Comments on: More Links For November 2014

By: Jos

Jos — Mon, 17 Nov 2014 18:58:17 +0000

Thanks Samuel and Anthony. That’s my assumption too. I was mostly curious about why Scott implies that the Kochs are beyond the pale, but that led to general curiousity about how he approaches climate overall.

My largely uninformed take overlaps yours – that the best reasonable estimate is that we are going to see a moderate increase in temperature no matter what we do on carbon rationing, and that this increase might be net neutral, net negative, or net positive to the human race as a whole, but will severely affect people whose homes or climates are rendered less habitible or uninhabitable.

On top of that, there’s a small but unknown chance that human activity on the present course might be the difference between catastrophic failure, up to and including the collapse of civilization, and a mere increase in temperature. Carbon rationing would reduce this chance by a smaller and also unknown amount, and would also reduce our chances of innovating out of this and other unforeseen problems by small but unknown amounts.

Given those assumptions, it seems obvious to me, FWIW, that we should be researching geoengineering like our grandchildrens’ lives depended on it. If we really believe that maybe we’re headed for catastrophe no matter what carbon targets we agree to, then shouldn’t we be trying to avoid that?

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By: Army1987

Army1987 — Sun, 16 Nov 2014 17:21:06 +0000

There’s a famous Italian comedy about superstition whose title translates to ‘it’s not true but I believe it’.

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By: Nancy Lebovitz

Nancy Lebovitz — Sun, 16 Nov 2014 15:36:43 +0000

My impression is that white American prejudice against black people is more about associating black people with crime and irresponsibility than about black people being descendants of slaves. However, I’m a Northerner, so I may be missing some nuances.

Specifically, there’s a species of racism which assumes that African Americans are inferior to Africans because those who were slaves were possible to catch and/or the loss of cultural continuity caused serious damage.

Also, the belief that black people are basically inferior (even unto the idea that smooth hair indicates a more civilized/professional attitude) is plausibly a result of beliefs that justified slavery.

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By: Luke Somers

Luke Somers — Fri, 14 Nov 2014 18:39:38 +0000

Oh. Sorry ’bout that.

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By: Luke Somers

Luke Somers — Fri, 14 Nov 2014 18:34:11 +0000

Your ‘ratchet’ has to give something up each time or it’s not actually a compromise. ‘Give me only one cookie instead of two cookies’ isn’t a compromise.

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By: rsaarelm

rsaarelm — Fri, 14 Nov 2014 17:11:37 +0000

Peter Watts posts on RequiresHate.

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 14 Nov 2014 05:35:48 +0000

In a typical Texas gubernatorial election, about 15% of blacks vote R. So this time half the black Rs voted D. Is that extraordinary? There was an equivalent swing in the opposite direction not so long ago: 27% of blacks voted for Bush’s 1998 reelection. wikipedia has numbers going back to 1994.

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By: Michael Dickens

Michael Dickens — Fri, 14 Nov 2014 05:22:09 +0000

After looking at the article on the Abbott vs. Davis vote, I was actually most surprised to see that Davis won 93% of the black vote. That seems extraordinarily high. I did some Googling to try to find a good explanation, but I couldn’t find anything. Does anyone have any idea about this?

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By: Auroch

Auroch — Fri, 14 Nov 2014 05:13:33 +0000

From personal (thankfully brief) experience working in fast food (well, Dunkin Donuts), there was a significant share of immigrant employees.

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By: Scott Alexander

Scott Alexander — Fri, 14 Nov 2014 01:45:15 +0000

I mean that I notice tiny flashes of positive affect when I see conservative things and tiny flashes of negative affect when I see liberal things. I expect that if you did an IAT on me right now that somehow managed to avoid showing anything specific (ie no particular conservative politicians) I would associate good words slightly more easily with conservativism than with liberalism, etc.

I expect this translates into being more likely to believe and pass on conservative than liberal things, and I’m trying to bring myself back to neutrality.

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