 or 50 pts lower than yourself the difference is just glaring, I just don’t even understand how you can hold to a denial of intelligence in light of such experiences.

Isn't that where this wonderful neologism "neurodiverse" comes in? They're not dumb, they're different! The onus for figuring out a way to interact with them is on you because you're part of the privileged neuro...neuronormal? majority! I joke, but also maybe not. Maybe this actually is the next woke expectation to come up?

What exactly does it mean when people blame “capitalism” for something? I see this a lot on Reddit and I have never really understood what people mean by it. I see it most often in the context of people blaming capitalism for some sort of exploitative behavior by corporations or individuals, or that capitalism is the reason for all sorts of mental health issues and other struggles with modern life. But I don’t see how “capitalism” specifically can really be blamed for any issues. Anything related to exploitative behavior can easily be attributed to human nature and the inherent problems that result from competition for finite resources. And most of the distinctly modern problems of atomization and things of that nature seem to be a result of technological changes. Basically I find “moloch” to be the best explanation for what’s causing most people’s complaints about modern society but I’m wondering if there is something I’m missing when people attribute problems to capitalism itself

Their complaints probably have more to do with capitalist ideology instead of the literal system itself. Capitalism as an institution could not have reshaped society as it did, it needed an ideology to actually encourage people to partake of it instead of staying on subsistence or whatever else. That ideology says the people who accumulate lots of money and wealth through the system are actually praiseworthy. It didn't introduce the idea of wealth or status envy to us, but it did provide a path upon which accumulating wealth was not seen as immoral.

This is not all it did, of course. Another change it wrought was the idea that the markets should be as free as possible, and from there, that economic growth is a terminal value.

I'm not going to say all of the things above are so easily blamed on capitalist ideology. But when people are blaming capitalism for something, it's very likely they're complaining about how, for example, it has reshaped how we actually go about determining if something is or is not a problem, let alone what the solution might be.

In my experience "capitalism" in these kinds of discussions just means "all the ways in which society has failed to live up to my expectations."

Whatever you decide to call it, it’s undeniable that the “current social/political/economic order of the West” is a peculiar thing and deserves a descriptive name. Capitalism has meant a million different things in the last 200 years and arguably isn’t the best definition as the current society would be utterly alien to a 1890s capitalist. But it’s definitely better than “Moloch”. If you can use a word to describe both 2022 German society and the Mayan society than it’s not a good word. If we didn’t decide to loathe intellectualism as a civilisation we could probably come up with a better one and stop relying on 19th century definitions for everything.

Deprived of organized religion, man inevitably turns back to dualism, and the good god Progress needs her dark sibling. Call him Ahriman, Moloch, or Capitalism, the name reflects the namer more than the reality.

Less tongue in cheek, I think the fact that poverty is the natural state of humanity is what people miss. It's very easy to see negative consequences of our economic system, and I can't/won't try to refute those. On the other hand, the billions of children not dying in poverty and starvation because of economic liberalization are easy to miss.

To steelman their complaints, I think the signal they're trying to transmit is "There is no natural law that this had to be this way, it is our flawed human systems that are to blame". It occupies the same kind of space as "If god is all powerful and good then why do bad things happen to good people?". I understand that this is not fair. Capitalism, and I'm even not a fan of the word as I find it contains a false claim in its very formulation, never claimed to have anything like the omnipotence and benevolence of a god. But there is some substance to the criticism, the system of markets and state allowed monopolies(think remotely owned private property rather than microsoft) rely on our collective consent as a bargain for the greater good and yet the great good has these very noticeable gaps where occasionally rather than be uplifted thousands of poor black people get lead contaminated water or games publishers ruin or disable their own products to great disutility to the common man so that they won't compete with their future titles and it causes people to wonder whether this system really serves them and deserves their continued consent. A question to which I think the answer is a clear yes because I am informed on the alternatives and the history of the before times and the people making this criticism generally aren't. There is some kernel of truth there, this economy of ours is powerful but feral, it will just as thoughtlessly uplift billions and give us wealth unfathomable to our ancestors as it will reduce us to radioactive rubble.

Back when I was on the other side, "capitalism" was simply a fighting word used to describe a state of affairs in which people or other entities who commanded capital are able to act in self-interest instead of the interests of society.

So TheMotte has finally infected my dreams.

There was an image-posting thread called "Simple Idealism" with the caption The world is aflame with ideology. Just remember that this is all training for upcoming Mandarins in powerful institutions, and has been ignored by people worldwide since the dawn of fire. It was followed by Renaissance-styled art of rustic fireplaces.

Thank you, IdealisticFireplace. Please lurk less.

So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited. Don't know anything about it besides that it was an influence on MLK.

Finished Soldier of Arete, by Gene Wolfe. Finished accidentally, I should say - I did not see the ending coming, and all of a sudden it was over. To be fair I was at something of a loss as to what the plot was even doing towards the latter half of the book, but kept reading because it was interesting enough thanks to the setting and Wolfe's good writing - and all of a sudden it was over, in the middle of what seemed to be an entire narrative arc. And in the end, I really still don't know what the books were really about, or where any of the plotlines went.

It was interesting; enjoyable even, but also very unsatisfying in how it's suddenly over with what seems like every end still loose. Wonder whether that's the intended effect, or whether Wolfe is just, as usual, too clever, subtle and ambiguous for me.

Persian Fire, about Darius and Xerxes' attempts to conquer Greece. Very fun read, reminds me a bit of Carthage Must Be Destroyed (which I also enjoyed). I must admit, I don't retain a lot of the back-and-forth minutia, but nonetheless the texture of these ancient civilizations is engrossing. Our civilizational forebears lived in a much more brutal, visceral world than we do, coping with much starker material limitations. Yet at the same time, the more things change, the more they stay the same — humans gonna human!

Just finished Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice. I was very impressed by the density of plotting. Shades of Dune, but clearly a much bigger influence from the Culture series. Would recommend.

Today I trawled a used bookstore going down my list. The best find was Thunder Below by Eugene Fluckey, a WWII captain who got into by far the most submarine combat. I did pick up various sci-fi/fantasy and a couple Audubon field guides, but I'm most excited about that memoir. Oh, I also found a 2-volume of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, which I purchased for historical interest. I don't expect that I'll actually chew through it any time soon.

One of those books I've never really contemplated reading on account of who the author is and who are her friends.

Am I missing anything ? Is it better written than Iain Banks, not too preachy or stupid ?

People kept telling me to read e.g. Ursula Le Guin and then I stopped in disgust when the author started talking about a planet stealing natural resources from another planet and exporting them by rocket. Wood was mentioned as a commodity. There's suspension of disbelief and there's that.

Oh, goodness. You're probably not going to like it.

There were no obvious SoD-breakers to the setting, in my opinion. It's not hard sci-fi; the underlying principles of the tech aren't reliably explained, but the results are reasonably utilized. No rocket equation issues. Tech is far more constrained than Culture "a wizard computer did it." The worldbuilding is well-executed, and the empire feels like a product of its tech and history rather than a plot contrivance.

I don't know anything about the author or her friends, but I can make some educated guesses. The empire's language is aggressively non-gendered, which the narrator always renders as "she* on account of being a warship. I will argue that such features are well-used rather than preaching or a gimmick--the narrator constantly misgendering non-imperials gives away her background--but if that raises your hackles, you will not enjoy the book.

Doesn't sound too bad, I'll probably check it out. Thanks!

I'm kind of surprised you enjoyed Ancillary Justice so much, because I actually thought it was quite dull. The problem (to me) was that the author had interesting ideas for a setting, but no plot to back it up. Which, in fairness, is kind of like Dune. But I think that this book had even less interesting of a plot than Dune has.

Not part of any organisation.

Noticed with dismay that the national subreddit is pretty full of zoomers who have drunk the woke kool-aid. One can expect vigorous campaigning for affirmative care of 'trans' youth in a few years*. It's not going to be easy- Czechs are fiercely egalitarian and people demanding special treatment (pronouns, etc) are detested, however I don't think it's going to last.

I note with dismay that there is so far no antidote to woke ideas, they're insidious to idealists and hard to combat if one is not a cynic.

*at the moment there's mandatory psychiatric evaluation before any surgery, etc - the same model that US state department has castigated Scandinavians over.

I remember very well the "based zoomers" meme of some years ago.

Gladly to hear that finally people understood that it was bullshit.

I'm not completely sure. People rebel against the establishment.

In Russia, rebelling against frozen bourgeois morality Soviets preserved could translate to woke.

But in the US, the establishment is both deeply woke and deeply uncool. Rebelling against that by going RW is possible, though it was most likely wildly overstated.

I tend to get the idea that "woke" proved itself somewhat able to give its most ardent practitioners some amount of clout and so it attracted the types of people who most ardently love clout. (David Leavitt is someone who provides a pretty decent example of this, I guess.)

And the David Leavitts are legion compared to the occasional true believer.

I think that this has resulted in two things:

  1. Clout-chasers having to go bigger and bigger and Bigger and BIGGER each time to overcome the memetic antibiotic resistance

  2. Normies noticing that the people who say "woke" stuff might be clout-chasing rather than justice-loving

This doesn't mean that woke won't return next week bigger and badder, but it does seem to have the feeling of the televangelist era following the televangelist scandals of the 1980's.

I have never been part of a woke organization, but the organizations that I have been part of have gone more self-consciously politically incorrect.

I am not sure that this is a reaction to woke, per se. I think it's mostly a reaction to covid, with woke/political correctness being seen as a convenient target that pisses off the same people, who happen to be unsympathetic enough that them getting offended is not a strike against it.

Would you be willing to share where you are from? Is this another Anglo country?

If you do not consider the UK Europe, Germany is probably the wokest country in the continent.

I can't really confirm this since I haven't traveled enough recently, but it certainly feels like we're taking it as seriously as we, in our usual dogmatic way, can.

And in my own social circles being openly un-woke means that a dwindling number of people are still willing to even talk to me. Lots of former contrarians also switched camps and now demand conformism on issues ranging from being anti-free-market to anti-trump to pro-mandate to pro-LGWTF, and taking the wrong side in any argument has made those the last arguments anyone would have with me. Sorry for the blogpost, I'm sad.

I have recently realised this due to German immigrants to the Netherlands(!!) complaining about the unwokeness of the country and falling over each other to use the latest woke language inventions that even Dutch people don’t know about. They seem to be pursuing this new religion with the methodical zeal typical of Germans. It was all very bizarre.

A few weeks ago I found this article shared on twitter, with a reference that 4-day school weeks were bad for kids. I though this was interesting, so I read the actual paper and was surprised to find this quote

For context, in fifth grade, student achievement is estimated to improve about 0.40 SD over the course of the academic year (Bloom et al., 2008), and schools only account for around 40% of these achievement gains (Chingos, Whitehurst, & Gallaher, 2015; Konstantopolus & Hedges, 2008; Luyten et al., 2017).

Can someone please tell me I’m wrong in my interpretation of this? It looks to me like studies show that, at least in 5th grade, the majority of academic improvement is not due to schooling.

That makes sense. A lot of academic improvement is just down to getting older and smarter.

Is this surprising? If anything 40% is a vast overestimate. Schools just don't teach as much as life and experience do.

Honestly? Yes. 40% is lower than I would have hoped.

While reading will improve with practice, and language skills will improve with age and exposure to language, my intuition is that math and science skills don’t just magically increase due to the passage of time.

Hmm... I very much do think that all skills "magically" increase due to the passage of time. Science skills in school are basically just reading comprehension + basic logic. And yeah, kids don't absorb math skills via osmosis, but a vast share of kids just don't absorb math skills period, in or out of school.

What people's impressions of the putative "stolen documents" in Trump's possession? I'm currently set to be highly skeptical of each new claim regarding what I won't believe Trump did this time, but the specifics here just seem weird - he supposedly has something like 200,000 pages of government documents. My immediate instinct to hearing that is that it's so many pages that he must have been operating out of his home as a remote office, staffers moved tons of documents, then didn't really bother returning them. I have no idea if prior Presidents have done anything similar. I could see it being pretty common and no one cares, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it's unprecedented since Trump really is a weirdo.

But the thing I'm really getting at is that I see people referring to "stolen documents" and claiming that these are really important docs... and that just doesn't square with it being a massive volume, from where I sit. What are these docs supposed to be and what do you think the odds are that they're anything anyone actually cares about beyond getting Trump?

Three postulates:

  1. The US government over-classifies documents on a massive scale. This has been an ongoing issue reported on for years in the press, it was widely pointed out in HRC apologia circa 2015-16 in NYT op-ed columns. Given the choice between risking something coming out and classifying it, they classify it every time.

  2. The regulations surrounding declassification are byzantine, labyrinthine, require a lot of paperwork and a sharp knowledge of bureaucratic procedure. This is reported on, and also obvious if you have two drinks with anyone with a clearance and chat about it.

  3. Donald Trump doesn't care about regulations or "doing things the right way;" his team is inexperienced and incompetent at paperwork and following bureaucratic procedure to a degree unprecedented in modern American history.

So he almost certainly broke the law, but I'd bet none of it was done with malice. Probably just carelessness, or kept them as sort-of "props" to talk about how important he was. I'd reckon the odds are it is just a bunch of random paperwork stamped "Top Secret" because he liked the look of it.

The PRA states that Presidential records must be saved and returned, but the president gets to hold on to "personal records". There are always disputes between the archivist and the ex president's office.

The only legal precedent is Judicial Watch v NARA from 2012 which found:

"NARA does not have the authority to designate materials as “Presidential records,” "

So the designation is at the former presidents sole discretion.

The outgoing Obama admin packed up all the records in the white house and stored them in a commercial facility to go through later.

Basically the raid doesn't have a good foundation.

what do you think the odds are that they're anything anyone actually cares about beyond getting Trump?

Very close to zero. It is absolutely clear ploy to attach something to Trump to a) hurt Rs chances in midterms (Trump is not in the run, but anything that smears him also reflects on any Trump-supporting R) and b) if possible, kneecap him for 2024 and c) grab some papers in which something facilitating a) and b) could be found. Well, I guess there's intimidation value too - if we could do this to former President, do you really want to talk about reforming the FBI this much?

Now, can they make anything stick or not is anybody's guess (my guess is no because they couldn't do it previous 9000 times they tried). There are rumors that Trump may have some documents that he could use against people who performed the whole "collusion" thing if he ever comes back (or maybe even if he doesn't) and they were looking for those. But I think it's not the case as Trump already proven his inability to take on the FBI when he was a President, and he's certainly haven't become more capable since then. So no documents could help him with that.

There could also be some documents for which Trump failed to check some required boxes before taking them, likely because same happened to previous presidents, but nobody gave a hoot then (see the whole FARA story or the Logan Act story) but this comes to "who has lawyers with better knowledge of obscure never-before-used regulations and comes down again to politics more than anything. Ultimately, the President has authority to declassify anything he wants, and there's no constitutional limit to that, but who knows what supplementary regulations may be lurking around. Likely all ends in a ton of "walls are closing in" reports after which it quietly dies with D being sure Trump almost sold nuclear codes to Putin but FBI stopped them and Rs being sure it's another in the long list of abuses they suffered at the hands of the corrupt DOJ, and nothing else comes out of it.

The warrant does specify the "45 Office," so I think it's pretty clearly leftovers from POTUS work. I don't really see that as a problem; if he needed to look at the black budget or an intel report outside a SCIF, that was his prerogative. The warrant does mention standard safe/alarm/inspection requirements as part of the standing, but I would argue that's moot given the Secret Service presence.

Once he leaves office, things get complicated. Legally, I don't know if presidents are subject to the usual brief/debrief process complete with NDA. Either way, the PRA is very clear that he's supposed to return what he worked on. Practically, uncleared individuals should not hold onto controlled information. The obvious reason is risk of disclosure or espionage. But it's also important to keep a chain of custody and know who has a hard copy at any given time. SCIF ingress/egress procedures are (sometimes frustratingly) complex for this exact reason.

What's strange is that his team halfway complied. See the affidavit--fifteen boxes were returned on Jan 18th "in accordance with the PRA." It's not like they were hiding that they had anything classified, because there was a bunch mixed in to the fifteen boxes. And 200k pages doesn't exactly suggest sentimental keepsakes.

Side question--where'd you see that number? 200k pages would be 80-100 banker's boxes. They didn't seize anything close to that unless the boxes were huge.

Anyway, there are a couple categories in the stuff seized.

  • Unclassified documents covered under the PRA. Stuff like "3 - potential Presidential record" or "1 - Executive Grant of Clemency re: Roger Jason Stone, Jr." (lol). He was probably obligated to hand these over, but there's no indication of how many he would have wanted to hold onto. I could believe that it was hardheadedness or just an oversight. Either way, not a big deal.

  • Classified documents, improperly stored. Some of these contain national defense information. I don't know why Trump would think he could keep these, or how he would expect to benefit from doing so. That suggests a mistake--but then why return some and not others?

  • Unclassified stuff stored with the other categories. I understand this is standard for the warrant type, and that they'll have to give it back, or maybe already have.

We don't know how big each category is, just that all this stuff was mixed together on the premises. I'm of the opinion that it would be both unwise and unseemly to prosecute him on pure PRA grounds. Even if the man admits he did it to flip them the bird, whatever, they have their documents back and it ought to be water under the bridge. But I am much less comfortable with the presence of classified documents.

A Security Classification Guide (SCG) is a document which indicates which parts of a given special access program are classified, and at which level. When new documents are created under that program, they inherit such rules. If a report mentions X, and the SCG says X is Top Secret, then the new document must be marked accordingly. The SCG is also classified at such a level.

Simple budgets can be enough of a risk to be classified. There are two types of special access programs: acknowledged and unacknowledged. Information, including funding sources, for the latter may be heavily restricted. Our rivals would surely like to know that Y branch of the military just spent a few billion on prototypes of platform Z.

There's also the well-trod ground of intelligence sources. I'm not so familiar with that field, but it's arguably more likely that the POTUS would have those lying around.

Sometimes classified documents are long with only a few nuggets of dangerous information. Sometimes they're not. Neither one should be made visible to those without a need to know. Trump had the highest access in the country, and the opportunity to pick up a great number of potentially damaging documents. "TS" is reserved for "exceptionally grave damage to national security." Not everything in a TS document will clear that bar--but how many times do we want to roll the dice?

The real risk isn't "Trump took home the nuclear codes and now we all die." It's closer to "Trump accidentally burns an intel source" or "China beats us to a key technology." My biggest fear is that he uses blanket declassification as a defense--can't charge him then!--at which point everyone and their mother gets to FOIA thousands of pages of military secrets. Even if he did so completely legally I would consider that a tragedy for the country.

In the absence of a smoking gun, like actually selling documents, I still think it would be a poor choice to push charges. However, I will continue to argue against the idea that his withheld documents must be harmless due to the amount or complexity.

Thanks for this, much appreciated!

The "200,000 pages" I was referring to was underspecified Twitter threads declaring his villainy, with the number of pages seemingly used to suggest that this is worse than if it were fewer pages. That was what set my alarm bells for, "wait a second, did he steal something specific that anyone is worried about, or is this just literally an office that didn't get emptied out?". The number apparently comes from this court filing. Per WaPo:

“[W]hen Plaintiff’s counsel referred to either 11,000 pages or even 11,000 documents during the status conference (we are still awaiting the transcript), the Government chose not to interject with an accurate number,” they write. “In conversations between Plaintiff’s counsel and the Government regarding a data vendor, the Government mentioned that the 11,000 documents contain closer to 200,000 pages.”

Agreed. I just dont put it past the FBI or any other federal agency to be acting in almost equal-and-opposite stupidity/corruption...which unfortunately seems to have the effect (on a particular group of people) of bolstering trust in Trump, rather than just making them more jaded about everything and everyone.

What are your picks for words/idioms that ought to be retired this year?

My pick is LARP, which used to mean something, but now just means "people I don't like are doing something." When both 4chan and the Azov are "Nazi LARPers;" the phrase just has no meaning, they seem to lack the live action on the one hand and the role playing on the other. I think it also overprivileges nostalgia for an imagined past when people were "real" and ideologies were "serious;" read about them and real successful revolutions and wars were just as filled with dilettantes, misfits, personal drama, and nonsense on their way to changing the world. Failure to recognize this starves our knowledge of history.

LGBBQTπKTHXBYE or whatever it is right now. It's a horrid acronym that just keeps on growing; needs to be cut off before it strangles the entire alphabet.

Trudeau officially retired it.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=P5eZ3MiCfPs

Re: LARPing, I really like this Alex Kaschuta article: https://alexkaschuta.substack.com/p/all-the-worlds-a-larp

Embrace the LARP.

POC, BIPOC, BAME, and all other euphemistic portmanteau terms the lump together non-white people in white-majority countries. They obscure more than they illuminate and the people the words refer to don't like them.

BIPOC

... pointedly doesn't lump together all the non-white people. 'Black and Indigenous People of Color' (where 'indigenous' can be taken to include people with a substantial Native American ancestry component, thus sweeping up most Latinos who aren't Conquistador-Americans) excludes Asians of both the South Asian and the East Asian persuasion. It's implicitly a catch-all term for 'non-white people who have worse average social outcomes than white people', a PC alternative for what used to be called 'non-Asian minorities'.

... pointedly doesn't lump together all the non-white people. 'Black and Indigenous People of Color' (where 'indigenous' can be taken to include people with a substantial Native American ancestry component, thus sweeping up most Latinos who aren't Conquistador-Americans) excludes Asians of both the South Asian and the East Asian persuasion. It's implicitly a catch-all term for 'non-white people who have worse average social outcomes than white people', a PC alternative for what used to be called 'non-Asian minorities'.

My understanding (I am not American, and BIPOC is obviously meaningless outside North America) confirmed by a quick Google is that BIPOC is supposed to stand for "Black, Indigenous, *and *People of Colour" - i.e. it does lump together all non-whites, but centres Black Americans and American Indians within the lump.

Maybe so, but even then, it is still centring the groups with worse average social outcomes, and downplaying the ones who are more successful than whites.

I particularly hate the term "BIPOC" because, by definition, the ethnicity or ethnicities which are indigenous to a given country vary from country to country. The ethnicity which is indigenous to Sweden are white Swedes, and yet in this context the term "indigenous" is only ever used to refer to non-white people.

In the UK "indigenous" to refer to the white English population is considered to be a racist dog-whistle. Amusingly, there is a deep (as in going back to the 1380's, and still taken seriously as late as the 1980's) tradition of (pre-Wokespeak so it doesn't use the technical terms, but the sentiment is clear) left-wing historical mythology in England which sees the white working class as indigenous and the upper class as settler-colonialists descended from William the Conqueror's knights.

The researchers from the London School of Economics, Dr Neil Cummins and Professor Gregory Clark, said the name checks showed that social mobility in England is hardly greater than in medieval times, and that people inherited their social status even more than they inherit their height.

Dr Cummins said: ‘Just take the names of the Normans who conquered England nearly 1,000 years ago. Surnames such as Baskerville, Darcy, Mandeville and Montgomery are still over-represented at Oxbridge and also among elite occupations such as medicine, law and politics.

‘What is surprising is that between 1800 and 2011 there have been substantial institutional changes in England but no gain in rates of social mobility for society as a whole.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2479271/1-000-years-invaded-need-Norman-like-Darcy-Percy-ahead.html

Excuse the Daily Mail link, at least the quotes are from the source.

Of course going down the indigenous rabbit hole in a European country leads you to places where indigenous either doesn't mean anything (mythology) or doesn't mean anything useful to modern society (Neanderthals, out of Africa).

Yes! My company wants to increase the representation of "Indigenous+" in Europe, and make no effort to explain what that means. I'm in Germany, so I assume they want more Neanderthals....

What? I'd assume it means ethnic Germans. I'll be offended if it doesn't. Please let your HR department know I have high expectations of them.

Ha! I'll make sure to pass it along ;), but sadly, it does not appear that that is what they meant...

What are your picks for words/idioms that ought to be retired this year?

"Gaslighting". It has proper application sometimes, but it's increasingly little more than a synonym for "disagreeing".

Nobody uses that word, you're imagining things.

Anyone who claims our democracy is not threatened by election deniers is gaslighting us!

LARP has a more specific meaning, even in the insult version. A certain Don Quixote-like quality of delusional ly pretending to be something anachronistic, from a different time. Also not fully standing behind the thing with proper skin in the game. Playing a tough guy without backing it up. Now whether this applies to the Azov people, I don't know but accusing them of being unreal, weak, all talk, etc. is a classic insult. It doesn't make those words meaningless.

OP is probably complaining about my usage of LARP in a recent thread, which, fair enough, maybe it is not specified enough. But I meant it more like "bored people who have been so well-insulated from the real-world that they go out and do dangerous stuff."

Agree on LARP. Without exaggeration, I think the current usage could have been applied to the guys signing the Declaration of Independence - "lol, signing your name on a document doesn't make it a real country bro, stop LARPing".

I could probably pass on pretty much all current uses of "our democracy", which doesn't really seem to have much to do with democracy, but quite a bit to do with the possessive on the front of the phrase.

The acceleration of the use of "denier" for "someone who disagrees with me" has rendered it all but useless. Maybe it was always just as useless, or at least just as pointlessly pejorative, but it didn't seem quite as fully devoid of meaning until I saw people slapping it on "election deniers".

Of course, the weight of "denier" comes from "Holocaust denier". Then recently people started using "climate change denier" and also "election denier", "vaccine denier" etc. The association with Holocaust denial also makes it easier to argue that these other types of denials should similarly become illegal.

Muh wage gap denialism.

Does anyone know a good overview of prisoners of war in the Russian invasion of Ukraine? I would like to see an estimate on the number of POWs on each side, an explanation on how prisoner exchanges work at the low level, and how the POW balance impacts the war on a high level. E.g. does the recent events in Lyman change the POW balance in a significant way, and does this have any knock-on effects?

Ask this on /r/CredibleDefense and people will likely have thoughts.

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