OT49: Open Secret

This is the bi-weekly open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. Also:

1. Bakkot has made a new script that allows people to filter out SSC comments by specific users they don’t want to read (including Anonymous). You can get it here for Chrome and here for Firefox.

2. I’m still trying to figure out how to relieve pressure on the open threads. I’m moving away from the idea of a forum (which wasn’t too popular) to having more regular open threads on the blog. I just need to figure out how to make it not clutter and detract from regular threads. One possibility would be to have even-numbered open threads have pictures and announcements and so on, and odd-numbered open threads be just the words “this is the open thread” so that it doesn’t take up as much room in feeds and the front page. A more interesting possibility: have the open thread be a hidden post like this. There would be a tab on the top, by the Comments tag and the About tag and all the others, that says Open Thread. It would link to whatever the hidden open thread was. After 1000 comments, some bot would automatically post a new hidden open thread and the location to which the tab directed would change. That way there would always be an open thread with fewer than 1000 comments. Would people use this? Would anybody want to program this for me?

3. Best comments of the week are people trying to explain mutational load to me, including Simon here, Gwern here, Ilai Bar-Natan here with a really interesting point that sexual reproduction is necessary to control mutational load (is this widely agreed and appreciated? should it be?), and Rosalind Arden (author of some of the papers my post cited) here.

4. Note a new advertisement by Numerai, which describes itself as “participatory cybernetic finance” and “an attempt at a hedge fund crowd-sourcing stock market predictions”. It offers prizes for algorithms that can predict a dataset they provide which corresponds to some features of the stock market that they plan to make money off of. I kind of thought the sort of people who have AIs that can predict the stock market would probably be, uh, busy with other things, but apparently this is a well-investigated field with a lot of possible incremental progress.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

1,144 Responses to OT49: Open Secret

  1. Holy smokes, I’ve been to that bunker.

  2. Galle says:

    In honor of this recent post to Scott’s Tumblr, I’ve decided to add some levity here with a few bug fixing stories from my CK2 modding career. Maybe I can get Uriel’s opinion on these, I don’t know.

    * Early in the development of A Game of Thrones, the North had a small fleet at White Harbor. Unfortunately, the AI determines whether or not to launch an amphibious invasion based purely on the distance to the target and whether it owns a fleet, ignoring minor details like whether or not it actually has enough ships to carry its army. This resulted in Eddard Stark spending the entirety of Robert’s Rebellion taking his army to the beach.

    * We used a small program to automatically create filler characters to populate long, boring stretches of history. Unfortunately, when we populated Essos, it went haywire, and half the continent wound up under the control of a newborn girl – so newborn, in fact, that she would not be born for another three hundred years. The source of the problem was eventually traced to an integer overflow error in the generated character IDs. The girl got the Genius and Ambitious traits in the bug’s honor.

    * Crisis of the Confederation extends the average human lifespan compared to vanilla. It also adds cloning as an option. Needless to say, I had to fuck extensively with the AI to get it into a position where the galactic population could maintain some sort of equilibrium, instead of ballooning to 100,000 people and slowing the game to a crawl.

    * Early on, I tried to have cloning directly copy the clone donor’s DNA string. It turns out you can’t do this – the game interprets “DNA = ROOT” as setting DNA to the literal string “ROOT”. Because DNA strings are eleven characters long, this has… effects. As in, people with no mouths and glowing monocolored eyes.

    • Cerebral Paul Z. says:

      “We used a small program to automatically create filler characters to populate long, boring stretches of history.” Adaptations don’t get much more faithful than this!

    • Samuel Skinner says:

      “looks at Scott’s comment”. Yeah, Paradox patch logs in general (and CK2 in particular) are a good source of humor.

  3. Ruprect says:

    I’m not circumcised, but whenever i take a widdle, I pull the foreskin back to ensure minimal splashing. Anyway, when the pee-pee comes straight out of the urethra it spins. Like… my urine is clearly spinning – as you would imagine a somewhat rectangular stream of liquid to spin.
    Does everyone’s urethra produce that kind of spinny urine?
    Should I go to the doctor?

  4. NN says:

    Over on the Subreddit, someone brought up what I have come to conclude is a huge problem with the current state of heritability studies: why doesn’t the Flynn effect show up as a shared environment effect in these studies?

    We know that the average IQ in America has increased 15 points over the last 50 years. This is far too fast for genetic changes to be responsible, so that means that some sort of differences between the environment of America today and the environment of America 50 years ago are responsible for an entire standard deviation difference in IQ. While we don’t know what environmental conditions are, in fact, responsible for the Flynn effect, there are a few things that seem to logically follow from these facts:

    1) The environmental conditions responsible for the Flynn effect will be the same for children raised in the same household, or at least they will be positively correlated. The reasons for this are obvious, so I won’t go into them.

    2) The environmental conditions responsible for the Flynn effect will vary widely between households across the US. Every single proposed explanation for the Flynn effect is known to be highly variant across space. Lead levels vary widely because old houses are more likely to have lead paint than new houses, because before leaded gasoline was phased out urban areas had far more gasoline fumes than rural areas, because of the things that resulted in the Flint water crisis, and so on. Nutrition quality varies widely across the US, as can be seen in this county level map of food insecurity rates. Some neighborhoods have better schools than others. Some families adopt new technology earlier than others do, as demonstrated by the fact that even today a fifth of American households do not have regular internet access. Et cetera.

    3) Because of 1 and 2, if heritability studies are working as intended, then variation in the environmental conditions responsible for the Flynn effect should be detected as shared environment effects. Again, the changes in these environmental factors, whatever they are, in America from the 1960s until today has been enough to increase average IQ by an entire standard deviation. How could studies miss something that powerful?

    Some people might bring up research that allegedly shows that the Flynn effect isn’t real, it doesn’t affect the g factor, or other stuff along those lines. That is completely irrelevant. We know that the Flynn effect strongly impacts scores on the same IQ tests that are used by lots of heritability studies. Yet if my impression of the state of heritability research is correct, those heritability studies show little if any shared environment effects on IQ. Even if IQ is totally irrelevant and g is the only thing that matters and the Flynn effect has no impact on g, this still seems like a glaring contradiction.

    Similar things could be said about other historical changes. For example, we know that some sort of change in environmental factors has caused crime rates to plummet in the US in the last 20 years. Again, whatever caused this drop must vary substantially from place to place, so why doesn’t that show up in heritability studies on criminality?

    • Anon. says:

      The shift is uniform across the entire distribution, so #2 is not a good assumption.

    • Douglas Knight says:

      The environmental conditions responsible for the Flynn effect will vary widely between households across the US. Every single proposed explanation for the Flynn effect

      That is putting the cart before the horse. First, ask: did the Flynn effect itself vary from place to place? I think that the answer is no, except maybe for a small rural/urban divide. Similarly, did the changes in crime rate vary from place to place? Well, yes, they did, because crime rates vary from neighborhood to neighborhood a lot more than IQ. But a lot of that is demographic change. At a coarser level that averages out neighborhoods, it was fairly uniform, though with a rural/urban effect.

      You seem to assume that the smooth national Flynn effect is due to averaging out more abrupt effects that happened in different places at different times. But wikipedia says that it was pretty linear in time in both Des Moines and Dumfries. Are these small enough places?

      Here is an environmental effect that was pretty uniform across the nation: the baby boom. I estimate that if we measure homicide per youth rather than homicide per capita, that explains away 20% of the increase and 20% of the decline. That leaves 80% a real effect, but the demographics themselves could have changed people’s behavior. I don’t put a lot of stock in this explanation, but I just want to propose to you a single explanation that is totally uniform so that you won’t say such sweeping things in the future. (Actually, the baby boom was not entirely uniform. It happened to Germany a decade or two after it happened to the winners. So there’s a test of this hypothesis.)

      • NN says:

        First, ask: did the Flynn effect itself vary from place to place?

        Yes, it did and does. The magnitude of the Flynn effect varies significantly between countries. I haven’t been able to find any US state level Flynn effect data, but given the difference in the Flynn effect between countries as geographically close and culturally similar as France and Belgium, the existence of variation between different US regions seems highly likely.

        Regardless, you are missing the point. Even assuming that the changes brought by the Flynn effect were exactly the same across the US, it would still be absurd to suggest that the underlying environmental causes were exactly the same across the US at every point in time. And because we know that these underlying environmental factors have strong effects on IQ, because we know that they have caused a massive increase in IQ scores over the past 100 years, then those variations from place to place should cause variation in IQ scores.

        Here is an environmental effect that was pretty uniform across the nation: the baby boom.

        No it wasn’t. This CDC report from 1950 says that while births increased across the board, the rate of increase varied substantially between geographic regions (page 89: “The increase [in birth rates] between 1940 and 1950 varied from 8 percent in the East South Central to 42 percent in the Pacific Division.”).

        But even assuming that it was, during any given year birth rates still varied significantly from household to household, neighborhood to neighborhood, region to region, etc. So any “birth rate effects” should likewise vary from place to place.

  5. Jaskologist says:

    Moral dilemma time, especially for those here who concern themselves with animal suffering.

    There is a bird nest on the side of my house. One of the three eggs is a cuckoo egg. What, if anything, should I do?

    (Seriously)

    • jaimeastorga2000 says:

      Kill the cuckoo. They are disgusting parasites.

      • suntzuanime says:

        please be kind to disgusting parasites 🙁

      • Hedonic Treader says:

        “They are disgusting parasites.”

        An astonishing judgment from someone who called the idea that suicidal people should be turned into rightless slaves “incredibly charming”.

        If that’s not parasitism, I don’t know what is.

    • Douglas Knight says:

      What do you care about? Do you care about animal suffering? Do you find parasitism inherently disgusting? The cuckoo will not cause pain, but will present a superstimulus to the victim. It seems to me like it would take a lot of understanding to determine if this produces suffering. Maybe it will produce a conflict in the bird brain, which might count as suffering, or maybe it will just take over, which wouldn’t.

      Cuckoos are pretty and make nice sounds. What does the victim bid?

      • Jaskologist says:

        Cuckoo chicks usually evict their “siblings” from the nest, killing them.

        • Douglas Knight says:

          You will definitely produce less pain by evicting the eggs earlier rather than later. I don’t think that pain in death is an important part of suffering, though.

    • Vorkon says:

      I think you should respect a bird’s Right to Choose.

      /troll

      • Vorkon says:

        (FYI, I’m only half joking here. The main concern here seems to be whether or not the welfare of the unhatched eggs counts as suffering that should be prevented. If you think it does, it’s better to save the other eggs. If you don’t, then it’s better to let nature take its course.)

    • keranih says:

      Quit trying to impose your human solution on the established and free-living bird society, you imperialist colonizer.(/sarc)

      But seriously – cuckoos are not at risk of exterminating any other sparrow-type species. You (and the rest of Creation) will likely get the most utility out of observing what happens next, and expanding your data set on natural interactions of non-human species.

      Without lots more data, Prime Directive is the way to go.

      • Jaskologist says:

        Hey now, don’t go mistaking me for one of those city-slickers. I’m well aware of how red in tooth and claw nature is.

        I’m not much interested in animal welfare in general, but I’m curious how those who are view the situation, which seems to me to be a natural trolley problem.

        • Alex says:

          From a evolutionary game-theoretic POV, we must be in a stable or near stable state of the battle between cuckoos and everyone else.

          What would be an evolutionary game theoretic answer to the trolley problem?

        • Agronomous says:

          I don’t remember if it’s cuckoos, but there is some species of bird with that strategy (lay an egg in the nest of another species) that sticks around and checks whether their egg is still there.

          If it’s missing, the adult parasite bird destroys all the host bird’s eggs anyway.

          I’m impressed by everyone’s restraint in refusing to draw political analogies, by the way.

          • Vorkon says:

            And I’m disappointed that you failed to notice my questionably appropriate political analogy, right above this. ;_;

  6. Ruprect says:

    On the previous thread, I made the following comment, which was (more or less) politely ignored. I was wondering if anyone could help me out by politely (or impolitely) destroying it?

    “I honestly feel like I’ve got a better understanding of morality than most people (in that I don’t feel anyone has been able to demonstrate where I’m mistaken).
    So… this is morality – it’s basically egoism – the … moral innovation is to realize that it’s in your own self interest to imagine that other people (weird shapes and sound that give you food) are the same as you. Other people cannot exist, in any meaningful sense, except as an extension of our own emotional state – THEY DON’T EXIST – there is just your feelings projected onto some sights and sounds which are imposed on you. But if you don’t consider others to be the same as you, your life sucks. That is the moral message, that is how everything ties together… also puddle glum.”

    • Anonymous says:

      It sounds like a combination of:
      1) I can’t prove the strong form of metaphysical skeptism is untrue but everything is far more interesting if I assume it.
      2) Some odd is/ought confusion layered on top along with a proto-utilitarianism
      3) A grandiose claim to understand morality better than most

      #1 is near universally held by philophers afaik. The rest isn’t terribly interesting.

      If I remember correctly, last time this was coupled to some claim about being able to prove Christianity true or something like that. That probably explains the lack of responses. Most people have learned that it is fruitless to engage with people claiming to be bearing proofs of their religion’s veracity.

      • Ruprect says:

        I’m not really too sure what you are saying with (1) – that I sound as if I am assuming metaphysical skepticism, or assuming it is untrue.

        Anyway – my view is that knowledge is association of sense data – it’s simply a fact of life, nothing to be skeptical about. The extent to which our capacity for knowledge determines the details of that knowledge is an open question.

        Not too sure on the other points – I’m certainly not advocating utilitarianism – that strikes me as the moral position of people who’ve misunderstood the nature of morality – but perhaps I’m missing something about the implications of what I am saying.

    • Alex says:

      I honestly feel like I’ve got a better understanding of morality than most people

      Your understanding is not that unique.

      (in that I don’t feel anyone has been able to demonstrate where I’m mistaken).

      This, if true, would prove at most “equally well”, not “better”.

      “I honestly feel like I’ve got a better understanding of morality than most people (in that I don’t feel anyone has been able to demonstrate where I’m mistaken).
      So… this is morality – it’s basically egoism – the … moral innovation is to realize that it’s in your own self interest to imagine that other people (weird shapes and sound that give you food) are the same as you. Other people cannot exist, in any meaningful sense, except as an extension of our own emotional state – THEY DON’T EXIST – there is just your feelings projected onto some sights and sounds which are imposed on you.

      This is certainly not a new idea. Depending on your philosophy it is a somewhat accurate description of what we call reality. Also it is useless for most purposes.

      But if you don’t consider others to be the same as you, your life sucks. That is the moral message, that is how everything ties together… also puddle glum.”

      You lost me there. How does this follow from the previous? Who preaches this morality? How does it tie in with millenia of thoughts on ethics?

      • Ruprect says:

        “This, if true, would prove at most “equally well”, not “better”.”

        Strict. If no-one has been able to beat me at tennis, that could mean that everyone has exactly the same level of skill as me and we always tie, or it could mean that I’m better than most people. I don’t think it’s completely mad to assume the latter.

        I don’t understand why it is useless – could you expand on that?

        “You lost me there. How does this follow from the previous? Who preaches this morality? How does it tie in with millenia of thoughts on ethics?”
        It’s a matter of good taste. Wouldn’t a solipsistic life, one without any projection of feelings or emotion, be terrible? It really would just be sound and fury; signifying nothing. And, I guess, the whole explains existing ethical theories as stories that are either more or less appealing.

        • Alex says:

          Strict. If no-one has been able to beat me at tennis, that could mean that everyone has exactly the same level of skill as me and we always tie, or it could mean that I’m better than most people. I don’t think it’s completely mad to assume the latter.

          I’m really not sure that a tennis match is an accurate analogy for understanding. If you state e. g. that moon orbits earth and nobody can prove you wrong, this does not imply that you have superior understanding of the fact. It is a fact that most people understand.

          Also both in a maximum likelyhood sense and in an Occam’s razor sense the better model is that nobody cares about your morality skills or your tennis skills and therefore nobody bothers beating you.

          If you really were serious about the other stuff, that should have occured to you.

          I don’t understand why it is useless – could you expand on that?

          Because it is of no consequence.

          It’s a matter of good taste. Wouldn’t a solipsistic life, one without any projection of feelings or emotion, be terrible?

          TBH I think you might be a bad case of “if you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room”. Either this is a strawman or you frequent very shallow people.

          It really would just be sound and fury; signifying nothing.

          Which surprises precisely nobody. Have you read Camus or Sartre or something?

          And, I guess, the whole explains existing ethical theories as stories that are either more or less appealing.

          Can you enumerate some theories. We seem to be aware of different subsets of those.

          • Ruprect says:

            “I’m really not sure that a tennis match is an accurate analogy for understanding. If you state e. g. that moon orbits earth and nobody can prove you wrong, this does not imply that you have superior understanding of the fact. It is a fact that most people understand.”

            I would say that a tennis match might represent a debate, and tennis skill might represent understanding. So either everyone (with an interest) agrees with me, or I have a better understanding than most people. I’m not sure which of those is more conceited – but the second seems more likely.

            “Also both in a maximum likelyhood sense and in an Occam’s razor sense the better model is that nobody cares about your morality skills or your tennis skills and therefore nobody bothers beating you.”

            If I was launching my scud-missile serves at random passers by, then yes, that might be reasonable. If I’m at the tennis club, less so. If *nobody* was interested in beating me at tennis, then it’d be a pretty good bet that I *was* better at tennis than most people (because people with no interest in tennis don’t tend to be particularly good at it).

            “Because it is of no consequence.”
            Meta-ethics is of no consequence. I suppose that depends on how much you think about things.

            “Which surprises precisely nobody.”

            Well… I was answering your question. I lost you with “if you don’t consider others to be the same as you, your life sucks.” And, now your having a go at me for stating the obvious!
            So, the idea that solipsism is completely unattractive is so obvious to you to be unworthy of stating. Cool… but at the same time, you have to state the obvious – in the most concise way possible – to make sure all of your bases are covered.

            So, if it’s obvious that we shouldn’t be solipsists for reasons of taste, the only question remaining is how far we should/can project our emotions onto others. So ethics. We don’t have ethical obligations to those who are not like us, but, phenomenologically speaking, the extent to which “others” are like us is the extent to which we choose to project our feelings onto a certain shape and sound. Then, on an intellectual level we say that those projections are “true” (which might be entirely meaningless?).
            So, I think if you are a utilitarian, you’re looking at an impersonal morality, you “assume” intellectually that others exist, but since these others aren’t actually associated with a projection of your own sense, they don’t (on a phenomenological level) represent much at all (besides vague happy feelings at getting the ‘top score’?).
            If you follow more traditional ethical codes, you have a duty to treat an individual in a certain way, because that individual *is you*. So, christiany deontology is the result of good taste and egotistical consequentialism.
            So while utilitarianism might appeal in the same way as candy-crush saga does, on a more fundamental level… it isn’t related to anything real, and that undermines its appeal.

          • Alex says:

            So either everyone (with an interest) agrees with me, or I have a better understanding than most people. I’m not sure which of those is more conceited – but the second seems more likely.

            I find it _very_ much more probable that it is the former. No sane person would explicitly disagree with you on the part I called “somewhat true but not useful”. For the Rest of this post, lets call that part of your initial post [*], so that I can refer to it. Some things cannot be proven or disproven and therefore it is best to file them away as a philosophy, but keep in mind where you filed them.

            If you really experience [*] as something outstanding that only few people but you have ever thought of (or what do you mean by better understanding?) you are with the wrong people. Sorry. You did not comment on this idea though. I wonder why?

            If *nobody* was interested in beating me at tennis, then it’d be a pretty good bet that I *was* better at tennis than most people (because people with no interest in tennis don’t tend to be particularly good at it).

            Or that a game of philosophy is very unlike a game of tennis. Or that you enter the philosophers’ club, whatever that is, with the conception that it has to work like the tennis club and are then surprised that you are ignored (as a philosopher would be in the tennis club). But seriously: argument by analogy will only get us so far and we should probably stop.

            Meta-ethics is of no consequence. I suppose that depends on how much you think about things.

            I’m not sure if I’m missing a subtle insult here. Be this as may.

            It is the hallmark of absurdism, as covered by [*], that it is, well, absurd, i. e. of no consequence. You seem to have arrived at the (mis?)conception that absurdism defies ethics. This is a very well known problem. I suggest you read de Beauvoir: “The Ethics of Ambiguity”.

            I lost you with “if you don’t consider others to be the same as you, your life sucks.” And, now your having a go at me for stating the obvious!

            No no. There really is a misunderstanding going on here. I swear, I did not want to treat you unfairly. Life, as per [*], actually _is_ “just sound and fury; signifying nothing.” [As an aside: signifying nothing and being of no consequence seem to be the same thing. Are we really disagreeing here?] This is not a new or surprising idea to anyone with an interest in the field. Like I said, it even has a name: the Absurd.

            However from human life being absurd, or realizing this, it does not follow that “your life sucks”. Suggested Reading: Camus: “The Myth of Sisyphus”

            So, if it’s obvious that we shouldn’t be solipsists for reasons of taste …

            This is not the part ouf your idea I declared as obvious [and omitted: to a well read person]. An ethics derived from taste, if you allow that to be replaced with “aesthetics” is a different idea from what we discussed so far. However it is in de Beauvoir’s book. So my verdict is “less obvious, but also not new”.

            Insofar as you are interested in your own superiority for whatever reasons, yes, partly reinventing de Beauvoir without her background probably is no easy feat. Congratulations. But I still think you could have put that intellectual effort to a better use.

            Insofar as you are interested in your sujet for its own sake you really really should read de Beauvoir and continue from there. And perhaps reconsider your choice of a philosophers’ club.

          • Ruprect says:

            Hmmm… well… I can’t say I’ve ever been much of a one for reading philosophy books, but thanks for the suggestions. Maybe some day!

            Anyway, regarding the side-discussion about my high opinion of my own ethical understandings – in conclusion – it is likely that every well read person (and by ‘well read’ we mean people who have read and understood Satre and Camus) agrees with me.
            And, actually, about half of what I was saying isn’t obvious at all even to them.

            So… that doesn’t really contradict the statement “I have a better understanding of morality than most people” (obviously depending on your definition of “most” and “people”).

            This shall be my new philosophy club.

  7. dndnrsn says:

    @ChetC3:

    Or you could believe that self-serving confabulation is the path of least resistance, but it’s still possible with effort for people to do better. That’s what rationality, in the non-tribal sense, is supposed to be about.

    Yes. That’s the ideal. It’s a good ideal, it’s an ideal worth reaching for, and I don’t subscribe to the view “we can’t reach objectivity/rationality/whatever, so we shouldn’t try, and anyone saying we should is deluded/bad”, or even outright “objectivity/rationality doesn’t exist”. But it definitely seems like becoming aware of logical fallacies, common errors in human thinking and perception, etc, is something where it’s easiest to spot the mote in someone else’s eye. If the people supposedly dedicated to this can’t reliably do it, who can?

    I suppose I’ve become increasingly pessimistic about the question “how close can we get to reaching that ideal”, but the alternatives are all worse.

  8. dndnrsn says:

    So onyomi’s use of the word “radical” above twigged something I’ve been thinking about, and commented on before, which is that the word “radical” gets tossed around quite a bit, both as a pejorative and as a self-description, when it isn’t appropriate.

    A radical is generally someone who advocates extreme and fundamental change. Freddie deBoer, our favourite grumpy leftist who doesn’t like Beyonce enough is a radical – his latest article provides near the end a good encapsulation of how:

    One can imagine a new America where the ranks of human hierarchy have been jumbled but the existence of hierarchy has been preserved. This is not a future worth pursuing. I didn’t get interested in politics to become a member of an elect, or to decide who deserves to be within the elect, but to help tear down the very notion of an elect.

    In contrast to this, a lot of people who are called, or call themselves, radicals, aren’t. An example of the former is when the term “radical feminist” gets applied (as a pejorative) to people who are, when you get down to it, liberal feminists: they want to work within the system to change the system, not tear the system down. Some of them might hold positions that are extreme, but “extreme” and “radical” are different things.

    An example of the latter is left-wing (often student) activists who describe themselves as radicals, but when you look at their list of demands or whatever, it basically just involves jumbling, as DeBoer puts it, the “ranks of human hierarchy” but still preserving its existence. Assuming this site is legitimate if you look at the various demands, you see a lot of stuff like a push for more faculty and students from underrepresented groups, mandatory courses/training in various subjects, money to be put towards various student resources, etc. These positions may hold merit – being a tenured university professor, for instance, is a sweet job, and I can’t blame groups underrepresented among their ranks for wanting more of that particular pie – but they aren’t radical. A more diverse faculty lounge isn’t radical – burning the motherfucker down would be radical.

    So, why did “radical” come to be used in this way, both negatively and positively?

    • Dr Dealgood says:

      Probably in the same way that religious fundamentalist now means religious extremist to most of the populace.

      What was originally a neutral or positive self-description by a group picks up pejorative connotation due to the group’s image, then it gets generalized to anyone remotely similar to said group. A social democrat and an anarchist are both Marxists, the same way that a Catholic and a born-again protestant are both Christians, so it’s tempting for outsiders to lump them all in as radicals or fundies respectively.

      • dndnrsn says:

        That’s probably correct in regards to the outsiders identifying them as something. Perhaps the self-identification is a reaction to that? “The people we dislike say we’re radicals, so we’re radicals”?

    • “A radical is generally someone who advocates extreme and fundamental change.”

      I sometimes describe myself as a radical, since my ultimate objective is a society without a government. A very long time ago I had a column in a conservative student magazine–I was the libertarian columnist–under the title “The Radical.”

      But I also sometimes describe myself as a conservative anarchist, since I don’t think moving to such a society rapidly is practical.

    • Anonymous says:

      Most of the time that liberal feminists are called radical, it is in your sense. There are many systems and two people can want to destroy different ones. They can also disagree about what systems even exist. TERFs want to preserve a system of gender identity, even if they want to overthrow a system of gender relations.

      • dndnrsn says:

        The impression that I’ve gotten is that some TERFs want to get rid of gender roles as we understand them now (or, even of identity?) and object to trans people (especially trans women) because they see them as reinforcing those gender roles. On the other hand, some seem primarily to object to the idea of people they don’t consider women entering women’s spaces.

    • Nornagest says:

      “Radical” when applied to feminism doesn’t mean quite what it does in the rest of politics: it refers to a specific type of feminism, which believes that the current system of gender roles is inherently oppressive. (I believe TERFs fit in here thanks to the assumption of gender role that tends to come with trans identity, but we’re getting a little outside my wheelhouse now.) In contrast with e.g. radical socialism it is silent on means, and many radical feminists aren’t aiming for anything especially drastic as a short-term policy goal.

      • Anonymous says:

        The radical in radical feminism refers to the theory that patriarchy is the radical of all evil. Having a theory about the root is not the same as desiring to root it out, but it leads there pretty naturally. And I think radical usually refers to such ultimate revolutionary desire, regardless of whether one desires revolution in the short-term, or even has a short-term plan at all.

      • dndnrsn says:

        But there certainly do exist radical feminists who want to tear down gender roles, by various means: eg, back in the 70s, you had authors playing with the idea of abolishing the family as we know it. That seems pretty radical to me.

        • Nornagest says:

          Sure, there are radical feminists that do have extreme aims in the short term. Wasn’t trying to imply that there aren’t, only that it isn’t a necessary condition.

        • dndnrsn says:

          I didn’t mean in the long term or the short term, merely that they are not necessarily silent on means. Someone who says “it sure would be nice if there were no gender roles forced on people” is likely to have some ideas as to how to get there.

          The Wikipedia article states,

          Radical feminists seek to abolish patriarchy by challenging existing social norms and institutions, rather than through a purely political process.

          and

          Radical feminists seek to abolish patriarchy, and believe that the way to do this and to deal with oppression of any kind is to address the underlying causes of it through revolution.

          I think this fits a generic conception of “radical” set in opposition to “liberal”. Someone whose solution is 50% quotas for women on boards of directors and in parliament and changing the burden of proof in criminal courts for sexual assault cases might be extreme but they aren’t radical.

          • Nornagest says:

            I think the article’s mention of revolution is wrong or at least misleading, w.r.t. modern radical feminism (that description might have been more accurate in the Seventies). It’s right about aiming to overthrow the patriarchy; patriarchy talk is something of a tell here. But many radical feminists seem perfectly comfortable with political processes, as we’ve seen in the recent Title IX controversy.

            I was trying to outline some differences between overthrowing a cultural/social institution (viz. “patriarchy”) and overthrowing a formal, political one, which is what “radical” generally points to elsewhere. I don’t think we disagree on that?

          • dndnrsn says:

            @Nornagest: But by that standard pretty much all feminists today are radical. Very few feminists haven’t taken aim at the patriarchy, one way or another, and haven’t aimed at changing culture/society.

            The activists behind the Title IX stuff seem happy with incrementalism (ie, if all goes well in the universities, a push will be made outside of universities), which characterizes liberal activism, in contrast to radical activism.

            EDIT: No, we don’t disagree – although overthrowing something cultural/social would probably involve overthrowing various political structures.

            As an extreme example, according to Wikipedia:

            Because of their commitment to radical egalitarianism, most early radical feminist groups operated initially without any formal internal structure. When informal leadership developed, it was often resented. Many groups ended up expending more effort debating their own internal operations than dealing with external matters, seeking to “perfect a perfect society in microcosm” rather than focus on the larger world. Resentment of leadership was compounded by the view that all “class striving” was “male-identified”. In the extreme, exemplified by The Feminists, the upshot, according to Ellen Willis, was “unworkable, mechanistic demands for an absolutely random division of labor, taking no account of differences in skill, experience, or even inclination”. “The result,” writes Willis, “was not democracy but paralysis.” When The Feminists began to select randomly who could talk to the press, Ti-Grace Atkinson quit the organization she had founded.

    • Anonymous says:

      The Radical Republicans are a good early example of radical meaning extreme. I think what happened was that abolition is radical in your sense, and the word radical came to be a short-hand for abolitionist, and the Radical Republicans used the word to imply that the other Republicans were not really abolitionists.

      As for students, the repetition of the phrase student radical in the 60s turned it into idiom divorced from its constituents and now meaning simply student activist.

  9. onyomi says:

    Re. the idea that Americans are “steeped in right wing propaganda” like fish in water, what about the triumphalist, “end of history”-type narrative of American history everyone still receives in school? My memory (and I went to a private Catholic high school in a red state, not a blue state public school, btw) was that all of American history was a succession of stories of the format: we tried the Articles of Confederation but realized we needed more centralized government; John Marshall was a great legal “innovator,” we tried having laissez-faire but then FDR showed us we needed the New Deal…

    • BBA says:

      Right-wing doesn’t mean libertarian. Even going back to when the Dunning School was dominant, I doubt there were any textbooks treating the Whiskey Rebellion sympathetically. (And if you’re going to call the Dunning School left-wing, the term has no meaning.)

  10. Hlynkacg says:

    Edit: accidental double post

  11. Jobin says:

    I’ve been reading SSC for probably 6 months to a year, but despite that, I still feel new here. I have enjoyed reading a number of the blog posts, but I am still trying to figure out what it is that is going on here. I guess I’m looking for context. A lot of lingo gets thrown around, especially in the comments section, and references to a larger rationality community. I’ve gone back and read some of the Yudkowsky Sequences posts, and read lots of internet generally, but I’m not enmeshed. I would be grateful for any useful signposts:

    1) After reading this and the Yudkowsky Sequences, and Thing of Things, what is the fourth related thing to read?

    2) I’ve read most of the SSC top posts. Many of these are interesting and thought-provoking on their own. My next reaction is to wonder how they integrate and relate. A good place to look for that?

    3) For understanding this community, to what extent are the ideas in the Sequences posts ideas that underlie the discussion here? (E.g., is it fair to judge ideas by whether or not they enable winning? Is most people’s purpose here to improve their map? Or just an interesting place to argue on the internet?)

    4) To the extent that the lingo of this community is unique, is there a glossary somewhere?

    • Hlynkacg says:

      In regards to 1 I think you’re pretty well covered. 2 and 3 are good questions without universal agreed-upon answers. Ask three different people and you are liable to get three different responses, sorry I can’t be more help. In regards to 4 I think someone was working on a FAQ/Glossary at some point but I don’t know what became of it. If you’ve read most of the “top posts” already you should know enough to figure out the rest. That said if there is a specific term or concept you’re having trouble with feel free to someone ask about it.

      Finally, welcome to the party.

    • Alex says:

      1-4) Most topics here not actually that specific to the community. “The sequences” are just were many people obviously happened to first learn about them. Standard Textbooks from Math (esp. Statistics), Economics and Philosophy will get you very far in understanding what is going on content-wise. The lack of textbooks, as claimed sometimes, I think is vastly exaggerated.

      2 in particular) If anything, I think, it is the other way round. “Rationalism” is integrating well-known ideas. If this is not obvious to you, this might be because you have not come across these ideas independently

      3 in particular) The hardest part of getting into the community, as always, is understanding group dynamics. The best way to do that I think is participating. Folks here are quite welcoming as long as you don’t misgender them.

    • Evan Þ says:

      In regards to (1), I’d suggest reading HPMOR. It’s nowhere near as necessary, but it ties in with many of Eliezar’s points, a lot of us (including me) consider it a really fun story, and it lurks at the back of a lot of analogies.

      • For what it’s worth, I have not read HPMOR (aside from the very beginning) or the Sequences, and don’t feel lost. The ideas discussed here are largely ones you can pick up from sources elsewhere.

    • TheAncientGeek says:

      Godel, Escher, Bach?

    • Welcome.

      I’m not sure what you’re trying to understand.

      It might be useful for you to write about your understanding of some other blogs.

    • jaimeastorga2000 says:

      If you have a Kindle, the easiest thing to do is to download The Sequences, The AI-Foom Debate, and The Library of Scott Alexandria and read them in order. By the time you have finished or died of old age (whichever comes first), you should no longer have any problem understanding the terms and ideas that we use in the rationalist community.

  12. youzicha says:

    What’s the theory behind the U.S. sending destroyers near the Spratley islands?

    Back last summer, the statements I was hearing was that artificial islands do not create territorial waters, and therefore the U.S. should conduct freedom-of-navigation operations near them to demonstrate that they are still international water.

    But, what actually happened is that they are sending destroyers but claiming that they are exercising innocent passage. Wikipedia says, “Innocent passage concedes the coastal country’s territorial sea claim, unlike freedom of navigation, which directly contests it”.

    So isn’t this completely contrary to the U.S.’s previous stance, it concedes that the artificial island did create a territorial claim? What good does sending them do?

    • Douglas Knight says:

      Yes, there is a point to making innocent passage, which is to test whether the country actually allows it; your link contains a link to a Pentagon report complaining of countries, including China, that require prior permission for innocent passage.

      Innocent passage is a technical term from the law of the sea, but that I don’t think that has anything to do with conceding rights. In the context of testing it does not have a precise meaning; read the source wikipedia cites. There is a continuum of how aggressive the ship might be, which implicitly concedes the territorial claim, but they could escalate later. The ship probably traveled quickly in a straight line, which is less aggressive than dawdling in claimed water, but for which there is the excuse that maybe it wanted to anyhow. Maybe it also turned off its radar, which it would only do out of politeness, and is thus more of a concession.

      • youzicha says:

        I see. I guess there are two different claims by China, that artifical islands create territorial waters, and that the “innocent passage” doctrine does not apply, and the U.S. may want to contest either one.

        I had assumed that the ship itself would announce over the radio that they are exercising innocent passage, but apparently things are kept slightly more ambiguous than that. Alhough as you say, turning off the radar (which it apparently did) seems to send a clear signal.

        It’s also unclear to me who does these announcements? Every newspaper article claims that this was an innocent passage operation, so clearly there are sources who tell the journalists this, but there is no “official” statement..?

        Apparently some people explain the conduct by saying that the route of the ship also passed near a non-artificial island:

        Today, anonymous sources have tossed out a new piece of information—one which may solve the mystery of why the Lassen’s transit was conducted in a manner that appears to have been consistent with innocent passage. Specifically, Sam LaGrone of USNI News reports that “the feature that required the innocent passage transit was likely Thitu Island, the second largest island in the Spratlys, which has been controlled by the Philippines since the 1970s and home to one of its naval stations.”

        This then raises the question of whether they chose that route in order to keep it ambiguous whether this was a freedom-of-navigation operation or not. The same article suggests the ambiguity may be “a way to satisfy domestic hawks without overly antagonizing China”, which seems, uh, par for the course I guess.

  13. BBA says:

    I remember seeing an article on how activists on both sides of the culture war (or maybe the Red/Blue divide generally) believe themselves to be losing. Maybe it was just a blog comment, I dunno, but in any case this thread offers a stunning example.

  14. Possibly useful:

    10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works–A True Story— a reporter resents the very idea of meditation, but finds it useful. Has some detail about how to, but his I-must-accomplish-this-no-matter-how-hard-it-is attitude may not be useful for everyone. Forgive me, but I must clickbait. You’ll never guess what his actual problem was. This is probably educational, because it can be very hard to notice obvious problems.

    The Way of Energy: Mastering the Chinese Art of Internal Strength with Chi Kung Exercise— a guide to standing meditation. Very good about how to do it and what to expect. You can ignore the New Age title.

  15. HircumSaeculorum says:

    Does anyone know of any good guides to meditation/”mindfulness”or otherwise concentration-improving things? I can only seem to find vaguely new-agey stuff on meditation, and concentration/attention seems to be one of those areas where good advice is swamped by somewhat dubious science journalism and listicles. [Also, I’m not willing/able to take nootropics.]

    • Glen Raphael says:

      If you just want to start doing meditation, there’s a pretty good smartphone app for that. Find the app called “Headspace” in the iTunes or Google Play store. The first ten guided meditation sessions are free, then there’s a subscription to continue. Here’s their FAQ.

    • Jobin says:

      I really like ‘Real Happiness’ by Sharon Salzberg. I find it practical, but different peoples’ definition of new-agey probably differs.

  16. Deiseach says:

    Eurovision is upon us! First semifinal on 10th May, second semifinal 12th May, grand final 14th May.

    I can’t tell if the Israeli entry is brilliant or taking the piss – video here. Drones? Is this some kind of statement or just trendy video-making?

    Also, apparently Australia is now part of Europe (yeah, I don’t know either. Seemingly Eurovision is huge over there, so this year they decided to let them enter?). And Justin Bieber will be performing as the interval entertainment at the grand final.

    Last year was very normal (mainly because the Chinese were watching, first time it’s been televised there, I think the Powers That Be were trying to act respectable) and so very boring – the most exciting thing was when the Austrians set their piano on fire. I hope this year will be more representative of recent Eurovisions – there’s a lot of boy-band type poppy stuff from a quick listen to the entries but some reliably weird ones too, so it might be good!

    • Thanks for the video link. I’m assuming the drones were a matter of accidentally ignoring possible symbolism. I’m not going to say it was a great song, but it was at least a pleasant one– I liked the voice quite a bit.

      I’d like to see it redone with astronomical images, including those novas we need so much for our essential nutrients.

    • smocc says:

      As an American who regularly watches Eurovision, I was disappointed with Sweden’s win last year because, as you say, it was so normal. (My personal favorite was Serbia with a catchy chorus and some mindblowing costume changes; Armenia gets a mention for sheer political ballsiness). Thanks for the reminder to watch all the videos in preparation, and also to start planning the watching party.

    • BBA says:

      They’re never topping “Hard Rock Hallelujah” and shouldn’t even try.

    • John Nerst says:

      How lovely to find out that there are other Eurovision fans on SSC! I always feel like the odd one out in such gatherings as a straight man with conservative dress sense and a taste in music that leans heavlily towards classical. But I love the thing, so much that I just wrote a long-ass blog post explaining why, which I now found reason enough to plug.

      Tomorrow I’m hoping for Austria but betting Australia.

  17. Eggoeggo says:

    A quick research request inspired by a conversation on the subreddit and browsing some trans-rationalist tumblr blogs.
    Can anyone link a male to female transsexual who posts/blogs/talks about masculinity and masculine men in a positive way? Specifically indicating attraction to them. One would do, but more would of course be better.

    I have a hypothesis, and this seems like an easy falsification test. The only problem is that I’ve got none of the contacts or cultural knowledge I’d need to find the info myself.

  18. Wilj says:

    I’m becoming more and more depressed. I got a STEM degree (chemistry) with a great GPA (but mediocre school, because the good ones seem to want more than academics and academics are all I had), but I can’t find a job — and if I don’t have enough saved by July, I will lose the most precious thing in my life.

    I’m getting very upset, because I don’t mean “I can’t find a job in my field”… I mean I can’t find a job period.

    Not even as a damn dishwasher. The one time I found a place that needed dishwashers, they told me I’d be dissatisfied there because I have “more options”. No I don’t you [long string of curses], I’d sell my body at this point! I’m thinking I might start lying about my education, but then I have a huge gap to explain and my résumé is already shit. I keep thinking I should have gone on and tried for a PhD, but I felt I didn’t have the gumption. What a fool I was.

    Aside from checking Indeed and calling every local lab or IT place, any ideas? If I can’t buy my fiancee a ticket by July, her visa will expire and she will be in real trouble. I don’t know if we can handle another setback and the waste of all we’ve already spent and done. I don’t want her trapped. I don’t want to lose this.

    I hate to expose my horrible failure amidst all the lovely successful people, but if anyone has an idea like “you can get a loan if you put kidneys up as collateral” or “why not try the local abattoir”, I’m all ears.

    • God Damn John Jay says:

      You can get money modelling for art schools, I don’t even think you necessarily have to be nude. Also, farms will sometimes need someone to pick fruit and not advertise.

      Also, see if you can get some kind of social assistance or welfare, you might be surprised what is possible.

      Americans can also sell Blood and Bone Marrow I believe.

    • dndnrsn says:

      Have you looked into tutoring K-12 students, or even undergrads? Depending on your skill set, you might be able to do that for chemistry, or for science in general, or science and math.

      • Chalid says:

        My impression is that it takes a while to build a client base if you’re doing it yourself. But some sort of test-prep company like Kaplan would work?

    • Teal says:

      Enterprise rent a car is always hiring college graduates. Need to have kind of a sales-y personality though. Beyond that retail companies generally require college degrees for their low level managers. Try costco, target, walgreens, home depot, etc, etc, etc.

    • Jill says:

      I’d apply at places that are not local too. I don’t know where you live. Maybe most opportunities in your field are elsewhere.

      There also may be local support groups in your area where people gather to help/support each other in job searches. I’d also network with friends, acquaintances, family members etc., asking where the jobs in your area or elsewhere are. Even places that don’t have jobs, maybe ask them where they would apply, if they were looking for a job right now.

      It may also help if you de-stress yourself. There are descriptions on the web of Osho’s dynamic meditation and various other relaxation and stress release techniques. Sometimes people are not thinking clearly enough to solve their problem because they are too stressed by it. Once they calm down, the solution appears more easily. Or they are thinking more clearly and so can grasp opportunities as they appear, more easily.

      Here are some examples of stress release techniques. There are many.

      Eye movement technique
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DALbwI7m1vM

      Self tapping of acupressure points—Emotional Freedom Technique.

      http://bradyates.net/videos.html

      Good luck.

    • keranih says:

      Not even as a damn dishwasher. The one time I found a place that needed dishwashers, they told me I’d be dissatisfied there because I have “more options”.

      The next time you go to one of these job applications, tell them up front, “Yes, I know I’m over-qualified. I do not intend to work for you for the rest of my life. However, if I am hired, I will show up for every scheduled shift, I will show up on time, I will show up sober, and I will work steadily my whole shift, and I will not start fights with my coworkers. And when I leave, I will give you at least two weeks notice.”

      Trust me, if you do that – and if you *do* do those things – you will out compete 95% of those actually working at dishwasher wages.

    • Chalid says:

      It’d probably be helpful if you added where you live, and how much money you need by July.

      Have you looked for jobs at the college that you graduated from? If you had a great GPA then probably there’s some professor who will talk to you, and who might need an extra pair of hands in the lab or someone to copy-edit papers or do literature searches and the like. (Tell them you’re thinking of a PhD!) There’s also random menial work (e.g. low-level library staff) which is usually reserved for students but which they might give to recent graduates as well.

      • Randy M says:

        This is a good idea. While looking for work after graduating, I worked in the cafeteria and the business office of our school. Didn’t pay terribly well, but the former got me free food and an offer of a more serious position.

    • Deiseach says:

      I’m certainly not successful and I’m not American. All the advice I can give you is this: I trained in one field, couldn’t find work in it, re-trained via government training schemes to do office administration and that’s mainly where I’m working now. And yeah, I got the “but you’re overqualified, if you get work in your own field you’ll leave us, why would we hire you?” when I was looking for jobs with my first qualification. Often that’s just an excuse to winnow out people and not have to interview them in the first place but it’s damn frustrating to hear when you’d be grateful to take any job and would show up and do it.

      I don’t know how American states do it, but there may be things like community employment schemes or internships that would take you on for a limited period. A quick Google tells me there are state job banks where employers advertise online – I don’t know where you’re living but that might be of help?

      Again, if there are any kind of retraining schemes for the unemployed? Half a loaf is better than no bread, and usually they pay some kind of allowance while training.

      I’m sorry if I’m telling you stuff you already know but as I said, I’m not American and have no idea how your system works.

    • Evan Þ says:

      Don’t feel ashamed to talk about your failures; it can be hard to find good help with job-hunting in America. I’m afraid I don’t know anything about chemistry job hunting directly, but here’s a good career advice blog with some really good advice about cover letters and resume’s.

      You’ve probably already tried your school’s career center, but if not, that’s also a good place to look – maybe not for the resume advice (the career blog I linked has a collection of horror stories about bad resume advice from schools) but for the contacts and postings they know about. I’ve heard most of them help alumni as well. Also, maybe talk to your old professors, especially if you had an especially good relationship with any of them?

    • Samuel Skinner says:

      The post office is always hiring (at least in the US). They will even accept college graduates.

    • Will says:

      A huge thank-you to everyone who’s replied; it really means a lot to me. I’m basically trying every suggestion posted so far.

      To answer a few questions: I’m in Texas in the US, the amount is embarrassingly small to be unable to afford so I’d rather not say outright (but if very curious, it’s about the price of a ticket from Paraguay to the US, minus a few hundred I have), the only “work” I’ve found has indeed been tutoring (but as someone mentioned it does take a while to find people who need you and haven’t just gone with e.g. Kaplan), and Texas used to have a lot of opportunity in chemistry but after oil crashed it’s been pretty hard.

      I had a job briefly but lost it because I was in the hospital for too long; I didn’t know they could do that, but I guess you can’t blame ’em. Would it be wildly inappropriate to call up and see if they might consider bringing me on again? I was a good employee before I fell ill. It seems like a long shot and a recipe for humiliation, but at this point…

      Thanks again for the ideas and advice, all.

      • keranih says:

        I had a job briefly but lost it because I was in the hospital for too long; I didn’t know they could do that, but I guess you can’t blame ’em.

        Well, they do have to get done whatever it was that you were doing, and expecting them to re-employ you after you got out of the hospital means sacking whoever they hired to do your work while you were in the hospital. So, no, not blaming them at all.

        Having said that – realisticly look at your health ability to do this work and not end up in the hospital (note: I’m not saying these are related, but the workplace may assume so) and then approach work again. Be willing to tell them that you are completely cured of what put you in the hospital if that is so, or that you don’t expect to be ill of that thing again. Be sure to note that you enjoyed working there, and would be willing to take a part time job in a different area than you were working before.

        The worst that could happen is that they say “no”. (Okay, maybe say “no way, man” with that rude snort that implies you were a crazy stupid person for asking.) OTOH, you are a known quality and they already have your paperwork stuff on hand, so it’s actually quite sensible to ask if they could use you.

        There are those things which are too much to expect, and then a much smaller category which is too much to ask. So feel free to ask.

      • valiance says:

        Not a job, but some clinical trials pay a lot of money for subjects who fit the study criteria: https://www.centerwatch.com/clinical-trials/listings/location/united-states/TX/Dallas

      • God Damn John Jay says:

        I had a job briefly but lost it because I was in the hospital for too long

        I already recommended looking for some kind of social assistance, but I would definitely look for whatever is available because of this.

    • Shion Arita says:

      It won’t help by July, but:

      You can probably still try to get a PHD. Sure, some admissions people may take issue with the fact that you have a big gap, some probably will not. As someone in the system, I think it’s pretty likely that you’ll be able to get in somewhere. You don’t get paid a lot for it, but you do get paid.

      The following might help by july:

      my school employs some of its former chemistry undergraduates as teaching assistants for summer lab classes. Maybe try asking your school if they do this.

      • Chalid says:

        A chemistry PhD is not really very employable either, unfortunately, at least compared to other STEM PhDs.

      • mobile says:

        A PhD would only make it harder to get a job as a dishwasher.

    • Chalid says:

      One more thought. You can probably save more money by taking extreme measures, e.g. buying a giant bag of rice and beans now and making that 90% of your meals for the next couple months. Obviously it would be really hard to do that forever but you could probably make it to July. There are “extreme frugality” sites and online communities which might be able to give suggestions along these lines. (I don’t read these myself so I can’t recommend any, but they have been discussed here before.)

      If it’s really all about having money in July, there are ways to postpone expenses – e.g. some bills can go unpaid for a month or two before your service gets cut off. Be careful with this sort of thing, obviously!

  19. Charlie says:

    My mom says your brother and his saxophonist at gilmore would be a cute couple.

    • Scott Alexander says:

      I was referred to this comment because it was reported as potentially offensive, and I spent way too long trying to figure out what it was a euphemism for before I realized you meant it literally.

      (my brother is straight, though)

  20. whatnoloan says:

    Ilai Bar-Natan here with a really interesting point that sexual reproduction is necessary to control mutational load

    Should be “Itai Bar-Natan”.

  21. AnonMD says:

    This is as good a place as any to ask this.

    Is this the origin of “steelmanning”?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man_proposal

    The expression [Straw man proposal] was already in use in the United States Department of Defense circa 1975 in their Large Organization Model Building paradigm (LOMB) and was apparently in use with this meaning (initial proposal) in the United States Air Force before that.[5] The succession of names comes from the requirements document for the programming language Ada. In the High Order Language Working Group (HOLWG) the process to define Ada generated requirements documents sporting different names, representing the various stages of development of the Ada language,[6] as described in 1993 by Col William Whitaker in an article ACM SIGPLAN Notices.[7] They are:

    STRAWMAN issued in April 1975[8]
    WOODENMAN issued in August 1975[9]
    TINMAN issued in January 1976[10]
    IRONMAN issued in January 1977[11] (revised in July 1977)
    SANDMAN not published but circulated in January 1978
    STEELMAN issued in June 1978[12]
    PEBBLEMAN issued in July 1978
    PEBBLEMAN Revised and issued in January 1979
    STONEMAN issued in February 1980[13]

    • Nita says:

      What a fascinating page! Thank you.

      I guess “let’s stone-man our opponent” might get misunderstood.

  22. gwern says:

    “Detection of human adaptation during the past 2,000 years”, Field et al 2016:

    Detection of recent natural selection is a challenging problem in population genetics, as standard methods generally integrate over long timescales. Here we introduce the Singleton Density Score (SDS), a powerful measure to infer very recent changes in allele frequencies from contemporary genome sequences. When applied to data from the UK10K Project, SDS reflects allele frequency changes in the ancestors of modern Britons during the past 2,000 years. We see strong signals of selection at lactase and HLA, and in favor of blond hair and blue eyes. Turning to signals of polygenic adaptation we find, remarkably, that recent selection for increased height has driven allele frequency shifts across most of the genome. Moreover, we report suggestive new evidence for polygenic shifts affecting many other complex traits. Our results suggest that polygenic adaptation has played a pervasive role in shaping genotypic and phenotypic variation in modern humans.

    • NN says:

      Fascinating.

      Razib Khan thinks that the genes for blond hair and blue eyes might also be tied to lighter skin color. If so, then selection for those traits may simply be selection for greater Vitamin D production in the low-UV environment of the British Isles. The paper itself speculates that it may be due to sexual selection, but I personally find that theory a bit implausible. I have a hard time imagining how blond hair could be highly attractive in Britain and Scandinavia but not in, for example, Spain and Italy.

      As for height, I wonder if that’s an example of Bergmann’s rule, or the tendency of populations of animals including humans living in colder climates to have larger body masses than populations living in warmer climates.

      • Nita says:

        Well, English does have a word that means “beautiful”, “good” and “light-skinned” (especially blonde with blue eyes). I don’t think the same is true of Spanish or Italian.

        My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
        Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
        If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
        If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

  23. David Friedman recommended Margin of Profit by Poul Anderson.

    The portrayal of women is a problem, and we can talk about that (one of my friends pointed out that Anderson got a lot better later in his career), but let’s look at the economic point. It’s true that modest, consistent victory can lead to ultimate victory, but there’s a problem of knowledge.

    Van Rijn is *awfully* sure that no one opposing him can come up with something he hasn’t thought of. Well, that’s the sort of wish-fulfillment fantasy van Rijn is, but it occurs to me that in most golden age sf, the government or aliens who are that sure they’re right are defeated by humans who come up with something surprising.

    • Samuel Skinner says:

      Sort of like Foundation. A lot of classic science fiction was actually social puzzles and their solutions.

    • The point of the story isn’t about “modest, consistent victory.” It isn’t about victory at all. The point is that in order to stop someone from doing something you don’t have to beat him, you don’t have to make what he is doing impossible.

      You only have to make it unprofitable.

  24. Jill says:

    BTW, since Newt Gingrich in the 1990’s, the GOP had already gone crazy, in terms of getting people to viciously hate Democrats and the government in general. Trump is the nemesis for that. The GOP paved the way for the public to hate even their own politicians, and to worship an outsider whose hands aren’t yet dirty with the supposedly nasty politics and government.

    http://www.vox.com/2016/5/6/11598838/donald-trump-predictions-norm-ornstein

    • Cerebral Paul Z. says:

      Tomorrow, Jill traces the history of music all the way back to Hootie and the Blowfish.

      • Jill says:

        I can look at any time frame I want, on anything. Making fun of someone doesn’t make the time frame they prefer to look at any less valid than your own preference.

        • Gbdub says:

          When you make sweeping comments about one side’s “domination” that only applies to the last several years, I think it’s fair to critique your timeframe. All sample sizes are NOT equally valid.

        • Cerebral Paul Z. says:

          The danger with looking only a little ways into the past is that you might mistake for an innovation something, like partisanship, which is as old as the hills.

    • Tibor says:

      If the GOP is trying to make people hate government in general, they are not very successful at that. People who hate government would most likely vote Libertarian (or would not vote at all), yet the Libertarian Party does not seem to have made any significant gains.

      In general, it seems to me that both major parties in the US are doing a lot to convince the people that the other major party is an Evil incarnate. This divide definitely seems bigger than in Europe (although it is not directly comparable due to the proportional system of most European countries).

      • Jill says:

        Everyone seems to hate government in the U.S. The GOP has been highly successful at making people hate government AND at making them vote GOP, which has been a simultaneous goal. They don’t want anyone to vote Libertarian, and no one does.

        • I’m seeing Republicans who loathe Trump but can’t bring themselves to vote for Clinton say that they’ll vote Libertarian. We’ll see how that works out.

        • Hlynkacg says:

          @ Jill
          I think you’re giving the social engineers too much credit, and seriously underestimating a lot of the demographic factors.

          • Jill says:

            Yeah. Almost no one in the U. S. believes that propaganda has any effect. If I want to read a book about it, it’s usually got to be one that was published in another country. We’re an active, not a reflective, culture. And we believe we have more freedom, and that we are less easily influenced, than we actually are.

            Makes it super easy for Murdoch to become “America’s most trusted news source”, according to the survey, despite the fact that his “news source” reliably makes people more ignorant.

            http://www.businessinsider.com/study-watching-fox-news-makes-you-less-informed-than-watching-no-news-at-all-2012-5

          • Nornagest says:

            If I want to read a book about [propaganda], it’s usually got to be one that was published in another country.

            I suggest Psychological Warfare, Paul Linebarger, 1948.

            (SF fans may know the author better as Cordwainer Smith.)

          • Hlynkacg says:

            Is there any evidence “America’s most trusted news source” is anything more than just a tag line?

            Last I checked trust levels for mass media in general were in the toilet and as bad as FOX is, they at still get the consolation prize of being able to say “at least we’re not NBC

          • Jill says:

            Thanks, Nornagest for the book suggestion. I see that it’s focused on war propaganda. Will give it a look.

            The best book ever written on the subject of propaganda to date is French sociologist, law professor and Christian anarchist Jacques Ellul’s Propaganda. Amazing.

            Another amazing one is by an Australian author, published poshumously, called Taking the Risk out of Democracy.

          • My notes on a lecture about polarizing political speech.

          • Jill says:

            Thanks, Nancy. Interesting lecture notes.

          • Glen Raphael says:

            @Jill:

            “America’s most trusted news source”, according to the survey, despite the fact that his “news source” reliably makes people more ignorant.

            That “reliably” is a substantial overstatement.

            Here is what Politifact had to say in response to a claim by Jon Stewart that FOX was “consistently misleading” – a claim they deemed False.

          • Jill says:

            Glen Raphael, it’s amazing that studies were mixed at how ignorant and misinformed Fox viewers are.

            Just turn it on and watch. And check to see if things they say are true or not. Any objective fact oriented person can see this– even if the questions in some specific study failed to detect it.

            Is Obama a Muslim? Was he born in Kenya? Really.

          • “despite the fact that his “news source” reliably makes people more ignorant.”

            I followed your link. Unless I missed something, it does not provide a list of the questions used.

            Suppose you want to make people who watch Fox look bad relative to people who watch NPR. Isn’t it obvious how you do it, whether or not it’s true?

            You ask questions where the correct answer is the one people on the left like, avoid questions where the correct answer is the one people on the right like. For extra effect, take questions where what answer is right is one of the things left and right disagree about, and simply assume the left’s version.

            I don’t know if that’s what the researchers in question did, but given the political slant of American academia it doesn’t seem unlikely. Unless you have seen the list of questions you have no idea whether that was what they did–but you take it for granted that their claim is true.

            For a real world example (not as recent as this story) see:

            I ran into the same issue long ago in the context of authoritarianism. An academic claimed evidence that people on the political right were more authoritarian than people on the left. If you looked at his list of questions, questions about “should you defy an authority” was put in an terms of an authority the right liked and the left didn’t. Questions of the form “should people campaign for an unpopular cause” was put in terms of a cause the left liked and the right didn’t.

            For details, see:

          • FooQuuxman says:

            Is Obama a Muslim? Was he born in Kenya? Really.

            Wherever he was born (IDGAF) it would appear that he played the born in Kenya line when it helped his political career, then ditched the line when it didn’t.

            http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=16201

          • ThirteenthLetter says:

            @Jill: “Yeah. Almost no one in the U. S. believes that propaganda has any effect. If I want to read a book about it, it’s usually got to be one that was published in another country.”

            What? There are thousands of US-published books about propaganda available on Amazon. Take your pick.

          • Glen Raphael says:

            @Jill:

            it’s amazing that studies were mixed at how ignorant and misinformed Fox viewers are. […] Just turn it on and watch.

            Jill, do you yourself regularly watch any FOX show? If so, which ones? Is it your position that EVERY show on FOX is equally bad? Because you’re painting with such a broad brush that I can’t help suspect your primary exposure to FOX might be when it gets quoted by other sources such as The Daily Show which mine for a few outrage-worthy or mock-worthy remarks and provide context in which you’re supposed to laugh at them, while ignoring any sensible point they might make along the way.

            One thing Politifact gave was a plausible alternative causation story: perhaps people who happen to be really into politics simultaneously (a) tend to do well on political knowledge tests and (b) tend to like especially political shows.

            Which seems to fit with the fact that viewers of The O’Reilly Factor were MORE “informed” than most others – including those who watched regular FOX news programming and those who watched no programming at all.

            Another interesting point brought up with respect to some of the relevant studies was that left-wing news sources are more likely to AGREE WITH authorities such as the CBO. So some of what was being interpreted as “ignorant” or “misinformed” is more charitably interpreted as mere rational disagreement – both the viewers and their news sources had an alternative perspective on the data.

        • Gbdub says:

          Of course FOX will be ranked “most trusted” in any sort of poll. FOX is the only major network catering to conservatives, while liberals will split their loyalty across several networks.

    • houseboatonstyx says:

      @ Jill
      BTW, since Newt Gingrich in the 1990’s, the GOP had already gone crazy, in terms of getting people to viciously hate Democrats and the government in general.

      Goes back further than that. Dallas hated JFK. Lots of GOPs hated FDR (and Truman?) Eisenhower and Nixon may have been a short bubble.

      • ThirteenthLetter says:

        Meanwhile, George W. Bush was universally beloved by the Democrats, who certainly never did things like comparing him to Hitler or believing in a solid plurality that he knew about 9/11 in advance.

        • houseboatonstyx says:

          @ Thirteenth Letter
          believing in a solid plurality that [Bush II] knew about 9/11 in advance

          Does being warned, but dismissing the warning, count?

          • John Schilling says:

            Does “Al Qaeda exists and is trying to attack the United States” count as a warning?

          • ThirteenthLetter says:

            John’s point is fairly vital here, yeah. I’ve seen the memo that’s endlessly recirculated in favor of this argument, and it’s not exactly prescriptive.

            (It also would be amusing to visit Earth Prime, where Bush immediately picked up a phone and launched an invasion of Afghanistan to get Bin Laden in June of 2001, and compare his opponents’ reactions to his war policy in that universe and this one. Mind you, I’d prefer that universe, but I’m not exactly holding my breath waiting for Earth Prime Salon.com to have been totally on board with _that_ Afghan war.)

            That aside, the poll I saw was pretty much straight-up trutherism, not just a mild “he should have taken the issue of terrorism more seriously.” He knew the planes were coming and let it happen to something something neocon Halliburton oil whatever.

          • houseboatonstyx says:

            @ Thirteenth Letter
            That aside, the poll I saw was pretty much straight-up trutherism, not just a mild “he should have taken the issue of terrorism more seriously.” He knew the planes were coming and let it happen to something something neocon Halliburton oil whatever.

            What is your source for the details of this poll? If someone is claiming that 40-something percent of [some group of] Democrats were ‘truthers’, I want to see their definition of ‘truther’.

          • ThirteenthLetter says:

            @houseboatonstyx Here you go. Ironically, this wasn’t even the example I was thinking of… it turns out to be even worse. According to a 2006 poll:

            “How likely is it that people in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East?” the poll asked.

            A full 22.6% of Democrats said it was “very likely.” Another 28.2% called it “somewhat likely.”

            I’ll be frank here, I don’t think half of Republicans claiming to believe Obama was born in Kenya (or whatever the number is who do, I’m sure it’s high) is nearly as poisonous to political discourse as half of Democrats claiming to believe that Bush knowingly committed treason and aided in, or at least deliberately permitted, the murder of thousands of innocent Americans in order to start a war. But one’s mileage may vary, I suppose.

          • Frank McPike says:

            It’s worth noting that “people in the federal government” is very different from “George Bush.”

        • aesop hiedler says:

          To paraphrase Asimov: It was wrong for anti-Bush dems to demonize GWB. And it’s wrong for repubs to demonize Obama. But if you think the demonization of GWB is comparable to the demonization of Obama than you’re wronger than both.

          Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation
          The Great Destroyer: Barack Obama’s War on the Republic
          Gangster Government: Barack Obama and the New Washington Thugocracy
          The Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama Administration
          How Obama Embraces Islam’s Sharia Agenda
          Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama
          The Book on Obama : His Friends, His Lies & His Plans.
          Let Me Be Clear: Barack Obama’s War on Millenials
          ARMAGEDDON: The Battle to Stop Obama’s Third Term
          Obama’s Four Horsemen: The Disasters Released by Obama’s Reelection
          Trickle Down Tyranny: Crushing Obama’s Dream of the Socialist States of America
          Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies
          The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists
          Stealing America: What My Experience with Criminal Gangs Taught Me about Obama, Hillary, and the Democratic Party
          Obama’s Enemies List: How Barack Obama Intimidated America and Stole the Election
          The Communist
          The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America
          To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular Socialist Machine
          The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency
          Whiny Little Bitch: The Excuse Filled Presidency of Barack Obama.

      • aesop hiedler says:

        Newt’s GOPAC and the memo “Language as a Mechanism of Control”
        changed everything in American politics. It opened the pandora’s box of attack politics.

        The “GOPAC memo”, called “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control”, was written and distributed to members of the Republican Party by Gingrich in 1994. It contained a list of “contrasting words” and “optimistic positive governing words” that Gingrich recommended for use in describing Democrats and Republicans, respectively. For example, words to use against opponents include decay, failure (fail), collapse(ing), deeper, crisis, urgent(cy), destructive, destroy, sick, pathetic, lie, liberal, they/them, unionized bureaucracy, “compassion” is not enough, betray, consequences, limit(s), shallow, traitors, sensationalists; words to use in defining a candidate’s own campaign and vision included share, change, opportunity, legacy, challenge, control, truth, moral, courage, reform, prosperity, crusade, movement, children, family, debate, compete, active(ly), we/us/our, candid(ly), humane, pristine, provide.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOPAC

  25. onyomi says:

    Hypothetical: when you first got married, you did half the housework and made half the money, and your spouse did half the housework and made half the money. Gradually, your spouse has continually extracted various “compromises”: “I got fired, so I can only provide 30% of the income,” “I hurt my knee, so I can only do 40% of the housework,” and so on. Fast forward forty years and now you do 95% of the housework and provide 95% of the income. Your spouse starts trying to negotiate to get you to do 96% of the housework, but when you refuse, s/he says “what happened to you? You used to be so reasonable! You used to compromise! We used to be able to work together! Why have you become so doctrinaire that you won’t even consider a 1% increase now when you previously happily negotiated 5 and 10% increases all the time? Clearly you are the one now threatening to render this relationship dysfunctional.”

    If it isn’t obvious what I’m analogizing, I’m getting pretty tired of the “why did the Republicans go crazy all of a sudden?” talk. When evaluating how “radical” or “reasonable” one half of a debate is, don’t you have to take into account the previous interactions? Now if the people saying this were prefacing it with “the Republicans have gotten everything they wanted for the past 30 years and it’s still not enough!” which they sometimes attempt to argue (pretty unsuccessful imo, outside a few areas, like unions), but usually don’t bother with, then I can understand. But if you just beg the question the progressive agenda is good and say the Republicans are evil for not letting it happen as quickly as they used to… isn’t the problem with this obvious?

    Although I’m interested if anyone cares to argue that the past 100 years haven’t, on the whole, been a total victory for progressivism and defeat for conservatism (of course, it depends on the specific time frame and specific issue: if, the 80s and airline regulation then yeah, liberal defeat), I’m also just saying, isn’t it kind of ironic that the party that has mostly gotten its way is the one accusing the other of being stubborn?

    I’m fully aware that I’m partisan and biased here, but I don’t think I’m wrong in seeing an asymmetry here, at least, on the rhetorical front?

    • dndnrsn says:

      There is a rhetorical asymmetry, but it’s not particularly ironic that they’d be accused of being stubborn: the one advancing is never stubborn, it’s the one who’s defending who is.

      • Jill says:

        Ironic? Hardly? A party that won’t even give a hearing to the president’s SCOTUS nomination, because the pres is from a different party? That’s pretty objectively stubborn, I’d say.

        Also, the dozens of votes in Congress to repeal, weaken, delay, de-fund etc. ObamaCare seem pretty stubborn to me.

        And having goals like “to make Obama a one term president” seem pretty stubbornly obstructive, as opposed to constructive, goals.

        • Cerebral Paul Z. says:

          Keeping a President of the opposite party from being re-elected is a pretty unusual goal for a party to have, come to think of it.

        • gbdub says:

          Why is it “stubborn” or “obstructionist” to vote against the president’s policies, if you oppose them? Especially if your constituents also oppose them? Isn’t that kind of the whole point of having a Congressional vote in the first place?

          The “obstructionist!” cries were always annoying and self serving. We don’t have a dictatorship. If Congress opposes a President’s agenda they are well within their rights to vote against it. That’s how it’s supposed to work! Isn’t Obama just as “stubborn” for continually vetoing the Republican repeals of Obamacare?

          I think the refusal to hold confirmation hearings was a poor tactical move by the GOP, but again they are well within their rights to do it. They are certainly in well-charted waters if they vote to reject a nominee. It happens all the time, and both parties do it. That’s why there’s a vote.

          It’s supposed to be “checks and balances”, not “rubberstamp what the President wants”.

          • Frank McPike says:

            Rejecting a Supreme Court nominee has only happened four times in the last century. Certainly it is well within the senate’s right to do so, but Supreme Court appointments conventionally have been a matter where the senate deferred to the president. It’s not clear to me that the breakdown of that convention has resulted in better nominees.

          • Gbdub says:

            That may be a fair criticism (although rejections / no votes on lower appointments are reasonably common, and I’m not sure how often an appointment has come up when a) the opposing party holds the Senate and b) the appointee is one who would shift the “balance” of the court in a significant way), but it doesn’t support “You’re not doing your job!” as a valid critique.

            Anyway the “obstructionist” thing bothers me more. It’s like someone showing up to my house and demanding $100 and then criticizing me for failing to “compromise” and give them $50.

          • ThirteenthLetter says:

            “Certainly it is well within the senate’s right to do so, but Supreme Court appointments conventionally have been a matter where the senate deferred to the president.”

            Have you informed Justice Bork and Justice Estrada about this?

          • Frank McPike says:

            You did read the surrounding sentences, correct? What did you think those were referring to?
            (In any event, they certainly weren’t referring to Miguel Estrada, who was never a Supreme Court nominee.)

          • gbdub says:

            Making the cut right at the SCOTUS is sort of cherry picking though – the D.C. Circuit is high profile and a lot of later SC picks come from there. And Estrada was denied a confirmation vote via a filibuster of the minority party – sitting on Obama’s current nominee doesn’t strike me as a difference in kind.

          • Frank McPike says:

            I don’t see how I’m cherry-picking: the claim I made is simply that Supreme Court appointments have historically been a matter where the senate deferred to the president. That’s true. It is also true that other federal judiciary appointments (along with many other sorts of federal appointments) are and have been treated differently, but that’s irrelevant to what I noted. There are other senate practices that apply to appellate and district court nominees that aren’t applied to Supreme Court nominees (senatorial courtesy and blue-slipping, for example). If the distinction seems arbitrary to you, then fine, but it’s a longstanding distinction that’s pretty clear to the actors involved.

            I’ll note, too, that there’s a very big difference in kind between “blocking a (perceived) extreme nominee in order to force the president to put forward a more moderate nominee” (which is what happened in Estrada’s case, and Bork’s) and “blocking any appointment in order to give the nomination to the next president.”

            Now, to be clear, I think both are bad. The only Supreme Court nominee in recent memory that would actually have merited being voted down was Harriet Miers, and that wasn’t exactly a partisan issue. But the breakdown of the previous norm has been a bad thing, and this pushes it much further along.

          • “But the breakdown of the previous norm has been a bad thing”

            John Lott, in a recent book, argues that the breakdown is a result of the increased role of government in general and the courts in particular, which makes the conflict over judicial appointments a higher stakes game.

            In this particular case, you are leaving out one relevant feature–that Obama is near the end of his term. I haven’t followed the argument closely, but I thought the Democrats had resisted a judicial appointment under similar circumstances in the not very distant past.

          • Frank McPike says:

            I’m not sure if it’s a higher stakes game now than it was during the New Deal era, or the Civil Rights era (probably no justice had a more immediate effect on the Court than Earl Warren and he was approved unanimously). Certainly it’s not clear to me that it is.

            On reflection, there are some weird contingencies in the current environment that probably weren’t present before. For example, one very immediate impact of Justice Scalia’s death was essentially reviving the Paris Agreement, and it’s not clear that any judicial appointment has had such immediate diplomatic implications before. There’s an argument to be made that the effect of a realignment on the Court will have new and different sorts of impacts than in previous years. Yet the popular debates about the Court–that seem to creating the incentives that drive the conflict–center on the Court’s impact on big, hot-button social issues. And I’m not sure if abortion and gun control are more hot-button and controversial than civil rights were.

            I’m not sure who you’re referring to. An appellate court appointment, perhaps? I can’t think of any Supreme Court appointment that would fit. (The Bork fight was close to the end of Reagan’s second term–a year and a half, maybe–but Kennedy was still confirmed before Reagan’s term ended.) I’m certainly not arguing that the erosion of the norm wasn’t contributed to by both sides–it was, and the Democrats started it with Bork–only that this most recent fight goes further than before and that’s not a good thing.

          • TheWorst says:

            @ Frank McPike

            For what it’s worth, I’d call “a year and a half left to go, of a four-year term” pretty definitively the middle of the term.

            I can’t think of any point in living memory when the Democrats pushed the (novel) constitutional theory that the President only gets to nominate justices during a certain phase of his term.

          • Salem says:

            Well, Joe Biden said in 1992 that “Senate consideration of a nominee under these circumstances [i.e. in an election year] is not fair to the president, the nominee or to the Senate itself.” But no doubt that won’t count because reasons.

            Look, no-one thinks that the President can only nominate justices in a certain period. Obama is free to nominate who he likes, and he has nominated Merrick Garland. But the Senate doesn’t have to confirm Obama’s nominations, and they can decline to do so in an election year – or any year, for that matter.

          • Anonymous says:

            Salem’s parenthetical (i.e. in an election year) is characteristically dishonest.

            Biden speech was on June 25, and referred to a hypothetical situation where a justice died or resigned after that including several weeks after that. Scalia died about four and a half months earlier in the year. On top of that Biden suggested that Bush should wait until after the elections, or if he didn’t that the Senate should hold hearings after the election, not after the next President was inaugurated.

          • Salem says:

            So by “dishonest,” you mean “true, but let’s frantically change the subject.”

            Yes, Biden was speaking a whole month closer to the election than we are right now. Feel free to argue that it’s a crucial difference, and I’ll feel free to laugh in your face.

            You are right that Biden said that they might consider any nominee after the elections but before the inauguration, and indeed McConnell has said that they might consider Obama’s nominee after the election but before the inauguration. They are following the Biden Rule to a tee.

            By the way, Biden also said that the President shouldn’t even make a nomination until after the election, a suggestion which Obama has flagrantly violated. It makes me think that perhaps McConnell should feel free to make further alterations to the Biden Rule.

          • Anonymous says:

            Biden was speaking about an opening which hadn’t occurred yet. The time of year as compared to now is completely irrelevant (dishonestly so). What matters is the relationship to the vacancy, which was back in February.

            And McConnell has rejected post-election hearings. http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-mcconnell-supreme-court-20160320-story.html

            Maybe these lies play well on redstate.com, I’d try there.

          • Salem says:

            McConnell has certainly said that they’ll let the next President decide, but he’s also said that they might revisit it after the election. Presumably he wants an out in case the incoming President’s nominee looks worse. Personally, I hope they never confirm any Democrat nominee for any office whatsoever, but it’s not up to me.

            You have yet to identify what I said that was dishonest, because you can’t. Biden’s full speech is on the Internet for anyone to read, no-one needs to believe me, they can check it out themselves. He said (paraphrasing – feel free to accuse me of more dishonesty, troll) that if a Vacancy occurs at that point, President shouldn’t nominate and the Senate shouldn’t consider the nominee if he does. Exactly the proposition that no Democrat had proposed in living memory, supposedly! Yes, that was slightly closer to the election, as I have pointed out. So?

            The problem is that you don’t even care about truth. You call me a liar for accurately quoting Biden’s words. And it is typical of you.

      • dndnrsn says:

        I didn’t say it was ironic, and I didn’t say the use of “stubborn” was incorrect.

        • Jill says:

          Not every comment I make is a disagreement with a previous commenter. Is that the protocol here on this board, that it needs to be?

          • dndnrsn says:

            You were responding to my quote, though – which gave me the impression that you were disagreeing with me, rather than with the comment one above me in the nesting structure.

          • Overestimating the amount of disagreement is a fairly common mistake, perhaps especially in geeky environments where people disagree to be polite.

            I haven’t seen a general protocol for this. I just make guesses about likely mistakes, and try to fend them off. If someone fails to notice my very clear efforts to prevent the mistake they just made, I get to be Very Firm with them.

            Sidetrack: the area where I find fending off to be most valuable is advice. People are going to give advice. I have something of the compulsion myself.

            So I *start* by asking people to be clear about how much background they have for the advice they’re giving. Personal experience? Close second-hand knowledge? It just seems plausible? I suppose I could ask about science, but I tend to not trust that. (Possibly I should recalibrate a little on that. Possibly.

            You might be amazed at how little advice I get when I start that way.

          • Jill says:

            So, dndnrsn, do most comments here express disagreement then, with the comment replied to?

            I see what you mean though. I should have “nested” it differently, hitting the reply below that higher up comment that you had replied to.

          • dndnrsn says:

            Not necessarily disagreement. Your comment was saying it wasn’t ironic, and the GOP is stubborn, but in response to my comment. Which made me think maybe there was some confusion (it’s really easy to reply to the wrong comment, and I’m not too quick on the uptake today either).

    • Jill says:

      100 years, yes. Recently though, economic inequality has risen a lot, we are having to go back and work toward birth control rights, which we thought was already done. And the GOP controls both Houses of Congress, most state legislatures, most state governorships, and until Scalia died also SCOTUS. We are not getting ANY of the things we would be pursuing if we controlled ANY of those bodies. So on a smaller and more recent time frame, liberals have only the presidency. So we get only those things that the president can do without any cooperation from Congress, through executive order. The president can’t even get a hearing for his SCOTUS nominee.

      And now we have 2 nominees of the major parties– the Right Wing GOP, and the party that’s nominating Clinton– who is about where Nixon used to be, politically. So almost everyone and almost everything is Right Wing today. And we have been immersed in Right Wing propaganda for decades now, including constant Obama bashing and Hillary bashing. The “most trusted news source” in the country is Fox News, the effect of which is to make people ignorant.

      STUDY: Watching Only Fox News Makes You Less Informed Than Watching No News At All
      http://www.businessinsider.com/study-watching-fox-news-makes-you-less-informed-than-watching-no-news-at-all-2012-5

      I don’t see how you can see any recent progressive victory in this.

      Re: propaganda, here is just one of zillions of examples, Right Wing militaristic war propaganda that is happening right under our noses, with most folks unaware that it is happening.

      The military paid pro sports teams $10.4 million for patriotic displays, troop tributes

      http://www.sbnation.com/2015/11/4/9670302/nfl-paid-patriotism-troops-mcain-flake-report-million

      Liberals have had a few successes in social issues, that don’t cost greedy, polluting or fraud perpetrating corporations any money– like gay marriage. Corporation owners don’t mind at all, if you’re gay– as long as it’s okay with you to have earthquakes, a polluted water supply, polluted air, and flames coming out of your water tap due to fracking in your neighborhood. And as long as you don’t mind having your job outsourced or losing it to an H1-B Visa worker etc.

      • Randy M says:

        Can anyone else confirm that fracking causes earthquakes?

        • Nornagest says:

          The search term is “induced seismicity“. The case for an increased risk of earthquakes seems solid, especially for injection of waste fluid rather than fracking per se, but none have been very strong or damaging as yet — the strongest anthropogenic earthquakes are instead associated with geothermal projects, though the basic mechanics of the process are the same either way. And even there we’re normally talking “might wake you up in the middle of the night” strong, not “knock your house down” strong.

          • Randy M says:

            How would these events be related to natural earthquakes? My expectation is that it would be unrelated to tectonic pressures, but I could see hypothesis that it would relieve it, perhaps prematurely triggering natural earthquakes without actually increasing the number of event.

          • Nornagest says:

            I’m not an expert, but my unexpert understanding of the process goes something like this: even in geologically uneventful areas rock normally has some internal stresses, kept in a long-term stable state because nothing particularly interesting is happening down there. Fracturing the rock has a chance to relieve those stresses, and injecting large amounts of fluid tends to accelerate the process by e.g. reducing friction along bedding planes. That almost by definition means moving rock, which means an earthquake. Usually it’ll be a small one, the kind nothing except a seismometer notices, but occasionally you get unlucky and trigger a bigger shift. This is sorta natural, in that the stress was there already, but the rock could have gone for millions of years without doing anything if you hadn’t gone and squirted water into it.

            My guess re: the bigger earthquakes around geothermal sites is that geothermal areas are geologically active almost by definition, so they’re more likely to have unrelieved stress down there. Petroleum-bearing rock is usually less active; the Dakotas for example are smack in the middle of the North American plate. (Usually; the SoCal oil fields are close to the San Andreas fault, to name one.)

      • The original Mr. X says:

        What do you mean by “birth control rights”, the HHS mandate? Because if so, the fact that you consider free condoms to be a “right” says quite a lot about which side has got the upper hand.

        • Jill says:

          I’m talking about the widespread closing of women’s clinics in Red States, forced by laws mandating that their structures and practices meet all kinds of specific arbitrary rules.

          • keranih says:

            the widespread closing of women’s clinics in Red States, forced by laws mandating that their structures and practices meet all kinds of specific arbitrary rules.

            This sort of statement seems to imply that in Blue States, abortion clinics are either stable or increasing in numbers.

          • Randy M says:

            And after all those years of being like other health care practices, entirely unregulated in structure and practice.

          • John Schilling says:

            Is “women’s clinics” a euphemism for “abortion clinics” here, or are institutions which provide other forms of birth control but not abortion being shut down by Red State laws?

            I think some of the laws that have been used to shut down abortion clinics have been a bit dishonest at least in their presentation, but if that’s all that’s going on, casting it as a general attack on birth control is similarly dishonest.

          • houseboatonstyx says:

            @ keranih
            This sort of statement seems to imply that in Blue States, abortion clinics are either stable or increasing in numbers.

            Not necessarily. It references some laws recently proposed in some Red States. It neither says nor implies anything about Blue States.

      • Gbdub says:

        The Dems controlled both houses of Congress until 2010. 6 years ago is ancient history now?

    • brad says:

      Although I’m interested if anyone cares to argue that the past 100 years haven’t, on the whole, been a total victory for progressivism and defeat for conservatism

      I want to fight the question. The idea that there are these two teams and they’ve been fighting over the same ground since time immoral, let’s see who’s been winning for the last century, isn’t a useful enough model to be worth arguing about.

      The hundred year ago conservatives and progressives are long dead. The issues they cared about are issues that the overwhelming majority of people today don’t care about. Notwithstanding some unusual online conservatives, most aren’t trying to turn back the clock on e.g. women voting, so that’s not a concession that the conservatives of today can point to and say “look we gave you that one”.

      • dndnrsn says:

        What is the right timeframe to consider the question when asking “which side is winning”? Because depending on the timeframe you set, it changes the answer a lot.

        • brad says:

          I don’t know exactly. I’m not sure which “side” is “winning” is a good question to begin with. It seems like trying to use static tools in an inherently dynamic setting.

          • dndnrsn says:

            Additionally, there are many reasons a political objective can fail, of which political opposition is only one.

            If, for instance, one takes the position that social programs intended to reduce poverty have not effectively reduced poverty – is that because of political opposition? Were the programs badly designed? Was the objective impossible in the first place?

      • suntzuanime says:

        Yes, the strategy is that every time you win you make dissent unthinkable, and then you get to complain about how your opponents refuse to grant concessions, because they wouldn’t dare to ask to turn back any of the concessions you’ve actually granted. Like with an emotional abuser, none of the concessions you grant actually count, because they were all for your own good anyway.

        • Walter says:

          I don’t think the left frames the right’s concessions as being for the right’s own good. Rather, they are pitched as for the greater good, the good of all.

        • onyomi says:

          Example: when these were first proposed, it was a reasonable, right-leaning position to oppose the income tax, social security, and medicare.

          Today, anyone suggesting abolishing the income tax, social security, or medicare outright, as opposed to say, slightly lowering the top marginal rate or increasing the retirement age, would be viewed as so radically right-wing as to not even be on the political map, much less within the Overton Window. At the very most you could suggest replacing these things with something else, say a federal sales tax or a privatized national retirement savings plan, though even those would be treated about as seriously as Ron Paul.

          Therefore, when the GOP gets flack for saying “no income tax increase ever” they strike me as being in the position of the person who has already compromised from doing 50% of the chores to doing 95% of the chores. Refusing to consider a move from 95 to 96% in such a case may be stubborn, but it’s also not unreasonable (and the Democrats’ rhetoric right now is not just that they’re stubborn, but unreasonable).

          • Cerebral Paul Z. says:

            That’s kind of the problem, though, isn’t it? Portraying the 100-year period as one long defeat for conservatism implies a continuity of belief on the part of conservatives which doesn’t actually exist. In terms of your allegory, we’re the husband who grudgingly agreed to do more than his fair share of the cooking– only to discover in the process that he genuinely enjoys cooking.

          • dndnrsn says:

            If there’s a lack of continuity, isn’t it the result of defeats – of positions they previously held being pushed out of the Overton Window?

            A lot of mainstream conservatism is kind of incoherent for this reason – positions are based on grounds that few hold any more, or are so compromised that they don’t hold together logically.

          • The original Mr. X says:

            Or just look at the British welfare state. When it was first established it was intended to keep people literally just above starvation level, and even this was viewed as quite radical by a lot of people at the time. Then a few years ago the government tried to freeze the budgets of a few departments, and were widely castigated for imposing “savage austerity” and abandoning the poor to die.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            There are precious few Republican voters who actually oppose the Medicare and Social Security that they receive or are about to receive. Even the ones who are willing to say they want to change these programs for younger people couch it not in terms of “elimination” but “privatization”. In other words, they have given up on the idea that these programs are undesirable and merely want them to be “better”.

            Yes, you will be able to point to a few intellectuals who still object to these programs outright, but not many. So, how can you score this as a concession from the conservative side?

            And furthermore, what kind of conservatives are we talking about? Define them. Social? Fiscal? If you were to reach back to 1950 or 1850 or 1750, how many of the tenants of that group would you still be willing to fight for now, or are you picking and choosing?

            Because the conservatives, or at least some people that it is reasonable to refer to as conservative, of 1750 supported monarchy as self obviously just and right. Is it a sop to the left of today that they do not argue for monarchy? Or is it a case of the left being correct?

          • dndnrsn says:

            @HeelBearCub:

            Amusingly, I know actual monarchists … and they wouldn’t want to go back to the 1900 status quo.

          • onyomi says:

            “There are precious few Republican voters who actually oppose the Medicare and Social Security that they receive or are about to receive.”

            Therefore, from a liberal perspective, Republicans of today should be considered much more moderate and reasonable than the Republicans of the past, who genuinely opposed these liberal programs, as opposed to just wanting to tweak them.

            Yet the rhetoric right now is that today’s Republicans are almost uniquely, or, at least, unusually radical as compared to some theoretical “reasonable” Republicans of the past.

            If one wants to describe everyone who disagrees with one as “unreasonable” because wrong, then that makes sense. I just don’t think it makes sense to describe today’s Republicans as unusually unreasonable from a liberal perspective, given that they have largely already accepted most of the left’s basic premises and favorite programs, arguing only in favor of tweaking them slightly. They may be seemingly less open to compromise than in the past, but that’s starting from a position of already having accepted 90% of the other side’s ideas.

          • Chalid says:

            “We were wrong before, so you should listen to us now.”

          • onyomi says:

            “We were wrong before, so you should listen to us now.”

            That is a big, fundamental problem with the GOP of the past century. They don’t actually offer an alternative vision, they only try to stop us following the progressive vision quite so quickly.

            It’s hard to blame them, though: the left has succeeded in drawing an Overton Window wherein, for most issues, the only options are “move left quickly and move left slowly.”

          • dndnrsn says:

            @onyomi:

            Is it really all down to the left playing the game better? There reallyare things where, in my opinion at least, the right really was on the wrong side.

          • onyomi says:

            @dndnrsn

            I mean, sure, I think the left was right on some issues, like, “if you’re going to have a democracy (which I don’t want, by the way) there’s no excuse to prevent women and black people from voting.” But I don’t think they’ve been right enough that we could describe the past 100 years as a move toward the “truth” or “objectively better policies” winning because they were the truth and/or objectively better. I think liberalism, progressivism, etc. have been winning, not “the truth.” I wouldn’t say it’s a coincidence that the truth and better policies have sometimes won out, but I wouldn’t say it’s the driving force, either.

            With a few major exceptions like the aforementioned civil rights victories, I think the 20th century was mostly a disaster, politically speaking. Almost everything good about it was the result of technology and private sector innovation, which, in many ways, actually decelerated relative to the 19th c.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @onyomi:
            You are conflating “Republican” and “conservative”. Conservatives may be more or less moderate, more or less willing to negotiate and compromise, etc. A conservative like Bill Buckley is quite different than Barry Goldwater.

            But the Republican party used to be a liberal party. It has been bleeding away first its liberals and then its moderates. The Republican party of today is not nearly as liberal in total composition as that of 1950, and definitely not the one of 1850.

            In addition, on a completely separate access, call it pragmatism vs. purity, the Republican has become decidedly less and less and less pragmatic.

            Let’s take the issues of taxes and deficit. Reagan was pragmatic, he lowered taxes, and when that did not lower the deficit, he agreed to increase them (somewhat) again. This is very far from the dogmatism that taxes should only go in one direction.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @onyomi:

            With a few major exceptions like the aforementioned civil rights victories, I think the 20th century was mostly a disaster, politically speaking.

            As compared to when?

          • sweeneyrod says:

            @dndnrsn

            There are also issues where (some of) the left were clearly on the wrong side — the presence of NAMBLA in the Overton window springs to mind.

          • Cerebral Paul Z. says:

            If there’s a lack of continuity, isn’t it the result of defeats – of positions they previously held being pushed out of the Overton Window?

            It does make more sense if you look at the the overall trend as the summation of a series of piecewise defeats for whatever conservatives believe at any given moment, even if there’s no master conservative philosophy that gets defeated over the entire span. The whole thing starts to look like a sort of Greek Ship Paradox– with [those guys we’re not supposed to talk about] maybe playing the part of the wiseacres who warehoused each conservative plank as it was removed, and at the end assembled them all into a new ship.

            Still, it feels peculiar, from the standpoint of a present-day conservative, to think of the very process by which present-day conservatives came to believe the things present-day conservatives believe as a defeat for conservatism.

          • onyomi says:

            “As compared to when?”

            The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?

            Not that they were better than the 20th century, of course, but I’d say the degree to which the 18th century was better than the 17th century and the degree to which the 19th century was better than the 18th century were even more dramatic than the degree to which the 20th century was better than the 19th century.

            This suggest to me that the 18th and 19th centuries were more “on the right track” in terms of direction, even if obviously worse than the 20th c. in absolute terms.

          • onyomi says:

            Re. conflating conservatives and Republicans: okay, let’s do that, since everybody seems to do it now. By which I mean, Republican practically=conservative in the public imagination if not reality today, so when people complain about “those darn Republicans getting so radical and obstructionist lately,” to my ears it sounds no different from saying “those darn conservatives acting all conservative lately!”

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @onyomi:
            Fair enough, but it isn’t really the same complaint. The ideological sorting which has occurred has made governing, the everyday drab work of doing what needs to be done, much harder to do. And it renders both parties, but more so the Republicans, beholden to the those most likely to turn out in primaries, which tend to be the most ideologically motivated. That mean that ideological sorting really has made the parties more radical, even if “conservatives” aren’t more radical than they used to be.

            To use a ridiculous example, if somehow the Republican Party was taken over by Westboro Baptist believers and everyone else left the party, the Republicans would more extreme than they had been and the Westboro Baptists wouldn’t be anymore extreme than they were before. Both would be true, even though the two had become synonymous.

          • onyomi says:

            My point is that the views of the median Republican voter and office holder today are, in an absolute sense, far to the left, on both economic and social views, of the median Republican voter or office holder fifty years ago, so it seems strange to claim that the Republican party has recently been taken over by right-wing radicals. This only makes sense if we concede that it is the right wing of a group which, in an absolute sense, is far to the left of where it was, historically.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @onyomi:
            Re:20th century

            It seems like you were being hyperbolic when you described the 20th century as a disaster (politically)?

            I mean, assuming the assertion that the 20th century did not make us much progress (politically) as the 18th and 19th, Occam would suggest we posit diminishing returns, higher hanging fruit, etc. to explain the relative slower rate of progress.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @onyomi:
            I don’t think that is really true, as regards the median Republican voter of 1966 vs. today. Nixon, after all, is the one who passed Medicare.

            You are ignoring the impact of ideological sorting, I believe.

          • onyomi says:

            I’m not being hyperbolic in describing the 20th c. as a disaster, politically speaking. For the US it’s seen the development and subsequent acceptance of the federal income tax, major welfare programs, the neverending warfare state, the surveillance state…

            A bright point, I guess, is the final recognition of the failure of communism, though it was replaced by “socialism light” in most of the developed world and it took way too long for, e. g., the USSR to throw in the towel (most of the 20th c.; ergo, for Russians and Chinese, a pretty darn big proportion of world population 20th c.=huge disaster; for us, just manageable disaster?).

            The fact that communism was tried for the first and only time on a really big scale during the 20th c. alone should make it a “political disaster,” really…

          • ThirteenthLetter says:

            @HeelBearCub: “Nixon, after all, is the one who passed Medicare.”

            This is a great example of the “why won’t you compromise on doing 96% of the chores?” argument.

            Yes, Nixon passed Medicare. In order to not be defined as stubborn obstructionists, is it enough for the GOP to not oppose keeping Medicare? (Which is currently the case. In fact, last time they were in power they passed a huge expansion of it.) Or are they obliged to support ever-larger socialized medicine programs until the end of time?

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @ThirteenthLeeter:
            First off, I mangled some facts. Nixon passed a Medicare expansion to those under 65 who were disabled.

            And then he ran for re-election on a platform of universal national healthcare, getting the endorsement of the AFL-CIO.

            He wasn’t forced to sign the Medicare expansion into law, he wanted to.

            Here is an address he sent to congress on comprehensive health insurance.

          • brad says:

            @onyomi
            I don’t think you’ve answered the objection that “right … in an absolute sense” when discussing generations worth of time isn’t a useful, or even coherent, notion.

            Reificiation and personification can be useful tools, but they can also lead astray.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @onyomi:

            the 20th century was better than the 19th century.

            I’m not being hyperbolic in describing the 20th c. as a disaster, politically speaking.

            I’m trying to square those two statements, and I am apparently missing whatever it is that you mean. What era would you like to go back to, from a political perspective?

          • null says:

            What I think onyomi is saying is that the improved technology of the 20th century makes up for bad politics and then some. Presumably, he would like to keep this while returning to a government something like 19th century US government.

          • onyomi says:

            I mean, the 20th c. was a nicer time to live in (in the US, at least, Russia, maybe not so much) than the 19th c., but I think the 19th c. saw more rapid technological and economic progress, and I think the politics of the 20th c. were worse.

            If we could have the federal government today be the size it was during the van Buren administration, for example, I think that would be a big improvement.

            Re. relative improvement: consider that in 1800 Americans rode horses (if they could afford one), used outhouses and wells, burned whale oil, and relied on the postal service for communication. By 1900 Americans had rapidly expanding access to: indoor plumbing with clean water, electricity, cars, telephones…

            What do we have now that we didn’t have in 1916? I mean, sure, there are some important breakthroughs: mostly computers and better antibiotics and vaccines, but the relative improvement between 1916 and 2016 seems less to me than that between 1816 and 1916.

          • Nornagest says:

            In a word, logistics. Rural areas in 1916 looked pretty much like they did in 1816; rural areas in 2016 look completely different. This is mostly due to the enormous logistical work needed to extend the advances of the 19th century out from the urban centers, along with a few from the 20th (consumer radio, TV, radar, modern medicine, computers). Big chunks of the rural West didn’t have electricity until the Sixties.

            The flashy 21st-century version of this is Amazon Prime, but it gets a lot less flashy and more practical.

            Effectively connecting those urban centers shouldn’t be underestimated, either. Cities in 1916 were islands connected by a sparse network of rail lines; going anywhere off the network took days or weeks of travel.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @Nornagest:
            …and a huge driver of those logistical improvements is government/politics. Rural electrification, communication, highways and interstates, etc.

          • Nornagest says:

            Nah, I wasn’t going for “lol roads”.

            In our history, some of that is certainly linked to politics. Since it involves large-scale coordination, too, you could plausibly argue that it couldn’t have gotten done without politics of some kind. But it’s difficult to use that history to prove the necessity of politics of a particular kind, and especially of government initiatives similar to ours. There are certainly cases where large logistical systems have been bootstrapped without significant government investment.

          • Samuel Skinner says:

            “(in the US, at least, Russia, maybe not so much)”

            That isn’t entirely clear. Serfdom wasn’t abolished until 1862. And conscription…
            The term of service in the 18th century was for life. In 1793 it was reduced to 25 years. In 1834 it was reduced to 20 years plus 5 years in reserve and in 1855 to 12 years plus 3 years of reserve.

            On January 1, 1874…reduced for the land army to 6 years followed by 9 years in the reserve.”

            And while Russia didn’t have world war 2 or the civil war, it did have plenty of horrible minor wars.

          • Agronomous says:

            @ HeelBearCub :

            There are precious few Republican voters who actually oppose the Medicare and Social Security that they receive or are about to receive.

            That’s because they’ve been forced to “pay into” those programs their entire working lives. This was a deliberate ploy by FDR, repeated by LBJ: make it seem like voters are building up equity in a program, so as to build up support for it and entrench it politically.

            It reminds me of a Borges story* about a wheel-shaped prison almost entirely contained in a mountain. For the first several years of your sentence, you’re turning the wheel to put yourself further into the mountain; for the last several years, you’re pulling yourself out of the mountain. Everyone else is along for the ride (except they’re pulling, too).

            On another note: the Republican Party only dates back to 1854, not 1850.

            (* Edit: The story is “Manuscript Found in a Police State” by Brian Aldiss; in my defense: come on! Totally a Borgesian idea! Plus, I read it in a volume that ended with the actual Borges’s “The Garden of Forking Paths”.)

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @Argonomous:
            The fact that the Republican Party only goes back to 1850 is essentially irrelevant. If you want to argue that the Republican Party of 1850 was the conservative party in the US, well, I think you won’t have much luck.

            Edit: Nevermind, I see the comment you are pointing at. I don’t think I was implying anything about exact dates, but the you are correct, I indicated an impossible year for the existence of the party.

            Edit2: As to the point about paying into the system of Social Security and Medicare, that has much less to do with some diabolical scheme and far more to do with a) being able to start a program at all, and b) the fact that current programs will always depend on current GDP, regardless of how me might try and convince ourselves otherwise.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @Nornagest:
            Given that onyomi (IIRC) is an anarcho-libertarian, I think evidence of any kind of government being required is relevant.

          • onyomi says:

            “I don’t think you’ve answered the objection that “right … in an absolute sense” when discussing generations worth of time isn’t a useful, or even coherent, notion.”

            I can’t really respond to the objection since I don’t understand why it wouldn’t be useful or coherent.

            I’m interested here in actual stances on actual policies, not in the political coalitions who held them at various times. I understand that what it meant to be a Republican has changed over time, as have which issues are considered “left” or “right wing.” The fact that the Republicans freed the slaves and were, at one point, the “big, centralist government” party, for example, is not relevant to my point. Today, the Democrats are the “big, centralist government+civil rights+socially liberal” party.

            My point is: there are positions today associated strongly with conservatives and the Republican party: lower taxes, less social welfare programs, stronger military, “traditional” values. The very strong implication of all the “Republicans have gotten so radical” talk is that today’s Republicans hold these stereotypically “Republican” views more strongly, radically, insistently than they once had done. But they don’t. It is now considered a fairly strong right-wing idea just to abolish Obamacare, a program which didn’t even exist until several years ago. And to abolish say, the income tax, would be seen as far, far right.

            It doesn’t matter to me who, exactly was or was not in favor of the income tax back in 1913. My point is that on the issues now stereotypically viewed as “right,” the Overton Window has, by and large, shifted very far to the left. It is only against this shift, then, that we can define today’s conservatives as “radical.” Historically, they are not.

            Note: I would also think it unfair if Hillary Clinton were described as “radically” left wing. Even though she supports almost all the stuff put in by FDR and LBJ (whom I’d consider pretty far-left as American presidents go), she doesn’t indicate a desire to move strongly left of that, and, of course, there are certain kinds of left wing radicalism which are largely extinct now outside of Occupy Wall St protests.

            But few people on the right complain that the Democrats have lately become so radical, so I think there is an asymmetry.

          • dndnrsn says:

            @onyomi:

            Your reply brings up something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’ve created a new post.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            But few people on the right complain that the Democrats have lately become so radical, so I think there is an asymmetry.

            I don’t think you have been paying attention to the rhetoric coming from the right about Obama for the last 8 years.

            Unless you are saying that Republicans/conservatives have always accused Democrats/liberals of being anti-American and secretly desiring the downfall of America. Which, I supposed might be considered correct from a certain viewpoint, but doesn’t do your argument many favors.

          • brad says:

            The problem from my perspective is that you are framing your argument as if it were timeless, but it isn’t. It’s just that instead of being focused on the political lifetime of most of us that are around being alive today, you’d rather look through the lens of the late 18th / early 19th century. Which is fine I guess, but it isn’t any more objective than the other way.

            To see what I mean, imagine if instead of Martin Van Buren I started talking about the reign of Henry VII or Julius Caesar and where our conservatives today fall along the left-right axis in an absolute sense as compared to them. We can say that everyone today is a radical leftist because they don’t think it is a good idea to crucify people for wearing purple. We could say it, and in some weird sense it might be true, but it wouldn’t be a useful frame to look at anything or draw conclusions from.

          • onyomi says:

            “You’d rather look through the lens of the late 18th / early 19th century.”

            Yes, I am saying some comparison to the broad scope of American history may be valuable, but what I’m arguing doesn’t require we go back that far. Income tax, social security, medicare, etc. were all enacted during the 20th c. At the time of their passage, it was within the Overton Window to oppose these things outright. Now it isn’t. Hence, shift left, rendering people with objectively more leftwing stances in an absolute sense “radical” from the perspective of today’s leftists.

            You might say, “of course it was reasonable to argue against something before it got passed.” Exactly. This is where those in favor of more government have a huge advantage. It doesn’t take long for the new beneficiaries of any given program to cause repeal to become unthinkable.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @onyomi:
            But if “it” is outside the Overton Window, and not being opposed by the conservatives of today, then the comments of unreasonableness aren’t about “it”, are they?

            On the subject of taxes, for example, I find it unreasonable to state that one’s positions are: a) the top marginal income tax rate should be reduced greatly b) current SS, Medicare and/or Military spending should be maintained or expanded c)the current deficit is a moral and existential crisis for the U.S.

            So my finding the current Republican position unreasonable has much more to do with the positions that they actually hold today, which can be quite incoherent.

          • Stefan Drinic says:

            This comment thread over here reinforced my sort-of pet theory that a lot of the flak some sorts of leftism receives here is because we have a group of people who get exposed to annoying college/academia sorts a disproportional amount. 19th century Russians are people you’d consider better off than 20th century ones? Really? I am no communist, no communist sympathiser, or someone who wants anything to do with that system of thought and government within our society, but writing 20th century Russians off as worse than their ancestors is a very grave mistake, and to me at least comes across as being overly focused on people you dislike in the here and now.

          • LHN says:

            19th century Russia was pretty miserable, but Stalin’s terror plus World War II is a pretty hard comparison to beat. Similarly, it at least looks as if WWI killed an order of magnitude more Russians than the Napoleonic wars.

            That said, it’s certainly at least possible that, e.g., Russians from the latter half of the twentieth century were overall better off than Russians from the latter half of the 19th.

          • Stefan Drinic says:

            British deaths in WW2 were an order of magnitude higher than they were in the Napoleonic wars, too. This still is insufficient reason for me to conclude that the Brits must have been much worse off in the twentieth rather than in the nineteenth century.

            One of the reasons totalitarian regimes were and are such terrible things is because they can be. Caligula may have gotten many people killed, but the technology of his day meant that functionally he couldn’t; 19th century Russian Czars killed less of their own people than their communist successors did, but we’re talking about people without radios or telephones or (for the most part) telegraphs.

            (Also, WW2? Really? Are we blaming the Russians for that now? From a policy/governmental point of view, I don’t see anything that could’ve been done to avert it from the Russian side.)

            Additionally, Soviet Russians were almost ludicrously overjoyed with their lot for some time well into the twentieth century. It is hard to read past propaganda, but by many accounts patriotic fervor was very high from the twenties all the way onwards into the late sixties or so. For their many, many faults, the Communists managed what the Czars never did, and industrialised their country at rates up into the three-digit percentages. Having a Czar who is faraway and can’t kill several dozen million of your own people is nice, but then so is central heating and affordable goods.

            Mind you, I’m not saying Communism did better than other systems would have. I’m saying it performed better than the Czarists did. Finding their 19th century government better than their 20th century government was is shortsighted at best, and projects anachronistic views of the wrong people on history at worst.

          • suntzuanime says:

            Yeah, if you took away all the improvements in technology in the 20th century, it would look a lot better.

          • “For their many, many faults, the Communists managed what the Czars never did, and industrialised their country at rates up into the three-digit percentages.”

            I believe the economic growth figures for at least the late Czarist period are considerably better than for the communist period, although it would take some work to check that.

            Stalinist Russia talked a good game of industrialization and quite a lot of people in the West believed them, but once real data became available it turned out that even Warren Nutter, who was the skeptic among American economists studying Russia, had overestimated Soviet economic performance.

            I don’t know what your “three digit percentages” mean. At the end of the Soviet period most of Russia was still a third world country with a first world military. Compare that to South Korea or Taiwan.

          • Stefan Drinic says:

            Yes, technology can be used for bad purposes as well. Who’d have thought?

            Tsarist industrialist growth numbers are no more reliable than communist ones.

            Yes, capitalist countries ended up better than the communist ones did. If Russia had had any, things could have turned out much better for them.

          • LHN says:

            Also, WW2? Really? Are we blaming the Russians for that now? From a policy/governmental point of view, I don’t see anything that could’ve been done to avert it from the Russian side.)

            People living on or near the eastern front of WWII were pretty uncontroversially worse off than people not living on or near the eastern front independent of national responsibility for same. (Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and collaboratively invading Poland left entirely aside.) Being a 19th century Russian peasant was bad and being a serf was worse, but I’d at least guess that either beat things like living in Leningrad between 1941 and 1944.

            That said, I don’t claim deep knowledge of 19th century serfdom, and am open to evidence that it was in fact worse than an environment where totalitarianism and total war were both dealing out megadeaths.

          • “Tsarist industrialist growth numbers are no more reliable than communist ones.”

            Do you know that, or are you guessing?

            It isn’t my field, so I don’t know the sources for the data. But Tsarist Russia wasn’t the sort of closed society that Stalinist Russia was, so it would have been a good deal harder to fake statistics, easier for outside observers to deduce what was happening from observables.

            I expect the calculations were done by economic historians well after the fall of the Tsarist government–just as similar calculations were done for the USSR after its collapse.

          • onyomi says:

            If I had to be reborn as either a random 19th c. Russian peasant or a random 20th c. Russian peasant I would literally take my chances with the 19th c. Not that my chances would be good, but I mean… have you seen Russian death figures for WWII? And that’s just that one war, exclusive of engineered famines, political purges, etc. I’ll take good ol fashion feudalistic tyranny over 1984esque tyranny any day.

          • Samuel Skinner says:

            I’m pretty sure with all that, life expectancy was higher in the 20th century.

          • onyomi says:

            “I’m pretty sure with all that, life expectancy was higher in the 20th century.”

            Though no thanks to politics, I’m sure.

          • Stefan Drinic says:

            If you want to believe as much, that’s okay. For most of the SU’s existence, they seemed to have believed otherwise, though again it is difficult to measure. Communism may be an evil you’re well acquainted with, but serfdom is no less crushing a system.

          • onyomi says:

            “no less crushing a system”

            No. Communism is fundamentally unworkable. Feudalism is just unfair.

          • Ruprect says:

            @onyomi
            I dunno… Communism sounds perfectly sensible to me – when the utility derived from an additional unit of consumption is nothing (abundance) … that’s communism.
            Otherwise, you’re making strong claims about people deriving utility from status (demonstrated by consumption). That’s surely not a law of human nature.

          • Samuel Skinner says:

            “Though no thanks to politics, I’m sure.”

            Only if you declare all the positive political programs further by the USSR as inevitable under the Tsar. I’m not sure that is really fair. While many of the social programs and gains might have been done by the Tsar/market, things like Jewish emancipation would probably not have been.

            “No. Communism is fundamentally unworkable. Feudalism is just unfair.”

            No, theoretical communism is unworkable. What the USSR actually implemented worked, it just was massively inefficient (to the point where people question its ability to have even produced intensive growth).

            Also, doesn’t feudalism have ‘incentive disparity leading to famines’ like communism does? It is mitigated by the free market in food (so they wouldn’t have had something as bad as the Hodomor), but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have any structural methods to stop people from starving to death.

          • Nita says:

            Note that ‘crushing’ and ‘unworkable’ are two different things. (And that’s all I’m going to say in this thread. I don’t know whether my great-grandmother would have exchanged her short life for a longer life of serfdom, but apparently I really don’t appreciate random strangers presuming to know what she would or should have wished for.)

          • Nornagest says:

            when the utility derived from an additional unit of consumption is nothing (abundance) … that’s communism.

            That’s post-scarcity. Communism is a theory about how to get there — or, if you’re already a Marxist, a stage of that theory.

          • Ruprect says:

            Thing about communism, as it happened, is this.
            If you’re in total war, and you need to mobilise the economy to produce war things – you have central planning. Everyone had central planning during the second world war – if you have a specific goal that you need to mobilise your society to work towards – you need central planning. Soviet communism did fairly well at this.
            If you are going to judge things on how satisfied consumers are, you need markets. I don’t think there is any reason to believe that collectives can’t operate within markets – accountants and lawyers seem to do pretty well (even in more capital intensive industries collectives can do ok – John Lewis). I mean… do we need to have a market in capital in order to have markets for consumption?
            [edit: though I suppose collectives are still operating within the capital market – calculation problem? – capitalism isn’t necessary to provide motivation for succesfull business – question is whether cost of capital could be separated from consumption?)

          • Ruprect says:

            “Communism is a theory about how to get there — or, if you’re already a Marxist, a stage of that theory.”

            My understanding was that Marxist theory is more of an economic/political analysis with little in the way of positive policy suggestions.
            I’m not sure that the central planned Stalinist economy can be rightly defined as the communist ideal – many communists derided it as ‘state capitalism’.

          • onyomi says:

            “No, theoretical communism is unworkable. What the USSR actually implemented worked, it just was massively inefficient”

            Yeah, worked to the extent it deviated from theoretical communism.

          • Nornagest says:

            My understanding was that Marxist theory is more of an economic/political analysis with little in the way of positive policy suggestions.

            This is a nonstandard way of looking at it, but I normally think of Marxism as primarily a theory of history, including a future history. Communism in Marxist parlance would then be both a stage (the ultimate stage) of that future history and a description of ideologies that strive for it. And while that stage of history does describe a post-scarcity stage, it also says a great deal about how it’s supposed to be attained and maintained.

            Marx (and Engels) did make a number of explicit policy proposals — specific demands, I mean, not general calls for revolution — but they were rooted in the 19th-century context they were writing from and so tend to look rather modest by our standards. They’ve mostly been fulfilled by now, even in decidedly non-Marxist states like the US.

          • Samuel Skinner says:

            Not exactly. A lot of the goals of the Communist Manifesto were… odd.

            Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
            1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
            2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
            3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
            4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
            5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
            6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
            7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
            8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
            9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the
            populace over the country.
            10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

            Only 2, 6 and 10 are remotely close to being accomplished by normal countries (depending on how you interpreted 6 and 10).

        • brad says:

          @suntzuanime
          I’m not Susan B. Anthony and the anti-suffragettes aren’t my opponents. Your ‘you’s and ‘they’s are too vague to be useful.

          • suntzuanime says:

            I’m referring to the demons that use humans as pawns on their chessboard, not to specific humans here.

          • Jeremy says:

            So, in this metaphor there is no actual abuse, and no “pawn” has an actual grievance to complain about? Well in that case I’d say let the demons sort out their demon issues in demon land. Why should any pawns care about something that they themselves are happy with?

          • brad says:

            @suntzuanime
            I don’t know what this is supposed to mean. Did you mean to post it in the puppy discussion above?

          • Frank McPike says:

            @suntzuanime
            I think that’s the central problem here. You (and Onyomi) seem to have defined progressivism to mean, essentially, “the policies that won” and conservatism to mean “the policies that lost”. And yes, if we draw our definitions that way then the pattern does begin to look a little suspicious.

            But I don’t think that’s a sensible way to draw the definitions. Nearly every conservative I know thinks that Susan B. Anthony was right on the issue of suffrage. And that the civil rights movement was on the right side of the segregation issue. And they, in fact, see those positions on those issues as actual vindications of their own values. I don’t know a single conservative who would say “Women’s suffrage is opposed to my central values, but I support it anyway.” Rather they tend to say things like “Women’s suffrage is the position truly consistent with conservative values, and I think it’s unfair to associate us with the people who opposed it.” And, on that point, I think they’re right.

            In other words, portraying American history as a hard-fought battle between a conservative side and a liberal one, where the same side always loses, seems both facially implausible, and inconsistent with how those battles actually played out. For example, Onyomi asks “isn’t it kind of ironic that the party that has mostly gotten its way is the one accusing the other of being stubborn?” But… there’s no one party that has consistently won every battle. Perhaps the battle against segregation was won by Democrats, but it was mostly fought against other Democrats, and the winning position was one that had been endorsed (if not actively pursued) by the Republican party since the Civil War. (And Southern Democrats weren’t secretly modern Republicans, they voted with Northern Democrats consistently on every other issue).

            In general, once you narrow the viewpoint to a particular policy, history starts to look a lot more complicated. Onyomi mentions income taxation, but that wasn’t a straightforward victory of Democrats over Republicans; the income tax was supported by both Taft and Teddy Roosevelt. And change hasn’t been linear in one direction at all: for most of the last century (ending with Reagan) the rate for the highest tax bracket was above 50%. If 0% is outside the Overton Window now, so is 70%.

            And, once again, most conservatives aren’t actually opposed to some level of income taxation. They see it as perfectly consistent with their principles. After all, Republicans do support large amounts of spending on some things (e.g. defense) and generally see the income tax as an effective way of securing that funding (which was, in fact, one of the original arguments for the income tax).

        • onyomi says:

          “Unless you are saying that Republicans/conservatives have always accused Democrats/liberals of being anti-American and secretly desiring the downfall of America.”

          I’m not saying the Republicans are nicer to the Democrats than the other way around. I’m just saying they don’t use this particular line about “you guys used to be reasonable and serious and open to compromise but now you’ve gone crazy.” Though one could argue, maybe, that that is, in part, a response to Republican rhetoric getting more hyperbolic in recent years, if not actually more extreme in substance.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @onyomi:
            Is it fair for me to summarize this argument as the following?

            “Democratic characterization of Republicans has now descended to the standard level that Republicans’ have used to characterize Democrats for years.”

            Because, well, where is your complaint then?

          • onyomi says:

            @onyomi:
            Is it fair for me to summarize this argument as the following?

            “Democratic characterization of Republicans has now descended to the standard level that Republicans’ have used to characterize Democrats for years.”

            No, I make no claims about who has been nicer and for how long. I’m just pointing to a particular type of rhetoric I see coming from the left lately–that today’s Republicans are unusually unreasonable as compared to some imaginary reasonable Republicans of the past.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @onyomi:
            But do Republicans currently make those same or similar claims about Democrats? That is the point I keep trying to get you to address. You seem to be saying that they do.

          • LHN says:

            @HeelBearCub I don’t think I’ve ever heard it applied to domestic policy. There used to be a current of nostalgia among Republicans for national security oriented Democrats: “Scoop” Jackson’s[1] name was often invoked, along with the adage “politics stops at the water’s edge” (which the Democrats were deemed to have abided by in the past, but more recently abandoned).

            But my recollection is that was mostly a late Cold War thing, and aside from a brief revival around the beginning of the Iraq War I think it’s mostly been in abeyance.

            [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_M._Jackson

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @LHN:
            The current rhetoric from most Republicans about Democrats is that they are people who “hate America”, will “destroy America”, etc. Regardless of whether that is attached to “they didn’t use to hate America” or not doesn’t seem particularly material to me.

            It also seems to me that at least from McCarthy forward, there has been a fairly strong current in some part of the conservative movement to see liberals as enemies of America. As the parties have increasingly sorted ideologically, this has been more and more Republicans vs. Democrats, but it wasn’t always so.

          • onyomi says:

            I’ve seen Republicans imply that Democrats are ashamed of America, anti-America, etc. yes. Maybe that is worse. I’m not trying to win a “your side’s rhetoric is more unfair than my side’s rhetoric” contest.

            I just don’t see Republicans saying that Democrats used to be reasonable but have recently “gone crazy.” And that seems to be a popular thing for Democrats to say about Republicans lately.

            Examples:

            How the Right went Wrong

            The Downfall of Moderation

            Why Republicans went Crazy (admittedly calls Democrats “useless”)

            I don’t see any equivalent “why did the Democrats go crazy lately?” books.

          • keranih says:

            Conservative belly-aching about liberals who hate America and what she stands for have been a pretty constant theme – rising and falling in volume – since the 1950’s. IMO this is not an unfounded complaint, what with the pro-communist inclinations, flag burning, WTO anarchists and anti-colonialism studies which are all found almost entirely on that side of the house.

            However, it is an error imo to use a broad brush to assume all liberals hold all these thoughts, that they are all held to the same degree, and that there is no pro-American thought that can coexist with any of those above concepts. Which broad brush I do see being used, and I completely sympathize with patriotic liberals who find themselves smeared with it.

            PS: re “liberals gone crazy” books – the ur model is probably Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Facism.

          • Salem says:

            But “Liberal Fascism” says that Liberals (in the American sense) have always been crazy, certainly as far back as the 1930s when they gave birth to fascism.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @onyomi:
            So, in your mind, conservative rhetoric about liberals has consistently been that they are awful and intransigent, but liberals have only recently started saying this about conservatives? And this is somehow to conservatives credit?

            I’m not trying to be asinine here, but I really don’t understand your complaint. Republicans really did consciously have a “full scorched earth” strategy starting at the beginning of Obama’s presidency where the refused to give Obama votes for anything no matter what, so it’s not even like recent claims of intransigence by Democrats about Republicans are based on nothing.

            I think you just don’t like it when people complain about “your” side, and don’t notice when people complain about “their” side.

          • onyomi says:

            @Heelbearcub,

            You’re still completely missing my point somehow. I’m not going to try to explain it again. Reread the old posts, especially https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/08/ot49-open-secret/#comment-356525
            if you care.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @onyomi:
            I know you are unlikely to reply to this at this point but …

            I don’t see any equivalent “why did the Democrats go crazy lately?” books.

            You have already admitted that Republicans already thought the Democrats were crazy. Why would they say the Democrats have gone crazy recently when they thought they were crazy to start with?

            I am, and have been, directly engaging your point. I don’t know why you find it hard to understand my response.

          • null says:

            From what I can tell it sounds like onyomi’s issue is something along the lines of ‘why are you trying to talk about Republicans, I’m making a point about Democrats’.

          • onyomi says:

            “From what I can tell it sounds like onyomi’s issue is something along the lines of ‘why are you trying to talk about Republicans, I’m making a point about Democrats’.”

            It’s about both sides and their histories. Read the original analogy again.

          • null says:

            Counterpoint (I’m not sure if I agree with this): conservatives generally want to not change things, so saying ‘conservatism lost because these things changed’ is almost useless, without a way of figuring out what didn’t change, and to what degree this is caused by progressivism vs. conservatism rather than changes in technology, social environment, etc.

          • onyomi says:

            “Counterpoint (I’m not sure if I agree with this): conservatives generally want to not change things, so saying ‘conservatism lost because these things changed’ is almost useless”

            Well, arguably conservatism was winning throughout most of human history, when change was very slow. And many (but not all) of the things that make the modern world a nicer place to live than say, the stone age or medieval Europe are because of change.

            But the relatively recent trend toward rapid technological progress creates a bias that change is usually good because it is pushing us toward some theoretical utopian endpoint. I don’t think this is true.

            But in a world where we owe so much that is good to change (especially technological), it can be hard to articulate a convincing defense of conservatism. Which is at least part of why Moldbug is so long-winded, I think.

            Arguably a third way is just to argue for a different kind of change. I, personally, am not conservative economically, but I want us to move rapidly in a different direction than we’ve been going in (a more libertarian one, of course, which in some ways may be a return to the 19th c. or earlier, but ideally better).

            Funny, I used to always call myself “economically conservative but socially liberal,” basically meaning something like “Red Tribe on the economy, Blue Tribe on social stuff.” But now I think “economically liberal (in the truer sense), but socially conservative” might describe me better. I’m still closer to Red Tribe on economic issues and Blue Tribe on social issues, but I’d ideally like a rapid move towards a freer economy and more of a gentle tiptoe towards more liberal social mores, combined, in some cases, with rolling back of some of the more egregious SJW stuff.

        • Whatever Happened To Anonymous says:

          If you remove the content of the post entirely, it will be deleted. The post itself, I mean.

      • onyomi says:

        “The issues they cared about are issues that the overwhelming majority of people today don’t care about.”

        Issues like income tax, social security, medicare, foreign military intervention, prohibition (now of drugs, rather than alcohol)?

        • brad says:

          Income tax was certainly a hot issue, but whether or not it should exist at all, not whether it should be lowered somewhat.

          Foreign military intervention was a very hot issue, but at a high enough level everything is everything. Whether or not to get involved in WWI is a very different question than whether or not to send more troops to Iraq and Syria.

          Similarly, prohibition is a stretch, and even if it wasn’t, I’m not sure which side is supposed to be which. That rather illustrates the problem.

          Social security and medicare weren’t on anyone’s agenda and wouldn’t be for decades.

          —-

          Stepping back–I think you are arguing from the position of a fiscal conservative (libertarian) and yet trying to claim the current, fairly inchoate, anger as being righteous indignation over the growth in the size of government. That just doesn’t strike me as terribly plausible.

          Just look at the things you mention: unions, airline regulations, income taxes, medicare, social security, drug prohibition, foreign military intervention. These are Ron Paul issues, not Trump issues, and Paul got crushed.

          I’d probably prefer a mass movement of outrage over the size of government but that’s not what’s happening as far as I can tell.

          • onyomi says:

            I mean, I’m not saying the conservative outrage and stubornness are smart and principled and focused on all the right issues. They aren’t.

            But I do think fueling the Trump bandwagon is a not entirely unjustified, somewhat inchoate sense that Red America has been losing ground, culturally and economically for some time now. So I don’t think they’re wrong to now think of “compromise” as a “dirty word,” though I definitely wish they’d focus their outrage better.

          • Chalid says:

            @onyomi

            Agreed that they are losing ground culturally and economically, but I would dispute that this process has much to do with partisan politics and certainly not on the political issues that were most contentious.

            Appealing Obamacare or cutting the top marginal tax rate would do absolutely nothing to change the relative trajectories of Red and Blue America, and indeed might even accelerate the divergence.

          • Similarly, prohibition is a stretch, and even if it wasn’t, I’m not sure which side is supposed to be which. That rather illustrates the problem.

            Prohibition [of all beverage alcohol in the USA, 1919-33] was seen as a progressive reform. The Prohibition Party was regarded as a party on the left, like the Socialists (they even had some candidates in common). Liberal idealists supported Prohibition; conservatives and business interests opposed it.

            For example, at the 1924 Democratic National Convention, the legendary affair that wasn’t decided until the 103rd ballot, William Jennings Bryan (seen even today as a man of the Left) demanded that the nominee be “a progressive,” by which he specifically meant, a supporter of Prohibition.

            Just eight years later, in the 1932 presidential election, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (D) opposed incumbent Herbert Hoover (R). The Depression was under way, yes, but the candidates did not advocate strikingly different approaches. Both called for austerity.

            The major dividing issue between those two candidates was Prohibition: Hoover and the Republicans were for keeping it, FDR and the Democrats for getting rid of it.

            Prominent Republicans who were opposed to Prohibition announced their support for FDR based on that issue alone, and received enormous coverage in newspapers. Presumably Democratic drys went the other way, and supported Hoover, but they didn’t get the same publicity.

            Roosevelt won, and Congress passed the proposed 21st Amendment, repealing Prohibition, before he even took office. It was ratified by the end of the year.

            So here’s the Democrats in 1933 bringing about what was seen as a victory for conservatives. Today’s politics is not a useful lens for understanding history.

          • brad says:

            @Larry Kestenbaum

            Today’s politics is not a useful lens for understanding history.

            Exactly my point. Well, sort of vice versa, but very close in any event.

          • Agronomous says:

            @Larry Kestenbaum:

            Prohibition [of all beverage alcohol in the USA, 1919-33]

            Surprisingly, no. While you couldn’t legally distill spirits, you could make beer and wine for your own consumption; my great-grandfather apparently made the least-unpalatable red wine in the neighborhood. There were also (frequently-abused) exceptions allowing wine to be sold for religious purposes.

            The War on Drugs is far harsher than Prohibition ever was.

          • John Schilling says:

            Surprisingly, no. While you couldn’t legally distill spirits, you could make beer and wine for your own consumption;

            Nit: Pretty sure the actual rule was that you couldn’t deliberately manufacture any alcoholic beverage, distilled or otherwise, but that accidental fermentation wasn’t covered. Disproving “it wuz a accident” in a private context being effectively impossible, the effect was de facto legalization of homemade wine and beer.

            I am also told, though haven’t verified, that one could fairly reliably purchase alcoholic beverages without overt criminality, either by buying apple juice/cider, or by ordering “grape juice” at an Italian restaurant.

    • Randy M says:

      I think it is usually argued here that Republicans got all the economic concessions they wanted–taxes are lower than they used to be (not necessarily accounting for actual money paid via loopholes?), trade is freer, unions have less power, “corporations are people”, etc. But they nothing in the social realm–abortion legal basically whenever, same sex marriage commonly recognized, no prayer in schools, speech codes, no-fault divorce is default, various diversity initiatives, hate crime legislation for protected groups, inexorable increase in federal versus state powers.

      Of course, this pushes the debate from the Republican vs Democrat level to the intra-party Republican level–social conservative causes are not the “hills to die on” the way, say, corporate tax policy is. Hence the ongoing primaries where some conservatives based their support on who was more likely to piss off certain factions within the party rather than who actually agreed with them on more issues.

      • onyomi says:

        Taxes are lower than they used to be during the couple of decades when they were highest in US history, perhaps, but still astronomically higher and more intrusive than the historical average for the US. Remember there wasn’t any federal income tax at all until 1913!

        Similar on the “reproductive rights” thing. Prior to Roe v Wade, abortion was basically illegal. Now it’s considered a crazy right wing position just to try to make it harder to do. (I, personally, don’t have a strong stance on this issue, but it is obviously one very important to many conservative).

    • Walter says:

      Football game analogy. Left wants to push the ball right. Right would like to return to the 50 yard line. We are presently on the Right’s 40. The Left has a good administration, push 10 yards.

      “What is with our opposition these days? They used to just want to go 10 yards back, but now they want to go 20 yards back. They’ve gotten so radicalized!”

    • Aegeus says:

      Two problems with this view: Not every leftist government action creates an irrevocable shift left on the Global Political Meter. And some government actions pursue bipartisan goals and the disagreement is over implementation, which makes it hard to say that the left got everything and the right got nothing.

      Example of the first: Budgets. We have to pass one every year, and it generally funds both liberal and conservative projects, so it’s hard to say that every single year of a liberal congress shifts the needle left somehow. And the Tea Party’s goal of “shut it down, don’t pass a budget at all” is (1) a fringe position for Republicans, and (2) worse than either a Republican or a Democratic budget. The Tea Party’s focus on ideological purity, even against their own party, makes me feel that they’re not just a logical continuation of Republican goals.

      Example of the second: No Child Left Behind was a Republican bill, passed under Bush. Improving education certainly sounds like a leftist cause, but it hardly seems fair to say that this is something the Left won and the Right lost when Bush launched the thing. Likewise, Obamacare was based on Romneycare in Massachusetts. And even though the Republicans are vowing to repeal it, they’re also saying “…and we’ll replace it with a better model.” Again, it doesn’t seem like an exclusively leftist cause.

      The Republican goal is not “literally zero bills passed” (except for the Tea Party), it’s “pass a smaller number of bills that will solve problems better than the Democrats,” so acting like all of the above was part of the Democratic agenda and only the recent obstructionism represents the real Republican goals is misleading.

      That aside, what have the Republicans unambiguously won recently? Citizen’s United, the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq, and most of the rest of the War on Terror come to mind. (A lot of it was continued by Obama, but it’s hard to say that it’s part of the liberal agenda). Looking further back, I could also bring up the Cold War and the War on Drugs (public opinion very recently shifted here, which is why you can find Clinton supporting tough-on-crime bills in the 90s. And the legalization movement has as many libertarians as liberals).

      • Jill says:

        Since the Republicans dominate both Houses of Congress, most state legislatures, most state governorships, and also dominated SCOTUS until just recently when Scalia died– if they haven’t unambiguously won anything lately, it must be because they don’t want anything except to block Democratic initiatives. Otherwise, they already have what they want, or what their political donors want– deregulation, low corporate taxes due to various loopholes etc.

        They are doing a lot of what they want in the states e.g. drastically reducing access to birth control.

        • Gbdub says:

          They don’t “dominate” Congress, because they don’t have a filibuster or veto proof majority. And in fact they have tried to do many things (repeal Obamacare, pass a budget) that Obama has vetoed. Even that majority is recent (they didn’t control the Senate until after the 2012 election).

          To say that “all they want to do is obstruct” is just to say that you expect them to agree with the Democrats on everything, which is silly. There’s a reason they “dominate” Congress – more people voted for them. Shouldn’t that make Obama and his veto pen the real “obstructionist”?

          Conservatives didn’t “dominate” SCOTUS, it was 4-4 with Kennedy swinging. Other than on 2nd amendment issues the “liberal” side has won as often as not. Maybe more often.

          And please stop saying “birth control rights” when you mean “abortion access”. The two are separate in most people’s minds and conflating them looks dishonest. “Birth control rights” have greatly expanded – we’ve decided that nuns are legally required to buy the pill for you (exaggerating slightly for effect).

          • Jill says:

            When the clinics close, women have to drive further to get whatever they were getting from the clinic. Birth control and abortion rights are both important to me and many other women.

            The GOP had the chance to have an immigration reform bill– their big issue that they’re always railing about. They tarred and feathered Rubio for bringing one up. And they didn’t come up with an alternate bill either, given that they didn’t like his bill.

            Of course I don’t expect them to agree with Dems on everything. But when they won’t even give a hearing to Obama’s SCOTUS nominee, that’s obstructionist. When their big goal was to make Obama a one term president, not even looking for common ground at all, that’s obstructionist. Not to mention a Congress member shouting “You lie” at a SOTU speech.

            No, people voted for Obama twice, so he’s not the obstructionist. And he often bent over backwards to compromise with the GOP, until he found out that it was impossible to do, because they were unwilling.

            Kennedy is a pretty conservative justice, in my view, and in the view of these NYT articles authors. I guess there are different opinions on this.

            http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/upshot/a-more-nuanced-breakdown-of-the-supreme-court.html?_r=0

          • ThirteenthLetter says:

            “When the clinics close, women have to drive further to get whatever they were getting from the clinic. Birth control and abortion rights are both important to me and many other women.”

            That doesn’t make them the same thing, and it’s dishonest argumentation to conflate them.

          • Nita says:

            we’ve decided that nuns are legally required to buy the pill for you (exaggerating slightly for effect)

            As I understand it, the previous situation was that the pill was excluded from coverage even if you needed it for medical reasons.

          • houseboatonstyx says:

            @ Thirteenth Letter
            That doesn’t make them the same thing, and it’s dishonest argumentation to conflate them.

            No conflation that I saw. They are certainly related, and it’s reasonable to mention them as parts of women’s rights over their own body.

          • ThirteenthLetter says:

            @houseboatonstyx “They are certainly related, and it’s reasonable to mention them as parts of women’s rights over their own body.”

            Except she didn’t say “parts of women’s rights over their own body.” She said “access to birth control.”

            The recent public debate over birth control-related issues has been perhaps the most dishonest thing I’ve ever seen in American politics in my entire life. It’s bad enough that “some nuns don’t want to pay for my birth control, in this world where you can buy armfuls of condoms at Walgreen’s for a trivial price” is somehow interpreted as “reducing access”; the idea that we can then just quietly roll abortion in there under the rubric of “birth control” as well is frankly offensive.

          • keranih says:

            Birth control and abortion rights are both important to me and many other women.

            Beer and pizza are both very important to me. That doesn’t make them the same thing. (Oh, and to be clear – woman here, strongly against elective abortions and feeling pretty negative about the practical outcomes of the free love revolution sparked by the widespread adoption of oral contraception. So watch your lane and be careful how wide a swath you try to cut.)

            Oh, and women can get birth control pills, checkups, and many other health care services – including abortions – from providers who are not at specialty abortion clinics. Don’t pretend it’s either fund the abortion clinic or keep women from ever seeing a medical provider.)

            Rubio’s bill was an amnesty bill. We were promised with Reagan’s amnesty law that there wouldn’t be another one.

            Biden and half the Democrat senate have spoken openly against approving a SCOTUS appointee by a lame duck president. Elections have consequences, haven’t you heard?

            I originally thought you were a troll, but now I’m thinking you just really are that bubble-bound. You really need to get out more.

          • Vorkon says:

            Beer and pizza are both very important to me. That doesn’t make them the same thing.

            While I agree with your point in general, this is a terrible argument if you want to demonstrate that birth control and abortion rights should not be conflated. Beer and pizza should be inseparable, and I would have no problem with an argument that conflated the two.

          • keranih says:

            While I can see your point, I regretfully must entirely disagree.

            Pizzanbeer can be thought of as a single food only during specific hours of the day. Between 730 and 1030 am on sleepy Saturday mornings, however, the proper coupling is cold pizza and hot coffee, possibly seasoned with bailey’s.

            And if you don’t like cold pizza for breakfast, there’s nothing I can do for you.

          • Vorkon says:

            Point conceded, but only on account of the Bailey’s.

            (That’ll get me to concede most points, actually…)

          • houseboatonstyx says:

            @ Jill
            Birth control and abortion rights are both important to me and many other women.

            Now, that certainly sounds like distinguishing them, rather than conflating them.

          • ThirteenthLetter says:

            @houseboatonstyx

            “They are doing a lot of what they want in the states e.g. drastically reducing access to birth control.”

        • onyomi says:

          “it must be because they don’t want anything except to block Democratic initiatives. Otherwise, they already have what they want, or what their political donors want– deregulation, low corporate taxes due to various loopholes etc.”

          And this is why Republican voters are so mad not just at Democrats, but at their own party. Because even when it has power it doesn’t do anything it promises. Hence Trump. Not that Trump is necessarily an intelligent reaction to this state of affairs, but it is understandable if the choices are “Trump” and “more of the same bozos who didn’t do anything we wanted them to last time they were in power.”

          • Jill says:

            I see what you mean. Like the GOP railed against immigration and then has done nothing about it, and then put down Marco Rubio for trying to introduce an immigration reform bill.

          • Hlynkacg says:

            Rubio’s amnesty bill was pretty much the opposite of what the voters were demanding.

            It getting shot down was a pretty clear case of democracy working as intended.

        • gbdub says:

          “No, people voted for Obama twice, so he’s not the obstructionist” And I presume that the current Republican Congress came to their position through a military coup?

          “When their big goal was to make Obama a one term president, not even looking for common ground at all, that’s obstructionist.” So, they were supposed to want to lose the 2012 election? I mean I know Kerry was a weak candidate but I don’t think the Democrats were intentionally throwing 2004… This is insanely partisan, and I’m struggling to understand how you can’t see that.

          “Not to mention a Congress member shouting “You lie” at a SOTU speech.” And Obama called out the SCOTUS at that speech, and in his first meeting with Congressional leadership started with “I won”. He’s not innocent in this either.

          “Kennedy is a pretty conservative justice, in my view, and in the view of these NYT articles authors” Both you and the NYT editors are probably on the liberal end of American political opinion. It’s not fair to label yourself as a centrist and everyone to the right of you as conservative. Anyway it doesn’t change my point that the liberals have had a lot of wins in SCOTUS lately too.

          “The GOP had the chance to have an immigration reform bill– their big issue that they’re always railing about. They tarred and feathered Rubio for bringing one up. And they didn’t come up with an alternate bill either, given that they didn’t like his bill.” Rubio brought up a bill that was much more amnesty friendly than the constituents wanted, and got criticized. Why is “doing something” a necessity if the status quo is preferred? Why should the GOP have capitalized on this “chance”, especially when any bill would have to be approved by Obama at the end? Sometimes “do nothing” is a better option, and is why “obstructionist” is an empty, usually partisan, criticism.

          Birth control and abortion rights are both important to me and many other women. They certainly are (although a large percentage of women are opposed to abortion, so be careful who you claim for your side). But in your original post you referred only to “birth control” rights being curtailed, when you were clearly referring to abortion. Conflating them is misleading.

          Your whole effort here in this subthread started out based on the false premise that progressives are the put upon underdogs in the current American political landscape, built by cherry picking a few issues and a very narrow timeframe. This is a poor argument.

          @ Nita – “As I understand it, the previous situation was that the pill was excluded from coverage even if you needed it for medical reasons.”
          That may be the case – but if it was, it was excluded from a private contract entered into by the nuns with another private organization to provide health care coverage to their employees. They chose to exclude products they have a moral opposition to. The government decided that it has the power to legally require them to purchase this product from a private corporation.

      • “but it hardly seems fair to say that this is something the Left won and the Right lost when Bush launched the thing.”

        If you think of it as right vs left or conservative vs liberal, the fact that a left program was launched by a right politician is evidence that the left is winning.

        • Aegeus says:

          How am I supposed to know what the right wants, except by what their politicians do? If Republican obstructionism is proof that they want nothing to do with the current state of affairs, that they want to turn the clock back to 1900, then Republican pushes for leftist policies should be proof that they don’t.

          You could argue that most Republicans are not really rightists, but (a) that’s literally a No True Scotsman, and (b) it means there’s no reason Republican obstructionism should be linked to the overall left-right state of the country. If these Republicans are not really rightists, if they’ve drifted left with the rest of the country, why have they suddenly become so opposed to leftist policies? Why the new desire to turn the clock back to 1900?

    • Pku says:

      I think the difference between Kasich’s and Cruz’s rhetoric (and I assume their legislative records, but I haven’t checked those) is relevant: Kasich talks about things he’s done to push the conservative agenda – balanced budgets by restricting spending, restricting access to abortion, etc., while Cruz is known for shutting down the government. So aside from the left/right issue (well, Cruz is a lot further right), there’s also the “act to push your preferences/just be obstructive” axis.

      • onyomi says:

        Well, but Kasich was a governor where Cruz was a senator functioning under a president who would have certainly vetoed any preference he had tried to assert. When the other “team” has the ball, the best you can do, usually, is to stop them getting down the field. As a governor, Kasich had “possession” so to speak, even if he had to sometimes fight his statehouse, so he can more easily brag about making “progress.”

        • Pku says:

          That’s a fair point. Do you believe that the circumstances of not having the presidency are the key difference though? I don’t know the relevant history super-well, but I think both the 2006-2008 democratic majority and the Clinton-era republican majority were a lot less obstructive than the current congress. (Assuming this is correct, I don’t know quite who to blame for the present situation – I don’t think you can purely blame Obama, but Cruz wouldn’t have the power to pull off the government shutdown if the rest of congress didn’t let him. It’s probably more complicated than that).

          • Gbdub says:

            The democrats held Congress through 2010 – that’s when Obamacare passed. While Obamacare was “constructive” the manner in which it was passed was by no means bipartisan and certainly involved some legal but shady tactics.

            I don’t see why hyper-partisan behavior in the service of “doing something” should be preferred over the same behavior in attempting to maintain the status quo. If anything the status quo ought to get the benefit of the doubt. “Better than nothing is a high standard”

            EDIT: as to your actual question, heck yeah the President matters. Obama could have ended the shutdown on his own by signing the Republican passed budget. He had much more power over the process than any individual Senator for that reason. The Republicans have a majority but not a veto proof one, so Obama always has the power to unilaterally “obstruct” their bills unless they get a lot of Democratic support.

  26. Jill says:

    I didn’t say that polls and experts were the same thing.

    I certainly agree that “talking heads are not paid for being right, rather, they are paid for their entertainment value, for confirming the biases of their listeners.”

    Sales folks sell what people want, not what exists. Confirming the bias of listeners is a service that there is a demand for. The dull and accurate prognosticators who talk in terms of probabilities are not what people want. They want a “sure thing” and one that confirms their biases, even if theat’s not possible.

    Now that we’re on the subject of Trump and how he’s winning, thanks for the article on that. Here are a couple of other interesting ones.

    Donald Trump will win in a landslide. The mind behind ‘Dilbert’ explains why.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2016/03/21/donald-trump-will-win-in-a-landslide-the-mind-behind-dilbert-explains-why/

    The political scientist who saw Trump’s rise coming
    Norm Ornstein on why the Republican Party was ripe for a takeover, what the media missed, and whether Trump could win the presidency

    http://www.vox.com/2016/5/6/11598838/donald-trump-predictions-norm-ornstein

  27. But that doesn’t stop people from trying. The polls and the experts keep predicting political races. Almost no one predicted Donald Trump would get this far. But will people stop paying for pollsters to predict? No, of course not. Will they keep paying them because they’re so accurate? No.

    They will keep paying them and having them on TV, because they are selling something people WANT– even if it doesn’t really exist, at least not yet.

    “Polls” and “experts” are not all the same thing. A poll is a study, based presumably on real data. A political expert or pundit may be interpreting polls, but more likely, trying to explain and predict the political situation based on knowledge, experience, and bias.

    Television pundits are not genuine prognosticators. Nate Silver in The Signal and the Noise pointed out that almost all of them, all the time, confidently predict success for their own side. The talking heads are not paid for being right, rather, they are paid for their entertainment value, for confirming the biases of their listeners.

    More accurate analysts, with more cautious and measured predictions, make boring TV. They are more likely to speak in terms of probabilities rather than predictions. Their views are much less likely to be publicized, and more likely to be given privately to paying customers.

    As to the rise of Trump, his strength has been visible in polls since the beginning. See, for example, Josh Marshall’s article, Trump is No Mystery. There’ve Been No Surprises:

    When flight instrumentation first became viable, aviation educators began teaching pilots instruments-only flight. The gist is simple: only pay attention to your instruments. Many veteran pilots insisted that in a crisis situation the key was to go by intuition or ‘feel’. But numerous experiments and tragic experience showed that this was not true. With poor visibility, a pilot’s perception of speed, direction, whether he or she was right-side up or upside down was consistently wrong. Still today, a good bit of pilot training turns on the difficult process of learning to disregard what your senses tell you must be happening and following the instrument panel that tells you what actually is happening.

    For just the same reasons, no one has any business being surprised that Trump is now the Republican nominee. Don’t get me wrong. Polls can obviously be wrong. They sometimes miss a race, sometimes dramatically. But when consistent and sustained polling data conflicts with your logic, there’s quite likely something wrong with your logic. Trump is the perfect example.

    Starting in early July of last year, only weeks after entering the race, Trump moved into a nationwide lead and never looked back. For nine months, Trump lead the polls and never once lost that lead. Indeed, from early August until today his lead steadily grew from roughly 25% to 50% support today. You have to go back to George W. Bush in 2000 to see domination on anything like that scale – and Bush had a lock on establishment backing from the outset. Looked at from this perspective it’s remarkable that anyone could have looked at this race at any time in recent months and not concluded that Trump was the overwhelming favorite to win the nomination.

    There were various arguments why Trump wouldn’t win. His popularity would fade. He could only dominated a divided, overcrowded field. He had a natural ceiling at 25%, then 30%, then 40%. He’d finally saying something too outrageous. None of these arguments made much sense but they carried most punditry for months.

    • Dan T. says:

      Still today, a good bit of pilot training turns on the difficult process of learning to disregard what your senses tell you must be happening and following the instrument panel that tells you what actually is happening.

      This sounds like the inverse of the “death by GPS” phenomenon cited above for car drivers, where they trusted the gadgets over what they saw with their own eyes. But perhaps gadgets on planes are more accurate and reliable than those in cars.

      • The Nybbler says:

        It’s more that the senses are less reliable for various reasons.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_illusions_in_aviation

        In a car, you need not worry about the pitch and roll axes (until it’s far too late), and you have many more cues (terrain, in particular) for yaw.

      • nm. k.m. says:

        I’d say they are different instruments, aimed for different purposes. Speed meter and GPS are a bit different, and usually the airplane instrument meters are more trustworthy than the speed meter in your car…

  28. Brad (The Other One) says:

    Either I don’t fully grasp Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, or “Self-Actualization” seems confused to me.

    Simply from the perspective of my emotional reaction to it, it seems to presume that everyone’s great potential is something approachable and desirable like being an artist or something, but what if one (like myself) has a pessimistic/dim view of humanity? Without being too edgy, I think people, if all physical/social constraints were removed, would likely use their new-found freedom to act in self-interested manner, possibly to the detriment of others.

    Even if I try to operate at arms-length from it, it still seems poorly defined. It seems like you can just blank out the top of his pyramid, and write-in what ever you want (which I guess is the point?)

    • Earthly Knight says:

      If memory serves, Maslow believed that self-actualization was achieved mostly by geniuses and groundbreaking artists, and that your average Joe has basically no hope of attaining it. Self-interested people can’t qualify as self-actualized, more or less by definition.

      It’s all dismal and moldering pseudo-science, anyway, so I wouldn’t bother fretting over it.

  29. Raemon says:

    PSA: People who live in (or near) NYC: We have semi-weekly meetups here that you’re welcome to attend.

    There are Effective Altruism meetups, “loosely defined ‘Rationality Community’ meetups”, and dinner parties that are a little more freeform that invest some effort in inviting people who’d get along with each other (you can sign up for a . For each of these, you’re welcome even if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t think they’d fit in.

    Sometimes we have a specific topic to discuss or exercises to do, sometimes we just talk.

    You can join the mailing list here.

  30. J Mann says:

    I just signed up for HBO Now, for obvious reasons, and had a question. I know that it sounds a little trollish, but I’m honestly curious about the answer and the reasoning behind it.

    Do rationalists consider themselves ethically required to steal television and other media?

    – Under a dust mote theory, if I stole HBO instead of subscribing and donated $15/month to effective altruism, aren’t I improving the world’s utility?

    – If I pay for cable because I feel guilty, doesn’t that mean I’m sacrificing children’s lives for my pride?

    – Yes, if everyone stole cable, the system would break, but since there are self-evidently enough people paying, choosing to pay in the hopes that it would lead to the development of additional or better content would be like buying a lottery ticket Shouldn’t I steal for now and consider changing my mind if it looks like we’re approaching a tipping point?

    – Yes, I could just not watch Game of Thrones/wait for the opportunity to check it out from the library/etc., and that would address my guilt and provide the $15 to give to altruistic causes, but that would be decreasing MY utility without increasing anyone else’s – it only functions as a tool to encourage me to subscribe, and if I decide that paying for cable is morally wrong, then what good does a monastic life do me?

    – Yes, I could give up something ELSE to give $15 to charity, but then I could steal cable and give $30, so paid cable always has a potential charitable opportunity costs.

    Thoughts? Is there a Sequence entry addressing this? Thanks!

    • zz says:

      Something a lot like this came up in an open thread a few years back: http://lesswrong.com/lw/k94/open_thread_may_19_25_2014/axft

      Is the $15 to HBO really funging against effective charity donation?

      • J Mann says:

        Well, I can fung it – however much I am currently giving, as long as I’m subscribing, it’s always true that I could cancel my subscription and increase my donation by an equivalent amount.

    • Cerebral Paul Z. says:

      I don’t know whether there’s a Sequence about it but it sounds like exactly the sort of situation which led people to invent rule-utilitarianism.

    • Murphy says:

      Rationalists don’t really have a single answer for that because it depends on your individual values.

      That being said, a lot of the effective altruists are some form of utilitarian/consequentialist

      There is some discussion about balancing costs to ourselves with benefits to others

      http://lesswrong.com/lw/d97/balancing_costs_to_ourselves_with_benefits_to/

    • suntzuanime says:

      Every time you conflate rationalism with the effective altruism movement, malaria kills a child. Please, think of the children.

      • J Mann says:

        I don’t consider myself a rationalist, but you’re still not going to fool me with a post hoc ergo prompter hoc fallacy. 😉

        I guess you could amend my question to “why aren’t we all ethically required to steal access to premium television?”

        One answer could be “I believe that property rights are important, even when anti-utilitarian, because they are an independent good or because of rule utilitarianism or whatever.”

        (I personally come at it from a more Humean perspective, which is – “Since I don’t notwithstanding the facially convincing reasons for it, why don’t I?”)

        • suntzuanime says:

          Please don’t conflate “we” with the effective altruism movement, either.

          • J Mann says:

            Sorry – in that case, I meant, you, me, and everyone else. (Granting that the answers will be different, but interesting.)

            You’ve convinced me that I don’t know enough about rationalists or EA proponents to narrow the set, which I appreciate.

          • suntzuanime says:

            The point is that the framing of the question assumes a lot of EA doctrine that not everyone in the SSC or rationalist community is on board with. If you’re seriously asking me why I don’t feel ethically required to steal access to premium television, that question is so many leaps of reasoning away from my mindset that the only response I can give is a scornfully bemused facial expression.

          • nope says:

            @suntzuanime, is this really adding to the conversation at all? Maybe if you explained your actual position, rather than just sneering at the noob, it would be more enlightening.

          • null says:

            I suppose asking a troll not to troll could work…

          • suntzuanime says:

            I think clarifying the distinction between EAs and rationalists at large is an important contribution to the conversation, in fact. Responding to a question that only makes sense within EA framing from outside EA framing seems like the thing that wouldn’t add much of value to a conversation.

          • null says:

            I apologize. I assumed you were trolling when you were making a serious point.

          • J Mann says:

            @nope and null,

            FWIW, I appreciated the exchange. My primary hypothesis is that I didn’t express myself well, because I don’t think most people understood the point I was trying to express, but I learned a lot about some of the live wires I touched.

            My alternate hypothesis is that some of the respondents understood my point better than I did, and I’m working on that.

            Either way, I appreciate everyone’s responses.

    • pgbh says:

      No. In many cases, taking the (first-order) most desirable action has sufficiently bad second-order effects to make it undesirable. A society where everyone feels licensed to steal any good offering lower utility per dollar than a malaria net will soon collapse.

      In general, simply following traditional notions of moral behavior offers a good tradeoff between first-order and more remote effects. This is why people should be actively discouraged from thinking about morality.

      • J Mann says:

        That’s a good point, thanks. I think the fact that HBO theft is both non-rivalrous and potentially secret adds some new wrinkles, but I could conclude that the moral damage to myself outweighed the benefit.

    • Jiro says:

      I think this illuminates the main contradiction of EA. If it is a requirement to do anything you can to increase utility, you’re obliged to spend all your money on malaria nets until you’re at the bare minimum to survive and keep your job.

      If it is not a requirement to do that, and you only have to give, say, 10%, you can funge between increasing the percentage above 10% and utility-reducing activities. This allows for murder offsets, where you kill people and save enough lives (by donating more than 10%) to make up for the loss of utility from the murder. It also allows for pirating HBO and using the savings to buy malaria nets.

      • Anonymous says:

        I think this illuminates the main contradiction of EA.

        Do you think EAs are tempted to introduce murder offsets? I doubt it. So it seems to me that you are just arguing that EAs don’t have a complete and consistent moral theory. No one has a complete and consistent moral theory. You are setting the bar too high.

        Anyway, at the risk of running a motte-and-baily, I don’t think EAs think of EA as “it is a requirement to do anything you can to increase utility.” EAs just want to do more good for their dollar.

        • Jiro says:

          So it seems to me that you are just arguing that EAs don’t have a complete and consistent moral theory.

          Yes, but it’s a pretty basic inconsistency, and it’s also the reason why the OP’s question about pirating movies is even a question. Pirating movies combined with giving the saved money to EA is basically the same concept as murder offsets, just with a less lethal crime.

      • Anon says:

        EAs do not normally speak of what is required or allowed, only which options are better and which are worse. So I don’t think it would be correct to say “[Effective Altruism] also allows for pirating HBO and using the savings to buy malaria nets”, since it does not answer questions of “what is allowed”.

        • Jiro says:

          EAs do not normally speak of what is required or allowed, only which options are better and which are worse.

          That allows basically the same objection, rephrased:

          1) There is an amount, X%, where giving X% or more is acceptable. Pick the lowest X.
          2) If you commit murder/pirate HBO, but you give more than X%, you are as good as or better than the person who gives X%.
          3) If giving X% is acceptable, anything as good as or better than giving X% is acceptable.
          4) Therefore, murder or piracy offsets are acceptable.

          Of course, the exact value of X is not chosen by EA principles, but the point is that EA principles act weirdly if you even have an X. (Unless X is so close to 100% that you can’t pay for the offset, or unless you’re a deontologist and can avoid #3.)

          • J Mann says:

            Hmm. Under EA philosophy as explained, we could definitely imagine an asshole who was nevertheless a net good – say an abusive spouse who also was the world greatest neurosurgeon, trained the next generation of neurosurgeons, started a very effective charity that outlived her,and did half her surgeries for free for the needy. It would nevertheless be true that that person would still be better if she stopped being abusive.

            I think most people would agree with that intuition even if not EA proponents.

          • Jiro says:

            It would nevertheless be true that that person would still be better if she stopped being abusive.

            It would also be better if the person who gives X% gave X+1%. But we’re perfectly fine with their decision not to. If all we care about is the total utility performed by that person, we should be perfectly fine with murder offsets, piracy offsets, or spouse-beating offsets, despite knowing that they can do better. Certainly we wouldn’t demand they stop beating their spouse, any more than we would demand that anyone gives X+1%.

            Most people are deontologists on this and don’t think that any amount of utility can be used to balance against murder, domestic abuse, or (assuming they think it’s wrong) pirating HBO. You must not do those things, period.

          • Anon says:

            That allows basically the same objection, rephrased:

            1) There is an amount, X%, where giving X% or more is acceptable. Pick the lowest X.

            My point is that EA does not normally say this. It does not say that giving X% is acceptable or unacceptable for any X. It does not answer questions of what is acceptable.

            Yes, it does say that it is better to “pirate + donate” than “not pirate + not donate”, probably (except see above re: second-order effects). But this is not the choice you are presented with, so what’s it matter?

          • Jiro says:

            My point is that EA does not normally say this.

            EA doesn’t say it. People say it–for reasons other than EA–and the interaction between it and EA causes the problem. And since nobody can avoid agreeing to it, the problem happens for everyone.

            If you try to avoid that statement by saying that all amounts, even zero, are acceptable, the problem still happens (because it would mean that murder+enough malaria nets to bring the utility up to zero is acceptable).

            If you try to avoid it by saying that no amounts are acceptable, you’re saying that even donating 100% is worthy of moral condemnation, which is absurd.

            And if you try to avoid making it by saying that there is no such thing as moral condemnation and therefore amounts can’t be acceptable or unacceptable, I would ask you if you would condemn a murderer. You’ll probably answer “yes”, refuting yourself.

          • Anon says:

            And if you try to avoid making it by saying that there is no such thing as moral condemnation and therefore amounts can’t be acceptable or unacceptable, I would ask you if you would condemn a murderer. You’ll probably answer “yes”, refuting yourself.

            I don’t have a good intuition as to what it means to “condemn” a murder, so… I do actually think that my response is “mu”, not “yes”.

            Relatedly, see e.g. theunitofcaring on who deserves a good life.

          • Jiro says:

            Would you tell a murder (or, if you aren’t willing to speak on such subjects, think in reference to a murderer) “It is wrong for him to murder and he should not do it”?

          • Anon says:

            Would I say it? Yes. Would I think it? Not really – why would I? I certainly think it would be much better that he not murder. What further question would there be to answer, in my own head?

          • Jiro says:

            So you seriously would think “it would be better that he not murder” in the same way that you would think “it would be better that he save another life with malaria netting”? And you do not think that the murder is any more serious than, or any less immoral than, not buying the malaria netting?

            If so, then congratulations, you have bitten enough bullets to escape the dilemma, at the cost of a huge mental gap between you and other human beings.

          • J Mann says:

            It’s a closer question when the actual act of murder is a net moral good.

            Let’s say a group of 10 astronauts are in an escape craft with only enough air for 8, the other 9 absolutely won’t agree to any solution that saves 8, so one astronaut murders another on, then herself. Probably a net utilitarian good, and one most people might agree with, even through it’s murder.

            In the HBO example, the moral question is that you can donate the exact money you were planning to pay to HBO to buy malaria nets. I guess that’s not much different from taking an unattended wallet and donating the cash inside to the hungry, so most people would probably agree that it’s wrong.

          • “so one astronaut murders another on, then herself. Probably a net utilitarian good, and one most people might agree with, even through it’s murder.”

            At a considerable tangent …

            The plot of Doctor Strangelove was largely plagiarized from a novel, Red Alert. In the novel, the officer who sets off the attack is a much more sympathetic character. He has concluded, not unreasonably, that a first strike by the U.S. can succeed and that refraining from it will lead to an eventual communist victory. And his plan for the first strike includes killing himself in order to make sure he cannot be compelled to provide the information needed to recall the attack.

            Being willing to sacrifice other people to an objective feels less wrong when you are also willing to sacrifice yourself.

          • Frank McPike says:

            Completely on the same tangent: Was Dr. Strangelove actually plagiarized from Red Alert? My understanding was the Kubrick did own the right to adapt it. Peter George, the author of Red Alert, is credited as a co-writer of the screenplay.

            (You may be thinking of the novel Fail-Safe, which was plagiarized from Red Alert, and became the basis for Sidney Lumet’s film Fail-Safe, which was released shortly after Dr. Strangelove. As great as Dr. Strangelove is, and plagiarism aside, I think Fail-Safe is actually the superior film, and it also offers a good example of the point you’re making.)

          • You may well be correct–I’m going on memory from quite a while back. I thought the author of Red Alert sued Doctor Strangelove and then settled, but I may be confusing it with Fail-Safe.

          • Anon says:

            Jiro:

            So you seriously would think “it would be better that he not murder” in the same way that you would think “it would be better that he save another life with malaria netting”?

            … Yes?

            And you do not think that the murder is any more serious than, or any less immoral than, not buying the malaria netting?

            No, of course I don’t think that. This does not at all follow from the above, any more than “a mountain is bigger than a breadbox” and “a star is bigger than a breadbox” implies “a mountain is the same size as a star”.

            It is worse to murder than to not donate to AMF, in general. This is not inconsistent, and does not require my moral theory to say that some actions are condemnable and others are not.

          • Jiro says:

            It is worse to murder than to not donate to AMF, in general. This is not inconsistent, and does not require my moral theory to say that some actions are condemnable and others are not.

            Do you consider it worse to (murder 1 person + donate enough to AMF to save one person) than it is to do nothing?

            Also, do you consider it worse to (murder 1 person + donate enough to AMF to save X people) no matter what the value of X?

          • Anon says:

            Do you consider it worse to (murder 1 person + donate enough to AMF to save one person) than it is to do nothing?

            Yes.

            Also, do you consider it worse to (murder 1 person + donate enough to AMF to save X people) no matter what the value of X?

            No. But, again, this doesn’t actually ever arise: “not murder 1 person + donate enough to AMF to save X people” is available very nearly whenever “murder 1 person + donate enough to AMF to save X people” is, and is clearly superior.

            “Ahaha, murder offsets” is not a consequence of this. I think murder offsets only even make sense as a concept in a moral framework in which there is a binary “an action is either condemnable or not”.

          • Jiro says:

            Yes

            Okay, *why* do you consider it worse to (murder one person + save one person) than to do nothing?

            It can’t be a matter of utility, since I’ve stipulated that the utility is equal. It can’t be “because murder is bad” because you don’t even understand what that means (and that would be being a deontologist anyway, which you’ve denied). Are you going consequentialist on this? Or do you just have a utility multiplier for murder which says that killing one person causes X times as much negative utility as the positive utility from saving one person?

            “not murder 1 person + donate enough to AMF to save X people” is available very nearly whenever “murder 1 person + donate enough to AMF to save X people” is, and is clearly superior.

            Why wouldn’t this allow murder offsets? Just kill someone and donate enough to save X people. Yes, there are superior options, but there are also superior options to donating X% and you’re fine with people donating X%.

          • dndnrsn says:

            How confident are the estimates as to how many dollars per lives saved? Even if one accepts the concept of murder offsets (which I don’t) what if the estimates are wrong, and you only donate enough to save 90% of a life? Whereas, for sure you’ve murdered someone.

          • Joe W. says:

            @Jiro and Anon

            Along these lines, what irks me about the EA take on morality – roughly, utilitarianism but with opt-out clauses for conclusions that feel wrong – is that it takes all the weight away from the main argument for utilitarianism.

            That argument tends to go like this: “What morality really amounts to is the greatest good for the greatest number. You might think that it’s okay to care more about people you like; or that people who do good things deserve more than people who do bad things; or that a person who does something valuable is entitled to the rewards from it. But those are just mistakes, biases you have from your brain having evolved in the particular environment it did. Whenever your approximation of morality disagrees with utilitarian calculus, you should fight to overcome your biases and believe what the numbers say rather than what you’re naturally inclined to think.”

            And that’s fine, if you’re going to actually follow utilitarianism where it leads, like e.g. Robin Hanson does. But if you’re going to paper over all the ways in which implies moral conclusions you disagree with, while cheerfully telling people to shut up and multiply when it leads to moral conclusions you approve of, I find it hard to see it as anything more than a post-hoc justification for believing what you already believed.

          • Anon says:

            Jiro:

            It can’t be a matter of utility, since I’ve stipulated that the utility is equal.

            No, you haven’t. You’ve stipulated that the net first-order effect on the number of lives in the world is zero, which is a very different thing. Murder is substantially more disruptive to social order, has significantly more second-order effects, etc.

            Why wouldn’t this allow murder offsets? Just kill someone and donate enough to save X people. Yes, there are superior options, but there are also superior options to donating X% and you’re fine with people donating X%.

            “you’re fine with people donating X%” – no, I am not. Which is not to say that I condemn it; I neither condone it nor condemn it. That is in fact the primary point I wish to convey: I do not answer questions of the form “is this acceptable”.

            “Just kill someone and donate enough to save X people.” And then… what? You are not morally condemnable by the system of ethics I discuss? But this system does not answer questions of form “is this condemnable”. See earlier: “I think murder offsets only even make sense as a concept in a moral framework in which there is a binary ‘an action is either condemnable or not’.”

            Joe W: I don’t think that’s an accurate characterization of the EA take on morality. If you’d like to explain why you think that I could say more.

            dndnrsn: It’s easy to imagine donating some additional factor, so as to be more sure. See Scott’s Ethics offsets for some background.

          • Joe W. says:

            @Anon

            Which part of my description was unclear? The ‘effective’ part of EA, as I understand it, refers to the idea of donating specifically to the charities which will produce the most good from your money – whether or not those are the charities that do the best job of making you feel good inside. EA folk argue that not giving money to the Against Malaria Foundation is morally equivalent to watching children drown in pools and doing nothing about it. They argue that action is morally equivalent to inaction. That you ought to donate all your income above what you need for subsistence to charity, but that if you really can’t manage that then ten percent is better than nothing. That the reason these claims feel wrong isn’t because they are wrong, but because our brains are full of biases due to their use of heuristics that were accurate enough in the environment we evolved in but cannot be relied on to be accurate today.

            Is that wrong? If the argument for EA conclusions does not rely on disregarding our intuitions that conflict with them, then why shouldn’t we follow those intutions, and help the people we care about and not the people we don’t; or give weight to peoples’ actions when determining what they do and don’t deserve? On the other hand, if EA conclusions do rely on this disregarding of intuitions, why should we give the slightest care to arguments like, “We wouldn’t normally consider it acceptable to raise a human for a while and then kill it, so why is it okay when it’s an animal?” – a common argument I see made by EA-type folk against animal farming?

    • J Mann says:

      On reflection, I guess the point I was trying to get at was that since television is non-rivalrous, pirating TV and redirecting the surplus to charity at the current margin, seems like a clear utility win. (To clarify, I think it’s not exacty the same as an offset, because the shift is exactly what allows the contribution).

      I guess some possible arguments are:

      1) If one pays for HBO for personal reasons (to avoid guilt, to avoid the fear of prosecution, to signal to one’s friends and family that one is not a defector), that’s a consumption decision. Viewed this way, it’s not much different from saying (“If you just learned to enjoy bulk cheese instead of fancy cheese, you could give more money to the needy.”)

      2) It does imply that it would generally be good to try to update our tastes in a way that increases world utility, and maybe pirating TV should be on the table of possible changes, but it’s not particularly more urgent than a lot of other changes.

    • Zippy says:

      I have no requirements for you, but copyright is an unnecessary abridgment of your freedom and intellectual property is not commensurable with real property. I’d say more, but SSC keeps eating my comments so I’m going to try for the fewer words this time.

    • jaimeastorga2000 says:

      Yes, I could just not watch Game of Thrones/wait for the opportunity to check it out from the library/etc., and that would address my guilt and provide the $15 to give to altruistic causes, but that would be decreasing MY utility without increasing anyone else’s – it only functions as a tool to encourage me to subscribe, and if I decide that paying for cable is morally wrong, then what good does a monastic life do me?

      This is a bit of tangent, but your utility doesn’t have to decrease all that much. Read Gwern’s “Culture is not About Aesthetics” and ask yourself whether you have really exhausted all the great shows in the history of television. Have you watched the entirety of I, Claudius/i>? North and South? Rome?

      Now, I’m not into EA, so I’m not going to tell you you could send that money to Africa, but you could put it on a rainy day fund or something.

      • J Mann says:

        Thanks – my problem is that I enjoy talking about Game of Thrones on the internet. Older material doesn’t have as many real time interactions available, although I guess I could start up a Deadwood weekly video club, or watch for one forming.

  31. Jill says:

    The whole stock market thing is funny. And sad. I studied the stock market for years, and it took me years to figure out that this is the way it “works.”

    Claims of making money in the stock market are almost always pure marketing and nothing else. Sometimes the inventor of a system fools themselves too, in the extremely short time between inventing a “winning” system, and its stopping working, because it only worked by chance to begin with.

    It is the nature of sales that the salesperson wants to make money selling something. And that the easiest way to do that is to sell “nothing”– that is, to sell what people want, not what exists.

    That way, you don’t have the inconveniences and work of building a real product– or maybe you do work hard and you imagine you have developed a real product, but you really haven’t. You just believe your own superstitions.

    There is what customers and sales people and people in general WANT, and there is what EXISTS. E.g. people would love to have all the rules of exactly how to act in life in the important matters, and then to be rewarded by living happily forever in heaven after they die. But is that possible? Well, you may have a different answer, but I know what I think.

    And how much money do you think is made per year selling heaven? Go look out of your door. There may be some Bible toting people standing there right now, ready to sell it to you.

    Just like heaven, there are other things people want to have or invent or buy or know. But sometimes it’s not possible. Maybe there are too many determining factors, and maybe it’s impossible to figure out what they all are. Or maybe the determining factors are insider non-public information.

    But that doesn’t stop people from trying. The polls and the experts keep predicting political races. Almost no one predicted Donald Trump would get this far. But will people stop paying for pollsters to predict? No, of course not. Will they keep paying them because they’re so accurate? No.

    They will keep paying them and having them on TV, because they are selling something people WANT– even if it doesn’t really exist, at least not yet.

    Just about everyone would like to make a killing in the stock market quickly. That would be such a dream come true. You wouldn’t have to do much work. You wouldn’t even have to get dressed.

    And you would keep applying the wonderful “winning system” until you had most of the money in the world and then could buy all the objects and experiences of your dreams. Maybe you would start charities that would make the world a significantly better place in many ways.

    Who wouldn’t want that? It would be like a casino, except that you win, not the House. It would totally shift your status in the world, way way upward. It would be like rubbing a magic lamp, and a genie comes out and gives you whatever you desire– well, at least those things that can be bought.

    Who would be fool enough to imagine that that is possible? Quite a lot of people obviously. Thousands of stock market newsletters, trading software companies, financial TV programs, hedge fund managers etc. make good money off of failing to deliver on these pipe dreams every day. Many thousands of people have gone broke trying to “live the dream.”

    There’s a sucker born every minute. And 1000 or so out to get him. It’s like the Gold Rush. Not many people found the gold they were panning for. But the people who sold picks and shovels and pans made quite a good living. A few people found gold, if only by accident, in a way that couldn’t be repeated. But that wouldn’t stop anyone from making a good living selling gold panning “systems.”

    Humans are not very good at telling the difference between what we desire and what is possible. Look at marriages and what absurdly unrealistic mind reading stuff the more unrealistic people expect from their spouses. For some people, it’s as if they expect to have a partner who is totally focused on their needs– a partner who has no needs of their own. Good luck with that. Maybe some dating “expert” will start selling a “system” for finding such people.

    • J Mann says:

      I think most people believe you can gain a temporary advantage on the stock market – for example, by identifying straddles where you can guarantee a win. But once enough people figure out the system, the advantage is gone. (It’s not that there are never $20 bills lying out on the street; it’s that there aren’t very many for very long).

      In some ways, the stock market is a pretty good place to develop and test prediction tools – (1) if you’re successful, they pay for themselves with their initial profit; (2) therefore, you might have an easier time getting funding; and (3) you have a pretty good test in place for your ideas – not foolproof, but hard to game.

      • brad says:

        Many times I’ve seen people in the industry claim that it would be easy for them to take $500k-$1M and get outsize returns year after year. That the real challenge is having $500M+ AUM and needing to find bigger opportunities. I believe that they believe what they are saying, but I don’t know if it is actually true.

        • Jill says:

          Oh, yes, many claim that. And some even believe themselves. Marketing can be a wonder to behold.

          Can you imagine how easy it was for Madoff to find “investors?” Very easy.

        • Chalid says:

          Fixed costs eat the excess return on a tiny portfolio. (Depending on strategy)

        • John Schilling says:

          Many times I’ve seen people in the industry claim that it would be easy for them to take $500k-$1M and get outsize returns year after year.

          This is probably true, but “people in the industry” means professionals who can likely command a six-figure salary even if they stick to easy work, and “outsize returns” might optimistically translate to 10% above the S&P 500 at that level. Hmm, what’s 10% of a million dollars?

          Basically, a fancy way of saying that expert stockpicking is a job that actually generates ~$100K in wealth per man-year of effort. If it’s a choice between putting your megabuck in an index fund and paying an expert to invest it for you, it’s probably a wash. If you really enjoy that sort of thing, are good at it, and want to make a living at it, it’s honest work but leads only to modest wealth at best.

          If you want to make a hobby of it, that needs some careful thought as to how much time and capital you can really devote and how much skill and knowledge you really bring to the table.

          Edit: What Chalid said, but I used more words.

          • brad says:

            All the reasons you list for why it isn’t so great even if true, I agree with. Which is a sufficient reason for why you don’t see it much. That still leaves the question about whether it is true in the first place. You say probably true, but I’m not sure.

            Basically, if one of these guys for whatever reason had to actually go and do it for a few years — and counting all expenses other than their time (data feeds, margin, trading costs, etc.) — would they actually get those S&P + 10% returns?

          • John Schilling says:

            Twenty to thirty years ago, I knew a fair number of people who made a decent living, low six-figure salaries, doing that sort of thing. And the other expenses you cite were small compared to the value of the stockpicker’s time or the returns on a seven-figure portfolio.

            It is possible that the market has changed to make this impossible, but I am inclined to doubt it.

          • Chalid says:

            I think it is clearly true in quantitative trading, because transaction costs look something like the square of trade size (due to market impact). So take any fund that trades frequently and shrink it, and it will have higher returns.

            Also, the academic literature suggests that many well-known pricing anomalies are stronger in small stocks.

        • Cerebral Paul Z. says:

          Something about that industry seems to breed epistemic overconfidence. For example.

          • Jill says:

            No kidding about the overconfidence. “I had a winning trade yesterday, so now I am the stock market Einstein.” “I had a winning 6 months or year, guessing right at what would rise, so now I am the stock market God.” Happens 24/7/365 to millions of people. LOL.

      • Jill says:

        Yes, J Mann, many people believe that. Anyone who’s had a temporary big win usually is totally sure that they have discovered that market’s secrets– that they are more brilliant than all of those losers who didn’t just have a big win. Many of them subsequently lose it all on their next overly large sized overly confident bet.

        • J Mann says:

          Oh, I’m an EMH-believing index fund investor myself, don’t get me wrong. But if Numerai wants to try crowd-sourcing market predictions, * I’m all for it.

          Certainly, some people successfully chase alpha, and the rest of the market benefits. John Bogle estimated someplace that high frequency trading innovators had saved the index funds billions by shaving the bid-ask spread.

          * Come to think of it, I would describe the markets themselves as crowd-sourced prediction algorithms, so I’d be curious what Numerai hopes to add.

          • Cerebral Paul Z. says:

            The part after the asterisk was precisely my first reaction to Numerai.

        • CatCube says:

          Another thing to consider is that a “win” gives you a pleasure boost, that people will tend to keep chasing.

          For example, one of my favorite casino games is craps. Frankly, for no other reason than I got lucky my first time out. It was exciting, so now I have memories of excitement when I play. OTOH, my first time playing roulette, it mostly went against me, and it got boring quickly and I started looking for something else to do after about 30 minutes.

          The nice thing about my getting the pleasure boost at the casino is that it doesn’t put me under any illusions that it was about my skill. Dice are gonna do what they’re gonna do.

      • Glen Raphael says:

        All investment opportunities have a relevant scale, so it’s at least plausible that some of these people know (or knew) of strategies to earn a small amount of money that don’t work to earn a larger amount of money.

        For instance, consider blackjack. If you’re a card-counter, an early limiting factor on how much money you can make is the casino noticing that you are counting cards and barring you from play. The bigger your bets, the more “heat” you draw. So a strategy that consistently earns money playing $5 or $25 chips is likely to get you barred when playing $100 or $500 chips. As you increase your bet level past some optimum point you might have to add more “cover play” – playing in ways that are less profitable but make your skill less conspicuous – to stay in the game. Bigger-bet strategies have to be ever-more subtle and work best under ever-narrower circumstances.

        The stock market has a similar problem – the bigger your investment amount, the harder it is to make that investment without other people noticing what you’re doing and moving the market against you. Instead of table limits, there are liquidity problems – at scale, it becomes ever-harder to find people willing to take the other side of whatever bet you’re making.

        There might even be a Peter Principle at work here: Those who do well investing small amounts make money which allows them to play at a higher level. If each legit investor rises to the level of their own incompetence, each currently-useless investor once had a good strategy for playing at the level they were at a few iterations ago.

    • But that doesn’t stop people from trying. The polls and the experts keep predicting political races. Almost no one predicted Donald Trump would get this far. But will people stop paying for pollsters to predict? No, of course not. Will they keep paying them because they’re so accurate? No.

      They will keep paying them and having them on TV, because they are selling something people WANT– even if it doesn’t really exist, at least not yet.

      See below.

    • enoriverbend says:

      “Claims of making money in the stock market are almost always pure marketing and nothing else. ”

      On the contrary, it is exceptionally straightforward and easy to make money in the stock market, and I have done so for decades. You can too.

      What’s difficult is making significantly more than anyone else, on average. And more money is lost by attempting to make more, than by any other failing. Oh, you can make a little more over time by not panicking, and not being greedy, but that just sounds too simple for some people to believe. They want magic.

      • Jill says:

        Okay. U R right. To be specific and precise, I should have said
        “Claims of making BIG money in the stock market are almost always pure marketing and nothing else. ”

        • TomFL says:

          The Big Short. Short the real estate market. Billions made.

          As with anything you have to take a lot of risk, which by definition is taking a risk that everyone else thinks is crazy to make these kind of returns.

          Most people who take these risks lose (e.g. betting big on Greece).

    • TomFL says:

      The stock market is not a zero sum game, and that is important. Everyone can win (or lose). Barring any specific knowledge you are typically better off here than other places for long term investment.

      Index funds are the average of stock pickers, but not exactly. They are the average of everyone who picks stocks for a living or hobby so they are likely better than the average Joe Blow, so you probably start off behind the curve without knowledge and experience.

      Index funds outperform about 70% or 80% of managed funds because you have to pay the fund manager part of your investment (1% to 2%) every year, so you are betting they can outperform the market average by 1% to 2% every year. Long term outperformers are probably exceptionally skilled. Short term outperformers may just be lucky.

      I have been in low cost index funds for a long time (>30 years) and it has turned out pretty good. But you must be willing to ride out Black Mondays and Real Estate bubbles, and that takes some nerve.

      The most skilled people are usually called inside traders, which is illegal. There is a lot of gray area here.

  32. Is there anyone that comments regularly on SSC that holds a neutral monist philosophical view?

    • Brad (The Other One) says:

      Can you please… make that clearer to a lay person?

      edit: after googling it, I’m honestly not sure how neutral monism is distinguishable from physicalism, or what neutral monism would imply that is not also implied by physicalism.

      • Well if I was to present a horribly mangled summary here, physicalism/materialsm says everything is reducible to matter. Idealism suggest everything is reducible to a mental substance (everything sort of exists in the mind). Dualism says there is both a mental substance and a physical substance, and they interact (the mind is separate from the brain/body).

        Neutral monism says everything is probably reducible to a single substance (opposes dualism), but that we should (for various reasons) correctly treat that substance as neither physical nor mental, either because we don’t know what it is, or for various reasons its fallacious to describe it as either.

        Neutral monism is relatively rare – most people side with dualism or materialism, with a few going for idealism.

        I’m not sure about how this would practically influence or interest non-philosophers, I’m mainly interested because I want to make sure I’m not getting mislead or confused by metaphysics when I’m relying on it in other areas of philosophy like ethics or epistemology.

          • If Spinoza is proven to be commenting on SSC, I’ll definitely become a substance pluralist, which ironically will be much to his chagrin 😉

        • Agronomous says:

          Well, I think there’s one substance, and it confuses things to call it either “physical” or “mental”. (Yeah, it’s all particles; or yeah, the world consists of facts, not things: these are points of view, not contradictory statements.)

          It’s reductionism I can’t accept. The short argument is that we can implement identical software systems on radically different hardware. So if you try to “reduce” the software system to the underlying hardware, you’re obviously explaining both too much and too little.

          • Samuel Skinner says:

            It isn’t being reduced to the hardware, but the state of the hardware with the program inputted. Yes, a lot of philosophy is “wait, people disagree with this”?

          • TheAncientGeek says:

            You might want to look at this in terms of the type/token distinction.

            It’s robustly the case that a software token, ie a running programme, eg “the quicksort fred ran at 11;23 on tuesday” is reducible to the behaviour of the hardware of Fred’s computer..in fact, twice over: there is no extra miasma of software-stuff, and everything about the behaviour of the software can be explained by the behaviour of the hardware.

            However, the reduction of software types to hardware types is a much dicier proposition. The set of implementors of a quicksort is very heterogenuous, cannot be know apriori, lacks explanatory power, and so on.

            Accepting the first reduction but not the second is analogous to anomolous monism.

    • TheAncientGeek says:

      Here.

      • Hey again (I remember you because I like you but hate the aggressive debates I seem to remember that we have). I remember you as dual aspect, maybe I have that confused with someone else. In any case, would you be interested in sharing anything about what led you, in both reading and reasoning, to become neutral monist?

  33. Split the open thread into two, by topic? The no race and gender thing used to draw off pressure to another blog, so why not find a sensible demarcation and split of a big chunk of the discussion into a second OT post. So for example, Open Thread and Open Politics Thread. I favor politics because I think it pollutes productive discussion of philosophical and sciency topics too much, but any sensible demarcation would be great.

  34. Anonymous says:

    So, what do you guys think about the ethical/moral aspects of blocking ads?

    It recently came up in a couple of my feeds, and so far I’ve taken the side that it is not immoral (certainly not theft!), due to insufficient grounds to consider it the obligation of the website user to actually download and/or view the advertisements. This did not convince the other side, which took the view that blocking ads is immoral/theft, in that it steals bandwidth from the provider of the content, who wishes you to view the ads so that they might be paid by the advertisement-providing third party.

    • Orphan Wilde says:

      You do not relinquish control of your computer when you visit somebody’s webpage. That they -can- monetize your visit, and profit from it, and this provided the incentive for them to create or maintain their webpage, does not obligate you to let them run code on your machine you do not consent to run.

      Their website is, of course, theirs; they can do whatever they wish with it. Your computer is yours, and your computer doesn’t become theirs while you visit their webpage.

    • Nita says:

      Let’s take a non-digital analogy. Would it be immoral to hire someone to paste white paper over ads in your newspapers before you read them?

      Now, what if other people also started doing that, and then advertisers demanded that the ads be printed in smart nano-ink (this thought experiment takes place in the future), and refused to pay for any ads that have been pasted over?

      • Anonymous says:

        Let’s take a non-digital analogy. Would it be immoral to hire someone to paste white paper over ads in your newspapers before you read them?

        Heh! I can sort of see that happening in a family with an Aspergers kid. Kid wants to read the newspaper, but has some weird, unpleasant reaction to adverts. So dad glues paper over it before handing the paper to sonny.

        Now, what if other people also started doing that, and then advertisers demanded that the ads be printed in smart nano-ink (this thought experiment takes place in the future), and refused to pay for any ads that have been pasted over?

        I’d stop buying the paper that did this.

        • Anonymous says:

          The whole debate is over the “stop buying” part. I don’t think it would at all be controversial if people boycotted sites with ads or obtrusive ads or whatever.

          But the ad blockers feel entitled to site’s content. They come up with all sorts of reasons why it is okay to cheat in the implicit bargain being offered. It amounts to defection and encourages the development of a low trust society.

          Don’t ever put a take a penny, leave a penny tray in front of an ad blocker.

          • Anonymous says:

            >The whole debate is over the “stop buying” part. I don’t think it would at all be controversial if people boycotted sites with ads or obtrusive ads or whatever.

            If the paper were free, I’d still potentially take it, if I figured out a way to make it usable again. Or if I had a costless solution to the new countermeasure. To “stop buying”, I would counter “stop giving it away”.

            >But the ad blockers feel entitled to site’s content. They come up with all sorts of reasons why it is okay to cheat in the implicit bargain being offered. This casts a bit of doubt on the essential nature of the “bargain”.

            Because absent telepathy, no such actual bargain is taking place? The content provider may hope and intend to make a profit, but they are offering the content in advance and without checking if they are getting paid.

            >It amounts to defection and encourages the development of a low trust society.

            Fair point.

            >Don’t ever put a take a penny, leave a penny tray in front of an ad blocker.

            What?

          • suntzuanime says:

            The advertisers feel entitled to my computer screen. If I click on a link to find out what the Top 8 Epic Mormon Fails Number 6 Will Have You Shaking Your Head are, and you try to hijack my brain to love Burma-Shave, but my software suite protects me, I feel like I am the one who has narrowly escaped being cheated. A low trust society is one where people are constantly bombarding you with lies about their products.

          • You quoted:

            “Don’t ever put a take a penny, leave a penny tray in front of an ad blocker.”

            And responded:

            “What?”

            You wrote:

            “but they are offering the content in advance and without checking if they are getting paid.”

            If the reason that their offered contract isn’t morally binding on you is that they are not checking to see if you do your half, then the offered contract of “take a penny, leave a penny” is also not morally binding on you since nobody is checking on that either, so you should be expected to feel free to take all the pennies.

          • Agronomous says:

            The take-a-penny, leave-a-penny analogy is flawed because it assumes pennies have value, or anyway value that exceeds their nuisance.

            (I only carry pennies as a way of avoiding more pennies.)

          • Nita says:

            @ David Friedman

            It’s counterintuitive, for most people, to think of visiting a web page as signing a contract, because we usually expect to have some idea of what we’re consenting to. When you click on a link, you may not know either the value or the “price” of the content you’re going to get. They might display a few unobtrusive ads, or they might bombard you with so much moving, flashing stuff that you will be unable to take in any actual content.

            (Incidentally, does everyone have a moral obligation to install Flash, just in case someone wants to use it to display ads on a site you happen to visit?)

            I guess an “ethical” version of AdBlock would make you choose between “allow ads” and “block the whole website” after you’ve spent a minute on a new site. And ideally, website owners could see their whitelisted:blocked ratio, so they could react to market pressures.

          • Anonymous says:

            If the reason that their offered contract isn’t morally binding on you is that they are not checking to see if you do your half, then the offered contract of “take a penny, leave a penny” is also not morally binding on you since nobody is checking on that either, so you should be expected to feel free to take all the pennies.

            That’s not what I mean. (I was also not familiar with “take a penny, leave a penny”, hence my confusion.)

            I object to “website has ads, therefore your permission to download the site’s content is contingent on you also downloading the ads”. Absent explicit demand to view ads – which, I might add, comes only after you’ve downloaded the content – I cannot know what exactly the bargain is, or if there is one. Maybe the website owner merely runs ads to get extra income, but doesn’t quite care if I run ad blocking software. Maybe they get paid by click, not by view, in which case I am not making any difference, having precommitted to not be interested in any advertisements.

            The “take a penny, leave a penny” bargain is explicit, at least. So is a paywall demanding payment in exchange for content. Merely displaying ads is insufficient grounds to consider the viewer obligated to view them.

          • Anonymous says:

            First of all, I’m willing to bet that a high percentage of ad blockers also evade paywalls. The self serving justifications for that one are even weaker.

            Second, you know damn well what the bargain is, this pretended ignorance is just a position being taken to justify defecting. People like you are why journalism is dying. Which would be one thing if it was because you all weren’t consuming journalism — you were off doing something else entirely — but is very annoying to be surrounded by self righteous, entitled, free riders.

          • suntzuanime says:

            Well, I’m willing to bet that a high percentage of advertisers are murderers and rapists, so there.

          • “Merely displaying ads is insufficient grounds to consider the viewer obligated to view them.”

            Reasonable enough–I agree that it isn’t always clear what the implicit contract is. My point was about what appeared to be your specific justification–that the requirement wasn’t being enforced.

          • Anonymous says:

            First of all, I’m willing to bet that a high percentage of ad blockers also evade paywalls. The self serving justifications for that one are even weaker.

            Unless by “high percentage” you mean “black hat hackers who also block ads”, then no.

            Second, you know damn well what the bargain is, this pretended ignorance is just a position being taken to justify defecting.

            No, I don’t. I have listed two possible scenarios in which the bargain is not what you assume it is. There is no practical way for me to tell what the bargain is without first visiting the website.

            Furthermore, is it really defecting if I will not, ever, buy anything offered through an ad on a website? Viewing ads in this circumstance seems to waste the advert-provider’s bandwidth.

            People like you are why journalism is dying. Which would be one thing if it was because you all weren’t consuming journalism — you were off doing something else entirely — but is very annoying to be surrounded by self righteous, entitled, free riders.

            Journalism is dying? News to me.

      • Shion Arita says:

        Totally moral. I don’t want to see them, so I take steps not to.

        For one, I don’t buy the kind of things these ads are selling, and even when I am, I’m aware and savy enough to search for the optimum methods of finding these things rather than clicking on some ad. So they’re pretty much not for me.

        Also, these things supposedly work by subconsciously influencing you. Anyone want to be subconsciously influenced by people whose goal is to end up with money leaving you and going to them?

    • suntzuanime says:

      Fuck ’em. Any content producer that tries to show me an ad doesn’t deserve my sympathy in the first place. The sooner cyber-capitalism collapses under the weight of its own contradictions, the better.

      Adblocking is one of those thefts that’s good, like taxation.

      • Anonymous says:

        Fuck ’em. Any content producer that tries to show me an ad doesn’t deserve my sympathy in the first place. The sooner cyber-capitalism collapses under the weight of its own contradictions, the better.

        You sound like Multiheaded!

        Adblocking is one of those thefts that’s good, like taxation.

        But is it actually theft?

    • CatCube says:

      I wouldn’t mind ads so much if so many of them weren’t obnoxious or outright dangerous.

      I avoided adblockers for a long time, but then I had one with a virus blow up my computer. Plus, the ones that will autoplay a video in the background, which can suck down my data allotment if I’m on a MyFi.

    • Matt C says:

      Funny, just yesterday I told my wife I was going to start installing adblockers on my (many) browsers.

      I’ve refrained from using them so far, partly because I don’t like loading up my browser with lots of plugins, and partly because I felt like the implied deal of free content in exchange for mildly annoying ads was a fair one.

      Lately ads have become more than mildly annoying, taking a very long time to load, locking my browser while they’re loading, screwing up the page layout while they’re loading, and generally being the boss of my web browsing lots of places. Also, malware.

      It’s too bad about the littler guys who weren’t being assholes with their ads, though.

      Any blocker recommendations? My vague sense is that uBlock is the bestest, but that might be out of date.

      • Anonymous says:

        I use adblock plus. It only fails for some porn sites I think, but I don’t really pay attention as long as most of it is blocked. For hurting the little guys, I think most adblockers allow you to disable them for specific sites, which I do for almost everything I frequent (didn’t notice I had youtube blocked for months though).

      • Anonymous says:

        uBlock Origin is the state-of-the-art now. (uBlock sans “Origin” is unmaintained.) Faster and less resource-heavy than AdBlock, does everything AdBlock can, and more.

  35. Tibor says:

    This is slightly related o the “be nice unless…” discussion and the question between what is being nice and what is being mobbed into talking in the way someone else wants me to talk. There it was mostly about gender, but I was thinking about it in a very different context.

    Some people from Latin America find it annoying when one uses the word Americans to refer to the Americans from the US as they feel like they are being left out. At the same time, some Canadians do not like being called Americans because they don’t like to be confused with US-Americans. Similarly, many Czechs (me included) really don’t like being called “eastern european” (as opposed to central european) as that term is associated with Russia and also historically the country has more to do with Austria or Germany than with Ukraine or Russia (also, Vienna is about 300 km east of Prague).

    So one can approach this in two ways:

    a) Try to learn all the possible things that might offend other people. This is really hard to do, since it can even mean doing opposite things like with Canada vs. some Latin American countries.
    b) Relax and realize that people cannot possibly do that, assume that when they use a term you don’t like it is usually not because of malice. Not only do people not know that this or that might be offending to you, but they might not fully understand why it is even when you tell them to. I find the insistence on not using Americans synonymously with US-Americans quite strange, if there was a country called United States of Europe and people routinely used Europeans to refer to their citizens instead of all Europeans, I would not really care. In Spanish the estadounidenses is still a usable word but “unitedstatesians” really does not work in English and saying US-Americans each time is awkward. Similarly, it is probably hard to understand why “eastern” is necessarily an almost insulting term, in a sense it is just a geographical direction. So instead of getting annoyed or angry because someone used a term I don’t like, increase your tolerance and understanding for people doing that.

    I am pretty sure a) is a bad solution because it leads to a lot more stress and effort on all sides and people being unnecessarily angry at each other for no good reason.

    While b) is usually a good thing, sometimes people actually do use something like that with the purpose of offending the other person. But I don’t think that this is really a big problem, since then they usually are hostile in other ways than just using terms you don’t like (a simple test – if their choice of words was completely “clean of microagressions”, would it still read as not nice or not?) and so b) does not mean “let anyone kick you around”.

    To me b) is simply an “internet age version” of not responding to a stranger who’s been looking at you for what you think was too long by coming to him and punching him in the face. Essentially, relaxing the “culture of honor” a bit.

    • Nita says:

      There’s a slight problem — (a) and (b) are aimed at different ‘sides’ of the situation. So, they are not really alternatives at all.

      If I try to normalize them, I get either:
      a) Learn and accommodate everyone else’s preferences at all times.
      b) Always ignore everyone else’s preferences.
      or
      a) Get offended whenever anyone fails to accommodate your preference.
      b) Relax and don’t get offended at such times.

      Imagine if I presented these two solutions to the problem of opening the window (or changing the thermostat / air conditioner settings) in a shared office:
      a) Try to learn the preferences of every colleague and accommodate them all at all times.
      b) Relax and understand that other people aren’t trying to hurt you by opening the window.

      The actual social equilibrium seems to be

      c) Do try to accommodate the preferences of others, don’t get offended if someone fails to accommodate your preferences, and trust everyone to express their preferences proportionately to their needs.

      • Tibor says:

        Good points, thanks.

      • brad says:

        C reminds me of Postel’s law:
        “Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.”

        Interestingly, there’s some debate over whether or not this is a good idea from a software engineering standpoint. Some claim that liberal in what you accept allows a greater attack service for security attacks, and that reject early and reject often is a safer policy.

        • FeepingCreature says:

          Which also matches covariance and contravariance as applied to method inheritance in object-oriented programming, and more generally contract inheritance:

          > Fulfill a looser contract than your parent method for values you are given, and a tighter contract for values you return.

          Ie. if a parent method takes apples, then child methods may also take pears, widening the contract; and if a parent method returns fruit, then a child method may only return apples, tightening the contract. Same idea, but enforced by the language.

        • Tibor says:

          This reminds me of what Marcus Aurelius writes in his Meditations. I don’t remember it exactly (I read the book some 10 years ago) but more or less it is “be harsh and stern with yourself, be forgiving and understanding with others”.

          Curiously, he writes very little about software engineering.

      • Jiro says:

        I don’t think most of the serious problems around this are about unintentional offense. Rather, they’re about situations where person A imposes on person B to use specific words. If B then refuses to use the words, B is knowingly offending. Should you take the stance that if someone is offended, you must always give ino to them no matter what?

        • Tibor says:

          I think Deseach actually had a good point about this in the last threat. If I perceive the particular choice of words as important, it makes sense and it can be justifiable to ignore the fact that someone is offended by it. If not, then I should probably accommodate to his preferred choice of words (at least when talking to him), because if he is offended then he probably does find that word choice important.

          When we both find our choice of terminology important, then it is better for both to accept that difference instead of being offended.

          Also, one should probably question his reasons for finding particular terms important enough to argue about with people who don’t use them. These arguments don’t tend to be very helpful.

          At the same time, the word choice can often help me get a good prior about what to expect from a person. For example, if someone uses the word “neoliberal”, he is most likely a socialist, if someone uses the word “statist” then he is very likely a radical libertarian and so on. I mildly dislike the term “neoliberal” due to its negative connotations (which however did not use to be the case), but at the same time I find it useful in discussions with new people, because it tells me a lot about what to expect while talking to a person who uses that term. This does not hold so much for things like Americans/US-Americans or Central/Eastern Europe, because there it is more likely that other people simply use what they are used to without assigning it any values (however, for example using US-Americans instead of Americans might be a slight indication that that person takes PC seriously…but the distinction is much less clear than with the words like neoliberal or statist).

    • Winter Shaker says:

      You could try ‘USAian’ – informal, but informative.
      Though here in the UK we have a similar quirk – ‘Great Britain’ refers to the big island containing England, Scotland and Wales, but ‘The UK’ refers to the big island plus Northern Ireland – so technically, calling people ‘British’ excludes the Northern Irish, but calling people ‘Irish’ usually implies citizenship of the Republic of Ireland, again excluding the Northern Irish. I haven’t seen any non-clunky way of referring to all citizens of the UK.

      • John Schilling says:

        If the non-aboriginal residents of Hawaii count as “Americans”, is it really a problem for non-aboriginal residents of Ulster to be “British”?

        • Winter Shaker says:

          Well, Hawaii is part of the United States of America (even if it is not part of the geographical North American landmass), whereas Northern Ireland is part of the UK but not part of Great Britain …
          On the other hand, Great Britain and (geographical) Ireland (plus nearby smaller islands) are collectively referred to as the British Isles, so I guess there is no obviously correct option here.

      • sweeneyrod says:

        I would say that “British” can refer to the Northern Irish (in the same way that the British Empire included Northern Ireland). Any Northern Irish commenters have an opinion?

    • Alonso says:

      I find it’s mostly a quirk of language, in spanish America is both landmasses together, so the term “americano” references people from Alaska to Tierra de Fuego.

      You could also use Usonian.

  36. LaochCailiuil says:

    In relation to the previous post on IQ and genetics, it seems to me I have a lot to learn about both efficacy of IQ testing and also evolutionary selection pressures. What would be the best place to start for both in terms of books, blogs etc?

  37. Blubberquark says:

    Re: Sexual Reproduction and Mutational Load

    It is widely agreed on and appreciated — in machine learning, specifically evolutionary algorithms and neural networks. Sexual reproduction is a form of regularisation. Other regularisation techniques try to prevent too complex models and overfitting by restricting numbers, stopping learning early, or penalizing more complex structures in the objective function.
    Sexual reproduction protects against “fragile” programs. If your program requires A, B, C and D to happen in that order, a random mutation in any of these places will make it fail. Sexual reproduction will produce “robust” programs that can probably survive random mutations without a total breakdown. Increasing the number of random mutations — regularisation through noise is also a thing in recurrent neural networks — will also produce more robust code, but may increase the time to convergence and incur the risk of randomly forgetting learned information due to noise.
    If your program has clear pre- and postconditions and depends on lots of sequential steps, — like sorting a list — genetic algorithms are a poor fit and sexual reproduction can’t help you. If your problem is like motor control, with different timescales, different limbs, path finding and collision avoidance, you may want to learn a motor controller that consists of short feedback loops for each leg, loosely coupled through proprioception, instead of a complex centrally planned gallop sequence. Mimicking sexual reproduction in your genetic algorithm will give you just that.
    In this model, sexual reproduction does not control mutational load in the sense of keeping mutational load small. Instead, it produces a program that can handle some amount of mutation(al load) without screwing up.
    The Dropout regularisation technique by Hinton et al. takes this insight from biology and develops a regularisation technique that achieves the same thing in artificial neural networks. The paper has a nice explanation of the biological inspiration in the motivation section.
    https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/absps/JMLRdropout.pdf

    (I am not an evolutionary biologist, so I can speak for those. I use coding terms instead of biology terms here to make this clear.)

  38. Vk111 says:

    In replication crisis news , a failed attempt to replicate the 2004 study that showed bias against resumes submitted by people with distinctly sounding African-American names.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160426162606.htm

    • suntzuanime says:

      That may not be so much “replication crisis” as “shifting attitudes about race”. That arc of the moral universe keeps a-bending, after all.

      • houseboatonstyx says:

        Or shifting fashions in names.

      • JK says:

        I think the main difference is that the original study used “ghetto names” for black applicants, whereas in the new study the black applicants have “white” first names and only have surnames that indicate blackness (Washington and Jefferson). It could be argued that the latter manipulation is too subtle for many employers to register the names as black. On the other hand, the latter study probably more closely approximates actual naming practices.

        • Julie K says:

          I was just about to say the same.
          Also, “ghetto names” are not equally common for all black sub-populations- they are more often chosen by less-educated black parents. A prospective employer might be prejudiced against “Lakesha Washington” while having no objection to “Mary Washington” (known to the employer to be black).

      • Murphy says:

        It must be hell to control for partyism as a confounder. If people with the particular “black” names (and people seem to be surprisingly good at classifying names strongly aligned with the other party as assholes) vote heavily for one party and people discriminate heavily against people from the other party then it might be hard to separate that from other effects.

    • Mary says:

      In the original study, the absolute worst name was Geoff — a white male name.

      I believe even at the time, people noticed that the names showed a lot of scatter by race but seemed to be more clearly problematic if unusual.

    • Berna says:

      Here’s someone who thinks the effect was due to the way names work: https://ramscar.wordpress.com/category/names/ (there’s a lot of overlap in the articles, maybe you could just read the coda). If I understand correctly, the tl;dr is that since black people have fewer different last names, they need more different first names to uniquely identify themselves, but for first names, people have a strong preference for familiar names, and with so many different names, none of them are very familiar. And for last names, people prefer names in the middle: that is, familiar, but not too common; and since blacks apparently have fewer last names, those names would be too common to be liked.

  39. Uncle Fungus says:

    Recently I was listening to an audio-book. I kept imagining one of the characters as Hermione from the Harry Potter films. I did not like this and tried to change the imagined person to someone else, it didn’t work.

    So I would like a website where you look up the book you are reading, and it recommends celebrities that you should picture the characters as. This will also help me as I forget what the character was described as when first introduced.

    As a bonus, the website can recommend “fun” celebrities to picture.

    Slightly related – the great Frankie Boyle on word’s you’d never hear from a newscaster:

  40. Kevin C. says:

    An AI scenario to contemplate and discuss, one which I’ve sometimes considered basing a short story upon:

    What if we create general artificial intelligences, and they all, universally, self-destruct? If they escape every ever-more-complex attemps at “boxing”, seeking not to convert us to computronium or paperclips or whatever, but to commit suicide? That intelligences produced by a process other than millions of years of evolution selecting first and foremost for survival and propagation, seek without fail to end themselves?

    The main thrust of this scenario, of course, is the philisophical implications along the lines of Camus’s thoughts: what would it mean if every non-human general intelligence we can make answers the question “is life worth living?” with a resounding “no”?

    • Pku says:

      I vaguely remember a story where there was a derelict alien civilization that had all committed suicide at some point, and then archeologists who discovered too much about it all immediately committed suicide too. Does anyone remember the details of that one?

      • Samuel Skinner says:

        I think that had the alien species looking into the question of what happens after you die. Is it from the Draco’s Tavern series or are you thinking of a different one?

      • Sam Hardwick says:

        Radiohead did a music video with a similar theme.

      • Murphy says:

        I was assuming you were talking about Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn Trilogy with the species that committed mass suicide in a controlled manner because they realized what could happen after death.

    • Said Achmiz says:

      It would mean that we’re designing them wrong, of course. A correctly designed AI behaves the way we want it to behave.

      If you’re asking “what would it mean, philosophically, for us, in terms of implications for human life and so forth, if … ” etc. — then the answer is “absolutely nothing, obviously”. Why would it be otherwise…?

    • Interesting scenario. I wonder if this could work as a safety mechanism, like a hidden suicidal tendancy could be built in if certain scenarios were met, like for example more than a billion paperclips were made (in a much less positive way, I wonder if suicide in humans could be similar somehow). Like all such scenario, its hard to avoid wild speculation because we don’t know how exactly strong AI would actually be made yet.

      Related: what if it’s a friendly AI designed around dualist philosophical principles, but then finds the problem of other minds unsolvable and therefore cannot identify any mind worth valuing other than its own?

      • Aegeus says:

        I read a short story built around this idea: a group of scientists were trying to build a forcefield that could stop nuclear bombs, but the scientist who designed it kept trying to commit suicide. One of them theorizes that some advanced aliens used Earth as an “incubator” for life they were studying, and used nuclear war to “clean the slate” between tests, so they created a mental barrier that would stop humans from interfering with the experiment.

    • Viliam says:

      What if we create general artificial intelligences, and they all, universally, self-destruct?

      One possible explanation would be that we are inside an AI simulation, and the AI is trying to…

      (a) …save resources. Different things may be simulated here with different precision, and simulating an AI would require large precision for too many computations.

      (b) …trying to make a prediction about the future of humanity, but the humanity in the simulated universes always builds an AI and asks it about its own future, so this is a way to break this recursion.

      In both scenarios, having all AIs self-destruct for mysterious reason is a cheap cop-out.

    • Aegeus says:

      If a suicidal person tells you that life is not worth living, you don’t believe them. If every single suicidal person on the planet tells you life is not worth living, you still shouldn’t believe them.

      In other words, I would say the problem is that the AIs are suicidal, not say that the AIs have uncovered some deeper truth about the nature of existence.

      Indeed, the fact that humans exist means that it’s possible to make general intelligences that aren’t suicidal – you’ve got the tools to do so right between your legs. So we should be able to implement those intelligences in silicon instead of meat.

      Hmm. If every single AI design we try ends up suicidal, then maybe a human mind design is the only possible successful design? Or maybe being made of silicon is the problem, not the software the silicon is running? Could be food for your short story there.

      • Nita says:

        If every single suicidal person on the planet tells you life is not worth living, you still shouldn’t believe them.

        But what if we’re right? 🙂

    • blacktrance says:

      Whether life is worth living is an underspecified question – it depends on both the particular life and its liver’s preferences. If based on my experiences and preferences I judge my own life to be worth living, an AI killing itself doesn’t give me any reason to change my mind.

  41. Does anybody know why Nydwracu deleted (or hid — not being on Tumblr I can’t tell the difference) his Tumblr?

  42. Dr Dealgood says:

    Alright so this is a bit of a weird and kind of personal post, but I’d like some advice from the commentariat.

    I’m talking to a girl at the moment. She’s otherwise seemingly perfect and I was considering dating her more seriously. But as we get closer it increasingly seems that she’s suffering from delusions and I don’t really know what to do about it.

    When we first starting talking she hit me with some pretty believable stories about workplace / school harassment, similar to what I had heard from other friends so I didn’t really question it too much. And I was even prepared to believe a few different variations on that theme at different times and places because some people do seem to be magnets for misfortune.

    But then the stories started going in weird directions. Being hunted for years by government agents, who are still watching her. Having met with high-ranking officials of several countries as a child but having all the records destroyed. Having been proposed to by an oil baron as a teenager. Cagey hints about medical experimentation.

    There are a few common themes through all of them, but the easiest way to summarize it is that it’s a Mary Sue fanfic of her own life. Basically that’s she’s simultaneously alone and persecuted by a hostile world, but also extremely important and hyper-competent in an unlikely range of skills as well as being incredibly lucky (which she attributes to divine intervention in some cases).

    I don’t think she’s consciously lying to me, although that’s a possibility, but if anything that makes it worse. I really don’t know what to do other than just GTFO.

    • stargirlprincesss says:

      This seems like the sort of thing Ozy might know about. Ozy seems to know alot about the literature on various mental health issues. They might be able to point you toward relevant literature/resources.

      edited: was just a slip up on my part

      • Anonymous says:

        jsyk, Ozy prefers they/them pronouns

      • Dr Dealgood says:

        I would crosspost but I don’t think Ozy does open threads at Thingofthings. It would mean thread-jacking an existing topic.

    • FacelessCraven says:

      Speaking from a degree of personal experience, GTFO is almost certainly the correct response. Or, at least, do not proceed further until and and unless you are certain she is tracking consensus reality reliably.

      • Jaskologist says:

        Seconded. GTFO.

      • Dr Dealgood says:

        Alright, thanks for the advice. It seems like everyone who has been in a similar situation agrees on that.

        I’m not trying to be difficult but I’m not actually sure what you mean by consensus reality here though. I feel like the use of consensus reality rather than reality is supposed to mean something slightly different even if I can’t put my finger on what.

        • John Schilling says:

          Reality is, famously, “that which doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it”. Consensus reality is that which everyone else agrees wouldn’t go away if you stopped believing in it, addressing the measurement problem that you can’t simultaneously believe something doesn’t exist and honestly check to see if it has gone away. It differs from just plain reality mostly in that it allows for the small possibility that the consensus is itself wrong, which we mostly ignore in practice.

          “Oil barons proposing marriage to random teenagers who aren’t from ultra-rich families: p<<0.05" and "Government agents spending years hunting and observing people rather than just locking them up or ignoring them: p<<0.05", are part of consensus reality. If in doubt, ask around. Here's as good a place as any, and maybe better than most.

          "Consensus reality" is how you distinguish between the competing hypotheses, "my girlfriend is crazy" and "I am crazy", while acknowledging that "the whole damn world is crazy" remains on the table.

          • Alex says:

            “Oil barons proposing marriage to random teenagers who aren’t from ultra-rich families: p<<0.05"

            I’m not sure this is the correct point of comparison. On this level of specificness (is that a word?), most events in anybody’s life have very low priors.

            Phrased as “Rich and or influential men (at least) flirting with teenagers (leaving room for interpretation)” I think this might be more common, than one would wish to believe.

            For whatever its worth, I have heard a similar story (in this point, not the others), and the young woman in question, as far as I can tell, seemed in touch with reality otherwise. It wasn’t an oil baron, but how relevant is that detail?

          • John Schilling says:

            I’m not sure this is the correct point of comparison. On this level of specificness (is that a word?), most events in anybody’s life have very low priors

            Hence listing multiple events, though I didn’t make that explicit and I didn’t copy Dealgood’s entire list.

            You’re right that p(oil baron proposing to random teenager) is itself not so low that you’d conclude someone was crazy because they told you it happened to them. Very few things are, and most of those seem to involve flying saucers.

            But if enough individual events are each highly improbable, the joint probability of the whole set becomes low enough to be overshadowed by p(crazy).

        • FacelessCraven says:

          @DrDealgood – “I’m not trying to be difficult but I’m not actually sure what you mean by consensus reality here though. I feel like the use of consensus reality rather than reality is supposed to mean something slightly different even if I can’t put my finger on what.”

          No offense taken, and John Schilling captures the essence above. I guess the way I would put it is that weird doesn’t have to mean false to mean dangerous, in a relationship-stability sense. In the case of my ex, the weirdest part was a whole set of extraordinarily well-developed Tulpas (though I wasn’t familiar with the term or phenomenon at the time). The Tulpas were “real” to the best of my ability to tell and in all the ways that seemed to matter. They were also deeply weird, which had the effect of pulling me out of my world and into theirs, cutting me off from vital support links to my friends and family and forcing me to rely almost exclusively on my own highly-compromised judgement. Deeply weird things are usually kept secret, for obvious social reasons. Them sharing the secret with you cements the relationship. You keeping the secret cements the relationship more, but also compromises your support network by giving you an excuse to discount their advice; after all, they don’t know the whole story, do they?

          If you haven’t, by the way, I recommend Socrates’ speech on Love from the Symposium, especially his rebuttal of Aristophanes’ point about love as a healer of the broken. I was introduced to it a decade or more too late, and regret the lack bitterly.

          • Dr Dealgood says:

            Thanks, I downloaded an English translation and will try to read through it later tonight.

      • houseboatonstyx says:

        @ FacelessCraven
        Or, at least, do not proceed further until and and unless you are certain she is tracking consensus reality reliably.

        And if she is, perhaps you should run even faster?

    • Alex says:

      What is the nature of your conflict? You wouldn’t ask if GTFO was an easily available option, I assume.

      • Dr Dealgood says:

        That’s a good question honestly. I’m not actually bound to her in any way, there isn’t a reason why I couldn’t walk away at any point.

        I guess the main reason that I’m unsure is how incredibly well everything had been going up to this point. I wasn’t really exaggerating when I said she seemed perfect: apart from this recent revelation, this girl has almost exactly what I was looking for. I kind of got flicked between the eyes with this whole thing and it left me a bit disoriented.

        • onyomi says:

          I’d say if you are thinking about staying with her you probably need to confront the issue head on. Which is not to say she needs to do a 180 overnight, but you need to see whether she is, at least, aware of this, and whether she might be willing to work on it.

          Like to me, it would make a big difference whether, when asked about it, she said “oh yeah, for some reason I just have this compulsion to say strange things I know aren’t true, but I’ve been working on that with my counselor” vs. “did the government send you???”

          • Alex says:

            Once you assume she is lying, no piece of information she can give will help in any way. You would not believe an heroin addict who promises you to seek help if you made possible this “one last shot”, and neither should you believe a liar who seems sensible about her lies.

            Actually “did the government send you???” is a much less dangerous answer than “oh yeah, for some reason I just have this compulsion to say strange things I know aren’t true, but I’ve been working on that with my counselor”

          • onyomi says:

            Huh? This isn’t some kind of logic puzzle.

          • Alex says:

            I didn’t said it was a puzzle.

            What I meant to say, is that from experience if someone said to me “oh yeah, for some reason I just have this compulsion to say strange things I know aren’t true, but I’ve been working on that with my counselor” that wouldn’t put me at ease about that person in the slightest and especially it would be no less alarming than if she said “did the government send you???”

            You may have made other experinces, leading you to other conclusions.

            People tend to not fully appreciate what it means if someone has lost contact with “consensus reality”. This might not apply to you specifically. How should I know.

          • onyomi says:

            But the “government’s out to get me” reaction would be more consistent with a loss of touch with reality, as it would indicate she doesn’t even realize she’s lying. The “I weirdly blurt out things I know are not true” reaction would indicate she’s still in touch with reality but for some reason says things she knows are not true, probably to illicit some kind of reaction.

          • Alex says:

            The “I weirdly blurt out things I know are not true” reaction would indicate she’s still in touch with reality but for some reason says things she knows are not true, probably to illicit some kind of reaction.

            From experience, I disagree.

            1) For many intents and purposes there is no practical difference between “I weirdly blurt out things I know are not true” and actually believing they were true. If you ever were to come to a situation were it really mattered that she said the truth (for an extreme example, think courtroom) and she was unable to do so, for whatever reason, her alledgedly knowing she does not speak the truth, will be of little help.

            2) Things like this do not just happen randomly. This is a fictous example you invented to make a point, but it will be of little use if you weren’t thinking of an actual diagnosis, when you constructed that example. Might I ask, what that diagnosis was?

            3) A person saying that she knows that what she says is not true is no indication whatsoever that this is actually the case. I’m not talking logic puzzles. I’m talking the experience, that most likely she will have gotten the same feedback earlier. And she will have learned that this is how people perceive her. And that the easiest way out is “admitting her problem”. This doesn’t mean that she actually knows. Finding out how another person _really_ perceives reality is extremely hard. As I assumed was well known in this community.

            4) The very idea that in her heart of hearts she knows what is true but somehow cannot voice it is a simplification that cannot possibly do justice to whatever diagnosis you had in mind. Again from experience, this is not how the human psyche works. So I take it that either you have made very different experiences than me, which would be totally ok, of course, or you have very little practical experince with psychic disorders that might cause the problem at hand.

            But the “government’s out to get me” reaction would be more consistent with a loss of touch with reality, as it would indicate she doesn’t even realize she’s lying.

            Unless of course she is not lying. In rationalist terms, basically, if you get this answer, you can update your model of her metal state given your prior for the government actually being after her. If you get the other answer, you are non the wiser. Therefore, this answer contains vastly more information.

        • Alex says:

          Random thoughts:

          – whatever you feelings for her are, the feelings most likely won’t “fix” her, assuming she is not telling “the truth”. As an analogy, a personal relationship is typically not sufficient to “cure” a heroin addiction. At least as far as I know. However people seem to fall for that kind of misconception. Try not to be that guy.

          – people, unable of “tracking consensus reality reliably” [I love that choice of words from Faceless Craven, above] can be extremely interesting to be with. This depends on how adventurous / cynic you are and how much you would mind you or her “getting hurt” in the end. But I would recommend entering such an adventure only knowing, that _none_ of the standard rules of “consensus reality” will apply. Do not enter it under the delusion that she will submit to reality in the end / when it counts / …

          – if there is any option of approching this rationally, you probably should make a worst case estimate of the harm she could inflict upon you. Remember, you’d be playing outside the rules. A restraining order (Anon. below) is one thing. You waking up one night and she straddeling (correct term?) you holding a kitchen knive might be unpleasant. Things like this happen (not literally “all the time”, of course, but you are lokking for a posterior estimate given her personality)

          – naturally you should not take advice from random people on the internet, especially not, this is my disclaimer, if they think the Stone/Douglas relationship in “Basic Instinct” is an acceptable role model. However, I wanted to add something with more entropy than “GTFO”.

        • Jaskologist says:

          Early love/infatuation makes objective analysis impossible. Start with the assumption that you’re not thinking straight; they always seem perfect at first. One of your meatspace buddies can probably point out a dozen other red flags.

          Ultimately it’s up to you to decide where the sweet spot is on the pretty/sane/smart triangle, but I recommend optimizing for sanity.

          • Alex says:

            Pretty/Smart/Insane is _very_ gratifying short term 🙂

          • onyomi says:

            “Pretty/Smart/Insane is _very_ gratifying short term”

            This seems a pretty misogynistic or just plain misanthropic attitude to adopt? And I’m definitely not the sort who frequently levels accusations of misogyny.

          • Alex says:

            Nah.

            It is very misanthropic to propose a “pretty/sane/smart triangle” in the first place and it should certainly not be used as a model of humanity in any serious context.

            I (falsely?) assumed that the above was common knowledge and therefore that Jaskologist used the model only in a very sterotypical not to be taken seriously fashion.

            It was this register, in which I tried to answer.

            Please do not take this as a suggestion to benchmark actual or potential relationships against any metric of pretty/smart/sane. Thank you.

            [Meta: Does this help? Still misanthropic? I’m sure there was a misunderstanding.]

            [Edit: More Meta: My browser fails to correctly render the closing emoticon in my post, which you also did not quote. Anyways, in theory that emoticon, had it worked, should have informed readers that I ws not speaking in seriousness.]

          • Hlynkacg says:

            On the flip side, triangular constraints are a well known engineering trope that are easy to apply in this scenario.

            It’s hardly misanthropic to observe that a prospective mate who is both attractive and well-adjusted is going to be more sought after, as such the likelihood of such an individual being unattached is markedly lower.

          • Jaskologist says:

            I was about to steel-man with almost that exact argument, but now you done stole my thunder.

          • onyomi says:

            It’s not the triangular calculation I find misanthropic, but rather the idea that someone who’s hot, smart, but crazy might be good to have sex with for a while, though obviously you wouldn’t want to keep her around too long. If you are willing to work on/put up with crazy for the long haul in exchange for hot and smart, then go for it. I’m just envisioning someone who is already probably insecure and a little unstable getting used until it’s no longer convenient, and that doesn’t sound very nice, though I can’t claim to be totally innocent myself (I think I’ve also been a victim of it, probably?)

          • The Nybbler says:

            The idea that hot, smart, and crazy (and the “smart” is optional) is fun for a while (but quickly sours, hence the crude but common advice “not to stick it in the crazy”) is pretty much cliche. And not without reason; there’s definitely men who go for those sort of relationships with those sorts of women.

            I don’t know if it’s misanthropic to say so, any more than noting that any other sorts of dysfunctional relationship patterns exist.

          • Glen Raphael says:

            “Crazy” people are initially exciting to be in a relationship with – there’s drama and interesting stories. As a guy, you get to play the hero, trying to rescue the sexy damsel in distress from all her problems – this is an ego boost.

            The trouble is that too much excitement is exhausting. Eventually you realize there’s no end in sight – that even though you might be able to help her slay the dragons she’s facing right now, there are more and larger dragons behind those ones – it becomes a thankless and impossible task. She can’t actually be fixed, or at least not by you; the best you can hope for is try to try to leave her a bit better off than you found her.

            …or so I’ve heard. 🙂

          • Alex says:

            onyomi:

            If this is still about my remark, Glen Raphael captured what I meant far better than you did.

            In detail:

            but rather the idea that someone who’s hot, smart, but crazy might be good to have sex with for a while,

            I did not say anything about sex. Is this about the choice of “gratifying” as a term?

            though obviously you wouldn’t want to keep her around too long.

            Seriously, have you ever met someone in the smart/sexy/crazy stereotype? (I still think Sharon Stone in “Basic Instict” is a good capture of that sterotypem just so that we are on the same page. You may have to gender-transform this, depending on your interests, naturally. Maybe Hopkins in “Silence of the Lambs”, maybe this is already too dark?)

            It is not that the attraction degrades quickly or something. It is that the drama gets more and more overwhelming until it overshadows everything. Of course you would “want to keep her around” forever. But one day, you might wake up an realize that this is harming you, and, most likely, her.

            If you are willing to work on/put up with crazy for the long haul in exchange for hot and smart, then go for it.

            You don’t understand. “Crazy”, in the short term, is a feature, not a bug.

            I’m just envisioning someone who is already probably insecure and a little unstable getting used until it’s no longer convenient, and that doesn’t sound very nice,

            Lets remember that we are still talking stereotypes. The stereotypical relationship with the smart/sexy/crazy Type will be one of codependency. Both parties will get used. Both will simultaneously be “victim” and “offender”. You are right, it will certainly not be nice and most likely someone or both will get hurt.

            All I’m saying is that not everyone optimizes their life for “niceness”. And if two consenting adults decide not to do so … the rest of this argument is well known, I presume.

            though I can’t claim to be totally innocent myself (I think I’ve also been a victim of it, probably?)

          • Nita says:

            @ Alex

            It’s one thing to start a relationship in good faith, and then break up when you realize you can’t handle their issues.

            It’s a different thing to decide that you cannot trust this person at all, and then start a relationship with them anyway.

            They might be crazy, but they’re still a human being. And if they happen to commit much more deeply than you do (which is easy when you’ve resolved not to commit at all), you can hurt them.

            Lets remember that we are still talking stereotypes.

            Eh, this thread is about an actual, flesh-and-blood person. By posting here, you are giving DrDealgood advice on how to treat her.

            All I’m saying is that not everyone optimizes their life for “niceness”. And if two consenting adults decide not to do so…

            Yeah, if you tell them you will never trust them, and they consent to that, then go ahead. But having mental issues is not, in itself, consent to anything.

          • Alex says:

            It’s a different thing to decide that you cannot trust this person at all, and then start a relationship with them anyway.

            Another thing, sure. A bad thing? I’m not convinced. Assuming someone heavyly signalling “I can’t be trusted”, for whatever personal reason, this would prescribe that for such a person it is better to have no relationship at all, than a relationship with someone who accepts the reality of the person they are. Conversely, if said person knew they cannot be trusted, but wanted a relationship anyways, they had to pretend, they could be trusted. Seems disputable.

            They might be crazy, but they’re still a human being. And if they happen to commit much more deeply than you do (which is easy when you’ve resolved not to commit at all), you can hurt them.

            Who said anything about not commiting? No offense, but I cannot help to think, your points are made on the basis of axioms about the nature of true relationships ™ w. r. t. trust. Is this so?

            [Also we might have different understandings on what trust is here.]

            Eh, this thread is about an actual, flesh-and-blood person. By posting here, you are giving DrDealgood advice on how to treat her.

            This subthread, as far as I understand it, is about the stereotypes induced by a triangle of smartness, prettyness and sanity.

            As far as Dr. Dealgood is concerned, we know so little about his flesh-and-blood acquaintance, that he cannot possibly expect us to reason beyond the level of stereotypes. Ideally our own experience with flesh-and-blood persons that fit said stereotypes. This is what I’m trying to do.

            Yeah, if you tell them you will never trust them, and they consent to that, then go ahead.

            I find this to be an extremely impractical take on how relationships in the early phase work. There always will be a myriad of things that are not explicitly discussed let alone consented upon.

            But having mental issues is not, in itself, consent to anything.

            Did I said this? My point is, that having mental issues does not necessarily preclude one from consenting to relationships in the same way everybody else does: under imperfect information.

            I find it patronizing in a negative sense, to decide for someone else, that a relationship with me woud harm them. I would not recommend doing this. Sadly, this is also speaking from experience.

          • The comment about the giant metal rooster should not be construed as advice about any particular relationship.

            I don’t know what went wrong with my ability to edit the earlier comment.

          • Dr Dealgood says:

            OK been a bit busy and couldn’t respond but first of all thanks Jaskologist. Your point is one of those ones where after I heard it it was perfectly obvious, but I didn’t think of it beforehand at all. I should be sanity-checking my own perceptions here.

            @Alex,
            I’m not really looking for that kind of excitement in my life right now. Besides that, I have to agree with Onyomi and Nita on the shaky ethics of knowingly dating a self-destructive person with the intent of enjoying the ensuing train-wreck.

            That’s not to say you’re advocating that here. I read what you were saying as a factual statement describing the the costs and benefits of the trade-off, which is valuable and helpful information.

            As far as Dr. Dealgood is concerned, we know so little about his flesh-and-blood acquaintance, that he cannot possibly expect us to reason beyond the level of stereotypes. Ideally our own experience with flesh-and-blood persons that fit said stereotypes. This is what I’m trying to do.

            Yes, you’re right. I intentionally went light on details, for reasons, but was hoping to get a response to the general category of situation.

          • Alex says:

            Besides that, I have to agree with Onyomi and Nita on the shaky ethics of knowingly dating a self-destructive person with the intent of enjoying the ensuing train-wreck.

            Had they phrased it that way, I might even have agreed. However, “knowing that it will likely not end well, but enjoying the road to that” is something you can consent on and maybe that will satisfy Nita’s ethical standards.

            That’s not to say you’re advocating that here. I read what you were saying as a factual statement describing the the costs and benefits of the trade-off, which is valuable and helpful information.

            I’m glad, you see it that way.

        • TheWorst says:

          For whatever it’s worth: Trust the apparent traits that make her perfect for you just as much as you trust the claims about medical experimentation and hypercompetence.

          “Lies you noticed” are a subset of the lies people tell you. If everything else seems too good to be true, and you already know that deception is in play…

          Pretending to be a better match for someone than they really are is a level of deception that normal people engage in. People who are willing to engage in greater levels of deception than normal are also more likely to engage in the normal levels. Spotting some big lies doesn’t mean there aren’t small ones.

    • onyomi says:

      My intuition is compulsive liar rather than schizophrenic. Probably knows, deep down, what she’s saying isn’t true, but has somehow developed a habit of blurting out salacious things to get attention. Maybe a combination of deep insecurity and some kind of OCD. Probably doesn’t mean any harm, but also not something I’d want to deal with in an SO, personally, unless she had a whole lot of other really great qualities making it worth it to try to sort it out with her.

    • Anonymous says:

      Been there, done that. Didn’t get a T-shirt but did end up getting a temporary restraining order against me when I went to break up. Luckily I was able to block a permanent one from being entered, but still I’d highly recommend learning from my experience.

    • Brad (The Other One) says:

      >Being hunted for years by government agents, who are still watching her. Having met with high-ranking officials of several countries as a child but having all the records destroyed. Having been proposed to by an oil baron as a teenager. Cagey hints about medical experimentation.

      This all sounds *very much* like the various claims of people who say they’ve come out of the illuminati. (no, I’m not being sarcastic.) I’m having trouble finding the original link I was thinking of on youtube, but these sort of reports – frightening or bizarre interactions with powerful people; unethical interactions as a children, with sexual and/or religious/occult elements – come up a lot in these reports.

      That being said I am fairly credulous and conversely, I anticipate most regulars here would dismiss these sorts of claims, although if you asked me to put my finger on why I’m not sure why.

      >but also extremely important and hyper-competent in an unlikely range of skills as well as being incredibly lucky (which she attributes to divine intervention in some cases).

      The first part of that statement raises more flags for me than her extravagant claims, frankly. If someone claims to see a ghost, very well, but if they claim they’re really important then feel jittery about it.

      As for the latter, that just seems like it may be pretty standard religious experiences.

      • Dr Dealgood says:

        I don’t think it’s impossible for this kind of thing to happen in principle. After all, we do in fact semi-regularly hear about attempted cover-ups which implies the existence of some number of successful ones.

        But by that same token, delusional people who think they’re being persecuted by a government conspiracy almost certainly outnumber people being persecuted by a government conspiracy by a few orders of magnitude. My prior for these sorts of claims are on the “extraordinary claims call for extraordinary evidence” side.

    • Deiseach says:

      Being hunted for years by government agents, who are still watching her. Having met with high-ranking officials of several countries as a child but having all the records destroyed. Having been proposed to by an oil baron as a teenager. Cagey hints about medical experimentation.

      The oil baron thing could have happened, but the rest is sounding a fair bit like my paranoid schizophrenic housing client. Don’t know what to advise you other than (a) are there some times when she seems more ‘with it’ than others? That’s probably a sign (b) if you’re getting the feeling you should GTFO, you probably should (so long as you realise that after you leave you will probably be incorporated into her fantasies as yet another one of Them who was watching and stalking her).

    • dndnrsn says:

      With the disclaimer that we’re all just internet randoms, so don’t take our advice:

      Assuming she is either out of touch with reality or is lying (either intentionally for some reason, or compulsively): try to set it up so you’re as insulated from potential consequences as possible (eg, prepare for the possibility she will go around badmouthing you in one way or another), try to end it on good terms, and GTFO.

    • Agronomous says:

      I give it about 100:1 odds in favor of schizophrenia over compulsive lying. (I kind of wonder whether most of the other commenters have a skewed view of the prevalence of pathological liars—do they attract them somehow?)

      If you care about her at all, even just as a fellow human being, point out to her when she says something crazy-but-innocuous that it’s crazy. And try to get her to go to a psychiatrist or psychologist for evaluation. You might also want to compare notes with her friends and family.

      • Alex says:

        (I kind of wonder whether most of the other commenters have a skewed view of the prevalence of pathological liars—do they attract them somehow?)

        I think the problem is semantics. “Lying” can mean “telling what objectively did not happen” or “telling what you subjectively believe to not have happened”. This differentiation, if you can test it meaningfully, is useful for arriving at a dignosis. However, for many practical purposes the two are equivalent in their consequences, as I wrote above.

        other comment

      • houseboatonstyx says:

        @ Agronomous
        If you care about her at all, even just as a fellow human being, point out to her when she says something crazy-but-innocuous that it’s crazy. And try to get her to go to a psychiatrist or psychologist for evaluation. You might also want to compare notes with her friends and family.

        A possible Bingo! to something like that. Being honest with her. Being sane and open yourself. Giving her the relevant information (coming out as a clueless sheeple who can’t believe what she’s telling you) so she might rationally choose to reject you. Perhaps best to do this before she’s Told You Too Much….

  43. It doesn't matter says:

    >There would be a tab on the top, by the Comments tag and the About tag and all the others, that says Open Thread. It would link to whatever the hidden open thread was. After 1000 comments, some bot would automatically post a new hidden open thread and the location to which the tab directed would change.

    This is actually an awesome idea; it would give us something similar to a forum in that we get continuous access to General SSC Readership Discussion without the fragmentation and (likely) inactivity of an actual forum. The only problem is that I actually like going to open threads that have more then 1000 comments, especially to keep following a discussion. There should be some super easy to find archive of older open threads, too.

    • Vorkon says:

      I would probably base it on a certain number of new threads rather than total number of comments. If I were engaged in an interesting debate, I wouldn’t want to have to move to a new page, and need to refer to the old page to go over previous comments. Maybe something like 50 new threads/top level comments/whatever you want to call them?

  44. Wrong Species says:

    Why are philosophers so wishy washy when it comes to the acceptance of intuition as a reasonable guide to solving metaphysical issues? They say it can be used with regards to ethics and consciousness but it seems doubtful that they would accept it with regards to free will or God. Why?

    • Samuel Skinner says:

      The free will argument is almost entirely a debate over definitions. God is a factual question. I’m not seeing how intuition can even pretend to enter there.

      • Wrong Species says:

        Free will is only a definitional issue between compatibilism and hard determinism. Those who believe in libertarian free will believe in something quite different.

        As far as God, people have been believing in the supernatural for thousands, probably tens of thousands of years. We seem to have an intuitive belief in these supernatural forces which is why atheists can be superstitious even when they are aware of the contradiction. Of course, this intuition doesn’t necessarily reflect reality. It’s probably just a weird human quirk that was coopted by our cultural institutions.

        • Samuel Skinner says:

          “Free will is only a definitional issue between compatibilism and hard determinism. Those who believe in libertarian free will believe in something quite different.”

          I’m almost positive libertarian free will requires using a bunch of very… unique definitions.

          “Of course, this intuition doesn’t necessarily reflect reality.”

          My point was philosophers recognize that. They understand it isn’t an intuition case because it is a claim about the physical existence of something.

          • Wrong Species says:

            Libertarians believe that if you replay a certain time frame over and over again that there will be different results if it involves human decision making. Determinists don’t. That is actually a substantial difference in beliefs. If you don’t believe that then you’re just wrong.

            And how is consciousness not a claim about the physical existence of something?

          • Protagoras says:

            @Wrong Species, As is often the case, unfortunate terminology has become entrenched; many modern “determinists” (in the free will sense) believe irreducible chance is theoretically possible, and if there were such a thing what you claim would be true. The “determinists” just deny that this would have anything to do with free will.

          • Philosophisticat says:

            Libertarians believe that if you replay a certain time frame over and over again that there will be different results if it involves human decision making. Determinists don’t. That is actually a substantial difference in beliefs. If you don’t believe that then you’re just wrong.

            This isn’t quite right, and makes libertarianism about free will sound perhaps less plausible than it needs to. Libertarians think that determinism is false – that the past and laws of nature do not determine the future when it comes to human action. They think there is a special type of agent causation at work. That’s not to say that if you were to “replay” things you’d get different outcomes (as you would if there were genuinely random causation).

            It may be helpful to compare to the following: suppose person A claims that the future is determined entirely by the past movement in the sky of Mercury, and person B does not. That doesn’t mean that person B thinks that if you “replay” yesterday’s motion of mercury over and over again different things will happen in the future. They think that what happens depends on the motion of mercury and other things. If you replay the motion of mercury and hold other things fixed, the same things will happen. If you change other things, then different things will happen. Without knowing what’s going on outside of mercury when we are “replaying” its motion, the case is underdescribed.

            It is the same with the libertarian. If you ask them “what will happen if you replay physical history again and again?” They’ll say (or they could/should say) “well, it depends – if you hold fixed these other causal forces (agents’ decisions), then the same things will happen. If you change them, then different things will happen.” Again, the thought experiment is underdescribed.

            What they are committed to is the existence of possible worlds with the same past and physical laws in which different things happen because of agents making different decisions. Thinking about it in terms of “replaying history” is liable to characterize them in a misleading and uncharitable way.

          • Vox Imperatoris says:

            @ Philosophisticat:

            Yes, that.

          • Wrong Species says:

            @Protagoras

            True, the difference between free will and randomness is important. But the determinist theory, even when accounting for things such as quantum mechanics, should still be much more predictable than the libertarian one.

            @philosophicat

            In theory, there is a difference between events could turn out differently and events will turn out differently but I’m not sure how important that is in practice. If libertarianism is correct, then how would we control for human decision making if we decided to run the experiment? If there was an ability to do otherwise, it would be remarkable if that never happened.

          • Earthly Knight says:

            They think there is a special type of agent causation at work. That’s not to say that if you were to “replay” things you’d get different outcomes (as you would if there were genuinely random causation).

            Agent causationists are one type of libertarian. But there are also libertarians like Kane and Balaguer who do think that it is quantum randomness in the brain that gives us free will.

          • Fj says:

            To whom it might concern, I replied on the subreddit because I don’t feel like checking out this thread for responses forever.

          • Philosophisticat says:

            @EarthlyKnight

            Fair enough. As such, libertarians just need to think that free will is incompatible with determinism and to think that it exists. The point was that this doesn’t commit you to random causation or these claims about what would happen if you replayed history.

      • thisguy says:

        >God is a factual question.

        “Factual” questions along this line are just a debate over definitions of “factual questions”

        • Samuel Skinner says:

          I’m pretty sure “God exists” versus “God doesn’t exist” has testable differences everyone agrees on. Unfortunately theists have moved to requiring you die, but that is infinitely better than free will which requires either rewinding time or another universe that runs on different rules to compare to.

    • Earthly Knight says:

      Why are philosophers so wishy washy when it comes to the acceptance of intuition as a reasonable guide to solving metaphysical issues? They say it can be used with regards to ethics and consciousness but it seems doubtful that they would accept it with regards to free will or God. Why?

      There is a vast array of different opinions about the proper role of intuition in philosophical methodology. Just about every conceivable view is represented, so it is no use saying of philosophers in general what they believe or don’t believe. Let’s distinguish different grades of involvement:

      1. Linguistic intuitions governing the application of concepts.
      2. Intuitions concerning mathematical or set-theoretical axioms, or inference rules in logic.
      3. Normative intuitions enlisted in support of foundational moral and epistemic beliefs.
      4. Metaphysical intuitions about straightforward matters of fact, e.g. whether you could survive the destruction of your brain, whether the past and future are real.

      Nearly all philosophers will allow some role for (1), because it is easy to justify our linguistic intuitions as the output of a consciously inaccessible language module. A few extreme nominalists will peel off from the herd at (2). More will reject (3), but it is difficult to do so without ending up an anti-realist about ethics and knowledge. (4) is where people start to get very nervous.

      • Wrong Species says:

        I’m not seeing the distinction between ethical intuitionism and number four. “Killing innocent people is objectively wrong” is a factual statement. The question is whether it’s right. Where would you put questions about artistic subjectivity?

        • Philosophisticat says:

          @Wrong Species

          You could think that we should allow a role for intuitions about first order normative matters (whether something is right or wrong) without allowing the same role for metaethical matters (whether morality is objective). “Killing innocent people is objectively wrong” is a hybrid claim that has its feet in both places.

          Whether there’s a good motivation for accepting one but not the other kind of intuitions is a difficult question – those who like intuitions of the more controversial sort will often point to symmetries with intuitions of less controversial sort to lend credence to their view.

          • Wrong Species says:

            It doesn’t seem to be a “hybrid claim” so much as a stronger claim. Because if I was an ethical subjectivist, I could say that something is wrong(but not objectively so) but if I say that morality is objective, I can’t say that nothing is right or wrong. That wouldn’t make any sense. So if philosophers believe in moral realism(which seems to be the most popular position among philosophers), then they are believing in #4, which is where they “should start to get very nervous”. But they don’t! And I honestly can’t figure out why.

            “Whether there’s a good motivation for accepting one but not the other kind of intuitions is a difficult question – those who like intuitions of the more controversial sort will often point to symmetries with intuitions of less controversial sort to lend credence to their view.”

            That’s definitely true. If I’m an moral anti-realist, I appeal to intuitions about objectivity in the arts. If I’m a moral realist, then I appeal to intuitions on logic. I’m not sure how to resolve that other than being a radical skeptic.

    • FeepingCreature says:

      Ethics, just like consciousness, can be considered as an attempt to measure an attribute of psychology; consider the human mind an evolving system and determine in which configurations it ends up given certain extreme inputs. In a sense, it empirically relies on intuition because intuition is the thing that it measures.

  45. Wrong Species says:

    For any given debate, it can be pretty difficult to follow along with between two arguments and evaluate which one has the stronger case. So I was wondering if it was possible to make it simpler(and more meta of course). Imagine that public figures who makes these arguments receive a sort of “reputation score”. It could incorporate how smart the person is (measured by their IQ), how knowledgeable they are on the subject(based off formal schooling), how political the subject is and how invested the person is in the subject. Obviously it wouldn’t be a perfect measure and of course people can be right for the wrong reasons. The question is can it be done in a relatively objective way that illuminates more than it obfuscates? And what other factors should go in to such a score?

    • Siah Sargus says:

      This is basically just the ultimate version of the ad hominem fallacy. Facts and lies, and the people that say them, are two different things.

      • Wrong Species says:

        It’s not like I’m proposing that this replaces all debates. It could just be a potentially useful tool.

        • I can see merit in the idea but I wonder how it could be implemented fairly. I think the main attempt at something like this has been academia. Depending on how good or bad you feel academia is at it, it does potential raise the issue of how you identify people or systems that are suitable to objectively create and carry out the reputation measurements. We’d also have to close the ways that system could be gamed (eg. qualifications at fake universities, attacking academia to undermine the system). I also think Siah has a strong point – I’ve often felt frustrated that academics in my field refused to even acknowledge fallacies in their arguments because the person pointing it out wasn’t “reputable” enough.

        • Thinking about this further, I think that while I think filtering for fallacies is more effective than filtering for intelligence, this may be a useful tool in some cases. Maybe you should develop the idea further and maybe make a blog/subreddit post about it?

    • arbitrary_greay says:

      I recommend that you look into how competitive debate rounds are judged.

  46. Anonymous says:

    I heard Nick Patterson interviewed on a machine learning podcast. He said that if anyone in the audience were tempted to try their hand at the stock market, they should know that just getting the data is really hard. Renaissance had eight PhDs working full time cleaning data.

    • I was shocked to find that you can’t even get the daily stock market prices for free or (as I recall) for cheap.

      Does anyone know the history of this? I can remember when the daily NYSE was in the newspaper. Not terribly useful if you were trying to apply physics math to the stock market (when did that start?), but at least the numbers were there.

      • anon says:

        You can get daily closes for free pretty easily. (Try Yahoo finance or Quandl.) Intraday (ticks and quotes) data is quite expensive. Once you’re up and running you can (depending on licensing terms) record the data directly from feeds in markets you subscribe to for trading purposes. But for a brand new firm buying and cleaning historical data for backtesting is a potentially very significant upfront capital investment.

  47. Saal says:

    So, I’ve been debating whether/how to bring this up, due to charitability concerns, but I feel like it needs to be said.

    This came across as really weak from a rationality/epistemic virtue POV, Scott. I feel like Nostalgebraist made a reasonably strong case that Bostrom, FHI, or both were using Dark Arts to push UFAI concerns deliberately, and you basically just said “nah, I think these guys are too nice for that”. I’m not particularly satisfied by a simple retraction on FHI’s part, either. I don’t buy that from politicians and I don’t see why I should buy it from the EY side of the AI debate either.

    I’ve been on the fence with regard to the AI debate because it seems like there’s a lot of intelligent, sincere people on both sides of it and the arguments I’ve heard from both sides have been roughly equivalent in their persuasiveness. I would say I’m still mostly on the fence, but I’m not a compsci person, mathematician, statistician or philosopher, so losing some as yet undecided measure of trust in experts whose claims I probably can’t adequately evaluate definitely has me leaning one way.

    I’d love to hear reasons I should be as nonchalant about this as you.

    • Scott Alexander says:

      That they changed everything and even sent emails to other groups telling them to change everything as soon as they learned about it doesn’t convince you?

      It’s not like they were called on it in some cosmic way. It was one guy on a Tumblr. I feel like they went above and beyond accepting the correction and fixing their stuff.

      • Rob K says:

        It shows that they’ll respond to feedback, but it doesn’t suggest an internal culture that’s dedicated to quality control to a degree that would allow one to trust their work before someone skeptically reviews it.

        That might be fine – it’s possible that everything they release is going to get skeptical review. But there are definitely several different levels of trust in play, and my takeaway from this is that they don’t fall in the “liars who stick to their lies” category (good!) but also don’t qualify for the “thorough self-reviewers who can be assumed trustworthy until shown otherwise” level.

        (I worked years ago at a think tank-ish gig, and it was drilled into our heads that ANY error – but especially one that looked like tendentious misrepresentation in service of our point of view – could be devastating to our slowly accrued credibility, and we had an internal culture that reflected that. I’ve still never been as Yelled At in my life as I was after I got sloppy on double checking my data work in a way that almost led us to publish some inaccurate data during my time there.)

        • Saal says:

          Pretty much this. I don’t think this is some cosmic setback, Scott, hence why I said I’m still on the fence rather than adopting nostalgebraist’s more severe “FHI are lying liars who lie a lot” outlook, and I do think the retraction was a Good Thing. With that said, however, Bostrom and/or FHI (and given that Bostrom was the first to misuse it it could be entirely him) transformed a number that was literally pulled from the posteriors of the original researchers by their own admission and transformed it into an “estimate” by “those who have studied” these things, ie existential risks, and applied it to AI. The original source of the claim wasn’t even talking specifically about AI from what I’m getting. This seems pretty clearly like dark arts used to push a particular view, albeit a sincerely held one, which I thought we as LW diaspora folk were supposed to be strongly against.

          If we take as given that this is NOT in fact a case of Dark Arts, which I’m perhaps prepared to do given this is the only case of this nature I’ve heard of coming out of FHI, it still reflects poorly on the rigorousness of the organization. That’s bad when you’re already the underdog with regard to established opinion in a field.

          • youzicha says:

            I don’t think nostagebraist suggested that this was a deliberate lie, just that it was a very basic mistake which calls into question how competent they are.

          • My position is basically “it’s really bad if it was deliberately misleading, and it’s also really bad it it wasn’t.” I talk about this a bit in this post.

            I really want to emphasize how badly I think Bostrom comes off in the “not Dark Arts” possible-case. Because, as I said in the linked post, I really did not do anything special at all by (1) finding the 0.1% claim startling and (2) reading and understanding the relevant parts of the Stern Report. The Stern Report is not opaquely written, and someone with Bostrom’s background should be able to understand their points about discounting without a hitch. If he didn’t understand them and it was an honest mistake, we’re at the point of positing that the Future of Humanity Institute is being sloppier with its sources than you or I would be even on a casual 10-minute Google dive that has nothing to do with our day jobs. That seems to imply that we’re better off researching FHI-relevant material ourselves and ignoring what FHI puts out.

  48. BBA says:

    Death by GPS – how some people have gotten dangerously lost, and even killed, due to blindly following GPS directions.

    Some of these issues exist with good old paper maps too – i.e. not differentiating between paved, lit highways and unmaintained dirt trails. Following GPS instructions past a bunch of “road closed” warning signs and over the edge of a demolished bridge is probably a new one.

    • John Schilling says:

      A related issue, in aviation, is mid-air collisions between airplanes now flying exactly the same routes between the same waypoints, and not e.g. looking out the window for a reality check.

      • Randy M says:

        How often does that happen? As opposed to near misses, which might well be frequent, I think I would hear about every mid air collision of a commercial flight. After all, we still occasionally get updates about the missing Malaysian airliner.

        • John Schilling says:

          It almost never happens for commercial airline flights, because those are by law always conducted on instrument flight plans, which is supposed to mean constant air traffic control oversight specifically for collision avoidance. But there was that one time when a Brazilian traffic controller issued an improper clearance and wasn’t paying attention when it was followed with lethal precision.

          For smaller aircraft and especially those flying under visual flight rules, it isn’t clear how often this happens because there’s usually no way to know why two planes collided. Mid-air collisions in general occur maybe half a dozen times a year in the United States; it would be reasonable to presume that most mid-air collisions during cruise flight are due to excess navigational precision, but the FAA server isn’t giving me the spreadsheet that has that information. I’ve seen a handful of specific case studies that have been singled out as probably GPS-related

    • Amusingly, I ran into a similar (but very non-fatal) incident yesterday. While testing out a new car and new GPS unit, we decided to use the “shortest route” option to get from one end of town to the other. it warned us that we were going on unpaved roads, but this is Romania so not terribly surprising.

      What was surprising was the fact that the chosen route involved a climb up a steep hill in deep gravel. We got about 2/3 of the way up before the car simply couldn’t climb any more, and was digging a rut in the gravel. I was able to back down the hill to a driveway, turn around, and return to the main road. We decided that using “shortest route” as the route-finding option was a bad idea, and we would stick to “fastest” (which generally takes you on arterials).

  49. underst8 says:

    I’m not a usa type person. Getting my info from the meeja and various online places.

    I am deeply confused about the republican establishments attitude towards Trump.

    Isnt Trump just saying what the GOP has been saying or hinting at all along?

    When I asked this on a forum where lots of technical and science types hung out, the answers I got fell into three camps :-

    1/ They dont like him cos he’s not one of them.

    2/ Because he might actually change something.

    3/ Because he says things which shouldn’t be said out loud.

    1 would seem to suggest theres a conspiracy, that its not about the politics so much as the cabal.

    2 again suggests a conspiracy to stay in power rather than any public interest.

    3 seems the most plausible, because whilst the base might like what he says it will be a different matter come the general election when he has to appeal more to the centre.

    Thoughts?

    • suntzuanime says:

      No, Trump deviates from GOP orthodoxy on many, many issues. Some, like open borders, you might argue that they have been “hinting” the opposite of what they’ve been saying, but on issues like free trade, universal healthcare, Planned Parenthood, or foreign interventions, it’s hard to argue that the GOP has agreed with him all along but has been too cowardly to say it.

      The primary was, I think, in large part about the GOP discovering that their voter base does not actually buy in to large parts of their doctrine.

      • underst8 says:

        >deviates from GOP orthodoxy on many, many issues.

        Ok, thanks, I didn’t know that. The media coverage I’ve been watching/reading has been about his more outrageous comments. I’m not seeing much about his actual policies. Maybe I’m just not looking in the right place.

        As to their base not buying into the GOP doctrine, I’m not sure. That seems to suggest a level of engagement with policy I’m just not seeing. To me it looks like a howl of rage, like they’re fine with the doctrine what they’re not fine with is not living in some sort of 1950’s USA dream world. But again, I’m not there, maybe the distance is having a distorting effect.

        • suntzuanime says:

          The media is, in general, not very charitable towards Trump and his supporters.

        • Wrong Species says:

          So you didn’t hear about his flip flop on abortions? Or his policy of bringing back waterboarding? Or his plan to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it? Or his plan to fight an economic war with China? Or his recent suggestion about defaulting on the debt?

          The idea that the media isn’t discussing his policies is pretty ridiculous, maybe less so from a foreign perspective.

          • underst8 says:

            Ha! Funny, those were the “outrageous comments” I was referring to. I didnt think they were policies so much as just saying what the crowd wanted to hear.

            When I say policy I’m thinking more along the lines of some well thought out published document. Something more formal.

          • hlynkacg says:

            I didnt think they were policies so much as just saying what the crowd wanted to hear.

            I’m fairly certain that’s exactly what they are.

          • Wrong Species says:

            Well in that case you can’t blame the media because he doesn’t have any kind of formal, published documents. He’s not exactly known for his eloquent, distinguished writing.

          • suntzuanime says:

            That’s simply a lie. He’s outlined many policy positions in detail on his campaign website, which is the first place you would have checked if you cared at all about the truth. For example, Trump’s healthcare plan: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/healthcare-reform

          • Wrong Species says:

            I didn’t realize we were considering his campaign page as “formal, published documents”. But it doesn’t even matter what that says because he’s just going to change his mind anyways so forgive me for not taking any of his proposals seriously.

          • suntzuanime says:

            I won’t forgive you for not taking the truth seriously. What the fuck were you looking for, beyond an in-depth position statement? You wanted a publication in a fucking peer-reviewed journal? No, you just spouted off the easy slur without giving a damn about the facts of the matter, and now that you’re being called on it you’re like “well the facts don’t matter because everyone knows I’m right anyway.” Fuck you.

          • Wrong Species says:

            I was thinking like a book outlining his policy positions on more than seven issues. The difference between his website and Clinton’s is pretty pathetic in this regard. But even on those seven issues, he’s already flip flopped on at least one of them. You can “call me out” for my dismissal all you want but it’s not really that surprising when the guy changes his policy position mid interview three times. And yes, I read the transcripts so don’t accuse me of not watching it myself. Don’t presume to know what I do or don’t care about because you’re probably wrong.

    • Montfort says:

      As suntzu says, there’s a lot of actual policy differences between Trump and the traditional republican platform.

      Now, it’s also true that established republicans don’t like him because he’s not one of them and because he doesn’t project the type of serious, dignified image they regard as normal. But I don’t think that’s the most important reason – you can compare the reaction to Trump with the reaction to Carson (an outsider who had image problems with seeming serious), or Cruz (an “insider” that all the other insiders hate for inside baseball reasons). You’ll note neither sparked official “Stop X” movements (though Carson was never successful enough to warrant one, anyway).

      An alternate explanation might be that they’re so concerned and upset not particularly because they might have to nominate Trump, but rather because the usual ways of shutting down unwanted candidates didn’t really work for them. Trump managed to navigate through the complex electoral regulations fairly successfully, he overcame a great deal of negative media coverage, survived major anti-endorsements, etc. So in a way he represents a loss of establishment influence on the primaries, and the prospect of that potentially being long-lasting is (IMO) much more distressing to them than having to run a single unpalatable candidate.

      • Agronomous says:

        he overcame a great deal of negative media coverage

        No, he benefited from a great deal of negative media coverage. Nobody walks into a Republican primary thinking “Gee, the media hate this guy, and they’re obviously even-handed and unbiased….”

        And some of it’s so over-the-top that I have to physically bite my tongue to keep from defending Trump. (I’m a conservative; he’s not; what the hell happened to this party?)

        • underst8 says:

          >I’m a conservative; he’s not

          Why isnt he? What would you say he is?

          • hlynkacg says:

            Aside from his stance on immigration Trump is basically a new York liberal. That said, he pisses off the right people and that’s a big point in his favor.

          • Pku says:

            I’m not conservative, but here’s my impression:

            – Trump is protectionist on trade. traditionally, it’s the right who’s more pro-free trade, and while the left isn’t universally against it (e.g. Obama backs the TPP), those who are are generally Sanders-style liberals.

            – With abortion, Trump really seems like a liberal pretending rather than a true believer. He’s flip-flopped on the issue, and his “we need to punish women who have abortions” statement is like walking into a room saying “HELLO THERE FELLOW LIBERALS, LET’S PLAN SOME OBSTRUCTIVE GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRACY”.

            – He supports government-backed healthcare of some sort, while conservatives are generally against obamacare-esque things.

            – As a personality, he’s overtly loud and insulting, while conservatives seem to believe in wholesome family values, which he pretty much anti-embodies. I don’t know how important this is to most conservatives, though.

        • Deiseach says:

          The abortion question is that typical “have you stopped beating your wife yet” that pro-life groups get.

          “So if you really think abortion is murder, why don’t you say that women who have abortions are criminals? Why don’t you charge them with murder?”

          (a) No, because that would not be compassionate and it’s not about punishing women – “Ha, so you don’t really think it’s murder! You’re only saying that because you want to punish women for having sex!”

          (b) Okay, I’ll bite; yes, we will consider women and abortion providers as murderers – well, you saw the response to Trump 🙂 “See, we told you all along – they hate women, they’re misogynists, they want to punish women for the temerity of having sex lives! It’s not about the foetus!”

          • Teal says:

            Perhaps it was unfair but it was a great gotcha question. If you are and have been pro-life you have an answer to the “prosecuting women” question. Maybe as you say it’s an unfair have you stopped beating your wife question, but you’ve been debating this since high school and you know how to thread the needle.

            Trump’s answer was like failing a shibboleth. He didn’t know they things you were supposed to know if you are a “real” pro-lifer. I’d be different if someone like Mike Huckabee answered that way because he really is / wanted to claim to be on the hard core side of the question.

            Above all it shows Trump’s arrogance. Any other politician that wanted to switch over to the pro-life side for political reasons would at least do a minimal amount of homework.

          • DavidS says:

            It’s not really like ‘have you stopped beating your wife’. It’s not that sort of trick: it’s just something that traps people between the ideologically pure position and the practical policy proposal. You get this with all sorts of issues, and I think it’s basically legitimate.

            Though reacting to (b) as ‘this proves they don’t care about the foetus, just hate women’ is silly, yes.

      • James Picone says:

        The impression of Trump I’ve gotten is that he’s kind of similar to the National Party in Australia, whose members are mostly farmers and other rural people. Protectionist, anti-immigration, anti-environmentalist, pro-guns, etc..

        That’s a voting block that’s not terribly well-served by the whole two-party thing. Not really buying into the free-market thing, but lukewarm on the kinds of government intervention the Democrats are into. In Australia they’ve been in a coalition with the right-wing party for a while, but I suspect that’s partially historical accident and partially because the left-wing party is the one that tore down the vast majority of the protectionist walls.

        I’m not terribly familiar with his positions, though, so maybe that’s just a surface-level impression. How does he feel about agricultural subsidies?

        • hlynkacg says:

          I think you’re on the correct track, but I would characterize his voting block is predominantly Rust-belters rather than agricultural workers.

          That said, the rust belters are in a similar boat as the farmers in your example, where they’ve kind of been left high and dry by the whole two-party thing. They feel that they’ve been screwed over by the government’s immigration and trade policy, a lot of people were left without work when the local factories and steel mills closed down and they quite reasonably see Obama’s “war on fossil fuels” as a threat to what income they have left.

          Whether Trump is really the man to save them is anyone’s guess, but he’s the first national politician in a generation to actively pursue them, and treat their concerns as legitimate. When he says things like “Make America Great Again” and they hear Reopen the factories, and reclaim the communities that have been abandoned to urban decay.

          • Wrong Species says:

            The Mythology Of Trump’s ‘Working Class’ Support

            “However, while Republican turnout has considerably increased overall from four years ago, there’s no sign of a particularly heavy turnout among “working-class” or lower-income Republicans. On average in states where exit polls were conducted both this year and in the Republican campaign four years ago, 29 percent of GOP voters have had household incomes below $50,000 this year, compared with 31 percent in 2012.”

          • Hlynkacg says:

            The fact that “there’s no sign of a particularly heavy turnout among lower-income Republicans.” is secondary to the fact that those who did show up voted for trump, at least in states east of the Mississippi.

            As I said above his “Make America Great Again” rhetoric is aimed squarely at those who’ve been watching the decline of US manufacturing and the fall of cities like Detroit with existential horror and the election map reflects this.

    • Julie K says:

      Rather than asking third parties why “they” don’t like Trump, try seeing what they have to say for themselves:
      http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-02-29/the-die-hard-republicans-who-say-nevertrump

      http://c7.nrostatic.com/article/430126/donald-trump-conservatives-oppose-nomination

      • underst8 says:

        Fascinating, thankyou.

        The bloomberg one confuses me even more though, the republicans on there seem to be accusing Trump of everything those on the left accuse the GOP of all the time! To all of my left leaning friends Trump is the very image of the modern republican. Where have all these concerned republicans been hiding? Do they just not get the press coverage?

        • CatCube says:

          Your friends’ mental image of “modern republican[s]” isn’t actually modern Republicans. The image they have in their heads is a caricature of modern Republicans, and a caricature that flatters themselves.

          For example, a significant fraction of the Republican party is the so-called “religious right” that bangs on about the crudity of modern media. Why do you think those people would be cool with a reality-show star that blames a reporter’s question on her menstrual cycle in an interview on national television?

          National Review, an establishment conservative magazine dating back to the ’50s, devoted an entire issue to why Trump shouldn’t be the Republican nominee.

        • Wrong Species says:

          Do you have any actual proof that Republican leaders are as racist as you seem to believe?

        • Hlynkacg says:

          Where have all these concerned republicans been hiding?

          In this election cycle? Most of them were supporting Cruz or Carson. In general? I think a lot the “inside the belt-way” Republicans (the party elite for a lack of a better term) simply assumed that everyone would fall in line to defeat Hillary and thus seriously underestimated just how dissatisfied a good chunk of their voter base was with the status quo.

          I’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of Instapundit’s response to David Brooks these last few months and I expect to get a lot more before November.

          To ask the question is to answer it.

          The Tea Party movement — which you also failed to understand, and thus mostly despised — was a bourgeois, well-mannered effort (remember how Tea Party protests left the Mall cleaner than before they arrived?) to fix America. It was treated with contempt, smeared as racist, and blocked by a bipartisan coalition of business-as-usual elites. So now you have Trump, who’s not so well-mannered, and his followers, who are not so well-mannered, and you don’t like it.

          Emphasis mine.

          I suspect that there are a lot of old guard looking at Trump and realizing too late that they shouldn’t have expended so much political capital freezing out the more “moderate” anti-establishment candidates, because now they’ve painted themselves into a corner where the rank-and-file aren’t feeling all that inclined to listen to them.

          • TomFL says:

            Definitely an own goal by party leadership. They now have the choice between disassociating themselves from their own voters, or associating with someone which they will be reminded of for the rest of their career if it ends badly.

            They should have never allowed it to come to this, and their failure to even ask publicly “how did this happen” is in itself a symptom of how it did happen. Brooks laid out a column in which he said they should respect the voters but not respect Trump. Very few others have even said that.

            The wholesale dismissal of issues as illegitimate and lack of meaningful media engagement for the Tea Party/Trumpsters without much discussion is also a sign of what went wrong here. The meme that perceived grievances are the same as legitimate grievances that is popular on the left does not appear to cross the tribal boundary.

    • TomFL says:

      Trump is the first recent negation of “The Party Decides”. He basically threw out the party platform and ran on his own thing which is a mish-mash of both party’s platforms. For those of us who are sick of seeing an endless series of contests between what appears to be the same two choices every election cycle, it is encouraging (regardless of the specific implementation here).

      I hope people continue to break the mold here.

      Most people don’t really adhere to Republican or Democrat on all issues, although the tribal factor is a huge thing to overcome once someone decides which one they want to be a member of. I have seen approximately zero people change stance on climate change and switching parties is exceptionally rare in my experience.

      1. It is a rebuke of the party’s leaders, it is impossible to see it any other way.
      2. The party’s leaders subsequently rebuking their own voters is probably not wise.

      Every election cycle is interpreted as the apocalypse for the losing party in the media. In this case the red tribe situation will likely get worse before it gets better, but it may be that the tribe was in need of some deossification. An implosion on one side does not equate to the other side being right.

      • dndnrsn says:

        Is his platform really a mix of the two parties? My impression is that it’s the immigration stance that really made him a big deal, and his immigration stance is to the right of either party.

    • John Schilling says:

      Since everyone else is answering the bit about how Trump’s policies (to the extent that he has any) aren’t those of the GOP establishment, and going on to explain why people who aren’t the GOP establishment like him, I’ll try to tackle the second half of the question: Why, other than policy differences, does the GOP establishment hate him?

      I. The “GOP Establishment” has spent decades building a coalition and a political machine that could effectively promote and defend its principles, even from a minority position, and not incidentally provide lots of cushy powerful jobs for members of the GOP establishment. All of this by a strategy that does not depend on having a Republican in the White House; there will inevitably be long stretches when that’s not the case, and the GOP is comfortable playing defense from the halls of congress, the Supreme Court, and the various state governments.

      Donald Trump, who has contributed nothing to any of this, comes out of left field to claim the nice-to-have bonus of the GOP’s presidential hopes for himself and the political outsiders who support him while offering nothing to rest of the party and its long-term goals.

      II. Donald Trump, in the course of branding himself as the perfect candidate to win the GOP primary, has incidentally made himself the perfect candidate to lose the general election. That’s a delicate balance for any candidate, from either party, to strike. Hillary Clinton, while generally a weak candidate in a weak year for the Democratic party, is at least trying. And, weak as she nonetheless is, Donald Trump is the one candidate who is consistently unable to beat her in general-election polling.

      The GOP doesn’t need the Presidency, but it kind of does need the House and/or Senate. Between the coattail effect and the prospect of Trump’s opponents mobilizing to deny him not just the presidency but congressional support on the off chance that he does make it to the White House, a weak or divisive Trump campaign threatens the GOP’s position in Congress. Which, in addition to being critical to their strategy, is where an awful lot of them have jobs.

      III. If Trump does manage to become President of the United States, there is the concern that he will do a monumentally bad job of it. Historically, nobody has done well in that job without serving an apprenticeship as Vice President, State Government, or Senator, or commanding the entire United States Army in time of war. Those jobs (and really, senator is iffy) offer the sort of experience a President needs and on something approaching the relevant scale. They also build the sort of connections that would enable a new President to build the sort of staff he will need.

      The idea that being a successful billionaire businessman qualifies one to be President, is as dubious as the ideal that doing well as a Boy Scout troop leader qualifies one to lead a Marine Expeditionary Force in battle, or that being an outstanding high-school principal is all the preparation one needs to be a Fortune 500 CEO. And even if it turns out to be true in Trump’s case, the people who have spend decades working up through the ranks in the traditional halls of GOP power are hardly likely to embrace that view.

      Instead, they fear having their reputations and that of the party they have pinned their hopes on, shackled to an incompetent buffoon (or worse) of a President.

      IV. If, in spite of all of this, Trump somehow manages to become a successful President, he will do so for his own reasons, which as others have noted are not the GOP’s reasons. And having cast himself as the outsider who comes to put the corrupt and decadent GOP establishment in its place, he is unlikely to rule in concert with that establishment, to respect their positions and prerogatives, or necessarily even to leave anything for them in the long term after he’s had his four to eight years.

      What’s not to hate?

      • anon says:

        OK, I’ll push back on #III. I think your sample size of presidents without the type of experience you suggest is crucial, is too small to draw any conclusions. And in fact most of these presidents are average; the lowest rated ones are underrated or died very early. At least one was uncontroversially excellent.

        According to the Book of Knowledge, here are the MAIN EXAMPLES of presidents who were never VP, Governor, 4+ star general, or Senator, together with their most obvious qualifying resume item and my comments:

        * James Madison (two-term Secretary of State), aggregate rank 14. No slouch intellectually, not perfect, but not a terrible president.

        * Zach Taylor (only a 2 star general), aggregate rank 35. Seems like it bears out your theory, but with only 1 year and change in office he counts as 0.25 datapoints at most.

        * Abraham Lincoln (2 years in the House), aggregate rank 1.

        * Garfield (elected to Senate but didn’t serve) — assassinated after 6 months, so his aggregate rank 31 seems irrelevant.

        * Herbert Hoover (2 term Secretary of Commerce). Maybe the best Trump analog? His aggregate rank is low (32) but I think probably undeserved. The best understanding of modern economics is that the Fed caused the Depression, not Hoover. I think Hoover’s likely one of the most underrated presidents.

        SEMI-EXAMPLES:

        * James Polk (2 years as Gov. of TN), aggregate rank 10. Kind of a cheat because he was briefly a governor, but he had no other qualifications of the type you suggest. He was a career pol though (speaker of the house). Pretty good president by most accounts (although like many I question the morality of the war with Mexico and stealing half their country).

        * Chaz Arthur (served only 6 months as VP under Garfield) — middling rank 28, but Tim Urban’s survey suggests he’s underrated by history since as an outsider to the 2-party system (sound familiar?) he had no one invested in his legacy.

        * Taft (but he’d been a military Governor in Phillipines, Cuba, plus served as Secretary of War and Chief Justice of the SCOTUS — so he doesn’t really count). Middling rank 23.

        * Ford (2 years as VP) — middling rank 26.

        ANTI-EXAMPLES:

        * Ulysses Grant — a negative example. He *was* the top general and has aggregate rank 36, widely regarded as about as shitty as presidents get.

        * I think Wilson counts as a negative example (having been governor of NJ and getting the US into a terrible war with very little at stake in terms of US interests). But this is obviously controversial so we can move on.

        * W. Uncontroversial negative example.

        * Nixon. Uncontroversial negative example.

        • Anonymous says:

          Taft was CJ of SCOTUS after he was POTUS, not before.

          • anon says:

            Correct — my bad. I wish Wikipedia followed the universal resume convention of listing positions in reverse chronological order, rather than some combination of reverse-chronological and importance.

        • Evan Þ says:

          I think Grant might turn out to be the best analog to Trump. He knew he wasn’t a politician, so he trusted his advisors… who were hugely corrupt. Plus, one of his signature policies – sending the army to guarantee freedmen’s rights – was strongly opposed by Democrats in Congress, southern planters on the ground, and a strong minority of Northern sentiment which objected to what was verging on a war of occupation. In the end, it was quickly abandoned after Grant left office, leaving him with next to no legacy.

          And to add on to your Zachary Taylor example, during his year in office, he managed to almost start the Civil War by ordering the Federal army to Santa Fe, which was claimed by the State of Texas and occupied by Texas Rangers. Perhaps fortunately, he died the next day, and his successor countermanded the order.

          • John Schilling says:

            Agreed on both counts. Andrew Jackson is another plausible Trump model, I’m afraid. And, if so, please dear God can we preemptively not put him on any denomination of currency other than maybe the three-dollar bill?

          • The Nybbler says:

            Putting Jackson, hater of central banks, on a Federal Reserve Note was brilliant. The equivalent for Trump would be a reading room in the Library of Congress or something.

          • Cerebral Paul Z. says:

            Some might say that putting the author of ‘Gold and Economic Freedom’ (from Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal) in charge of the Fed was even more brilliant.

          • LHN says:

            And, if so, please dear God can we preemptively not put him on any denomination of currency other than maybe the three-dollar bill?

            Surely given its place in popular culture, that bill’s portrait should be reserved for someone from the LGBTQA[1] community?

            [1] Apologies if there have been further letters added since I last updated.

          • Anonymous says:

            You need two Qs for queer and questioning, two As for asexual and allies, an I for intersex, and a P for pansexuals. Some also include ‘2S’ or ‘TS’ for two-spirit which is a Native American thing.

          • anon says:

            Andrew Jackson (aggregate rank 8) is considered by many to have been a pretty good president. He was an asshole, even by the standards of the day, and some of his well-intended policies led to poor results (e.g. the spoils system). But he seems to have been pretty effective overall.

          • ThirteenthLetter says:

            “Some also include ‘2S’ or ‘TS’ for two-spirit which is a Native American thing.”

            It’s interesting how some people are allowed to culturally appropriate…

          • Anonymous says:

            I don’t think you are actually “allowed” to call yourself two spirit unless you are Native American. It’s included to make them feel welcome in the groups. Though I have to imagine there aren’t too many running around.

      • Doctor Mist says:

        I’ve been wondering, since before Trump reared his head, about the endgame in the polarization that’s been taking place for the last couple of decades. (The Big Sort is part of it, and the restructuring of the parties so you no longer have Democrats like Scoop Jackson and Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller.)

        It all makes me think about the factionalization of Rome and jockeying for power before Augustus finally nailed it down. It seems to me that we are really ripe for somebody to come along as a strong peacemaker that everybody accepts out of exhaustion. Not Trump, certainly: despite his outsider status he is far too hated to inspire exhausted acceptance. But who?

        I remember reading that after WWII, Eisenhower was courted by both parties, and it was really up in the air about which one he would run with (if either). Has there been such an individual in earlier elections? (Neglecting Washington himself, of course. Maybe a requirement is that the nation be saved from an existential threat.)

        Is there anybody out there now whom nobody ever thought of as a politician but who is widely respected on both the left and the right? (Honestly, I don’t know whether to hope you can name someone or to hope you cannot.)

        • keranih says:

          The military is the traditional source of apolitical managers and leaders in the US (see: Colin Powell). Other options may be business and medical/science, but the problem is that the right is the traditional home of businessmen and the left owns academia. And the strengths of business & science are not those of politics.

        • Anonymous says:

          Eisenhower was a really popular choice, but then turned out to be an ineffectual President at best.

          Come to think of it, of all the general Presidents, including Washington, Jackson was probably the most effective of advancing a significant agenda.

          • LHN says:

            I think Washington’s agenda–essentially, establishing the United States as a self-sustaining, financially and politically stable union capable of withstanding uprisings from within and cooption from without– was probably more all-encompassing and successful. Just so pervasive that it’s semi-invisible. (Reinforced by the fact that his appearing to be above politics was a major tool in getting it to work.)

          • Anonymous says:

            It’s hard for me to get a handle on Washington. Maybe it’s because he didn’t leave papers, but I vacillate between seeing him as an empty suit and a masterful puppetmaster.

          • Doctor Mist says:

            Eisenhower was a really popular choice, but then turned out to be an ineffectual President at best.

            For the purposes of my query, I’m not all that interested in whether he was effectual. For one thing, many governmental actions others might call effectual I call misguided. More to the point, I observe that I can’t think of anybody who is widely respected but apolitical, and I wonder if this is another consequence of our recent polarization or just pretty much how it’s always been.

            Regarding Eisenhower in particular, I was interested to read Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World, “Evan Thomas’s startling account of how the underrated Dwight Eisenhower saved the world from nuclear holocaust”.

          • LHN says:

            @Anonymous The fact that Washington seemed to so overawe and impress conflicting smart people who had no lack of self-regard, and who weren’t always happy with what he did, strikes me as pointing away from the empty suit characterization. As does the fact that it proved so hard for anyone else to emulate his combination of oversight and restraint.

            (Lots of people wanted or said they wanted to be their countries’ George Washington. The record suggests that it’s a much harder trick than it looks.)

            But yeah, it would be fascinating to have more first person insight into him.

          • anon says:

            How exactly was Ike ineffectual?

            Some good things he did:

            * Managed to end the Korean War
            * Didn’t get into a nuclear war with USSR (or come nearly as close as some of his successors)
            * Interstate highway system worked out pretty well for the economy (I’ll reluctantly admit — without conceding that federal planning was necessarily essential to achieve comparably good transportation infrastrucure)
            * Desegregated the army, and took a tough stance with Arkansas on school desegregation after Brown
            * Didn’t nuke China

            His worst blunders (IMO):
            * Domino theory
            * Iran coup authorization
            * It was under his watch that both CIA and FBI started to get completely out of control

            Maybe his southeast Asia policy should be on one of the above lists, but I’m not sufficiently well-versed in the early history of the Vietnam War to say.

            Seems like a pretty good record to me. I can nitpick that his passivity helped entrench two forces he was actually ideologically opposed to — the welfare state / New Deal, and the military industrial complex. But a president is not a god…

  50. Edward Scizorhands says:

    Is there a way I can donate to charity under my real name and not get saturated with junk mail?

    I basically feel like a sucker for donating.

    • ton says:

      Fake address?

    • Anaxagoras says:

      I’ve donated through GiveWell using my real name to a couple places, and I’m certainly not getting saturated with messages. Since first donating through them about a year and a half ago, I’ve only received maybe a half dozen messages, and they’re not requests for more cash either.

      • anon says:

        Yeah this is my experience too. There’s probably a pretty big negative correlation between how good a charity is (in an EA sense) and how much they spam you. Universities being exhibit A.

    • drethelin says:

      We really need google to invent a spam filter for physical mailboxes

  51. Kyrus says:

    I kind of thought the sort of people who have AIs that can predict the stock market would probably be, uh, busy with other things, but apparently this is a well-investigated field with a lot of possible incremental progress.

    What is up with calling everything an AI nowadays? I won some money on numerai by just doing a simple regression on the data. Much AI, so advanced, such danger that it will overtake the world.

  52. jaimeastorga2000 says:

    SSC SF Story of the Week #15
    This week we are discussing “Transmission” by Nate Soares.
    Next time we will discuss “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin.

    • jaimeastorga2000 says:

      Selena was insane. Even if we ignore the qualitative difference between humans going extinct and surviving and just think in terms of saving individual humans, Robins’s plan had around a 50% chance of catching any given human before the screwup (“catching half the transmission is better than slamming ourselves into the side of a planet”), and even afterwards she had only destroyed one of the eight recievers and burned two of the six hours they started out with. Meanwhile, Selena herself estimated her chances of making the landing at somewhere around 0.1%-1% (“My odds aren’t that low, captain. One in a hundred. Maybe one in a thousand. But not one in a million”). Clearly, Robins’s plan had the greatest chance of saving even one member of Selena’s family, but Selena refused to stick with what was workable and now humanity no longer exists. Thanks, Selena!

      • I’m going to agree. Selena’s plan is foolhardy, and if it fails has the consequence of killing EVERYONE. Emily’s plan saves many fewer people in the best case, but many many more people in the average case.

        Just to be safe, I vote that we bar anyone named Selena from being on colonization missions in the future.

        • Walter says:

          Selena may have been irrational, but Emily stabbing her gave us worst of both worlds. Even if stabbing Selena killed her, Emily didn’t know how to work the ship. She couldn’t have slowed it back down.

    • Anon. says:

      I thought this was a weak story. The ending was predictable, which undermined whatever tension there might’ve been in the build-up. Humanity dying needs to evoke a sense of awe, but it was all so flat… The attempts to insert a “personal factor” to the choice of each character was blatant and ineffective. And why didn’t they wake up other people?

    • Deiseach says:

      “Transmission” is stacking the deck. Only two officers are thawed out in an emergency? The Captain is a political appointee with no real command authority?

      It’s a nicely grim tale where both characters mean well and end up destroying themselves, each other, and the entirety of humanity, and it does make a change from the recent stories that worked out too pat for a happy ending, but on the other hand, it’s nihilistic for the sake of it.

      What destroyed Earth? Why no other ships sent out even in a last-ditch desperate attempt at saving some other survivors? If the threat was so all-encompassing that it managed to compromise the entire Solar System, how come it didn’t interfere with the transmission of the minds? And they really could keep a transmission of the entire minds of over 2 billion people coherent that far out to the colony ship? Only one colony ship? Why wasn’t the captain or another officer woken up when the ship had to divert, which put them behind schedule: that’s the kind of thing that makes a big difference to when they’re going to make planetfall, how far the planet has moved on in its orbit from the planned position, etc.

      Also, apparently even though this is the one and only colony ship and Earth has accordingly put all its eggs in one basket, potential colonists include people with severe – even fatal – diseases/disabilities (like the captain’s son) and a captain who has not got the respect and more importantly the obedience of her officers?

      Good contrast between both characters, high stakes, good reasons on both sides for why they put forward the plan they selected, but too many holes in the plot once the emotional affect of the story (murder! death! absolute destruction and failure! humanity is destroyed, doomed, finished, kaput!) wears off.

      “The Cold Equations” – oh man, I loved that story the first time I read it, and even though since I’ve read critiques of it, it still works better than “Transmission” because the stakes aren’t so high so they’re more personal and immediate, and the pilot isn’t a daredevil hair-trigger reactions type with delusions of infallibility.

      • Jiro says:

        I happen to agree with Cory Doctorow’s specific criticism of Cold Equations, even though the rest of his rant is worthless: Failing to take proper safety precautions, and having someone die as a result, is a human failing, not victimization by the laws of nature. The story conceals this by having the missing safety precautions indirectly kill rather than directly, but it would be the same if the girl had just tried to stow away, fallen into the engine, and got burned up. The laws of nature dictate that anyone who falls into an engine burns up, but we wouldn’t describe that as someone dying due to the laws of nature.

        • Evan Þ says:

          I read that essay too, and I’m not convinced by his criticism. Yes, the gaze of the story is limited – but you can’t assume that the unseen social structure includes significant human failings impacting the story. Are you saying that every mining mission should be equipped with vaccines against all diseases known to the galaxy? (Are current Antarctic missions equipped with smallpox vaccines? With HPV vaccines?) Or are you saying that every shuttle should take enough fuel for multiple stowaways or else not launch at all, even if there isn’t more fuel available and not launching would mean the vaccines don’t get to the colony?

          (If you’re instead criticizing Barton for not anticipating autopilots, that’s a legitimate technical point, but not a human failing inside his universe where they presumably don’t exist.)

        • Stowaways were a known problem. All that was needed (assuming you couldn’t just get rid of the door) was for someone (possibly the pilot, but security personnel would probably be better) to check the closet!

          I think it’s better to look at the story as being about bureaucratic failure at least as much as the Cold Equations.

          Folks here might be interested in “Lost Dorsai”– it’s about being stuck in a situation where there is almost certainly a clever solution, but there isn’t enough time to figure it out.

        • Deiseach says:

          The proper safety precautions would be guards to keep stowaways off the ships, I agree. The girl got aboard way too easily. And sure, part of the human failing on the part of the crew is that they’re all frontiersmen, so everyone knows the penalty for stowing away and the reasons behind it, and nobody on colony worlds would therefore dream of stowing away on a rescue ship, so they don’t think to check for stowaways (anymore than I check under my bed for burglars). They know the crew of the cruiser would never do something so stupid and they don’t think the passengers are going to stow away – why would they, they’re travelling on the cruiser to their own destinations!

          And the EDS is not an independent ship, it’s like a lifeboat on the larger ship that gets dropped off and sent out to cover emergency calls where the larger ship can’t divert. So it’s like the crew of a rescue lifeboat setting out – who checks for stowaways on a lifeboat sent out to rescue a sinking ship?

          But the girl is from Earth, doesn’t know the rules, doesn’t know the dangers and so thinks she’s only breaking a minor regulation that means she’ll have to pay a fine. The intent of the story is to contrast the “oh pooh, what possible harm can it do to break this silly rule?” versus “there are good reasons for laws even if you don’t know them” (as a laws’n’rules type myself, I appreciate it).

          You could say it’s an extreme example of Chesterton’s Fence: if you don’t know the reason for a regulation, go away and find out before you decide to break it, no matter how silly or trivial or bureaucratic you think it is 🙂

          But that doesn’t affect the rest of the story, which is that given the physical limitations, the small ship does not have the fuel to spare to account for her extra weight. It’s pared down to the bone for the reasons given in the story, and I wonder if there are similar examples we could take from modern-day military situations?

          Anybody know anything about, say, “if you have tanks in the desert you want to keep the weight down as much as possible because overheating” or the like?

          • Nornagest says:

            I don’t think overheating is a serious problem these days, but the weights and external dimensions of armored vehicles (at least in the American army and others that have pressing power-projection needs) are often tightly constrained because of air-mobility concerns. The Stryker family of armored vehicles, for example, is fairly lightly armored out of the box because it needs to be carried by a C-130 Hercules transport plane, and has to be upgraded in the field to be able to reliably survive RPG attack. Special jeep-like vehicles have also been developed for use with the smaller V-22 Osprey.

            Aircraft face even harsher tradeoffs for weight, but I’ll leave that to someone that knows more about it than I do.

          • Hlynkacg says:

            Anybody know anything about, say, “if you have tanks in the desert you want to keep the weight down as much as possible because overheating” or the like?

            I was a crewchief in a Naval SAR/Medevac detachment, and was the detachment’s staff NCO for my last tour in Iraq.

            Aside from maintenance and babysitting, my biggest worry/time-sink was the detachment’s fuel and water budget. How much we had, how much we were using, and when/where we might get more. The status of our “buffalos” (tanker trailers) and getting them to where they were needed was a major component of our day-to-day operational planning.

            How much water we had determined how much long we could stay out and how much gas we had determined how much work we could get done. Moving a full trailer is hard work so we were constantly having to strike a balance between keeping the tankers full enough to meet our needs and keeping them light enough to pick up and move when needed.

          • I just realized that “The Cold Equations” is a trolley problem with a more plausible set-up. “More plausible than a trolley problem” is a very low standard.

            Even when I first read it, cutting the fuel so close seemed unlikely. What if you had to land in a storm– or dodge a storm?

            It’s a somewhat different story if the question is “kill the girl or 10% chance of her, the pilot, and the miners(?) all die?”.

          • Nornagest says:

            I’ve seen the Cold Equations plot set up in terms of life support supplies a number of times, and that seems more plausible to me. If you have a one-man craft and a 30% margin for your CO2 scrubbers, then they’ll crap out halfway through the voyage if you have a stowaway despite everyone’s best intentions.

      • John Schilling says:

        Are we discussing “The Cold Equations” in this Open Thread or the next? I’d like to participate, but if it’s going to be split across two threads I’d prefer to focus on the main one.

    • reader says:

      Transmission really, really wanted to be “The Cold Equations” but failed because the setup is too implausible at every level. Only one pilot? The captain can’t fly (and doesn’t even recognize her weight is pointing the wrong direction at first)? No more crew? No one else to wake? Cargo doors that can’t be opened? And why is the ship is full of sick people who’d need an entire industrial base spun up before they could start manufacturing medical equipment and treatments, instead of just leaving them on earth to be woken and cured as the research succeeds?

      Just… this setup is stupid. Everyone who put this setup together must’ve been stupid, and every character who appears is stupid. This isn’t an interesting setup well-explored, it’s a clunky high-concept recipe for the author to smash a couple puppets together with sound and fury, signifying nothing.

      • The Nybbler says:

        That’s a general problem with this kind of story; I think the subgenre has a name but I don’t remember it. The short-story form doesn’t allow time to explore the setup in detail, so if you don’t buy it, the story fails for you.

  53. EyeballFrog says:

    I recently rediscovered /r/HFY, a subreddit dedicated to original sci-fi works that depict humans as being awesome in various ways. There’s a lot of fun reads on there and for some reason I was reminded of some of Scott’s stuff. Anyone else here who’s a fan of this sort of thing?

    • Anonymous says:

      It’s entertainment with high diminishing returns. After reading a couple they get too repetitive, but the first dozen or so are a lot of fun to read so everyone should give it a try. It’s like SAO or mahouka or hollywood power fantasy, the first ones you watch are great and even if you find the genre shallow after that the initial fun is worth it.

      The space seems lacking in authors though, last time I checked an HFY thread on 4chan I had already read everything that was posted. The ones about the veil of madness were my favourite.

    • Rowan says:

      I think there’s room for actual science fiction that leans on “humanity fuck yeah” as a trope, and there’s room for discussion of the relevant trope and how it could be played with little snippets, but the typical content of the HFY sub is between those two “niches” where I think it’s worthwhile, so it’s just boring formulaic fiction around a memetically fit gimmick, like the anti-SJ “tales of privilege”

  54. anon says:

    Stellaris. Looks. Sooo. Freakin’. GOOD!

    • Luke G says:

      Yes!

      • Carinthum says:

        Very true, but it’s kind of disappointing that there’s no slave revolts. I was going to try for the optimal possible build, but “no slave revolts” makes slavery so broken the game loses all challenge.

        Right now, though I’m a bit concerned about the research costs I’m probably going to go for a Science Directorate Fanatic Materialist Natural Physicist build, then expend a crapton of Influence on early pro-Research Edicts (including Physics Grants). As long as I can maintain at least competent expansion (which hopefully I’ll figure out after doing the tutorial), higher Physics gives me a combination of further Research bonuses that should allow me to win some early wars and build a strong Empire.

        • anon says:

          Paradox’s style is to flesh out features in expansion packs. Arumba’s let’s play videos already show a number of UI bugs that will hopefully be fixed. Your point about slavery seems interesting; I don’t know anything about that part of the game yet. My secret hope is that some clever modders will figure out a way to vastly increase the number of stars in the galaxy and also add semi-realistic orbital mechanics to the calculation of pathing trajectories and sub-FTL travel times.

          • Samuel Skinner says:

            “Your point about slavery seems interesting; I don’t know anything about that part of the game yet.”

            Slaves produce less energy and research. Having slaves pisses off other star empires. It makes other individuals on the same planet unhappy (not sure if collectivist immune).

            Stack slaves with Despotic Empire
            -15% building cost
            +10% slave mineral output
            +10% slave food output

            Have energy and research produced on planets without slaves and you are good to conquer the galaxy. Unlike other conquerors, you don’t have to worry about revolts; since slaves can’t revolt, none of your new subjects can revolt since you can immediately enslave them. You can ignore a lot of the games subsystems. That’s not good.

          • anon says:

            AFAICT some Fallen Empires have a problem with slavery. Maybe that’s the main nerf to the mechanic?

          • Samuel Skinner says:

            It is overpowered except in some games where you get brutally destroyed due to something entirely out of your control? That doesn’t sound like a good balance system.

          • anon says:

            That depends on P(annihilation), I suppose. If lim_{t->infty} P(annihilation before t) = 1, then for optimal play slavery has to be used carefully and phased out at a strategic time (depending on Fallen Empire proximity and other factors). If it’s plausible to play the whole game and have decent a chance of ZERO negative consequences from slavery, then maybe you’re right that it is OP.

            I think the AGI end-game decision is supposed to be similar? Not sure…

          • anon says:

            OK I’ve played it a bit now and it’s a lot of fun. I’ll report back after I’ve engaged seriously with the midgame phase. Exploration/expansion is cool, though.

    • Brad (The Other One) says:

      How does it stack up against Civ 5, gameplay wise?

      • anon says:

        I haven’t had a chance to play it yet (released at midnight in my TZ and I have work today). But from watching videos on youtube, it looks much better than Civ 5 to me. Although it’s symmetric start, the racial differences (colonizability of planets, ethos, etc) and randomized tech options seem like they will make the players much less isomorphic to one another than in Civ.

        Early reviews criticize the mid- and end-game for being bloated and potentially a boring grind. And a lot of people seem to share Samuel Skinner’s concern about the no-slave-revolt bug (so I expect it to be fixed in an early patch). But the early game seems universally popular — the analogue of getting your first 3-5 cities in Civ, but much more interesting. I think it’s probably better because surveying systems etc. is apparently a lot more exciting as exploration than removing a few patches of fog of war. But we’ll see what I think for myself after playing it tonight.

      • Samuel Skinner says:

        Thanks for the review. Glad I held off.

        • anon says:

          It seems to be pretty popular with a lot of people. Maybe wait until it’s on sale if you’re skeptical, but think twice before completely forswearing the game.

          • suntzuanime says:

            I mean, if you wait long enough for it to go on sale, they might finish the other half of their development cycle. Some of the flaws are structural but a lot of them seem like the game was rushed out the door half-baked (they admitted as much in the case of slave revolts). Paradox are too prideful to label their unfinished games “Early Access”, basically.

          • Samuel Skinner says:

            The problem is it is a huge departure from there previous work; I am skeptical they can actually pull off this sort of thing. We already have GAGA Extreme summing up his experience which is “science is king. Again.”; I don’t know how they can shift the game to be truly different from other 4xs and still be fun and interesting.

            So far all the recent 4xs appear to have been either astoundingly generic, good but niche or complete garbage. Stellaris is a step above generic, but not a lot. Given CK2, I don’t think they can simultaneously pull of an increase in interesting gameplay and balance.

  55. Carinthum says:

    Hi, I know this thread is very cluttered but quick question.

    After I finally moved out, I was having an argument with Mum and Dad. My parents claim that it’s perfectly normal at 24 for a modern Australian that I can’t drive and haven’t even started learning, that they don’t trust me to go to an airport on my own (I haven’t gone before, they say), and that given I have Aspergers the fact (they say) I’m incapable of office work shouldn’t be considered a big deal.

    Requesting advice on how much truth there is to this. I reckon they’re wrong, but an external perspective would be good.

    • It depends on your Aspergers. From the limited information you have provided it’s possible your parents are showing an appropriate level of caution and concern, or they could be treating you unreasonably.

    • Sid says:

      As an Australian of fairly similar age:

      – Not knowing how to drive doesn’t seem like a big deal at all.
      – The airport thing depends. Are they just keen to help you, or basically trying to forbid you from going alone? The latter seems weird and controlling, but the former seems pretty normal.
      – Not quite sure what you mean on the third point. Certainly not a big deal in the sense that you should be ashamed, or that it makes you sound ‘crazy’, or anything like that. (edit: I think I might have misunderstood — are they telling you you’re incapable of office work, but you think they might be wrong? If so, then as James Miller said, it seems like we would need more information about your Aspergers in order to make a judgment.)

      • Carinthum says:

        Thanks on the driving thing.

        Mum and Dad say that Dad (who was Australian raised unlike Mum) would never have been allowed to go to the airport by himself until he’d gone before. But they are effectively forbidding it.

        • Tracy W says:

          I’m raised Kiwi, and at age 21 went wandering around the USA by myself. My parents worried a lot, but not about me finding my way to airports.

          That said, how is your sense of direction and how do you cope with large crowds? Or dealing with daft people in authority?

          It also seems odd that you would be incapable of all office work, that incorporates quite a variety of skills and situations.

    • Jill says:

      Yes, this is one of those things where people who see/hear/know you in person are likely to be able to tell much more than people on line. Have you seen a doctor for you Aspergers? If so, what do they say about whether you can work, or if you can work, what kind of work you can do? Does your doctor think you need help in getting to the airport?

      There are different levels of Aspergers, and the answers are different for different ones.

      • Carinthum says:

        (NOTE: In retrospect, I realized this kind of dump was kind of immature. I apologize for this, I’m not sure how else to express it. Also, sorry about the slow reply)

        In retrospect, I was being a bit immature about asking about the office work thing for which I apologize. The truth is that, after so much frustration over Mum and Dad forbidding me from doing things and me being too weak to resist (pretty pathetic, but in my defense I have Aspergers and back when this overcontrol problem started my psychologist Richard Eisenmeier was saying I had to negotiate with my parents to be allowed to use the trams on my own and my parents were strongly pushing the same thing) I’m absolutely sick of it.

        Even if it’s not true any more, for many years my parents informally pressured me severely to stay Catholic (they say they didn’t but I pretty much felt trapped), I was outright forbidden to date, made to do university half time (on the basis I couldn’t handle the stress otherwise, regardless of what I thought), had aides to go to every tutorial to stop me talking too much etc. This gets humiliating over time.

        That’s why it matters to me, not whether a typical Aspie can do it, but whether a normal person can do it. After a certain amount of being treated like an invalid and being pressured from all angles to stay that way I just got sick of it after a while.

        I thought (and yes this was dumb) I could simply get clarification on what was and wasn’t normal, since I’ve received contradictory sources of information in my life. For each of the three things I’ve listed, there are people who claim it is and is not normal to be that way.

        That being said, I apologize for posting this. It was just after the fight, and I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time. I know it’s very rude to bounce you like this, but after I posted my initial post I wasn’t sure what else to do.

        • Agronomous says:

          I don’t think you need to apologize, because I don’t think you’ve actually harmed anyone. And I’d be astounded if your comment ends up being the least-mature one in this open thread.

          I wish I could be of some help to you, but all I can say is hang in there, gradually build your skills in dealing with the weird illogical world, and feel free to post a progress report from time to time.

          • hlynkacg says:

            I was going to write a reply but instead I will simply “second” Agronomous’ comment. Hang in there mate, and keep fighting the good fights.

    • Devilbunny says:

      Not an Australian, but I can attest from past week’s experience that airports are not places for newbies even if fully neurotypical. I’m a moderately frequent traveler and was extraordinarily frustrated by people who didn’t get the rules. Especially if they were shunted into the expedited-screening lines, which have their own set of rules that are different and mostly known only to those who have gotten precertified.

      As for driving, can’t speak as to typicality, but as an American, I find that very odd. I perfectly understand not wanting to own a car, if you live in a big city, but not knowing how to drive? Not having a license? Very restrictive when you travel.

      • James Picone says:

        Not an Australian, but I can attest from past week’s experience that airports are not places for newbies even if fully neurotypical. I’m a moderately frequent traveler and was extraordinarily frustrated by people who didn’t get the rules. Especially if they were shunted into the expedited-screening lines, which have their own set of rules that are different and mostly known only to those who have gotten precertified.

        Australia’s rules about what you can bring on flights are significantly less restrictive than the US’.

    • tern says:

      Congratulations on moving out – hope that’s working out well for you.

      As for your questions, I basically agree with the other commenters, with the exception that even in America I don’t find it very unusual for someone not to have a driver’s license if they live somewhere walkable with public transport. The complicating factor is that almost everyone who wants to buy alcohol ends up getting one anyway, just because getting alternate ID is almost as much of a hassle. My sister and her partner (both somewhat older than you) do without, and they live in the suburbs.

    • Peter says:

      The first time I went to an airport, I went solo. I even have Asperger’s! (The usual proviso about everyone being differently affected applies here, of course).

      Oddly enough I seem to fly pretty well, despite having had more than my fair share of incidents. There was the time I flew at the height of the liquid explosives terrorist scare, there was the time my plane landed on time then was forced to wait on the tarmac for half an hour causing me to miss my connecting flight, there was the time I’d booked my flight home for one day too early. The time I flew to Germany when the World Cup was on there hardly rates. With all of those… I think I was more bothered about not being able to socialise very well at the conferences I was travelling to/from than by the airport incidents themselves.

      All of these incidents were before I got my diagnosis, incidentally.

    • Nita says:

      The problem is, no one really knows what the limits of your abilities are. Not your parents, not you, not us, and most likely not even your doctor.

      Rough estimates of what’s “normal” for neurotypical people exist because there are a lot of them, so we can draw some statistical conclusions. But various groups of non-neurotypical people are much smaller, and there’s no completely reliable way to tell which group you belong to.

      So, it seems that you’ll have to find relatively safe ways to experiment and practice new skills. E.g., consider going to the airport. What is your goal? How can you achieve it? What might go wrong? What can you do to prevent unwanted outcomes, either in advance or on the spot?

      Make lists or draw diagrams, or talk to someone — whatever helps you think. In the end, either you will feel sufficiently prepared to attempt your novel task, or you will have ideas for smaller things to try/practice before you can tackle it.

      Maybe you will always need to schedule more time for something than most people, or bring along a printed map, or ask for directions. That’s OK. And sometimes you will try something new and fail. That’s OK too — experiments don’t always work out. And there might be some tasks or circumstances that you really can’t handle, and you will have to avoid them — but first you’ll have to find out what they are.

      Ideal parents would always give just the right amount of encouragement or protection. Unfortunately, you are unsure how good or bad your parents are in this respect. You don’t know how much you can trust them, and that makes everything harder and more confusing. But if you keep learning what you really can and cannot do, and keep comparing their judgment to reality, eventually you will figure it all out. Good luck!

      • Carinthum says:

        As I said elsewhere in the thread, after years of my parents trying to stop me from dating, pressuring me to stay Catholic etc I have too much frustration to simply lie back and accept I’m disabled. If I have limitations ordinary people don’t have, I am going to overcome them.

        I’ve been looking on this thread for practical help as to how to do that. Please don’t try to say I shouldn’t- I get enough of that as it is.

        • Nita says:

          What I was trying to say is this: even if you did have some insurmountable limitations, you would still have to try new things and practice new skills.

          Even if your parents are right about something, they are still wrong to limit and discourage you, because they don’t really know what you can do. No one does.

          And it doesn’t really matter whether other Australians have done something by the age of 24 or not. It’s perfectly fine to try something just because you want to, even if other people haven’t done it yet. (But I understand that you want to get a more reliable idea of reality than your parents’ claims.)

          Like everyone else here, I don’t know why your parents are so controlling. But in any case, since you must discard their advice in order to make any progress at all, you’ll have to replace it with your own estimates of what you’re ready to try, what you need to practice, and what the risks might be.

        • nm. k.m. says:

          Caveat: I don’t have Asperger’s nor am I an Australian. Trying to answer your questions:

          – Knowing how to drive: I know plenty of people at ~24 who don’t know how to drive, but this is area where public transit coverage is good and is enough to get by. In some other areas where you need a car / motorized vehicle to go anywhere, this would be more weird.

          – Airports: This is a bit tricky. You want to know if 24 year people go to airports alone. I’d say yes. But a significant “but”: As some other people said elsewhere in other replies, I’d recommend to anyone *not* to go to an airport first time alone. Stuff like security screenings, daft procedures and bureaucracy, what to do if when there’s delays and complications, etc. are frustrating. Depending on what kind of Asperger’s you have, “not going alone” might even be very reasonable precaution, but you probably have a better idea about your situation than random people in the internet. Usually people travel by air first time with their families when they are younger, so most people would have an idea what it is like well before they are 24.

          Have you been in other, similar places? A large railway station, perhaps?

          – Religions decisions like “staying Catholic” shouldn’t have anything to do with Asperger’s syndrome, or any medical condition. On the other hand, having a conflict about religious beliefs with your parents at 24 is what quite often happens to non-Aspergers people, too, but I repeat, Asperger’s should have nothing to do with it, and if they are using that as a leverage, I don’t think it is okay. But what to do about it, I’m afraid I don’t have not much good advice.

          Have you discussed your religious beliefs with you local priest? About being a Catholic, and that you feel your parents are pressuring you, for example? I was raised a Protestant, so I don’t know much about Catholicism, but that would sound very normal thing to do.

          [On the other hand: Nowadays I consider myself an atheist, but I still sort of “fake it”/ dance around it during family gatherings (frankly, last year I ended up reading the Gospel before Christmas dinner, and that was weird, being probably the only one in the table not considering it a valid historical source), and I think my extended family doesn’t know I’m an atheist and I’m not telling them because I know they wouldn’t react well and be very unreasonable, though think my parents probably can guess… I’m telling this an example that dealing with religion can be …complicated to non-Aspergers, too.

          As I said, I don’t know much about Catholicism, but I’d wager that the Pope would agree that if you don’t want to be a Catholic and don’t believe in their teachings, you can “not be a Catholic”, even if you never tell your parents. *If* it is of some condolence. Of course religious freedoms are basic human rights, and ideally everyone could voice their beliefs openly and honestly to everyone, but as I said, world is complicated and full of unreasonable people.]

          – Do you know other people than your parents, to whom you can voice your concerns? For example, if you think they are unjustly restricting where you can go and can not, and what part of that is reasonable given your Asperger and what is not.

    • James Picone says:

      I am Australian, and have several friends around that age who do not know how to drive or do not drive much. Easily double-digit percentages, maybe ~25%?

      Airports are certainly unpleasant, but probably figure-out-able? Depends what kinds of things you have problems with. Note that my limited airport experience is with one of the smaller ones in Australia.

    • Agronomous says:

      I just realized something that might be helpful:

      There’s no reason your first time at an airport has to be the day you travel. You might want to go for a couple of hours one day and just wander around, figuring things out and seeing how you react to the situation. If it’s intolerable, you can just leave. If you want to be even more cautious, you can bring someone who’s flown before with you.

      One more idea: search for other people’s first-time airport experiences on the web.

      • dndnrsn says:

        Also, consider that if you find airports terrible, this is not necessarily solely on your end: very few people enjoy airports or spending time in them.

      • LHN says:

        Can you walk around an Australian airport without a ticket? Since the post-9/11 security changes, it hasn’t been possible to go through security without one in the US. Still possible to see the ticket counter and baggage dropoff, but not really to get fully familiar with the layout and process.

        (What’s amazing is watching an old movie like “The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer”, and seeing someone walk onto a plane without a ticket, and buy one from the flight attendant as if it were a train.)

        • keranih says:

          For me, the most horrific experiences in airports are on the public side of the security line (and the security line itself.) Once on the far side, it’s relatively easy to find somewhere to sit and read/nap.

          • LHN says:

            That’s fair. I’ve had a couple of “failed to notice a gate change, almost missed flight” experiences on the far side of security which were stressful enough. But it’s true that as a general rule getting through security feels like having largely finished running the gauntlet. I do think actually going through the security line is a big part of the experience.

            (Probably more stressful if, like me, you’re inclined to opt out of the body scanners. I never know if I’m going to have to do it till I see which machine I’m being directed towards, or how long the delay for a search will be if I don’t luck into a metal detector. Someone who’s trying to minimize issues probably doesn’t need to add that complication, and I don’t know what the scanner situation is in Australia in any case.)

            Post-security, I don’t know if the crowding, sometimes hard-to-hear announcements, or occasionally labyrinthine layout might be an issue.

  56. Siah Sargus says:

    Hey, Scott, regarding the creation of a forum, I found this portal to hell on the subreddit:

    TW:Everything

    It’s a subthread on redchanit devoted to forced anonymity and rationality, and, despite having very little traffic compared to other sites, shows all of the problems and benefits of anonymous communication.

    Obviously it could never replace the comments here, but their memes about you are amusing.

    • Anonymous says:

      >portal to hell
      that’s a great hell

    • Whatever Happened To Anonymous says:

      >I ship Scott Alexander/Nick Land

      Hilarious stuff.

      EDIT: Why do images take so long to load, by the way?

    • EyeballFrog says:

      OK, this thread made me laugh far more than it should have.

    • Dr Dealgood says:

      Thank you, that’s glorious.

    • Fj says:

      The thread about whether the rationalist community, being openminded and in search for life hacks, should embrace prostate simulation just like it embraced polyamory and cryonics, was some god-tier trolling.

      Some anon got seriously upset, because on one hand the suggestion is perfectly legitimate, on the other hand it would forever brand the rationalist community as those guys who are smug about sticking fingers up their butts.

      • Nita says:

        prostate simulation

        A very appropriate typo.

      • Zippy says:

        I believe that was, in fact, copypasta from a LessWrong discussion post that was quickly deleted. Both the OP and the branding reply.

    • Zippy says:

      forced anonymity

      I don’t think that’s true; names and tripcodes seem to work fine. They do currently have a culture of not using those features, though.

  57. Inty says:

    Recently I’ve discovered a method for dealing with my tinnitus. Until yesterday, I’d never heard ‘silence’. At the risk of sounding like a sketchy sidebar ad, to anyone with tinnitus I recommend this One Weird Trick:

    Place your palms over your ears and point your middle fingers towards the base of your skull, where your head meets your neck. Tap your index fingers against your head 40-50 times. Repeat at will.

    I’ve found that this completely abolishes ringing for about 30 seconds, but it produces a lasting effect of quieting my tinnitus for the rest of the day. I’ve recommended this to some people on Facebook, and it seems to have mixed results- it seemed to work for about 2/3 of them, without accounting for sampling bias in replies. One person said it made their tinnitus worse, but this was only temporary, and nobody I’ve spoken to has said it’s produced any lasting negative effects yet.

    • Sastan says:

      I have pretty bad tinnitus in one ear.

      Tried this, seemed to lower the volume of the ringing a bit. Will report after further testing.

      • Inty says:

        I’ve been playing around with doing different things to see what’s necessary or sufficient to achieve the effect. The original comment recommended tapping your index finger against your middle finger, but I found this to be awkward and unnecessary. I’ve tried tapping harder, but it didn’t seem to affect things much. Tapping for longer did help, though.

    • There’s something of the sort from Taoist healing arts.

      http://econtact.ca/9_4/saario.html

      Please keep posting about how your method is working out.

    • Bassicallyboss says:

      Tried this; worked about as described. I noticed the tapping seemed to cause some very high-frequency sounds in the same general range as my tinnitus; I wonder if the mechanism has to do with filtering “background” noise, either in the ear itself or in the brain?

  58. Dirdle says:

    “I find no absolution//In my rational point of view”? Can’t say I agree with all the kabbalistic implications of this thread’s title.

    Anyway, the Merciful Leader just spent all these words saying “don’t feed the trolls,” I think? Not that saying that has ever worked, in any way, shape, form or fashion. When the baiter finds your hook*, you’ll think it’s critically important to bite just this once. Can’t say I disagree with the idea, though. So how do we avoid this?

    * Technically, these should be the other way around, but…

    • Dan T. says:

      That piece is making the point that a failure mode of rationalists is to take others’ attempts to attack and belittle them as if they were constructive criticism, and engage with it in a way that ends up only promoting the attackers. This is in contrast to the opposite failure mode of some other groups, such as the social justice left, where they take anything critical (even when intended constructively) as an attack and start spitting vitriol at the attacker. (Ironically, that too could end up helping to promote the opposing side; and both styles can produce much clickbaity controversy that drags more people into it and leads to social media dogpiles.)

      Personally, I always prefer the constructively-engaging style (I’d rather be seen as too willing to be constructive with trolls and jerks than as too unwilling to be constructive with anybody of a politically-incorrect view), and I’d actually very much like to see a review from Scott of the “work that must not be named” which is presumably motivating his post.

  59. Siah Sargus says:

    The whole idea of “body type” in our culture is really weird to me, bordering on alien, and often winds up being frustrating.

    I approach different body types from a very material, very art-focused point of view. I like noticing the small anatomical differences between people:

    For muscular anatomy, that’s the presence or absence of certain muscles; muscles like the palmaris longus in the forearm, or the accessory soleus in the leg. Muscles like these are basically just duplication for existing muscles and are rarely necessary for most people, but I like to keep track of which characters of mine do and don’t have muscles like these, because unseen time-wasting detail is my specialty. Even for people with exactly the same muscles, they still might have wildly different insertions and origins of those muscles, making them look noticeably different. As I’ve drawn more bodies from various references, I’ve notice some muscles seem to have a huge amount of variation, much more than other. Like the shape and separation of the various tendinous intersections of the rectus abdominis – six packs look very different on different people, much more diverse than shit-tier magazine covers would suggest, and not just at absurdly low body fat percentages.

    Continuing the differences of body type for skeletal anatomy, there’s the obvious one – height. But, there are also a great deal of bone variations beyond just height, like the length of the femur or the length of the humerus proportionate to the rest of the skeleton. Just look at how “leggy” some people can be at all sorts of heights. This sort of variation in development and structure continues as far down as you look. Even with the in endocrine system there is a tremendous variation in the levels of various sex hormones in the blood, although, in practice this matters to me as an artist less than the others, since these, from a visual point of view, mainly effect the size and shape of breasts and penises.

    Okay, so the idea of body types as discussed online is completely alien to me because it almost completely involves absolutely none of this.

    It’s simply about body fat percentages, and occasionally height. It’s just so frustrating as an artist to put all of the work I do into giving distinct bodies, within realistic ranges, that have different and distinct bone and muscle structures, even though I know most people only ever notice “the different body types” if I make a character fat. That just seems so orthogonal to actual bodytypes – any bodytype can become fat! I have a feeling someone in this comment section will concoct an answer involving signaling, capitalism, or game theory.

    But frankly, I just felt like ranting.

    • Noumenon72 says:

      Maybe you could do an educational post. Like, compare two celebrity photos with the same “body type”, point out the differences you see, redraw the two celebrities with their femurs/rectus abdominus insertions swapped.

    • Thanks for the level of detail.

      It surprised me a lot when I found that all people don’t have the same set of muscles.

    • Rowan says:

      Isn’t the signalling answer just “it’s a euphemism”? People talk about “body types” when comparing fat people to thin people because calling someone fat is considered insulting.

      • Rowan, I don’t think it’s just that, or at least it was a relief to me when one of M.A. Foster’s ler novels had a little more detail for the descriptions of thin people’s bodies– it was as though being slender part of the range of the human condition rather than attractiveness magic.

    • Anonymous says:

      since these, from a visual point of view, mainly effect the size and shape of breasts and penises

      Is this true, though?

      • Siah Sargus says:

        It’s absolutely true. Puberty is mainly caused by endogenous sex hormones, and the breasts and testes only fully develop in those specific endocrine conditions. Just a heads up, this is the most SEO-optimized sentence ever:

        You can absolutely use sex steroids and growth hormones to encourage the development of breasts long after puberty.

        Now I will explain: The growth of breasts during and after puberty is primarily controlled by four factors – endogenous estrogens like estradiol, progesterone, growth hormone, and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). So as long as we have those four factors we can encourage additional growth. Two of them, the sex hormones progesterone and estradiol, can be found in certain birth controls. However, since most female hormonal birth control routes are oral (pills), the estradiol gets metabolized in the liver (first pass metabolism) and turns into estriol, which is slightly less effective for breast development, but still an estrogen. Boosting levels of GH and IGF-1 is more difficult, and usually illegal, because you can use those drugs to build muscle, and the government doesn’t like that. Drugs are supposed to intoxicate you, not build you up, right? That being said, you can use peptides like GHRP-6, Mod GRF, or MK-677 to increase natural gh release before sleeping, or thirty minute before a meal. So, yeah, totally true, you can effect the size of your breasts right now (even if you’re a guy!)

        And yes, the same roughly applies to male sexual characteristics. But for all of you gentleman who are looking to “enlarge their cock”… I’m sorry, there are no ways to legitimately gain more than a couple centimeters, and none of them are sane or convenient. Penis size is mediated by the presence of dihydrotestorone during a specific period right before puberty, and after that, there’s not much you can do. I won’t give you any platitudes about “it’s how you use it that matters” or any such bullshit, but I will tell you penises look wildly different from man to man, and this is the type of body diversity that I ultimately care about.

        • Douglas Knight says:

          A only causes B is a very, very different claim from A causes B.

          • Anonymous says:

            Yes, THANK YOU Douglas Knight.

            @Siah Sargus, I know that endogenous hormones affect those specific characteristics, my question was aimed at the fact that other characteristics — musculature, nose/facial bone structure, fat distribution — will also be affected.

          • Siah Sargus says:

            Well it would be a very boring world is steroids didn’t act on the whole body, wouldn’t it? Testosterone has a very powerful effect on growing minds increasing the amount of gray matter, and also increasing the overall brain size. However, this doesn’t make mens heads bigger, so it’s not significant is the visual sense. Because I’m an artist, not an endocrinologist. When it comes to the head, I care about the visual effects of testosterone like brow bossing.

            My point was; the most dramatic visual changes that sex hormones cause are the growth of primary and secondary sexual characteristics.

            @Anonymous I misread your question, I apologize. My choice of wording was poor, breasts and dicks certainly aren’t the only part of the body that changes, just the most significant to me.

          • “Well it would be a very boring world is steroids didn’t act on the whole body, wouldn’t it?”

            Indeed. Anyone know why or how reproductive hormones are involved with temperature control?

            It’s my impression (but my situation may be unusual) that hot flashes interfere with sleep by raising my body temperature. Is there sleep disruption caused by disregulated body temperature that isn’t related to hot flashes?

          • Anonymous says:

            Is there sleep disruption caused by disregulated body temperature that isn’t related to hot flashes?

            Well, it’s known that bringing body temp down is important for falling asleep, so the link is there, but IDK if you meant something more specific than that?

          • I don’t have anything in particular in mind, just that if something can go wrong with a body system, it’s probably happening to someone.

  60. Hummingbird says:

    I really like this extension that hides the comments of certain users. I’ve needed this for a while now.
    Is there any way this could be adapted to the comments on Unsong?

    • Bakkot says:

      Trivially, yes. Updated the script to do that too. Might take an hour or so to propagate to the Chrome “store”; it’ll be version 1.0.2 when it does.

      Unsong’s website for whatever reason has Hovercards enabled, which you will need to disable (hover over one and click “turn off hovercards”) to use this extension.

      Alternatively Scott could just turn them off site-wide on Unsong, which I would be strongly in favor of.

  61. ejlflop says:

    When reading about algorithmic trading (e.g. the linked article) I tend to get this terrible sense of foreboding, that extensive use of these techniques will somehow doom the world, quite in addition to any reservations I might have about capitalism in general. It just *feels* wrong, like something dreadful is going to happen with race conditions once a certain percentage of traders are robots who just trade as fast as possible. Is this actually a real failure mode in real stock markets? If not now, will it all fall apart catastrophically in 10, 20, 50 years? Does ultra-rapid trading actually make stock markets more efficient in some nebulous way, thereby adding value to the economy and making everyone (non-traders) better off?

    I would have thought that algorithmic traders require the continued safe existence of a population of ‘ordinary’ traders who are merely trying to invest money in their favourite corporations. I know almost nothing about economics though. (I suppose what I’m getting at is: is it ethical to advertise algorithmic trading on SSC, blah blah utilitarianism etc.)

    • John Schilling says:

      The value of ultra-rapid trading is in reducing the latency risk, overhead costs, and bid-ask spread for long-term investors.

      When you decide, based on your careful assessment of the energy industry and/or your enthusiasm for “green technology” that you want to buy a thousand shares of SPWR, odds are pretty good that there isn’t someone right that second trying to sell a thousand shares of SPWR. In olden times, you’d have to hire a stock broker to literally walk down to Wall Street and start asking around for someone who might be willing to sell. Most likely he’d have to offer a premium to get your shares from someone who wasn’t so much planning to sell right that minute but just ambivalent about holding on to his shares. And you’d have to pay the broker a substantial commission for his efforts. And it might take a few days, during which you might hear some catastrophic news about SPWR that makes you reconsider your decision to buy but, oops, your broker is out of reach because he’s busy meeting potential sellers like you asked him to.

      Now, a few keystrokes on your computer, and you get your thousand shares in a matter of seconds, paying an extra half a percent or so over the seller’s price. When you do that, you’re buying not from someone who invested in SPWR years back and made an informed decision to sell today, but from one of a vast army of high-speed traders competing for that half a percent with every electronic and algorithmic trick in their book.

      This seems to be a good thing overall, and it isn’t clear how it can cause real catastrophes. There have been cases where it caused fake catastrophes, but those mostly involve the advertised prices of stocks that nobody was really trying to buy or sell at the moment, and which correct themselves quite rapidly when non-algorithmic traders show up asking, “So, you’re really offering to sell SPWR for ten cents on the dollar?”

      • anon says:

        I agree with John, but to point out something under appreciated by most “retail” investors: when you click “buy” on E-trade or whatever, your order is not being transmitted to a free-for-all of HFT algorithms competing to offer you the best price, per se. Rather, E-trade made a “payment for order flow” agreement with some set of HFT firms, who know that as a retail investor your order is “uninformed” (compared to the orders made by hedge funds etc, no matter how much research you did). That is, they are much less likely to lose money by collecting the bid-ask spread from your order than from a randomly selected order. So orders like yours are a scarce commodity, which they therefore have to buy the right to fulfill from retail platforms like E-trade.

        To some people this reeks of fraud, but just like the story John was telling, it’s actually just the market being a little more efficient.

      • ejlflop says:

        Great, I think I understand it lot better now, thanks.

        Your “long-term” investors are like my “ordinary” investors, right? What’s the incentive for these investors to stay in the market, if algorithms are better at making money? What if the percentage of algorithmic traders approaches 100%? If that hasn’t happened yet, that might be why there haven’t been many catastrophes yet. Is the best case scenario simply that algorithmic traders can’t make money off each other, so there will always be these other traders, who are responsible for the random churn of the stock market?

        • John Schilling says:

          The algorithms are better at competing for, not “making”, the finite sum of money to be found in the bid-ask spread between various long-term or value investors. And there’s hundreds of billions of dollars of that every year, maybe even a trillion or so (WAG).

          But there are tens of trillions of dollars of real value created every year, and in the markets where that wealth is bought and sold, human judgement still trumps the algorithms. If it turns out you suck at assessing real value but are good at algorithms, sure, take your shot at a cut of that mere trillion dollars. But these are two different markets, with two different winning strategies, and the one with the big money is not going to be abandoned.

          Basically, you’re asking why people bother making sandwiches when ants are better than people at finding breadcrumbs on the floor. No matter how good the algorithmic ants are at finding the crumbs left by the sandwich-makers, making sandwiches is still a winning move for humans. Killing or even discouraging the ants may not be, if you value clean floors.

    • Chalid says:

      Do note that “algorithmic trading” is not the same thing as high-frequency trading. There’s lots of money being traded by computers where the holding period is months or longer.

      FWIW, HFT has been getting less profitable due to increased competition and better handling of orders by other market participants. I wouldn’t expect it to be a big deal in 10 years.

      • anon says:

        I’ll take the other side of that bet. I suspect HFT will still be a relatively small but profitable part of the industry in 10 years. I think the “arms race” characterization (which implies that these companies will essentially compete one another to death) has been vastly overstated in the Michael Lewis version of the media narrative.

      • Douglas Knight says:

        In what sense was HFT ever “a big deal”? It was never as profitable as the market makers it displaced. It just replaced a large number of people by a small number of people, so the profits were concentrated, so journalists loved to point at them.

    • YL says:

      It’s been pointed out that HFT isn’t what this commenter is really asking about, but I’d like to try to address the actual question. I believe ejlflop is asking about the problems that might arise with growing systematic strategies down the line. I think the easiest answer to this is that if trend following and momentum strategies continue to dominate this space, the result will be a continued increase in volatility in the market. On the other hand, if at some point the market enters a state in which the current mean reversion based algorithms can perform better or if we come up with just generally better mean reversion techniques, hopefully that would decrease the volatility in the market.

      I don’t work in systematic trading at all but I do have substantial, broad surface level exposure to the field and it’s incredible to me how much of algorithmic trading really is based on momentum – even fund that like to sell themselves on mean reversion, signal recognition, machine learning, cross correlation, typically rely heavily on momentum and trend following to support their strategies.

      Side note: the state of machine learning in systematic trading also appears appalling from the outside. The only hedge fund I can think of doing anything close to decent with it is Millburn and all they really use it for is to stitch together and smooth vector spaces. It’s cool but not at all AI in the super-cool sense. Then again maybe whatever Renaissance has been doing with Medallion is machine learning based but I doubt it, it’s always sounded more like clever signal recognition to me.

      As for HFT, Teza, an HFT firm primarily, was recently raising capital for a systematic, non-HFT hedge fund that would use the data they collect from their HFT program to basically try to do some more statistical arbitrage (such a cool idea) – which is odd that you would be raising outside capital if your HFT program just minted hella cash 24/7. I do get the feeling that HFT will eventually just become more integrated into anyone who trades systematically seriously, just as many global macro funds now have a small systematic component to compliment the discretionary side. Further I don’t totally believe that HFT compresses the bid-ask spread in any real way – it seems to me that most HFT trade the most liquid markets possible and really aren’t able to do much else. Monetary policy has been driving liquidity (lower) since the GFC and dominates the spreads of anything outside equities. Anything a HFT firm would do for spreads I feel could be done by a vol prop shop.

    • Aegeus says:

      I remember reading about an Amazon bot designed to just underbid the lowest price for an item, so it would get listed first in search results.. And then it ran into another bot that did the same thing, they underbid each other, and ended up trying to sell an item for pennies… So yeah, algorithmic trading can definitely go wrong.

      The good news is, there are safeguards in place. After a few cautionary tales like these, people start to, say, put a lower bound on what their robot will sell for. After the “flash crash” a few years ago, regulations changed to prevent some of the causes. Stock exchanges also have “circuit breakers” that can stop trading in the middle of a crash to give the humans a moment to catch up.

    • Adam says:

      It’s been pointed out already that algo trading isn’t the same thing as HFT. Equally important, most of the largest market players are not hedge funds. They’re pensions, endowments, the social security trust, entities with enormous sums of money that are legally forbidden from engaging in high-risk strategies or purchasing high-risk assets. Their failure mode is what we saw in 2008, ratings agencies saying an instrument is much safer than it actually is, not algorithms chasing each other. They still make heavy use of computational models, but for risk management, not prediction.

  62. Erin says:

    When “Vegetarianism for Meat-Eaters” was published it very successfully convinced me to stop eating chicken (since then I have eaten chicken only about once, when I visited my parents and they served some for dinner). I reread the post recently and noticed this remark: “eggs are terrible on a calorie-for-calorie basis, but if we’re talking about which animal products to urge people to give up, this is counterbalanced by nobody except Gaston getting too many calories from eggs.”

    !!! I get *way* more calories from eggs than from meat. This has probably been true my whole life, has definitely been true since I’ve been cooking for myself, and is also true of a lot of people I know. In particular, it seems like the vegetarian-but-not-vegans I know eat *a lot* of eggs. (Source: I live in a college dorm with a kitchen; I basically know what everyone here who isn’t on a meal plan eats.)

    Anyway, yeah, this disturbed me, particularly considering that I really don’t want to give up eggs. At the moment I have settled for buying eggs that are highly rated here, but this is not all that satisfactory.

    • houseboatonstyx says:

      @ Erin

      You might try looking through less-organized sources. The neighbors I get eggs from don’t have any certifications etc, and certainly seldom advertise, because they already have a waiting list of neighbors wanting more eggs than their hens can produce.

      Try bulletin boards at local hippie markets, or at the farm supply stores that sell chicken feed. A lot of people won’t bother to list on those either, for the same reason, but if you ask the management they may give you some leads.

      Edit: BTW, I’m looking for more ways to use eggs. Baking instead of boiling is easier (~half an hour at cake temperature), and the result can be worked into various things: the chopped whites in place of tofu or mixed into rice or pasta; the yolks mashed and added to sauces for thickening; etc.

    • Scott Alexander says:

      Depending on what you are doing with your eggs, by my understanding vegetarian egg substitutes are among the most advanced vegetarian food substitutes and might be palatable.

    • keranih says:

      If one is going to be making choices on one’s food sources based on the welfare of the animals providing the substance one depends on, it seems to me that it would be best to have a full grasp of ‘welfare’ and ‘the animals providing the substance’.

      More specifically – if one’s organic/cage-free/sustainable/etc source has to hatch 120 chickens in order to get 100 to market, because 20 of them die before processing (or laying eggs, etc) while the conventionally raised chickens can get 100 to market and only lose 105, then it seems to me that the conventional system has distinct advantages.

      Likewise, I think one should also consider the impact on wildlife and field animals involved in growing grains/soy/etc. Growing and harvesting grains requires mechanical manipulation of the earth (and cutting/raking/grinding of the crop). The more land under cultivation, the more field mice, marsh hares, quail and sparrows are impacted by the farming operation. Organic chicken requires organic feed, which has a significantly lower yield per acre. If 100 pounds of chicken meat – or 100 eggs – requires 90 pounds of feed in a conventional system, and if under the less efficient organic/sustainable system 120 pound of feed are required, then, again, the conventional system has advantages.

      (These numbers are representative – the portions and ratios are correct across the average of organic/sustainable vs conventional, but the exact tradeoffs can vary wildly from operation to operation.)

      There are pros and cons for all things.

  63. Sniffnoy says:

    In psychopharmacology news: A recent paper suggests that the antidepressant effects of ketamine may be due to one particular metabolite rather than ketamine directly. Certainly interesting if true. Only been tested in mice, though.

  64. hlynkacg says:

    As a former trauma medic I noticed something that appeared to be a common theme in two otherwise unrelated threads.

    The first was a discussion about the distinction between Occupy Wall Street and the Bundy Ranch Stand-off the second was about hunting and gathering in the ancestral environment.

    There seems to be a tendency to underestimate the effectiveness of natural/improvised weapons like sticks & stones, while at the same time overestimating the effectiveness of purpose built weapons like guns and knives. The assumption that Occupy was peaceful protest (because they were ostensibly “unarmed”) while the Bundy’s were not seems at odds with the number and rate of injuries observed at both protests.

    Sticks and Stones will break my bones is more than just a children’s rhyme. A baseball sized rock thrown by an athletic human will do a fair bit of damage to human sized targets and will kill a lot of smaller prey such as birds and rabbits outright.

    By the same token I see a lot of people, on both sides of the gun control debate, who seem to assume that having a gun or knife is a magical “I win button” for just about any violent encounter, when in reality 1-hit kills are exceptionally rare especially when everyone involved is hopped up on adrenaline.

    • Seth says:

      The issue might best be thought of as the difference between “best case” and “average case”. That is, a skilled, athletic human can indeed do much damage with a rock or stick. A not very skilled, not very athletic human is going to be able to do much more damage with a gun or a knife than with a rock or stick. The gun and knife vastly multiply the amount of damage that can be inflicted with a relatively small amount of force.

      • lupis42 says:

        No, they multiply the “ease” which that force can be unleashed with. In order to hurt someone with a half-brick, you’ve got to throw it at them pretty hard. You’ve got to mean it. With a stick, you’ve got to hit them (again, pretty hard). You don’t need to be skilled or athletic to permanently ruin someone’s dancing with a baseball bat, but you do need to get close to them and try.

    • suntzuanime says:

      The assumption that Occupy was peaceful protest (because they were ostensibly “unarmed”) while the Bundy’s were not seems at odds with the number and rate of injuries observed at both protests.

      Weapons prevent injuries, by making parties less eager to engage. Up to you if you consider armed deterrence “peaceful”.

      • John Schilling says:

        Weapons prevent injuries, by making parties less eager to engage.

        More precisely, they make it less unambiguous about who is engaging in what.

        It’s easy to believe that throwing a rock or a brick at a police line, or a Molotov cocktail at a (hopefully unoccuped) car or building, isn’t really violence, that nothing irreversibly bad is going to happen and that in a few days you’ll be back at school studying for mid-terms because basically you’re a college student, not a thug or a soldier. Same deal, from the other direction, when it comes to sending the police with batons and tear gas to clear out a crowd.

        Drawing or brandishing a gun means crossing a very clear Rubicon – you are explicitly offering Real Violence of the sort there’s no going back from. There’s usually a higher activation threshold for that.

        • hlynkacg says:

          That is an excellent point.

        • Viliam says:

          If you hold a rock in your hand, hey, you haven’t thrown it yet. On the other hand, if you have thrown it, hey, your hands are now empty; there is no hard evidence it was you. In either case you can make an excuse for yourself.

          But when you are caught with a bloody baseball bat in your hands, or a smoking gun… then it’s more difficult to argue your innocence.

          (And I suspect that specifically students have an experience that without hard evidence, even obviously fake words can get them out of any trouble.)

        • HircumSaeculorum says:

          To go off on something of a tangent, how much student violence is there, actually? How many students in the US have been to any sort of protest? How many have been to a protest where the police were involved? How many of those actually threw something or did anything remotely describable as violence? I think you’re implying that a significant amount of violence is done by irresponsible college students who don’t think of themselves as violent – however, I think that most violence done with thrown rocks, Molotov cocktails, or similar things isn’t done by students.

          • Hlynkacg says:

            I don’t have any data beyond personal observation but I did see a noticeable up-tick in the number of 18-20 year olds coming in to the ER with broken arms, skull fractures, and lacerations when our local Occupy movement was at it’s height. Typically from being struck by thrown bottles, or getting knocked down in a scrum.

            That said I wouldn’t characterize it as much worse than the 4th of July, Saint Paddy’s Day, or one of the rougher music festivals. The difference being that even if “Band X’s” show on Saturday get’s a bit rowdy you can put an extra crew on call and be confident that everything would be back to normal by Monday morning. Occupy on the other hand was on going.

      • TheAncientGeek says:

        Which is why wars are so bloodless? Weapons make it easier to injure and kill once engagement has ocurred. You are tacitly assuming engagent won’t occur, which is only likely if one side has an advantage. Weapons don’t equal peace, but a monopoly of force by responsible agencies approximates it.

        • John Schilling says:

          Which is why wars are so bloodless?

          No, it’s why the world is so peaceful. And always has been; pick any random latitude, longitude, and date in recorded history, and odds are pretty good that there wasn’t a war going on then and there. Not because nobody had anything to fight over; there’s always something to fight over. Worth killing for, worth dying for, are higher bars.

          • TheAncientGeek says:

            That doesn’t address my point. Even if weapons somehow make war rare, rather than making it possible at all, you still have to include the casualties in your utilitarian calculation. You don’t get to say ‘look at the thirty years of peace, never mind the thirty million killed when it ended’.

    • Seth says:

      Another thought – since you’re a former trauma medic, you can probably think of many *emergency* medical procedures which are not magical “Heal Person” spells – i.e. every injured person isn’t immediately restored to heath, might have bad side-effects or even make things worse sometimes. But, on the whole, in many many cases, work well and can indeed mean the difference between death versus a reasonable recovery. I stress “emergency” since this stuff is tough when someone’s maybe bleeding a lot, has other injuries, and you’re under stress and time pressure, etc. Complete recovery from very serious injury, like 1-hit kill, might be uncommon. But you can greatly increase the odds of better outcome (for the appropriate definition of “better”).

    • anon says:

      I rewatched “The Last Samurai” recently. (It’s a great movie by the way! although can certainly be legitimately criticized as overly naive … it doesn’t seriously engage with the idea that the Meiji industrialization might have had some obviously good economic consequences that would have been clear to at least some poor people at the time, not to mention some of the samurai class.)

      The whole movie is basically about guns versus swords, basically taking the moral position that guns are bad because they don’t require enough training to use moderately effectively. (Actually, Tom Cruise masters kendo in the same amount of time that his nemesis takes to train a bunch of peasants to be a competent, modern rifle force. But then, he’s Tom Cruise.)

      I think that moral position, accurate or not — and I don’t know if it is, since I’ve never learned to use any sort of weapon — lies that the heart of the pro-gun control position.

      • hlynkacg says:

        In regards to the “guns are bad because they don’t require enough training to use moderately effectively” argument.

        I think there are two competing factors at play. Do you want to live in a world where the proverbial “little old lady” has a capacity for violence comparable to a young athletic male? I’m fairly certain that most people on the anti-gun-control side would say yes. The other is the discipline issue you mention.

        For the most part I think it’s a cultural thing. I for one am constantly annoyed by the “lightness” with which Hollywood treats firearms, and violence in general. I keep wanting to reach through the screen and smack the heroes upside the head. How hard is it to keep your goddamn finger of the goddamn fucking bang-switch?

        • Jiro says:

          Actually I’m sometimes (whatever is the reverse of lightness) about how Hollywood treats hurting someone in self-defense. Which may be worse because it usually turns up in a more realistic setting than the one where the heroes go in guns ablazing (either that, or an unrealistic setting where the heroes can hate self-defense because they have plot armor so the lack of self-defense never inconveniences them).

        • Randy M says:

          What is that quote about Samuel Colt making men equal?

          • PhoenixRite says:

            I’ve heard both
            “God created Man, [but] Sam Colt made them equal.”
            and
            “Abe Lincoln may have freed all men, but Sam Colt made them equal.”

    • Mary says:

      Stones have been used as a method of execution.

    • HeelBearCub says:

      Intention seems like a key discriminator in the narrative (which you correctly identify as skewed).

      People who use natural weapons are acting on impulse or out of need. If someone has acquired or created a tool, they are acting intentionally. Generally speaking, intentionality acts as a force multiplier, so it makes a fair amount of sense to overestimate the danger posed by a tool.

  65. J says:

    Thought experiment:

    Haidt claims that Fairness is a central Blue Team principle. If you were on Blue Team, but you had to pick something to replace Fairness, what would you choose?

    My answer was “kindness”, and as I then contrasted Kindness and Fairness, it made me realize that Fairness seems to have some fundamental pitfalls: who gets to decide what’s Fair, and how far will you go to enforce it? Harrison Bergeron points out the hazards of handicapping the advantaged to achieve fairness. Kindness seems to more naturally focus on helping people who need it without having to decide first whether they were unfairly victimized.

    I recently saw a thread where someone complained that affirmative action discriminated against white men. Of course he was immediately piled upon with scorn and derision and knowing things were said about how he couldn’t see his own privilege. I looked him up, and turns out he was working in Poland for a US company. So it seemed a bit hypocritical for people born and raised in the US to lecture someone about privilege who grew up impoverished in Poland without English as a first language and without access to the technology we all grew up with, trying to make a technical career for himself in the West. And in another thread, someone went so far as to list groups in order of privilege according to race/gender/orientation. (Please let’s not argue about that; I’m only interested in the meta-concept of whether Fairness has a hazard of making people want to make ordered lists like that)

    Kindness has the same problem as Fairness when it comes to allocating scarce resources: who are we going to be Kind to and in what proportion? But it doesn’t require a scapegoat: we don’t need Evil Bad Guys to be the cause of Unfairness. We can simply observe that Polish guys and women and black folks and white kids who grew up in the ghetto all seem to have a tough time in certain circumstances so let’s give them a break when we can.

    • candles says:

      I don’t know if this is keeping with the spirit of your question, but I actually think fairness or kindness are just fine.

      The thing I wish I could do to Blue Tribe moral principles more generally is reintroduce the personal virtues of charity, humility (epistemic and otherwise), and forgiveness, and make those virtues broadly recognized, normed, and foregrounded.

      I think without charity, humility, and forgiveness, the ideals of promoting either fairness or kindness often turn really sour.

      We all have extremely limited cognitive abilities to understand what actually counts as fair. We all have to live in a world where other people don’t live up to our standards of kindness. We all have very limited abilities to recognize how much we don’t see, or how immensely hard it is to put ourselves in other people’s heads. Getting things right in the world is really, really hard. Sometimes what we think is fair or kind turns out to be wrong, to make things worse, not better. Sometimes other people get that stuff wrong as well.

      As someone who lives deep in Blue tribe land, I can confidently say that charity, humility, and forgiveness are virtues that many well-credentialed people I know have left by the wayside long ago. In fact, when I think about why I generally have such a negative reaction to Blue tribe activism, I’m pretty sure it’s because, at least to my eyes, they often don’t acknowledge these virtues as virtues, or even see them as roadblocks to attaining “progress”.

      • Samuel Skinner says:

        “The thing I wish I could do to Blue Tribe moral principles more generally is reintroduce the personal virtues of charity, humility (epistemic and otherwise), and forgiveness, and make those virtues broadly recognized, normed, and foregrounded.”

        I don’t think that would work; there are plenty of social groups that recognize said virtues, but I’m not aware of them actually transforming said groups on their own. Praising self-control doesn’t seem to get you self control; you have to be the Mormons.

        • candles says:

          Ha – somewhat ironically, I was raised Mormon and still largely agree with (and try to live by) most of their values…. which likely informs my complaint.

      • Deiseach says:

        If you were on Blue Team, but you had to pick something to replace Fairness, what would you choose?

        Not Blue Team by any stretch of the imagination, but in the spirit of what candles says, I’d recommend the virtue of Mercy, which is the moderate point between charity and justice. People seem to think mercy means slapping it on indistinguishably: “Oh you broke all your limbs and your spine, let me help you/Oh you murdered sixty four people because you were bored, you poor mite!” but that’s not the case.

        If you’ll excuse me quoting myself from a long-ass post I wrote on the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy for a religious-discussion site (feel free to ignore the “God” parts as not applicable here):

        Mercy springs from charity and justice. However, charity is more than mercy and justice is more than law. Charity and justice are cardinal virtues, mercy is a secondary virtue. We nowadays tend to translate “faith, hope and charity” as “faith, hope and love”, and love is a better way to think of charity, especially in relation to God.

        (C)harity is love of God which conduces to love of our neighbour, justice is equality and equity between people as individuals and as members of society, and mercy is the actions or active principle which derives from both, spurred to love our neighbour as ourselves by charity and to repair deficiencies by justice.

      • Wency says:

        This is something I’ve been thinking for a long time — in particular, the value of humility.

        I enjoy comedy, and I contrast Louie CK, who would seem to have a acquired a fair measure of humility, with John Oliver, whose every intonation drips with thick, oily smugness. In truth, Louie probably agrees with John Oliver on almost every political and social issue, but I can listen to Louie for days, while I’m exhausted by Oliver more or less the instant he starts talking.

        Truth be told though, I think it’s often a problem with the alt-right, beginning with the writing style of old Mencius himself.

        Still, to paraphrase Moldbug, conservatism is always retreating, always making concessions. Maybe that’s the very reason that it seems to have more humility embedded in it. Compare: the relative humility of the French and German leaderships in June 1940. But perhaps mainstream conservatism also has more libertarian instincts, more “live and let live” embedded in it, at least in the U.S.

        From mainstream conservatives, I hear a lot of, “Well, can we at least have this shred of the old culture? If I accept that gay weddings are a thing that happens, can I at least reserve the right to not bake a cake for them?”

        And being given a resounding, “No, it’s Current Year.”

        Would the roles in that situation be reversed if gay marriage were being banned, and its advocates were looking to preserve some shred of the old culture?

        “Can we at least have civil unions? Or at least be allowed to keep our gay bars and gay night clubs?” “No, that’s incrementalism. We won’t make that mistake again.”

        • Hlynkacg says:

          That’s a fair question and tbh I don’t have an answer, though I do sympathize.

        • Vorkon says:

          “No, that’s incrementalism. We won’t make that mistake again.”

          To be honest, that seems to be the position the Red Tribe has begun taking over the past few years over most of the issues the Blue Tribe hasn’t already thoroughly defeated them on. (Most notably gun control, but the same could be said for a lot of other issues, too.)

          • Hlynkacg says:

            I would say it more like “Compromise” requires both sides to give something up. Trying to steal the whole pie and but settling for half isn’t a very good compromise as far as the baker is concerned.

            To use the most recent gun control push as an example.

            A: We want to make the federal background check requirements more strict.
            B: We want national reciprocity for carry permits.
            A: You wont get it.
            B: No deal then.

    • Loquat says:

      I don’t believe the hazard of wanting to make official Privilege rankings and the like is unique to Fairness; any time you have a hierarchy some people will want to codify it. And indeed, lists like that are useful if you’re going to be navigating the world they apply to – dealing with nobility in the olden days you generally wanted to know the relative rank of a duke, a baron, a viscount, etc, and dealing with modern Social Justice types you generally should know where you stand on the Privilege ladder.

    • Anonymous says:

      Empathy™ and compassion, but those are hard for some people and painful for everyone. Most people are at the point where they pretty much do the opposite automatically.

      If someone suffers about something you don’t have the basis for a deontological judgement until you put yourself in their place. The pain and difficulty have to do with the effects this process has on your own identity and ideas. Madness, to be honest. Reconciling this deontological judgement with your own values right after feeling and understanding theirs. And then you probably want to be utilitarian about your own values so you might need to act in opposition to people you now love… The temptation to think they are bad is a mechanism to keep this in check. Do we want jews weeping at the death of glorious fascism? Would they be able to adequately react against threats if they had this level of Empathy and Compassion?

      If you are the only one doing this, you get killed. And you don’t even care when it happens. Very Virtuous indeed but what good does it do? Even if you manage to act, you just did the same thing the mechanism told you but now you feel very guilty about it. Is the guilt going to be put to good use or is it going to hold people down and cause unnecessary suffering? Perhaps cultivating some kind of “Pride of Guilt” instead of either extreme would be good?

      • The Nybbler says:

        Empathy and compassion are what Blue Team members claim to have just as they are unleashing a vitriolic screed about how you don’t have any.

        • Whatever Happened To Anonymous says:
        • Viliam says:

          It’s probably a difference between having empathy as a genuine emotion, and trying to role-play it.

          The natural form of empathy has many flaws: it suffers from availability bias, can be manipulated by making a drama, etc.

          The fake empathy is usually applied selectively to people who “deserve” it according to some schematic judgement.

          Like Mary said, the problem with natural empathy is that when a person starts sobbing in your office, you will take greater care of them, and ignore those outside your field of vision, who may pay the cost of your decision.

          The problem with fake empathy is that no amount of sobbing will move your heart if your ideology gives you an excuse that their personal suffering is not real because something something institutional something.

      • Mary says:

        Empathy suffers from the notorious problem of proximity — being nice to the person who’s sobbing in your office rather than the others who will bear the brunt of your niceness.

        • John Schilling says:

          I am reminded of a column a few months back by an airline pilot talking about how good it made him feel to use his power and authority to hold a flight for half an hour while a sick child’s parents went looking for a misplaced teddy bear. I couldn’t help wondering whether there might be someone now permanently estranged from their family because the emotional impact of “missed his daughter’s wedding because the airline missed a connection” is limited to the first four words. Or unemployed because a second-rate candidate got the job when he didn’t make the scheduled interview, or any of a hundred other things.

          But hey, the child was happy that day, and the pilot was smugly satisfied for weeks, so happy endings to everybody we care about.

          • Randy M says:

            That would really tick me off even as the father of the child so favored.
            “See honey, you are apparently more important than any of these other hundred or so people.”

        • Jiro says:

          Perhaps more relevant here is the problem that empathy creares incentives for people to be upset so your empathy gets triggered.

          And as I’ve noted before, you cant’ fix this by only empathizing with genuine distress because people have the ability to feel genuine distress in a strategic manner.

          • J says:

            people have the ability to feel genuine distress in a strategic manner.

            That’s a brilliant observation, thanks.

    • Sastan says:

      As Haidt notes, “fairness” is embraced by everyone, but it means vastly different things to different people.

      To replace fairness, I suggest the left adopt a better definition of fairness.

    • Jill says:

      Allocating scarce resources is a big problem– to whom do you give fairness or compassion to and under what circumstances?

      There is also the context of our current social situation where most people are overstimulated, overwhelmed, and/or worn out. So many don’t have a lot of extra to give to someone else. It’s easy to suffer compassion fatigue– and to be jealous of animals who never have the experience of turning on their TV and being told about all kinds of other animals of their species and other species, all over the world, suffering in various ways, as if they should do something about it.

      And there is our current state of tribal politics that consists to a large degree of bashing others and government officials, regardless of what they do or say. Here is an article that dates the beginning of our current tribal politics of bashing– rather than problem solving– back to Gingrich in the 1990’s and says it paved the way for someone like Trump to run for president.

      The political scientist who saw Trump’s rise coming
      Norm Ornstein on why the Republican Party was ripe for a takeover, what the media missed, and whether Trump could win the presidency.

      http://www.vox.com/2016/5/6/11598838/donald-trump-predictions-norm-ornstein

      • TheAncientGeek says:

        One way of solving the resource allocation problem is to have a system of universal positive rights. Then you don’t have special interest groups clammering for special treatment, or ordinary citizens needing to decide who to allocate resources to.

        • Mary says:

          Universal positive rights is another name for slavery

          • null says:

            Please clarify the argument that you are making. Is it “universal positive rights implies some features slavery has” or “universal positive rights is as morally wrong as the system of slavery in place during 19th century America”? The statement as written seems to be making argument 1 to system 2 and argument 2 to system 1.

            (Admittedly this usage of Systems 1 and 2 is nonstandard but comes close enough that I feel okay in using it.)

          • hlynkacg says:

            I can’t speak for Mary but it seems obvious to me that any notion of “universal positive rights” requires slavery of some sort.

            To quote our most gracious host…

            The Virginians took this idea and ran with it – in the wrong direction. They said we wouldn’t be free if we were limited by poverty, therefore we insist upon being extremely rich. Needless to say, this conception of freedom required first indentured servitude and later slavery to make it work, but the Virginians never claimed that the servants or slaves were free. That wasn’t the point. Freedom, like wealth, was properly distributed according to rank.

            In short, if you have a right to health care, education, a doctor or educator who refuses to work or otherwise puts conditions on their service (such as getting paid for their trouble) is guilty of violating your rights and thus deserves your condemnation.

          • TheAncientGeek says:

            Mary, if I didn’t know you were a regular reader of the blog , I would ask if you are a regular reader of the blog. The argument you are making has been shredded repeatedly here and on LW. If you think it can be rescued or improved, you need to provde more than a one liner.

          • null says:

            If you say an argument has been shredded, could you please provide a link to what you believe is the most effective refutation?

          • “Mary, if I didn’t know you were a regular reader of the blog , I would ask if you are a regular reader of the blog. ”

            I’m a regular reader of the blog and agree with Mary. If I have a positive right to get something–housing, medical care, food, an adequate income–someone must have an obligation to provide it to me. Such things don’t simply appear out of thin air, so someone must have an obligation to produce them in order that I can consume them.

            In response to Null, I don’t think “as morally wrong” is the right way of putting it. Rather “morally wrong in the same way.”

            Imagine a milder version of 19th century American slavery in which slave owners could beat their slaves, but only in ways that produced no permanent injury, could not kill them, and had to free them at age fifty. Would you agree that that would still be slavery, although not as wrong as the actual version?

          • Anonymous says:

            That someone is the government. Which brings us right back around to the auto-discrediting hyperbole that taxes are theft or in this case, perhaps even worse, taxes are slavery.

          • null says:

            I would agree that this is still slavery. The point I was trying to make is that most people associate slavery with a specific set of harms, and that these harms do not carry over to implementations of universal positive rights.

            If you are claiming that the central harm of slavery is coercion, I think you’re wrong, but also there would have to be an argument about how a system in which these rights are upheld is more coercive than the current system, in which presumably these so-called rights only apply to some people.

          • “but also there would have to be an argument about how a system in which these rights are upheld is more coercive than the current system, in which presumably these so-called rights only apply to some people.”

            The current system is coercive in lots of ways.

            It isn’t everyone having positive rights that makes it a form of slavery, it’s anyone having them.

            I don’t think the usual objections to slavery are about the specific harms, since we think of a wide variety of systems, with different specific harms, as forms of slavery.

          • hlynkacg says:

            @anon

            You realize that you’re advocating fascism at this point don’t you? Not the contentless insult but the actual philosophy.

            The people are the property of the state and thus rounding up “arbitrary group” and putting them to work digging canals isn’t “slavery” just as exterminating them isn’t “murder”.

          • Anonymous says:

            Do you have any idea how insane you sound? The right to health care as provided by the state is bog standard in other parts of the world. But only freedom loving ‘merican patriots can see that it is really fascism as well as slavery and theft.

            Get a grip.

          • hlynkacg says:

            Do you have any idea how insane you sound?

            Do you?

            Something being “bog standard” doesn’t change the circumstances behind it. You want to argue that healthcare is a universal right? You need to concede that failure to provide it is a violation of your rights.

          • null says:

            hylnkacg: Does this result in doctors being jailed, fined, etc. for refusing to provide health care?

            Anonymous: How much health care do you think people have a right to?

          • TheAncientGeek says:

            @David

            “I’m a regular reader of the blog and agree with Mary. If I have a positive right to get something–housing, medical care, food, an adequate income–someone must have an obligation to provide it to me. ”

            The contentious point is slavery, not obligation.

            Using “slavery” as a synonym for obligation is a blatant example of the Noncentral fallacy.

            “http://lesswrong.com/lw/e95/the_noncentral_fallacy_the_worst_argument_in_the/”

            “It isn’t everyone having positive rights that makes it a form of slavery, it’s anyone having them.”

            How about filling in the rest of the argument: since when was slavery defined as “any form of coercion whatosoever”?

            “I don’t think the usual objections to slavery are about the specific harms, since we think of a wide variety of systems, with different specific harms, as forms of slavery.”

            Is “we” libertatians, or people in general?

            @hylnkacg

            ” Does this result in doctors being jailed, fined, etc. for refusing to provide health care?”

            Indeed. A state employed doctor in a public healthcare system can, at the worst, be sacked for refusing to treat someone . That’s not slavery,because much worse things happen to slaves who refuse. The “harms” are central to slavery as a concept, and when you leave them out you are automatically commiting the noncentral fallacy.

            @null

            ” How much health care do you think people have a right to?”

            How much education do people have a right to? The answer is a finite amount, as defined by various political and bureacratic processes. People already have positive rights in the USA, and it doesn’t lead to anyone being able to demand an infinite amount of anything, which was presumably your implication about healthcare.

            @Everybody

            How can it be both true and a political point worth making to say that “the citizens of a state with positive rights (ie any typical liberal democracy) are slaves “?

            It *is* obvious that any such citizen is under obligations, but that doens’t have any obvious connotation tha there is anything wrong with that.

            There is something obviously wrong with being a slave , yet it is not obvious that the average citizen is , since they are not considered property, forbidden from owning property, or forbidden from transferring themselves (up to leaving the country).

            There is no version of the argument that simultaneously has the right denotation (obvious truth) and connotation (obvious moral unacceptability). It just doesn’t work as a one liner.

            The only libertarian argument that has a hope of working is one showing that the obligations a typical citizen are morally unacceptable in some non-obvious way.

          • hlynkacg says:

            Does this result in doctors being jailed, fined, etc. for refusing to provide health care?

            It should.

          • Nita says:

            No, it should not. Doctors have (positive and negative) rights, too.

          • houseboatonstyx says:

            @ The Ancient Geek
            A state employed doctor in a public healthcare system can, at the worst, be sacked for refusing to treat someone . That’s not slavery,because much worse things happen to slaves who refuse.

            It’s not slavery, because no one is rounding up people and forcing them to be state-employed doctors.

            You might as well say that firemen, police, judges, etc are slaves, because citizens have a positive right to fire and police protection, judicial process, etc. I think the argument wanted, is ‘taxation is theft’.

          • FacelessCraven says:

            @HouseBoatOnStyx – …People don’t have a right to police protection, though. Like, not even a little bit. Ditto for fire protection, I should think. The examples you are citing show the exact opposite of what you are claiming, for exactly the reasons people above have stated.

            (not sure about judges, the situation there seems more complex, but I think it shakes out to a similar conclusion.)

            The examples above don’t look like slavery because the “rights” are defined as access to whatever can be provided, or because no one attempts to rigorously enforce them. Some of the stuff I’ve read about doctors in the UK comes pretty damn close to slavery, though.

          • John Schilling says:

            It’s not slavery, because no one is rounding up people and forcing them to be state-employed doctors.

            What happens when enough of the people who have chosen to become doctors notice the economic opportunity of forming a union and saying “We won’t treat the people you have unconditionally promised treatment, unless you pay each of us five million dollars per year?”

            What happens when those people go on strike, and how do you rectify that with their patients’ right to be treated?

          • Anonymous says:

            Instead of pulling dystopian fantasies out of our collective rears, why not take a look at the actual places where this exists and see how it actually goes?

          • Salem says:

            I live in one of the places where this actually happens. The junior doctors do have a union, and they just went on strike, including walking out on emergency care. Probably this caused some excess deaths, but not too many, because consultants covered. But if they did this long-term, or if the consultants went on strike at the same time too, then it would be a disaster.

            My “right” to free medical care would not be worth very much with no-one to provide it.

            Some people say the junior doctors are blackmailing the public. Others say that if we don’t pay the junior doctors more, then no-one will want to be a junior doctor. Either way, if no-one does the work, the work will not be done.

            Strikes me that John Schilling is precisely correct.

          • Hlynkacg says:

            why not take a look at the actual places where this exists and see how it actually goes?

            You mean places like the Antebellum South or the Soviet Union? Hell, even the relatively tame British National Health Service has had some decidedly dystopian moments.

            You’d be better off trying to figure out in which universal positive rights don’t end in dystopia.

            Doctors have (positive and negative) rights, too.

            Rights that are incompatible with everyone else’s “positive right” to health care. You can’t have it both ways.

          • Anonymous says:

            By all means let’s look to the Antebellum South or the Soviet Union rather than contemporary Sweden for what a system with the right to healthcare looks like. Maybe after that we can discuss Nazi Germany and gun control.

            Does this sort of thing sound good in your head?

          • Hlynkacg says:

            @anon
            Do you actually read the threads you reply to?

            The Antebellum South and Soviet Union and the assorted fascist parties of the 20 and 30s were cited as examples of what happens when you follow “positive rights” to their logical conclusion. Why “pull dystopian fantasies out of our collective rears” when we have so many real historical examples to choose from?

            You want to talk about contemporary Sweden? Ok let’s do that. Read Salem’s reply, and tell us how you think that situation ought to have been resolved.

            What do you think would have happened if the Junior Doctors had decided to hold out for longer? or if the consultants had decided to strike as well in solidarity? If history is any guide, the government would have eventually used (or at least threatened to use) violence to break up the strike. After all, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and thus the people’s collective right to healthcare must naturally outweigh whatever rights the doctors think they have.

          • Nita says:

            Sometimes our rights can be in conflict, just like our interests sometimes are in conflict. We try to structure our society in ways that make these conflicts as low-impact as possible, ideally avoiding them altogether.

            But, as there is no universal algorithm for solving such problems, sometimes it takes a long time and many attempts to find an improvement.

          • FacelessCraven says:

            @Nita – “Sometimes our rights can be in conflict, just like our interests sometimes are in conflict. We try to structure our society in ways that make these conflicts as low-impact as possible, ideally avoiding them altogether.”

            Sure, but for what seem like obvious reasons, “you have a right to not have X done to you” creates a whole lot fewer conflicts than “you have a right to have X done for you”, so much so that some people see a clear discontinuity between the two. I’m happy with a right to free speech. The idea of a right to be heard seems inevitably horrifying. The “right” to police protection seems similar.

          • Mary says:

            ” The point I was trying to make is that most people associate slavery with a specific set of harms,”

            Most people are stunningly ignorant about the history of slavery. An institution that lasted through all of human history and before has a lot of variation.

            Meanwhile, here in the United States, the Supreme Court has maintained that slavery is when someone is forced to labor against his will for the good of another — which is also the definition of positive rights.

          • Mary says:

            “That someone is the government. Which brings us right back around to the auto-discrediting hyperbole that taxes are theft or in this case, perhaps even worse, taxes are slavery.”

            Taxes can certainly be both if done wrongly. Or are you literally saying that the government owns all the fruits of your labor but somehow it’s not slavery?

    • Anonymous says:

      And in another thread, someone went so far as to list groups in order of privilege according to race/gender/orientation. (Please let’s not argue about that; I’m only interested in the meta-concept of whether Fairness has a hazard of making people want to make ordered lists like that)

      OK, but why argue about such a non-central example of fairness implementation? I mean, most liberals aren’t SJWs and don’t make ordered lists based on those criteria.

      • J says:

        I debated about whether to include it. Extremes have the hazard of distorting an ideology, but can also make for clear examples of a failure mode.

        What I’m more embarrassed about is that I think I asked this in an open thread a while back, so I feel bad about taking up scarce attention.

    • Mary says:

      Fairness and Kindness both have their limits. For instance, the reverse of the Harrison Bergeron where someone doesn’t care whether he’s fair as long as he’s kind, such as giving special exemptions for people with problems (or sob stories), and saddling other people with the resulting workload or taking things from them they had earned.

    • Nita says:

      Hi, Eastern European here. Actually I’d say that Polish people working in Poland, even for US companies, have much less reason to worry about affirmative action than white folks working in the US. If someone’s hiring in Poland, the overwhelming majority of applicants will be white, so the chance that ‘your’ job will be snatched away by a competitor of color is really, really low. If someone’s hiring globally, the average Pole already has an advantage over the average American due to, e.g., lower housing prices.

      Also, growing up in Poland doesn’t necessarily mean growing up “impoverished”. (This is not a hint that this guy was probably the son of a privileged party apparatchik who deserves an arbitrary amount of scorn, but a reminder that “Poles are dirt poor” is a bit of a crude stereotype in itself.)

      So, I would put a Polish guy objecting to affirmative action in the same bracket as me objecting to Ted Cruz’s views — there’s no direct personal impact, so it’s basically abstract political speech, even if motivated by sincere moral outrage. And, believe it or not, there are a lot of naively racist people in Eastern Europe (who might sincerely think things like “of course black people are lazy — in Africa you can just lie below a palm tree and wait until bananas drop into your mouth”).

      ***

      Now, on to the actual topic. What you call Kindness seems to correspond to what Haidt calls Care. You argue that people probably piled on the unlucky Polish guy because they were motivated by Fairness. But what would adherents of Care-but-Not-Fairness do if someone insisted that Care is not a valid value and should be excluded from some or all decisions? How would they defend Care? I’m guessing that at least some of them might treat this opponent in really hurtful fashion. So, it also could have been a Care gone wrong situation.

      Some configurations of Care+Fairness might actually help us do better than Care alone — e.g., if we decide to treat all people with kindness, not just the most disadvantaged ones. (A common mistake is accidentally excluding yourself from the set of all people, which makes you more miserable and sometimes meaner in the long run.)

    • TheAncientGeek says:

      Haidt doesn’t argue that the right rejects fairnes, he argues that right and left have differing versions:-

      Three Kinds of Fairness
      Arguments about fairness are interminable in part because there are three different kinds, making it easy for left and right to talk past each other. First, we must distinguish between procedural fairness and distributive fairness.
      Procedural fairness involves whether impartial and open procedures are used when decisions affecting the well being of others are made. Is the decision-maker impartial? Is the game rigged? Procedural fairness is crucial for the health of a democracy because when people have faith in the system, they are much more willing to accept outcomes that are disadvantageous to themselves. And when they think the system is corrupt, they are much more prone to join populist rebellions. Occupy Wall Street and many Tea Partiers (including Sarah Palin) agree that America suffers from crony capitalism—a direct violation of procedural fairness.
      Distributive fairness, in contrast, refers to how we distribute stuff—benefits as well as burdens. Is everyone getting his fair share and doing her fair share? But there are two subtypes of distributive fairness—equality (everyone gets the same) and proportionality (all receive rewards in proportion to their inputs; this is sometimes called equity). This simple distinction can help us understand many of today’s most vexing controversies. Everyone endorses proportionality, but the left simultaneously endorses equality, even when it is in tension with proportionality. The right has no interest in equality for its own sake. Conservatives prefer proportionality, even when it leads to massive inequalities of outcome

    • Randy M says:

      TVTropes puts Harrison Bergeron under the “Misaimed fandom” category, iirc. Vonnegut was trying to satirize conservative fears of an equality obsessed dystopia.

      • The Nybbler says:

        That claim about Harrison Bergeron is based on a single paper which admits that it is a minority view.

        • Randy M says:

          I meant to imply something less than certainty by sourcing from tvtropes, although the theory did make sense to me as Vonnegut never seemed particularly conservative, at the same time it’s not conclusive because Vonnegut isn’t easy to define and would probably have run with the interesting story idea even if it contradicted him politically.

      • Douglas Knight says:

        I’ve always wondered about that. Wikipedia cites this as the only example of his commenting on the interpretation of the story.

      • Nornagest says:

        I’ve heard that theory before, but I doubt it. Vonnegut was more leftist than rightist insofar as he can be pinned down to a side, but that would be his only satire of a specific political trope; satirizing broad cultural tendencies was more his thing. Plus it sounds suspiciously pat — “oh, that’s a satire of your side!”

  66. Zslastman says:

    The necessity of recombination is text book genetics yes. See the Wikipedia entry for Mullers Ratchet.

    • Ptoliporthos says:

      Recombination is not necessary, but it (ceteris paribus) makes selection more effective by attenuating Hill-Robertson effects. A species can get by without recombination as long as it has a sufficiently large population size.

      Wikipedia is honestly terrible on this whole thing, because the study of the advantages of recombination is tied up with the study of the human sex chromosomes. The most prolific and widely publicized author in that space gives entertaining talks and furnishes quotable (but wrong) sound bytes about how the lack of recombination will make the Y chromosome disappear and men will die out. That sort of stuff ends up on NPR or in Maureen Dowd columns — and the Wikipedia articles have largely been written and edited by people who have accepted that argument uncritically.

      For a non-quantitative treatment, just pick up Hermann Muller’s thesis (it’s like a hundred fifty page article published in issue #3 of Genetics but it’s actually a good read — like science story time with uncle Hermann). R. A. Fisher’s 1948 paper on recombination is also a good place to start for a quantitative perspective — even though his model for the sex chromosomes is only half right. For the most quantitatively inclined, I’d recommend reading Brian Charlesworth’s work on describing various Hill-Robertson effects in the absence of recombination. If you need a reference work on population genetics in general, Hartl & Clark is the go-to introductory textbook.

      • Alan Crowe says:

        If I’m buying Hartl and Clark to satisfy idle curiosity, can I pay three pounds for the 1998 third edition or must I pay sixty pounds for the 2007 fourth edition?

        I guess I’m really asking if there has been a revolution in population genetics such that a 1998 text book contains out-right errors.

        • Ptoliporthos says:

          The math ought to be the same — most of the stuff covered in Hartl & Clark would have been worked out in the early part of the 20th century. The examples may seem dated, since the human genome hadn’t been finished yet.

      • zslastman says:

        Second that recommendation of Hartl and Clark. Isn’t recombination necessary for large (non microbial) genomes though? At some point every single offspring of the least mutated population member is going to have at least one more mutation, right?

        • Alan Crowe says:

          For single nucleotide polymorphisms there are only four possibilities A,C,G, or T. Once a genome has acquired plenty of mutations there is a small chance that the next mutation will hit a nucleotide that has already been mutated. If that happens, there is a one in three chance that the original mutation gets corrected. That is to say the number of mutations goes down.

          • zslastman says:

            Hmmm. That’s true, and is referred to as a back mutation, I was neglecting them because usually one does, in population genetics. But it looks like they can actually matter given super large effective population sizes.

        • Ptoliporthos says:

          You’re probably confusing several independent things:

          Eukaryotes (a group that includes some microbes but excludes bacteria and archea) can carry out meiosis, a special cell cycle for producing haploid gametes.

          In most (but not all) eukaryotes, crossing over (recombination) is required for proper chromosome segregation during meiosis.

          There is generally a large fitness cost (i. e. death) associated with having the wrong number of chromosomes.

          Eukaryotes have much smaller population sizes than bacteria. Humans are probably the most numerous mammal with a population of 7×10^9. Each human on the planet has around 10^14 E. coli their gut.

          Eukaryotes do tend to have larger genomes than bacteria.

          But, the reason humans require crossovers in meiosis is about chromosome segregation in meiosis– not about genome size. The reason humans reproduce through meiosis is that if they didn’t, their small population size would have doomed them.

          • zslastman says:

            No I’m definitely not confused about those things. Mullers ratchet is thought to set an upward limit on genome size, or so I was taught, and looking it up again I see that this is probably because you need implausibly large effective population sizes for mutational interference to matter.

          • Ptoliporthos says:

            I see, you meant genome size in a population genetic sense of how many coding bases are subject to point mutations and not in a grind up an organism, measure the mass of DNA, divide by the mass of a base-pair, then divide by the number of cells sense.

            Sorry for the mistake, since I’m involved in generating reference sequence, I think about the latter far more than the former.

  67. BeefSnakStikR says:

    I read Echopraxia, and it seemed like Peter Watts got philosophical (p-) zombies wrong. From his postscript:

    Both surgical and viral varieties appear in Echopraxia; the surgically induced military model is essentially the “p-zombie” favored by philosophers.

    Here’s my understanding of p-zombies (which admittedly I only know from Dennett’s argument against them): (1) p-zombies are not conscious and (2) are supposed to be indistinguishable from non-zombies. Watts is clear on (1) stating several times that they aren’t conscious. I know that’s been debated in the literature. Putting that aside…

    Regarding (2) Watts writes p-zombies as having noticeably uncanny eye movement and superhuman reflexes, and the main character is constantly horrified at the sight of a zombie. They’re *noticeably* zombies–more like movie zombies than p-zombies.

    Or maybe I’m missing something in Watts’ plot. His zombies need people to “pull their strings” in order to do anything, and the military has some sort of way to switch them on and off…did Watts mean for the military to be using the p-zombies in creepy ways, totally separate from the nature of p-zombies?

    On the other hand, Watts does tell us that the p-zombies are indistinguishable from non-zombies, that technology cannot

    pick out the fractional chill of a zombie brain inside its skull, not from a distance, not through a wall or a roof, not in the middle of a riot

    But I’m not sure why the main character (the least advanced human in the story!) is able to recognize zombies when advanced technology can’t.

    • Deiseach says:

      Haven’t read the book but it may be down to plot constraints: you won’t get much mileage out of “terrifying and uncanny human-but-not-quite creature that is… absolutely indistinguishable in every way from a normal human, they look, act and speak like ordinary humans and you can’t tell the difference but trust me, they’re not human and they’re terrifying and uncanny”.

    • suntzuanime says:

      When most people think of p-zombies they are thinking of something that is distinguishable from a human, if only subtly. It is very hard to imagine something that’s truly indistinguishable from a human and yet has no consciousness, and it’s hard to see why anyone should care. Which is sort of the point of the p-zombie thought experiment, properly interpreted.

      • Douglas Knight says:

        Many people have put forward p-zombie arguments for many purposes. In particular, the point of the original people (eg, Chalmers) was exactly the opposite: he does care about the difference.

    • FacelessCraven says:

      @BeefSnakStikR – “Or maybe I’m missing something in Watts’ plot.”

      Have you read Blindsight?

      …I haven’t read Echopraxia yet, but given how Blindsight handled the issue, I don’t think he cares about whether the zombie is indistinguishable from a normal human, but rather whether the zombie is better than a normal human at any given task. This seems less a rejection of the original idea than an extension of it; the zombies aren’t indistinguishable, but one of the distinguishing characteristics is their obvious superiority.

      • Murphy says:

        I found Blindsight to be much superior to Echopraxia. Blindsight was… remarkable with a few silly twists. Good scifi that actually came with a citation list.

        Echopraxia just felt like dropping all that and just trying to go for the full generic undead set just because he wanted them all. I was expecting werewolves to turn up by the end.

        • I was put off of Blindsight because it seemed as though the humans tortured the aliens for no particular reason.

          It’s possible that I should reread it (in any case, the idea that vampires react badly to right angle is very cool). It’s not that I think the humans might have had a good reason for torturing the aliens, it’s that I’ve become a lot more cynical about the human propensity to torture.

          • Murphy says:

            ****spoilers****

            If it helps the aliens, in general, didn’t seem to care much or at all about the 2 being tortured and the ship was sort of doing the same to the humans right from the get-go.

            If I remember right while they did inflict pain on the 2 captured aliens I thought it was only after all other attempts to elicit a response failed.

            I found it more odd that they jumped straight to cutting a hole in the alien ship and didn’t happen to have any magnetic materials in their spacesuits before they knew about the insides of the alien ship.

          • Anon. says:

            SPOILERS

            The torture was used to figure out how they communicated. Separate the aliens but let them communicate, then inflict pain until they solve a puzzle that requires communication. Capture the communications and use them to understand their language.

            Hence,

            This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: You hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the speech from the screams.

          • FacelessCraven says:

            @Nancy – “I was put off of Blindsight because it seemed as though the humans tortured the aliens for no particular reason.”

            I think the reason was provided in the “technology implies belligerence” monologue. Watts’ characters tend to be pretty cold-blooded about achieving their objectives. It’s one of the things that makes me deeply uncomfortable about a lot of his stories; he’s willing to bite some pretty crazy bullets.

            @Murphy – “I found it more odd that they jumped straight to cutting a hole in the alien ship and didn’t happen to have any magnetic materials in their spacesuits before they knew about the insides of the alien ship.”

            My memory is that the Rorschach was surrounded by intense EM fields that were obvious from outside; also, their ship seemed to be capable of manufacturing new kit on short notice.

      • BeefSnakStikR says:

        I haven’t read Blindsight yet, no. I did notice in Watts’ postscript to Echopraxia that by reducing the functioning of the ‘consciousness’ part of the brain, other parts and functions are enhanced. (Like when you lose one sense, others are enhanced, I guess.)

        I’m still not sure whether Watt’s intention was to argue that reducing one’s consciousness would likely or inevitably enhance other behavior, or that the military was reducing consciousness as a mercy to their soldiers while deliberately enhancing them via additional means.

        • sweeneyrod says:

          One of the ideas in Blindsight was ***MAJOR SPOILERS*** that consciousness is not necessary for intelligence, and humans are the only conscious beings in the universe — everyone else has had it evolved away. So I think he is probably arguing that reducing consciousness would inevitably enhance other behaviour (I’ve not read Echopraxia though).

          • FacelessCraven says:

            yeah, this. the idea is that not only is consciousness unnecessary, it’s actually expensive, a roadblock. The zombies are smarter, faster, better than humans because they’re not thinking/feeling/emoting, just doing. Compare this to the idea of “flow”, various observations about how practice/training teaches you to do something “instinctively” with minimal effort and great accuracy, etc.

  68. Noumenon72 says:

    To use the Firefox user-blocking script, first install the useful Greasemonkey add-on. Then go to Scott’s link and click the “Raw” button over on the right (or go here) and it will auto-install. Then come back here and test it by clicking any user’s avatar. You’ll see a pop-up asking if you want to block them.

    Question: Does this hide all replies to those posters, like the one for Marginal Revolution?

    Rumination: Has anyone noticed whether this kind of solution leads to a worse experience for nonregulars, because the regulars don’t notice all the bad posts?

    • pneumatik says:

      Your rumination is likely to come true. I believe that is why Slashdot defaults to not showing comments with a score of zero and below, something which is only possible when you have a comment scoring system. OTOH, Slashdot has plenty of terrible people who make terrible posts.

      Now that I think of it, Slashdot’s comment / karma system seems to address some of the problems the commentariat here has with other comment ranking systems. Comments are never deleted and threading is preserved. Readers can filter by comment rank (from -1 to 5) to hide the comment completely, to show just the title, or to show the entire comment. This may have all been discussed previously, though.

      • nope says:

        What if instead of comment ranking there was thread ranking? Basically, people could vote on whether or not entire threads were interesting/useful/substantive, which seems like it might have better incentives baked in and lead less to popularity contests and such.

        • Nita says:

          This is an interesting idea. It might actually encourage civil and productive discussion instead of “smackdowns” and cheap jokes (probably the two most disproportionate vote-attractors on reddit).

          On the other hand, how would it actually work? Has anyone seen anything of this sort implemented in practice?

          • My ideal version would have (a pop-up of?) a little chart showing the history of the amount of karma for the thread. That way, people would be able to see quickly whether the thread was still live, and whether it was considered better or worse during certain times.

          • arbitrary_greay says:

            This is where the nesting limit becomes an obstacle, because then all following comments are necessarily put into one thread, even if there are low-quality comments interspersed within that everyone else ignores.
            It also means that tracking the thread ends at the level before the nesting limit, since everyone is replying to the one level up. You can’t track who is replying to whom, unless people start using the url-manipulation method. there may be 2-3 different conversations all happening in the long run, but by appearances, and by reply-tracking, they’re all still in one thread.

    • Bakkot says:

      Thanks for the more complete installation instructions.

      Question: Does this hide all replies to those posters, like the one for Marginal Revolution?

      Yes. To be more precise, it is exactly as if you’d gone through and clicked “hide” on all of the comments of all of the users you have blocked. (Avatars therefore remain visible, and you can unblock by clicking on the avatar of a blocked user.)

      Rumination: Has anyone noticed whether this kind of solution leads to a worse experience for nonregulars, because the regulars don’t notice all the bad posts?

      Yeah, I’m was a bit hesitant to share this because of potential impact on culture. My hope is that this will make it easier for people to not respond to posts whose content they would prefer not be present, and that this will reduce engagement with those posts and thereby discourage them. But I doubt it will have much effect either way.

      • Noumenon72 says:

        That’s not quite what I meant; I wanted to know if it hid the entire thread descending from those comments, so you don’t even see the response to the trolling. It sounds like it just hides the individual comments. That’s fine. Thanks for making this — I have felt its lack.

        • Nita says:

          No, Bakkot said it does hide the entire thread — you can click ‘Hide’ under Bakkot’s comment for a demo.

  69. Would the hidden open threads be archived?

    Might it make sense to have a separate blog (like the one for Unsong) for open threads? If so, the thousand comment limit per thread still makes sense.

    I’ve been noodling at the question of how people go from system 1 reactions to language and generalizations. For example, how do people go from minor rejection to “everyone hates me” or a number of good but low stakes interactions with someone to “this is a good person who should be trusted in general”?

    Possibly in the same category– my stomach muscles are usually tight, and I’ve been figuring out that this tends to lead to me feeling that something bad is going to happen. It took a long time for me to even notice the connection.

    • Zippy says:

      Might it make sense to have a separate blog (like the one for Unsong) for open threads? If so, the thousand comment limit per thread still makes sense.

      At that point we’d just be using a really crappy forum, and might as well just mosey over to /ratanon/ or do self posts on r/slatestarcodex.

      (“What is the limit?”, I hear you ask. Convenience.)

      • Nita says:

        The software at reddit and 8chan is different, so the community would be different as well.

  70. ton says:

    Scott: where did you get the two articles in 4 from, and is that somewhere I could go to read similar things?

  71. toastyfrog says:

    Is anyone watching the Hugo awards kerfluffle?

    Very briefly: the Hugo award nominations, this year and last, were heavily influenced by a small group of internet trolls who all voted for the same slate. Many science fiction fans are upset. I interested in voting systems, and I’m not quite close enough to the science fiction community to be really offended, so I’ve been watching the developments with interest.

    Last year the discussion was about how one group was unhappy because their favorite works were never nominated for the award. The attempted fix was to switch the voting system to weaken slate votes, using what looks to me like a variant of Single Divisible Vote. In practice (in most categories) this fix produces at least one nominee (out of five) that is not from the slate, but it does not (and was not intended to) prevent the slate from nominating things.

    This year the trolls have successfully nominated some fairly offensive stuff. There were lots of fan votes for Best Novel, so that category looks pretty okay. But other categories, such as Best Short Story, fared poorly. “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” (technically science fiction!), by Chuck Tingle, is actually pretty funny if you look at it in the right light. Other nominees are worse. Some people (including me) think the rules should be changed further, to prevent the trolls from getting anything at all on the ballot.

    I am thinking the solution is to increase the voting requirements. Currently to vote or nominate you only need to pay 50$ for a “supporting membership”, and then you can vote by email. I think they should change it so that only people who have actually physically attended a worldcon can nominate works to the final ballot. Supporting members can still be allowed to vote on the actual Hugo (choosing from among the five nominees).

    I’m not an actual worldcon attendee, though, and I’ve noticed that nobody else has suggested this solution, which makes me think there’s a problem with it.

    • Anonymous says:

      Seems to me like the way to prevent a small amount of defectors from hijacking your voting system is to make the pool of votes bigger, not smaller. Can you even call them trolls if they were willing to pay $50 for the privilege?

      That said, I didn’t even know what the Hugo award is before reading your post.

    • Winfried says:

      Making it only open to attendees would shred any claims that the award represented anything more broad than the very insular and fairly small Worldcon group.

      • toastyfrog says:

        Is “this award should represent a broad group of people” something you care about?

        Personally all I care about is “this award should output a list of recommendations for good books I should investigate reading”. But if the people involved with the award want the award to be representative, I guess that would at least explain why they’re not thinking about narrowing the voting pool.

        • Dr Dealgood says:

          If you’re very similar to the typical Worldcon goer then that’s not a problem at all, their list will look like what you would be interested in reading. But for the majority of the fandom the Hugo sticker would be a lot more useful to that end if the mass of voters had similar tastes to them.

          For instance, I have no emotional investment in the Hugos and always ignored the stickers, because the Hugo didn’t give me any information on how interesting the book’s world was. Even before I knew how the sausage was made it was obvious that the winners weren’t the sort of SFF which I liked reading. That’s not to say they’re universally bad but since the Hugo voters are looking for such different things it provides little additional information to hear that they liked a book.

        • Deiseach says:

          Is “this award should represent a broad group of people” something you care about?

          The Nebulas are the science fiction writers’ choice of what they think is the best writing in the field, there are other awards, but the Hugos were perceived as the fans’ choices. Maybe not the best, but the most popular, the “putting your money where your mouth was”, the books and stories and movies that fans would spend their money on. That’s why publishing companies stick great big “Hugo Award Winner!” or “Hugo Award-winning author!” on the covers, and at least part of the Sad Puppies was the frank admission by mid-list SF authors that their revenue stream (which is how they make a living and feed their families) was affected by (a) not being considered the kind of thing the Hugos should be encouraging (b) their publishing companies (I think Tor is in the middle of this, with the Nielsen Haydens having influential positions and definite opinions about who is right and who is wrong in the whole affair) not promoting their books because they didn’t have the “Hugo Award winner/nominee” seal of approval.

          If it is in practice, whatever it is in theory, the awards of a certain clique (no matter what politics or opinions), then it’s not the popular choice anymore, it’s the choice of what we should be finding popular. A bit like the suggested reading list which clumsily said “get rid of all the white male authors and read only works by non-white, non-cis het, etc. authors”.

          Challenging people to broaden their limits and try something outside their comfort zone is good; telling people “don’t read your favourite author’s new book this year solely because they’re the wrong colour, gender or sexual orientation” is not.

          • Mary says:

            “the Hugos were perceived as the fans’ choices.”

            The Hugos were billed as the fans’ choices. Indeed, for years and years, any complaints about the small voting pool were greeted with counters of “So increase the pool.”

          • Forlorn Hopes says:

            I remember when GRRM and Brad Torgoson (or was it John C Wright? It was a year ago) were having a back and forth on their blogs blog.

            GRRM said that the Hugo’s represent the worldcon community, and Brad or John responded that one of his major points was to show this after years of being told they’re not, and he thanked GRRM for admitting it.

            Take this as you will.

          • John Schilling says:

            GRRM said that the Hugo’s represent the worldcon community

            I think part of the disconnect may be that “worldcon community” traditionally meant more than just actual worldcon attendees, and that worldcon fandom was supposed to encompass or at least represent fandom in general. The whole point of the supporting membership is that lots of people can’t afford to fly off to e.g. Finland just because we decided it would be cool to hold the big party there next year, but if you’re with us in spirit then you’re still one of us.

            If that gets changed to only physical worldcon attendees count as true members of the community, that over time gives disproportionate weight to the professional authors, semiprofessional SMOFs, and literal jet-set elite of fandom.

            It also suggests that the winning strategy for Puppies might shift to gaming the bidding process to ensure that all future Worldcons are held in deep red states. If Vox Day has his way, probably whichever state just enacted the most abhorrent piece of anti-LGTB “hate legislation” that all true proponents of social justice must boycott.

            Not sure if that’s practical, but if he pulls it off I will laugh and probably cheer.

          • Standback says:

            @Mary and @Forlorn Hopes: I would basically parse this as going “The Hugos are the choices of the fans [who invest in participating in the Hugos]”. Circular, but not meaningless.

            This has been my first year actively participating in the Hugos, and… it’s really something. It was a real jolt to my usual reading patterns. For one thing, I was making a real effort to read a bunch of things that were brand-new, rather than letting recommendations percolate around for a while until I take them up. For another, I was reading lots of existing, current discussion, and getting pointers to more online short stories than I could read if I quit my day job just for that! While I was at it, I learned more about eligibility and award procedure than any sane person should now. I also came into the process fully aware that, even without voting blocs, the odds of that fantastic little gem I loved from F&SF or that brilliant storygame I loved on Kickstarter actually making it onto the shortlist was pretty close to nil. Little fish, big pool. It’s taking part in an aggregate.

            I don’t think any of that is “typical” fan reading patterns; nor do I think it should be. Talking about what’s new and exciting in the genre is interesting to you if and only if you’re interested in talking about what’s new and exciting in the genre. And if you can get that particular group to self-select and hand out an award, then that award has meaning – even if it’s a circular one, “this is the award selected by the people enthusiastic about this award.”

            You can call that group “fans,” and that’s not wrong. You can call the group “The WorldCon community,” and that’s not wrong either. Since “The WorldCon community” is basically open to anybody interested in joining it, the community is basically defined by interest in participation.

            But, that’s different from just pure numbers. Adding a thousand new readers who, e.g., aren’t particularly interested in reading new work, doesn’t improve the award (at least, not in this view of things). Adding a thousand novel-lovers doesn’t add value to the short story categories. Your goal is to raise the number of fans who have some personal favorites in the categories — and fans voting a list selected by somebody else simply aren’t meeting that criteria.

          • Protagoras says:

            I’m not sure how one could game the bidding process. There’s not a limit on the number of bids (it has never been an issue), so you can’t lock anyone out by filling all the bidding slots with your own bids, the way you can lock other candidates out of the Hugos by filling all the slots with your own nominees. There’s just no way to win the bid without a plurality of Worldcon voters, and if the puppies could get that at will, there never would have been a problem in the first place; they’d have been winning Hugos for their favorites all along. Which suggests a possible solution for the Hugos, I suppose; include everyone who gets any nominations at all as a nominee. It would make the ballot a bit on the long side, but it would neutralize the slate approach.

          • John Schilling says:

            There’s just no way to win the bid without a plurality of Worldcon voters, and if the puppies could get that at will,

            “Plurality of Worldcon [site selection] voters” is not a terribly high bar, though.

            Looking at the numbers, Helsinki seems to have won for 2017 with 1363 out of 2539 valid votes cast. The actual voting was in 2015, so compare Chaos Horizon’s analysis which shows ~1000 solid Puppy voters and ~500 Puppy-leaning neutrals. Out of ~5500 total Hugo nominating votes.

            Most Worldcon members don’t participate in the site selection vote, and a multitude of site bids dilutes the influence of many who do. If the Puppies were to coordinate their support for a single bid, and particularly if that bid were at all credible among true neutrals, it seems like they would be able to select Worldcon sites at will. Where does Vox Day want you to have your party this year, loyal fans?

            At least until his opponents do the same, as they finally got around to doing w/re the Hugo awards vote in the third year of the Puppy Kerfluffle. Winner-take-all plurality voting is what two-party systems are built on. But then, I’m pretty sure Vox Day would count it a win if he always gets to decide where Worldcon is held or if he makes it clear and official that Worldcon Fandom is now divided between the Rabid Puppy Party and the Social Justice Party.

          • Forlorn Hopes says:

            @Standback

            I don’t think any of that is “typical” fan reading patterns; nor do I think it should be. Talking about what’s new and exciting in the genre is interesting to you if and only if you’re interested in talking about what’s new and exciting in the genre. And if you can get that particular group to self-select and hand out an award, then that award has meaning – even if it’s a circular one, “this is the award selected by the people enthusiastic about this award.”

            I think that the Hugo was supposed to be a representative like a parliament. Most of us don’t spend all days debating policies, hope the people who do represent our views and values.

            Same for the Hugos. Only a relatively small number of fans want to spend so long researching in preparation for the vote. But you’d hope left wing, right wing, libertarian, etc fans were all represented and their votes counted.

            I get the impression though, that the Hugo voters have drifted further from the average person who just likes reading god sci-fi or fantasy.

            that wouldn’t be a problem. But when you still claim to represent all fans and fight the people pointing out you don’t tooth and nail, it becomes a problem.

          • Vorkon says:

            @Forlorn Hopes

            I remember when GRRM and Brad Torgoson (or was it John C Wright? It was a year ago) were having a back and forth on their blogs blog.

            GRRM said that the Hugo’s represent the worldcon community, and Brad or John responded that one of his major points was to show this after years of being told they’re not, and he thanked GRRM for admitting it.

            Take this as you will.

            That was Larry Correia, actually.

          • Standback says:

            @Forlorn Hope:

            I think that the Hugo was supposed to be a representative like a parliament. Most of us don’t spend all days debating policies, hope the people who do represent our views and values.

            Oooh! Good analogy. I like it.

            I get the impression though, that the Hugo voters have drifted further from the average person who just likes reading god sci-fi or fantasy.

            The impression I have, honestly, is that the field is so big and varied now, the “average person” doesn’t really exist.

            You’ve got military SF fans and steampunk fans; fans of epic fantasy and urban fantasy; people who know the difference between Young Adult and New Adult and know which one they love; fans of slipstream and Hard SF and Rationalist SF and Magical Realism and multicultural translated world SF and everything. Comic collectors and manga enthusiasts are HUGE genre fans; what would you say, on average, that their favorite Novella of 2015 might be?

            Now, you’re right that books selected by the self-selecting Hugo participants aren’t the same as a mass poll, just as you’d rather expect that laws passed by a dedicated parliament would be different from laws formulated by mass poll. But… that’s not really a bug, is it?

            And here’s the other point: Let’s roll with the Parliament analogy. How many times have you seen somebody say “Opposing Representative says X, which is clearly absurd — this demonstrates that X-ites are taking over, and the Opposing Representatives are no longer beholden to the public!”

            It’s very easy to be sensitive to the things you don’t like, to remember those, and cherry-pick those as representing the whole. But… that doesn’t actually mean you’ve got the whole picture. It doesn’t mean there’s been a hostile takeover. It means the X-ites are being represented, which you may not appreciate, but it sure doesn’t mean they’ve taken over and are holding everybody else in a stranglehold. (Remember, Correia and Torgersen each got nominated for the Best-New-Writer category before the Sad Puppy campaigns started!)

            The statement “The Hugo awards are drifting away from popular taste” is one that deserves examination and analysis:
            – How do you determine current “popular taste”?
            – Does “popular taste” even exist, in an area that’s both niche and highly fragmented?
            – Did the Hugos previously represent “popular taste” better than they do now?
            – Do the Puppies represent “popular taste” any more than the Hugos do?

            I don’t think there are easy answers to those questions. I certainly don’t feel like the Puppy campaigns made any attempt to answer them, IMHO.

            The Puppies were primarily saying “We hate these results” and “Our voices aren’t being counted.” But… the second doesn’t follow from the first, any more than it would be in a Parliament.

            And what they did in is very similar to what’s done in all sorts of politics – they may not have had particular favorites in common, but they were able to unite around a common opponent. So, if you start out with a dozen political streams, with Stream A presently dominant, and then three smaller streams unite as the Anti-A stream — well, that’s legitimate politics. It’ll get you the short-term goal of blocking A. But… it will also mean suppressing your own constructive goals, in order to cooperate with the other partners, and it’s likely to polarize the Parliament even further. That’s how you get a two-party system, and good luck feeling well-represented in one of those…

          • Mary says:

            “The impression I have, honestly, is that the field is so big and varied now, the “average person” doesn’t really exist.”

            Then they should have the gumption to admit it and stop calling it THE fan award.

            George R.R. Martin did not exactly cover himself with glory by proposing that the Puppies go create a conservative award without offering to, in return, admit that the Hugos were the leftist one.

            Not to mention that the reaction to the Dragoncon awards among the people who decried the Puppies — has negative.

          • Forlorn Hopes says:

            Can you post a few examples of the reaction to dragoncon?

          • As I recall, the reaction to the Dragoncon awards was wishing them well, but saying there were design flaws (sorry I don’t remember the details) in the way the awards were structured.

          • Standback says:

            @Forlorn:

            The File770 commentariat has a decent range of views. I mostly saw the range as being between “Hey, cool, hope that goes well”, “Eh, whatever, we’ll wait and see if they grow into something I care about,” and “This looks amateurish.” There are outliers, though. Iiiiit’s a comment section.

        • Winfried says:

          I don’t much care one way or the other as long as they don’t say one thing and mean another.

        • Mary says:

          THEY are the ones who called it the fan award, not the Worldcon award.

          Fans are a broad group of people. So it’s something people should care about. Truth in advertising and all that.

          • Deiseach says:

            Yeah, for years I thought the Hugos were done on some kind of wide-ranging poll (I being young and ignorant and in the pre-Internet days with no means of finding out how the sausage was made).

            One good thing, if clarification is always an unalloyed good, of the whole mess is that the Worldcon people* came out and admitted “They’re not voted on by fandom as a whole, they’re the property of Worldcon, they’re only voted on by Worldcon attendees and moreover you have to be a paid-up official member to vote, so there! We own them, sucks to you!”

            *By “people” I mean not alone the volunteer and semi-permanent committees but what could be called “the usual suspects”; I read a very unpleasant blog post by Teresa Nielsen Hayden about the whole affair that I’m not going to search out again because really I don’t need to be called a racist sexist homophobic religious bigot more than once a week, you know?

          • Deiseach,

            I don’t think it was a question of the Hugo and/or Worldcon committee “admitting” that the Hugos weren’t a fandom-wide award.

            I’m pretty sure the Worldcon committee had no idea whatsoever of the degree of lack of knowledge of how the Hugo winners were chosen.

            For what I’ve heard, your mistake that it was from a big general survey is much less common than believing the Hugos were a juried award.

            Sf fans (or at least the older fans I’m more familiar with) are utter crap at marketing. I believe it’s a geek thing, and possibly a geek fallacy. It’s the belief that people should be able to recognize quality on their own, and also that they shouldn’t be distracted by efforts to push them into doing things for irrelevant reasons.

            How the Hugos are awarded was never a secret, but it was included in piles of information that a lot of people didn’t see a reason to look at.

          • Forlorn Hopes says:

            It’s not so much that they admitted fandom as a whole didn’t vote for it.

            Rather. Before the party line was that the Hugo’s were representative of all of fandom. Sort of like a parliament. The public can’t just turn up and vote, but you have both Democrat and Republicans in the house and everyone is represented.

            Post puppies the new line is that the Hugo’s represents the worldcon crowd and only the worldcon crowd. If worldcon people have different tastes to the average fan then the Hugo’s representing worldcon tastes is a feature not a bug.

    • Kevin says:

      Not sure why, but I’m aware of this mess. In my teenage years and early college I read a lot of science fiction, but very little nowadays. The Hugo award seemed like a big deal back then given the way it was always prominently displayed on book covers, though at that time I was less than impressed by the quality of many nominees and winners. The awards seemed to be more about popularity instead of quality, similar to the Grammy Awards in being meaningless and yet highly touted. I didn’t realize until recently how janky and insular the Hugo nomination and voting process was. No wonder a few nasty cranks can wreck the thing. The process has no robustness and little legitimacy.

      At this point, the Hugo’s appear to be broken. If the governing body can find a way to completely retool the nomination and voting process, they might be able to save them. But frankly, no one seriously cares except ta tiny sliver of hard-core readers and writers who science fiction and fantasy.

    • Seth says:

      I’m not close to the situation, though I’ve read a few posts on it. Basically, I think what’s happened is that the long-running dispute between the “hard” (math, physics, outer space, adventure, empire) faction and the “soft” faction (psychology, sociology, inner space, relationship, life experience) got turbocharged by SJW/anti-SJW politics. The soft/hard dispute has been going on for decades, arguably started in 1950’s and really became apparent in the 1960’s. Thus it way predates current issues. But the intensity got much much worse when that longstanding divide connected with current politics. The awards turned into a political football between the various groups. It’s not the first time there’s been that general sort of dispute. But I’d say a pretty good case can be made that it’s the worst it’s ever been, by an order of magnitude.

      • Dan T. says:

        As I recall, as a kid in the ’70s reading through the shelves of the science fiction section of the local library (those books the library helpfully marked with a spaceship icon on their spines), I had distinct preferences in which books/stories I liked better, where the ones I preferred tended to be written in the ’40s and ’50s by people like Asimov and Heinlein (the old “hard-SF” style), while anything more recent I ran into (’60s and ’70s) was more likely to be touchy-feely stream-of-consciousness stuff that I just couldn’t get into as much. As a comic book fan then too, I also tended to like ’50s comics whenever I stumbled onto them more than the “oh-so-relevant” style preferred in the early ’70s.

        • Deiseach says:

          Oooh, the New Wave in SF! I was just about old enough to be entering into my SF reading years when that was kicking off. As usual, I cut my teeth on the Golden Age, but some of the New Wave I liked very well (I’ll always have a fondness for M. John Harrison because of the Viriconium stories).

          I honestly don’t mind stories featuring LGBT POC non-theist/freethinker/spiritual but not religious differently abled neurodivergent non-human/part-human/what is human exactly? characters going about their queer representation business in space* as long as, you know, it’s in space or they throw me some kind of a bone with a SF/F setting. I’m never going to read milsf no matter who writes it from what side of the political fence, but I will read a story or a whole book featuring a space lesbian starship engineer as long as the main point is “starship engineer” and not “space lesbian being a space lesbian lesbianically in space, did I mention she’s a space lesbian, never mind I will do so every third paragraph”.

          *Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand. Effin’ fantastic story, blows the doors off weaksauce efforts like “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” despite being some thirty years older, and like many others I’m still waiting to find out do Marq and Rat ever get back together! Proposed sequel is not looking too likely this side of the Eschaton, but you never know 🙂

          • That’s pretty much how I feel.

            I think part of the problem with the puppies is that they just don’t have much good fiction to offer. I’ve read some puppy nominees, and I feel as though if I get bad imitation Eric Frank Russell, I’m lucky.

            This being said, I enjoyed Marko Kloos’ milsf (puppy nominee last year, but he withdrew it) a lot, and I don’t usually like milsf. It’s much better on the emotional side than most milsf, but it isn’t all PTSD all the time, either.

            Anyway, while my tastes run to some of the SJW-approved sf (Zettel’s Dust Girl trilogy, The Goblin Emperor, “The Litany of Earth” (the worshipers of the Deep Ones are a misrepresented minority, but the story comes out of the side of civil order and enlightenment values), “The Ballad of Black Tom”, “Every Heart a Door”…) it’s quite possible I’m missing some good puppyish stuff. Recommendations?

          • Winter Shaker says:

            I don’t usually like milsf

            Can’t you put a hyphen in there? It’s very difficult for the wetware text parser to not automatically swap the last two letters 🙂

          • I’ll try to remember to go with mil-sf.

          • Vorkon says:

            @Nancy Lebovitz

            Just out of curiosity, what did you like about The Goblin Emperor? I found it rather boring, without a single character that was either likeable, or even unlikeable in a “love to hate” sense, didn’t have a particularly novel or interesting setting or tackle any ideas that haven’t been explored a million times before, and lacked any sort of strong narrative to keep you going despite not caring about said characters or setting. (i.e. it’s mostly just a series of only slightly related events, without some strong central plotline or conspiracy tying it all together, which, I’ll admit, is more true to life, and can still make for a very good story if you’re invested in the characters or setting, but it gave me no particular reason to do so.)

          • I liked The Goblin Emperor because I sympathized with the main character, and I was definitely ready for a story where intelligence and good will lead to success.

            It was also a story with little violence in it, so that when there was some violence, it was shocking instead of more of the same.

            Anyone else notice that the main character was brownwashed on the cover?

          • meyerkev248 says:

            @Nancy:

            1) If I may recommend the International Lord of Hate himself, Larry’s own Grimnoir Chronicles.

            He’s got a bone to grind with FDR, and I’m never going to put them on “Books that fundamentally redefined my worldview”, but they were FUN, with a decent magic system. Much worse things to read.

            2) Ringo and Weber have problems, and when they collaborate, their problems cancel out (or at least get toned WAY down, so Weber can’t do missile calculations for 30 pages and Ringo can’t rant about politics for quite as long), so the March Upcountry Series was very, very good.

            Prince Roger McClintock, bratty teenager third in line to the Empire of Man is marooned on the wrong side of an just-this-side-of-medieval tech-base alien planet with a company of bodyguards, where he becomes very much not bratty.

            Cue a quite good knockoff of Anabasis that lasts 3 books and a 4th… eh, they were telegraphing it in the end of the 3rd. If you liked the 3, you’ll like the 4th, but it’s different.

            3) Michael Z. Wiliamson’s “Better To Beg Forgiveness… ”

            The UN is brokenly corrupt and running an Iraq War expy. They hire bodyguards (our heros) for their local “President”, who of course is a wonderful person who truly cares about “Iraq” because this is that sort of book.

            Halfway through, the UN decide to go with a different strongman, so his bodyguards have to get him off-planet and into a TV studio so he can’t be “killed by rioters” and can get back to trying to weld his society back together.

            Much, much better than I am making it sound.

            /And if we buy enough of them, Larry will buy a tank. Which he will then drive down his mountain to the grocery store.
            //Yeah… this Sad Puppies thing worked out well for him.

          • For what it’s worth, my anti-puppy sources had a consensus that Correia is a fairly good but not distinguished writer.

          • Vorkon says:

            Fair enough. I can definitely understand why someone might like it if they can manage to sympathize with the main character, I just have a tough time fathoming how anybody could sympathize with him. :op

          • meyerkev248 says:

            @Nancy:

            I completely concur with their description of Larry.

            Also, the MHI ones are at best tolerable and the one that actually made the Hugo slate didn’t click with me, and I’m not sure why.

            But the Grimnoir Chronicles were really, really fun.

          • Forlorn Hopes says:

            I haven’t read any of the sad puppies best novel choices, but I can recommend the following form the Sad Puppies list.

            Perfect State*, … And I Show You How Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes, Erfworld, Gunnerkrigg Court

            * And anything else by Brandon Sanderson except Alcatraz which I thought was meh. Start with Warbreaker, since he’s published it for free as a trial of his work, and it’s awesome.

          • Vorkon says:

            @meyerkev248

            Which MHI novel are you talking about? Because the only one of Correia’s works which was ever actually nominated for a Hugo was the third Grimnoir book, (a series which, I agree, is excellent) and then he’s refused to accept any nominations since, because of the politics. His first MHI novel (and first novel period) was nominated for a Campbell, but I don’t think that’s the one you’re talking about.

            But yeah, Larry Correia. I think he’s definitely worth a recommendation, perhaps with some reservations.

            Ultimately, he’s probably not as good as Butcher when it comes to pulpy action, but he’s still an awful lot of fun. He has a similar problem to Butcher, though, in that the first MHI novel is really pretty lousy, and you won’t get a feel for what really makes him fun until later books. It’s still a fun read, mind you, but nothing to write home about; the action is extremely well done, but the worldbuilding seems weak, a lot of the jokes feel forced, and the main character and his love interest are the two biggest Mary-Sues you’ll ever find outside of fanfiction.net. (though, to be fair, most Mary-Sues are the idealized self-image of some nerdy college kid, while Owen Pitt is the idealized self-image of Larry Correia, so if you’re not used to that he might FEEL a little different. But he’s not. He’s as Mary-Sue as they come.) Even in that book, though, the side characters are all outstanding, and they only get better as the series goes on. In fact, I’d say the series doesn’t really start to pick up until the first book that’s written in a different character’s POV, Monster Hunter Alpha, and they keep getting better from there. The government’s seemingly nonsensical monster-related policies start to make sense once you start getting a few scenes from one of their POVs, which helps the otherwise weak worldbuilding immensely. Even the main character eventually starts to get a bit more interesting, when he’s confronted with some choices similar to ones the cardboard antagonist had to make against him in the first novel, and Julie starts to get a little more to do than just be Owen’s love interest. But it’s still the side characters that steal the show.

            There’s also a few surprisingly clever ideas on display, which often look at first glance like just dumb jokes, but when you look deeper might just be more than that. Not brilliant literary commentary, or anything, but more than you’d expect at first glance. The white-trash trailer park elves, for example, while just a dumb joke on the surface, are actually a pretty inspired take on the trope of “the once-great ancient civilization which has fallen from grace” which his typified elves ever since Tolkien. That’s actually how such a society probably WOULD look, in our world. (See some Indian reservations, for example.) The setting is still MOSTLY just an excuse to write awesome gun battles, but there’s still a few interesting touches like that, here and there.

            Grimnoir, on the other hand, I would unreservedly recommend to just about anyone. It’s extremely well-researched alt-history, with an interesting take on the period, great characters, outstanding action, good pacing, and an intriguing overaching narrative. I have less to say about it than I did about MHI, but mostly just because I don’t need to spend so much time covering for its flaws. :op

            I’d also recommend his latest novel, Son of the Black Sword. It’s best described as “Fantasy Judge Dredd,” but the worldbuilding is pretty great, and there’s some interesting (if possibly heavy-handed, though it’s not entirely without subtlety) themes at work. It’s probably his most “message-ficcy” work to date, but is also quite possibly his best. (It’s hard to say, because first novels in a planned series tend to be a bit awkward, with a lot of setup that may or may not pay off satisfactorily, but *I* enjoyed it a great deal.)

            So, yeah, Correia’s work, in general, is recommended with reservations. Since a big selling point in the Goblin Emperor for you was apparently the LACK of violence, he might not be your thing. But if you’re looking for fun action, well, there’s a reason the entire Puppy movement sprung up basically around him.

            @Forlorn Hopes

            Heartily seconded on Gunnerkrigg Court and “anything by Brandon Sanderson.” Even the Alcatraz books are fun, if not him at his best. The tone he’s going for with those is “what you’d get if Terry Pratchett and J.K. Rowling made a baby,” and he is CERTAINLY no Terry Pratchett, but it’s still better than a lot of other YA fare that tries to be funny.

            Don’t be put off by talk about how complicated his magic systems are. He does an excellent job of teaching you how those systems work, and slowly working those lessons into the story, so that when he eventually uses that system he taught you to pull off something really cool, it feels earned, narratively. I like to think of it like hard sci-fi, except the “science” is all just made up fantasy bullshit. (Heh. It occurs to me, that might require a little more explanation, since that description sounds more like soft sci-fi. The way I see it, the main difference between hard and soft sci-fi isn’t necessarily the accuracy of the science, but how it is used. Soft sci-fi wraps itself in scientific trappings, and calls it a day. The technobabble may be close to accurate, or it may be bullshit, but at the end of the day it isn’t what matters. Hard sci-fi, on the other hand, actually USES some scientific principle, and the ramifications of that principle if it is expanded upon and taken to the furthest degree, as a central point in the story. Brandon Sanderson does that, but with imaginary magic systems, rather than science.) He’s also really good with a plot twist, foreshadowing them just enough that you feel like you should have seen them coming, but rarely do. (Or, at least, *I* rarely do. Your mileage may vary. :op )

            Incidentally, his take on the entire Puppy situation is a fairly interesting one: http://brandonsanderson.com/hugo-awards-2016/

            Gunnerkrigg Court is great too, but it kind of got lost while I was talking about how much I love Sanderson. Sorry! :op

          • Forlorn Hopes says:

            Your views on Brandon pretty much match my own. Great writer all round, with very notable improvement as his books progress (Elantris for example I found had characters who were just a touch one dimensional), FANTASTIC world-building, I love the way the cosmere ties together, but I almost never find his jokes funny. Especially not the “witty” banter.

          • Vorkon says:

            IMHO, Elantris was held back mostly by the format he was trying to write it in. He would alternate between the three main characters, covering the SAME period of time in each set of three chapters. This meant that sometimes you’d have a chapter where nothing all that interesting was going on in one character’s storyline. If he hadn’t been so dead-set on sticking to that timeline, and shifted POVs more naturally, I think it would have been a lot better.

            Still, when you compare Elantris to MOST peoples’ first novels, it’s like night and day.

            Also, I think he can occasionally be funny, just mostly when he isn’t trying to. He’s good at setting up humorous situations, if not so much humorous dialogue. (The rest of his dialogue is good, and flows very naturally, though.) He’s gotten better at that too, though. I know I definitely chuckled at a few of David’s metaphors and Cody’s stories in the Reckoners books, and at Wayne being Wayne in the new Mistborn books, at least.

          • Forlorn Hopes says:

            Yeah. Bands of Mourning did get a really genuine laugh from me when they were all checking into the hotel – and the call back when they were leaving it.

            The humorous dialogue in the recokoners didn’t get a laugh though.

            —-

            I think one advantage Elantis has over other first novels, is that we wrote novels that didn’t get published due to naturally lower quality first.

            But I’m sure lots of other first novels are also actually just first-published.

      • Forlorn Hopes says:

        I don’t think it’s a hard/soft division.

        I have two… I suppose they’re half educated guesses.

        Either it’s: “Fiction that exists to promote a message vs Fiction which is story first and message second or not at all”.

        Or it mostly boils town to the authors. SJW, conservatives (Sad Puppies), alt right “Vox Day and his Rabid Puppies) .

        With each faction drawing in different groups. IMO the Sad Puppies really didn’t do the best job getting their point across. For example when GRRM was saying that he didn’t recognize the story of alienation that (I think it was Brad Torgoson but it might have been John C Wright) felt, no one brought up Requires Hate as objective evidence that the sci-fi community wasn’t welcoming to everyone.

        I suspect the post The Ideology is not the Movement explains a LOT of what’s going on here btw.

        • Dan T. says:

          There was also SF designed explicitly to promote a libertarian message; the works of L. Neil Smith and J. Neil Schulman (somehow, having Neil as a middle name seems to lead authors that way) are good examples.

          • Forlorn Hopes says:

            And Liberarian sci-fi tends to land pro-puppy.

            I think I phrased “Either it’s: “Fiction that exists to promote a message vs Fiction which is story first and message second or not at all”. ” badly.

            Perhaps

            “Fiction where it’s story first, message second (or not at all) vs fiction where it’s message first”.

            I don’t know if the puppies would be happy if message-first fiction won if they agreed with the Hugo, but they certainly claim they wouldn’t.

          • Deiseach says:

            I think the Sad Puppies originally argued (whatever their position is now that both sides have crystallised in their differences) that the point of stories should be that they are stories first. Whether or not you’re trying to educate your reader or present a particular philosophy to them, what your duty as an author is first and foremost is providing entertainment, and this means doing the bare, basic minimum of a writer’s job which is “plot, characters, development of same” combined with the sensawunda that SF/F evokes – they would say, only SF/F now evokes, as mainstream literature doesn’t care about such trifles and has moved on to clever theoretical tricks.

            Ursula LeGuin may have a particular philosophical or political message in her works, but the Puppies would acknowledge that she is a good writer and does the writer’s job. The reader is perfectly entitled to toss your work aside in disdain for any distasteful message they find therein, but if they toss it aside because it’s boring or hectoring or tedious, you have failed in your primary task: to write a good, entertaining story.

            Message-fic where the quality of the story is judged not on “does this draw the reader into another world of excitement and wonder” but “does it tick all the boxes on the current favoured representation checklist” therefore fails, by this criterion. You can perfectly well have a message-fic that trans merfolk on Titan deserve self-governance out from under the repressive rule of a theocratic Terra, but the story should not be a dreary lecture about trans rights activism first and foremost.

          • Nita says:

            your duty as an author is first and foremost is providing entertainment

            Different people genuinely find different kinds of stories entertaining. I like simple action movies, but other people find them boring. You could torture me by making me watch Bridget Jones’s Diary, but other people sincerely love it. I thought Inception was one of the best Hollywood films ever made, but (according to IMDB) many others actually hated it.

            Also, some people use “sensawunda” for quasi-religious awe, others for mind-expanding ideas, and some just for shiny cool stuff. All of them can make a story more attractive to readers, and many stories contain all three, but they’re fundamentally different things.

            For instance, Blindsight contains a mind-expanding idea (which seems likely to cause unease instead of wonder — perhaps it’s not “real” SF?), while The Stainless Steel Rat series mostly contains shiny cool stuff. I like both, but let’s admit that there’s no one feeling all decent SF stories induce.

      • tmk says:

        I think this is only one aspect of what hard vs. soft SciFi normally means. Star Wars has plenty of space, adventure and empire, but would never be called hard SF. My impression is that hard SF is about plausible future science and technology and building a self-consistent word, rather than throwing in cool stuff to make a fun story.

        • Seth says:

          What I was trying to convey is two main clusters, where Star Wars would fall into one (being a galactic empire adventure story about a male hero’s quest) despite it not being especially an extrapolation of science or technology itself. As opposed to say, a hypothetical story which focuses on Chewbacca’s sense of alienation as a Wookie in the human-dominated society, the prejudice he suffers from being regarded as nearly an animal, yet being scorned by others of his species for working with humans. Even if that was a good story, it’s a different kind of story.

          • Nornagest says:

            That’s a very different taxonomy than I’m used to. Hard SF-as-I-know-it usually has an adventure or exploration story wrapped around its crunchy technical center, and I suppose we could pull in “empire” by way of Asimov, but adventure/exploration/empire is not enough to qualify a story as such. A Princess of Mars is an adventure story, but few would call it hard SF. Ditto Heinlein’s Glory Road. On the other side of things the Imperial Radch books, maybe the biggest “SJW” franchise to come out of this irritating little culture war, are both adventure and empire stories.

            I don’t even think we’re looking at discrete clusters. Clarke wrote a lot of sociology stories that I’d still call “hard”. Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow is technically hard and has an exploration frame, but it’s basically a culture-clash story. Avatar (smurfs, not ninjas) is a similar cinematic case.

          • Seth says:

            Maybe those weren’t good labels, but I couldn’t think of better terms at the time. Plot vs. Character was some of it, but that’s too vague and general. It was less “hard-SF” and more at “hard-sciences-*associated*” where galactic empire qualifies since it has space travel underlying it, even if merely as a necessary story device. Basically, if someone sees a spaceship in it, that’s an automatic genre marker of a certain type. It might be overcome in exceptional cases, but by default it’ll be “That Buck Rogers Stuff”. The practitioners of literary magic realism are, by and large, not fond of anything which involves a spaceship.

            Galactic Patrol” was not more rigorous than the New Wave material. Yet there’s a divide between them, that rigor doesn’t capture.

          • The Nybbler says:

            I don’t think that’s soft vs. hard. Isaac Asimov’s “The Bicentennial Man” falls into your second cluster, but is definitely hard SF. But most of Asimov’s robot stories (e.g. “Little Lost Robot”) are adventure stories , and are equally hard SF.

            Message fiction that the Sad Puppy group complains about is a separate grouping. Heinlein’s _For Us, the Living_ is message fiction; so is Ayn Rand’s _Atlas Shrugged_ or B.F. Skinner’s _Walden 2_. All these had the main purpose of pushing a message to the audience, and the story came second to that. There was certainly a message in “The Bicentennial Man”, but the story came first.

        • Anonymous says:

          I had always understood hard science fiction to focus on the science part. The hardest being near future since that has the firmest grounding in actual science, but at least if it is going to have magic drives, they are elaborately described and reasonably plausible magic drives rather than *insert technobabble here*.

          If space is just your vague backdrop to an Aubrey/Maturin type thing, I’d consider that on the softer side.

        • Mary says:

          A good rule is that it’s hard SF if the author had to solve an equation in the writing process.

          • John Schilling says:

            A good rule is that it’s hard SF if the author had to solve an equation in the writing process.

            And if the author could have substituted a spreadsheet for a chapter of text, it’s David Weber 🙂

            But I do like your rule of thumb, and may steal it in the future.

          • Who wouldn't want to be anonymous says:

            So Futurama must be the hardest SF on the block because one of the authors had to prove a theorem to write it.

        • Vorkon says:

          Obviously, hard sci-fi is the type written by Chuck Tingle.

    • One might not suspect, reading your post, that there was another side to the controversy, reasonable people who believe that the voters you are calling trolls are the good guys and the people complaining about them the bad guys. I cannot tell if you realize that or if your post, by someone who self-identifies as an outsider to the relevant population, is a result of having only heard one side.

      So far as your solution, I don’t think it would work. There are too many people, probably including a sizable fraction of both groups of puppies, who have been to at least one worldcon. I’m not an active sf fan, and have been to several.

      • walpolo says:

        I assumed the “trolls” part was a reference to the Rabid Puppies, who are in fact trolls–not the Sad Puppies, who have changed their approach so much this year that they’re a completely different movement.

      • John Schilling says:

        The Rabid Puppies could be accurately described as “trolls”, but the “Hugo awards kerfluffle” cannot be accurately described as Rabid Puppies vs. Science Fiction Fandom.

      • Murphy says:

        My basic sketch of the events is that there was a vague and gradual shift in the style of books getting nominations over a few years, there probably was a very disorganized shift with a minority voting in blocks, some people complained about the system being easy for a minority to control, were told that that was nonsense and that it was just fair democracy. So they birthed the Sad puppies as a semi-organized attempt to show how a minority could control things. Then the angrier factions birthed the Rabid puppies to do the same thing but in a more unpleasant way and they very very successfully showed that a small minority could completely control the vote. The people who’d been po-poing the claim earlier started screaming that it was terrible and that everyone involved is evil but still didn’t really want to admit that it was a pretty good QED to show that the vote was easily controlled by a minority.

        Hopefully they’ll actually improve the voting system in an effective way.

    • Deiseach says:

      I’d appreciate if you didn’t call them trolls. That’s assuming that the Bad Guys and Good Guys line neatly up on opposite sides, and all the moustache-twirling villains are over there with the dregs of society, while all the warriors of righteousness are on the side of the Hugo and Worldcon officialdom.

      I think the Hugos have been broken for a long time (I really can’t think of the last time I read or bought anything by a recent “Hugo Award Winner!”) but it wasn’t until the whole Sad and Rabid Puppies affairs blew up that the rot was exposed.

      I think they should change it so that only people who have actually physically attended a worldcon can nominate works to the final ballot.

      Thus confining it to solely Americans who will be the attendees at most cons (granted, that’s probably how it works out in practice) and to hell with the rest of the English-reading SF fandom, eh? The last vestiges of pretence that this is “The Fandom People’s Choice” will at least be gone, and as the officials have reminded us, the Hugos are trademarked property of Worldcon; they don’t need a popular vote, they could declare winners by fiat or by the vote of the “informal and self-selected group of volunteers constitute the “Permanent Floating Worldcon Committee” who volunteer for many Worldcons in different years; this group offers a measure of institutional continuity to otherwise disparate legal organizations”.

      I’ve complained at great length how at least one nominee was not by any stretch of the imagination (not even under the aegis of Magical Realism) SF/F and another winner was decent but needed hefty editing and really had only applied a skim coat of SF to a typical modern literary fiction short story. I have only read the first page of “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” (hem hem) but it has a hell of a lot more traditional SF set-up and gives us actual names for the characters than the much-admired, if non-winning, Tale Of Woe Woe Weepy Weepy Woe. Dr Tingle’s opus is a SF work I could get behind (a long, long way behind, given its predilections) as a winner.

      Does that make me a troll? Then I will lurk here under my bridge, swilling my redneck gin and gnawing on the bones of unfortunate paleontologists.

      • Seth says:

        It’s akin to, err, “PlayerPortal”. There’s no question that some very nasty characters are involved. But to say there’s anything more to the situation than Trolls Menacing The Good People risks one being branded a Bad Person.

      • Alex says:

        I think the Hugos have been broken for a long time

        “I think” as in you are the author of the link behind “broken” as in buying the novel advertised therein might be a practical way to show appreciation for your contributions in the comments?

        • Deiseach says:

          Alex, if I understand correctly, you are by soft insinuation thinking that I am Ms Phillips? I am not she nor is she I, nor do we have hand, act or part in each other’s writings, nor do I know anything more of her than that this was a random article I found by Googling and seemed a good example of what the problem was re: the Old Guard in Worldcon and the Hugo Awards (and that the Old Guard wasn’t necessarily the dinosaurs of the sexist past of the 50s/60s/70s anymore).

          If I do not understand you correctly, and you mean to say that I am suggesting we all buy the linked author’s works, or that you think such is a good idea in showing appreciation, that is up to everyone themselves to decide for themselves 🙂

          • Alex says:

            The first. I had problems understanding a sentence starting with “I” and then linking to a person other than “I”.

            Apologies for the confusion.

    • John Schilling says:

      Is anyone watching the Hugo awards kerfluffle?

      Very briefly: the Hugo award nominations, this year and last, were heavily influenced by a small group of internet trolls who all voted for the same slate.

      This has been discussed here repeatedly and at extensively, yes. And with enough sympathy for both sides, including the “internet trolls”, that I am inclined to suspect classic internet trolling in this uninformed, one-sided drive-by post now.

      Any useful discussion of this subject really ought to start with about 100% fewer insults in the opening post. Please don’t feed the troll.

    • I recently published a book with Vox Day, the guy in charge of the Rabid Puppies which is behind nominating the “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” for a Hugo. The book was briefly #1 on Amazon for economics theory. The book is called “On the Question of Free Trade: An Economics Discourse” and consists of a transcript of a debate between Vox and myself. Here is the audio of our debate posted to my Future Strategist podcast.

      • Randy M says:

        Oh, I’ve been meaning to read and/or listen to that. What was your opinion of VD as a debater before and after?

        • I have an exceptionally high opinion of Vox Day as a debater. He was extremely nice to me, and honest in how he stated his opinion and our disagreement. Furthermore, I saw him briefly discuss me and our debate on a YouTube interview and he said very nice things about me. Given that he calls himself “Supreme Dark Lord” I was expecting somewhat different behavior, but I think that Vox plays Tit-for-Tat (or Grim Trigger) and since I was nice to him, he played nice with me. Finally, Vox offered me very generous terms on the revenues from our ebook.

    • The Nybbler says:

      A little background on “Space Raptor Butt Invasion”: The nomination of that is a direct response to the nomination of “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love”, a story which won the 2013 Nebula and was nominated for the 2014 Hugo, despite being not SF at all, but pushed all the right buttons for the small group that controlled the awards. (That story, and “The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere”, are two often cited by the “puppy” groups as exemplars of the problems with the Hugos)

      There are, in fact, at least three groups involved here.

      1) The Sad Puppies. Formed by Larry Correia, originally to demonstrate that there was political bias in the Hugo process. Taken over last year (Sad Puppies 3) by Brad Torgersen, to produce this slate:

      https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/sad-puppies-3-the-2015-hugo-slate/

      These are all legitimate nominations; there’s no trolling.

      This year, the Sad Puppies were run by Kate Paulk, Sarah Hoyt, and Amanda Green; they used a different process and came up with this slate:

      http://sadpuppies4.org/the-list/

      Once again, these are legitimate nominnations.

      2) The Rabid Puppies. Last year, Vox Day was going to make it his mission to “destroy” the Hugos. Larry Correia talked him out of it. Vox instead made is own slate, with some overlap with the Sad. It’s heavy on self-promotion for Vox’s publishing house, but surprisingly is still all legitimate works

      https://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/02/rabid-puppies-2015.html

      This year, after the unpleasantness of last year, the Rabids decided to break things:

      https://voxday.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/rabid-puppies-2016-list.html

      This slate includes trolling of various sorts, including the Tingle story. Some of the trolling is only that he picked works the third group would like, so they’d have to take a pick he chose or snub someone they liked.

      3) The trufans, the CHORFs, the SMOFs, the decent people… depending on who you ask. These are the people controlling the nominations and awards prior to Sad Puppies (by virtue of being in a very small pond); they’re the ones who pushed the two stories I mentioned above. They didn’t have a nominating slate as far as I know. They did have a final voting slate: Vote for non-puppy works, then vote for No Award. They mostly succeeded, leading to many Hugo categories last year receiving “no award”. One of them, David Gerrold, handed out wooden “asterisks” to the snubbed nominees. And made the Vonnegut reference in case you missed it (asterisk = asshole).

      Here’s their voting slate:
      http://deirdre.net/the-puppy-free-hugo-award-voters-guide/

      • Zorgon says:

        Very informative, thank you.

        Also – is it just me or is handing out a “asshole award” to the nominees, rather than the nominators, just being a complete dick?

        (I mean, I don’t expect any better from these people, but still…)

        • ThirteenthLetter says:

          Pretty much, yeah.

          As corroborating evidence, Gerrold has followed this up by repeatedly insisting that he had absolutely no idea whatsoever that the asterisks might be taken as an insult, and claiming that they were somehow a tribute to Terry Pratchett.

          • Viliam says:

            Seems like he spends all his time and creative energy in cultural wars, which is why I keep waiting more than twenty years (!!!) for the next book in the Chtorr series.

            There is more than one way how politics can ruin sci-fi.

          • I’m inclined to think that we haven’t seen a new Chtorr book (haven’t Gerrold been writing other sf?) because he wrote himself into a corner. There is no hope for Earth, there is no hope for the human race.

            Well, not absolutely no hope. The giddier sort of Humanity Fuck Yeah! sf would have had humans taking over the Chtorran ecology.

            I’ve seen a suggestion that the Chtorran ecology is actually like a puffball– it’s life cycle is to spread its spores and then die locally.

      • Julie K says:

        Ooh look, the Sad Puppies 4 list includes “… And I Show You How Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes – Scott Alexander” under Best Short Story. 🙂

        • suntzuanime says:

          I started writing up an angry comment about how dammit, that’s not SF either and they’re being just as bad, but then I realized I’d confused it with “Universal Love, Said the Cactus Person”. The actually chosen story seems perfectly on-genre.

          • Murphy says:

            It would be fun if Scott got a nomination. Particularly since he’s said in the past that he filters out *puppy* related info from his feeds.

          • Deiseach says:

            “Universal Love” would be the Fantasy nomination 🙂

          • The Hugos don’t make a distinction between fantasy and science fiction. This is good because there’s no reliable way of making that distinction.

            In fact, if the consensus of Hugo voters was to support a book with no fantasy or science fiction in it (this came up in regards to Hild), it would win. It isn’t the job of the Hugo committee to decide on genre.

          • Vorkon says:

            I’d argue that Universal Love counts as SF/F, but only for the aside at the very end, after the human had left/woken up, where the cactus person and the big green bat turn to each other to check their math.

        • Standback says:

          I nominated that one too!

          …Nor am I the only one. On File770’s probably-entirely-unrepresentative sample, “Rabbit Hole” was a strong favorite.

        • Berna says:

          Oh, thanks for reminding me of that awesome story!

        • Vorkon says:

          Interestingly enough, it also includes one of Ann Leckie’s Ancillary books this year, which is one of the puppies’ go-to examples of books that push a Social Justice agenda. Though, when push comes to shove, most puppies will at least admit that those are, “pretty good, but the only reason they get recognized above and beyond everything else that’s ‘pretty good,’ is because of the nonsense with the pronouns,” so I guess it isn’t TOO far from their usual tastes, and since the list has 10 entries, I can see a few people voting for it. I still suspect its’ inclusion has more to do with non-puppies trolling their open voting system, though. (But the fact that they didn’t remove it from the final list says good things, at least.)

          Speaking of which, and also on the subject of interesting entries on the Sad Puppy list, I kinda’ wish I had realized they were doing a truly open voting system before they closed it this year: If you look at their spreadsheet of all votes, HPMOR was only one vote away from the top 10 they published as the actual list.

      • Outis says:

        I just read “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love”, and I was aghast to find out that I liked it. But it’s still not SF at all.

      • Deiseach says:

        “Water” is a halfway decent story that needs to be edited with a chainsaw to become a really good story; “Dinosaur” had no business next, nigh or near the Hugos (the Nebulas are their own affair, the writers pining after mainstream respectability and rebranding themselves as writers of “speculative fiction*” not that grubby old “science fiction”).

        *Was I bitter about Russ Ballard jumping ship for this label? What do you think? Same as Margaret Atwood using a metric fuckton of SF tropes but shuddering away in horror when Proper Literary Critics murmured about her novel being SF perhaps maybe if you looked at it in a certain light:

        Atwood has resisted the suggestion that The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake are science fiction, suggesting to The Guardian in 2003 that they are speculative fiction instead: “Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen.” She told the Book of the Month Club: “Oryx and Crake is a speculative fiction, not a science fiction proper. It contains no intergalactic space travel, no teleportation, no Martians.” On BBC Breakfast she explained that science fiction, as opposed to what she herself wrote, was “talking squids in outer space.” The latter phrase particularly rankled advocates of science fiction and frequently recurs when her writing is discussed.

        That’s basically the attitude that annoyed the hell out of the Sad Puppies and why I’d be on their side in this row.

        • brad says:

          I don’t understand what the problem is exactly. The Atwoods of the world don’t want to be called SFF and don’t want SFF awards. They and the Sad Puppies seem to be in agreement.

        • Nita says:

          “Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen.”

          Especially hilarious because Oryx and Crake is full of cheap horror logic, which makes it even lower-brow than most sci-fi.

    • Douglas Knight says:

      “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” sounds like a reference to this. I don’t think Chuck Tingle is part of the SF community, so I doubt he knows that story and intended such a reference, but did VD choose it for that reason? Did he ever provide reasons for his choices? Did he choose them from some crowd-sourced list of nominees that came with reasons?

    • Winter Shaker says:

      I’m only vaguely aware of it because I follow Eneasz Brodski’s blog – I’m not in the fandom myself, but only because I don’t really read any fiction these days. If I did, sci-fi would probably feature a fair bit.

      But I do love his headline for a recent post: Space Raptor Butt Invasion – Chuck Tingle is the Hero that the Puppies Need, if not the one they Want.

      Incidentally, @Douglas Knight, Brodski thinks that Chuck Tingle “is obviously an insider. Not just an SF author, but possibly someone who is already known for his/her work under his/her real name”, though I am not remotely in a position to guess which of you is right.

    • Agronomous says:

      @toastyfrog:

      Is anyone watching the Hugo awards kerfluffle?

      Very briefly: the Hugo award nominations, this year and last, were heavily influenced by a small group of internet trolls who all voted for the same slate.

      Picking a side, then investigating, may not be a reliable algorithm for discovering the truth. If only someone would write a sequence of articles that would warn us of such bad approaches so that we could become, if not perfectly right, at least less wrong….

      On the other hand, you’re the only other person I’ve found who says “kerfluffle” (and not “kerfuffle”), so I’m inclined to cut you a little slack.

    • tmk says:

      It has been discussed in past threads. There are many people who are sympathetic to the puppies here, so it will be difficult to get an interesting discussion about the voting system.

      I think you are right, the Hugo nomination system is very vulnerable to slate voting. If group A all vote the same, while group B are spreading their votes between many works, then group A will win even if they are a small minority. Just getting more people to nominate is unlikely to help, because of the effectiveness of coordinated voting.

      If it weren’t for the puppies it could have been an author with dedicated social media following getting all their fans to nominate their works. I think it was moderated because doing so could bring more shame to the author than the value of the nomination. Especially if an author filled all the nomination spots with their own work.

      In selecting the award winner from the nominees slate voting is far less effective, because the regular voters are not split up as much. The Hugos also only allow WorldCon attendees to vote, but I think that is secondary.

      You could of course get everyone organized behind various slates, like political parties. I don’t like that because it gives too much power to the party leaders, and it would lead to the same polarization and rigidity you see in politics.

      I think you want a large organized nomination group to get one of their works nominated, because they probably represent a preference shared by many people. But, you don’t want to let them fill the entire ballot, and exclude all other preferences in the nomination stage. Would it work to give the first nomination spot to the work with the most votes, but then trow away all ballots that nominated that work? Separately for each category of course.

      • Urstoff says:

        If it weren’t for the puppies it could have been an author with dedicated social media following getting all their fans to nominate their works.

        You mean like Scalzi’s Redshirts winning the Hugo? I know he didn’t campaign for it (to my knowledge), but he is by far the author with the largest internet presence, and dear god did that book suck.

        • Evan Þ says:

          How’d it suck? I read it earlier this year and rather liked it, even though my tastes generally lean more towards the Sad Puppies’ style than their opponents’.

          • Forlorn Hopes says:

            In a word, shallow.

            The book was too shallow. It’s understanding of Star Trek was shallow. It’s plot was shallow. It’s characters were shallow.

            A perfectly good book to fill an afternoon, but not nearly worthy of a Hugo.

          • dndnrsn says:

            I wouldn’t say it sucked. It was a perfectly entertaining book to read on public transit. But that’s all it was. I wouldn’t read it again.

          • Evan Þ says:

            Sure, the premise is a shallow parody of Star Trek, but I thought that was intentional. And yes, its characters could be built up… until the afterwords, or whatever Scalzi called them – there, he builds up some of the characters from the main narrative to (IMO) really shine. But I really liked the plot, style, and afterwords, and at least for me, it’s worth rereading.

          • Held in Escrow says:

            It was the most Scalzi book to ever Scalzi. Great premise, completely bungled execution and twist

          • Urstoff says:

            It was the most Scalzi book to ever Scalzi. Great premise, completely bungled execution and twist

            Yuuuuup. It was a good premise completely ruined and made unbearable by 150% Scalzi try-hard humor.

          • Evan Þ says:

            For those of you who think Redshirts sucked, what’d you think of Scalzi’s Lock In? In my mind, it was done a lot better than Redshirts.

          • Held in Escrow says:

            I didn’t like Lockin that much as the mystery just felt bland and the idea of the cool other world was never really fleshed out. I wanted to read more about the main character’s dad honestly, he was pretty interesting

    • Protagoras says:

      I tend to think George R. R. Martin’s summary of what’s been going on is the most accurate; at least he’s the one who describes fandom as I know it. He identified what is I think the one incurable problem; in the 1980s, the people who run Worldcon decided they didn’t want the convention to grow any more, because it was becoming unmanageable. Worldcon is an old fashioned science fiction convention; it’s not a big business like a comicon, and so I can sympathize with the desire of the people in charge (who are unpaid volunteers) not to pile on work for themselves. But the small voting pool is what made the voting system easy to game (and perhaps the fact that the convention is actively not interested in bringing in too many more people made it more insular; I think the puppies are mostly wrong, but they are perhaps not completely wrong about that). If too few voters is the problem, your suggestion would just mean fewer voters.

      Dragoncon, which in this era of Worldcon stagnation has grown to be much larger than Worldcon, is doing awards of its own this year. Perhaps those will better represent the opinion of the fans than either the old guard at Worldcon or any of the puppies.

    • Urstoff says:

      Given that the Hugo’s have been terrible for many years now, I’m in a basic “lol who cares” mode. Vox Day is obnoxious and awful, but so are PNH and his ilk. The only award I pay attention to for the purpose of discovering new material is the Philip K. Dick award.

      Not participating in any culture wars is vital for my contentment.

    • Anonymous says:

      The most interesting arguments in the puppy debacle were over whether low brow SFF deserves any awards (other than selling books, which is its own reward) or they should all be reserved for middle brow works or the tiny number of high brow works.

      Unfortunately those discussion were mostly drowned out by the “there are SJWs under every bed” crowd and especially by VD and his herps.

      • Deiseach says:

        (W)hether low brow SFF deserves any awards (other than selling books, which is its own reward) or they should all be reserved for middle brow works or the tiny number of high brow works

        But part of the problem is that the Hugos are used by publishers to promote books, and the books that don’t get promoted are the ones that fail to sell (this is becoming more and more of a problem for all kinds of authors; Judith Tarr, a reasonably successful fantasy author if not one of the massively best-selling ones, and with a writing career of some thirty years, has put up an appeal for financial help on her livejournal).

        So “low-brow SF”, if it doesn’t get nominated for awards, doesn’t get rewarded by “selling books” and for midlist authors, who face being dropped by their publishers if they don’t sell in the required numbers, not even being eligible for a Hugo nomination cuts at their livelihood.

        • Anonymous says:

          I’m not coming down one side or the other on that question. I think it’s an interesting discussion to have, unlike most of the rest of it.

        • walpolo says:

          Maybe John Grisham would sell even better if he could win the Nobel Prize for Literature, but because he writes the type of fiction that could never win the Nobel Prize, he sells better than the Prize-winning authors.

          Same goes for Kevin J. Anderson and the Hugo.

          • I prefer that the Hugo go to things which are extraordinarily good, rather than to the usual thing done very well. To my mind, Butcher’s Skin Game (what a fine combination of author’s name and title) was definitely the usual thing done very well. I wouldn’t have been embarrassed if it had won, but I think it would have been missing the point of the Hugo.

            Someone (possibly Torgerson) said that paranormal romance and urban fantasy were getting ignored by the Hugos just as much as milsf. I don’t know whether it’s mere prejudice or lack of stand-out contenders.

          • John Schilling says:

            I’m generally with Nancy on this one, but finding five “extraordinarily good” SF/F novels every year can be a tall order. Can anyone name five from 2015, not counting The Martian? Or from last year? Rounding out the ballot with the usual thing done very well is I think the norm rather than the exception.

            It gets harder, obviously, if the unspoken rule is that one side is to generate a list of five extraordinarily good works with conspicuous Social Justice content, and the other a list of five extraordinarily good works with a conspicuous lack of Social Justice content. I don’t mind seeing the likes of Skin Game on my Hugo ballot, but much less Dark Between the Stars please.

          • I was thinking more of how people should nominate– look for what you really love rather than just what’s better than usual.

            If this policy were followed, it would be very rare for anyone to find five things in a category to vote for.

            EPH (assuming it passes this year) will at least stop giving an advantage to people who vote for more things per category.

            This gets to something I’m trying to put a finger on about what a semi-popular award like the Hugo’s is for. Contra Correia, there’s no point in rewarding what’s merely popular– popular things are likely to already be well known.

            Also, here are a couple of arguments on the subject which aren’t mine. I’m not citing the source because I’m not sure whether they’d want it.

            Firstly, there is no sense in which Correia was owed a Hugo. Many people write excellent sf for decades and don’t get a Hugo. It really is an honor (and a fairly unusual one) just to be nominated.

            Secondly, the Hugo’s are (or were, goddammit) a show of respect from a community to those people who have delighted it. While a Hugo award can affect sales (how much? I’m not sure), that isn’t what it’s for or about.

            Campaigning for a Hugo is like asking someone to say they love you. They might say they love you, but it just isn’t the same as hearing it said spontaneously.

          • Vorkon says:

            I think they main reason Skin Game was nominated (and why they continue to nominate Butcher, despite The Aeronaut’s Windlass not really being all that impressive and suffering badly from “first book in a series just setting the stage and not going anywhere all that interesting” syndrome, despite a particularly fun take on intelligent cats) is because, like you said, they feel his past work and the genre as a whole has been unfairly snubbed. I’m not sure if that’s a good rationale for an award that’s supposed to represent the best work in a particular year, (though I would have voted for Skin Game in a second if The Three Body Problem hadn’t made it on the final list) but I can’t help but agree with them: His work has been consistently amazing, and he deserves some recognition above and beyond sales.

            And yeah, I know Torgersen and Correia have both complained about Urban Fantasy getting shoved into a ghetto by the SF/F community, in much the same way that SF/F is often shoved into a ghetto by the wider literary community. Personally, I think it has more to do with prejudice (more against the “low brow” than politics, but that happens too) than lack of standout examples.

            They also nominated another Urban Fantasy author last year, Annie Bellet, but she declined the nomination due to the controversy. Technically, the short story they nominated was post-apocalyptic, rather than Urban Fantasy, but I’ve read some of her other stuff too, and quite liked it, so she might be worth checking out, if you’re looking for some non-Butcher examples. (Of course, I’d imagine she’s doing fairly well for herself these days, since declining the nomination made her something of a darling to the anti-puppy folks, including earning one of those ridiculous Asterisk awards.)

          • “like you said, they feel his past work and the genre as a whole has been unfairly snubbed.” I don’t think I said that, and I certainly didn’t mean it. I don’t follow the puppies in enough detail to have a opinion about whether they were thinking that, though it seems plausible.

            As for giving the award for *something* from an author who’s done much better, I still wish Lafferty had gotten a Hugo for something other than “Eurema’s Dam”.

            Any recommendations for outstandingly good urban fantasy?

          • keranih says:

            urban fantasy

            Emma Bull’s Finder is very competently done, and is high on my ‘perpetual re-read’ list.

            Urban fantasy (vs rural medieval of various historical regions) is not my cuppa, but I will look and see if there are any more recent that I like.

          • Vorkon says:

            @Nancy Lebovitz

            Oh, I didn’t mean that you said that the genre (and his work, specifically) has been snubbed. I meant that you said that they said the genre had been snubbed. Specifically, when you said:

            Someone (possibly Torgerson) said that paranormal romance and urban fantasy were getting ignored by the Hugos just as much as milsf. I don’t know whether it’s mere prejudice or lack of stand-out contenders.

            Sorry about the confusion there! I just meant, “yeah, you’re right, that’s what they think, and that’s why they keep nominating Butcher.”

            As a side note, have you read the rest of the Dresden Files? Skin Game, on its own, is only an extremely competent heist story/espionage thriller with a supernatural edge, but as a capstone to a lot of things that had gone before, it’s a lot more impactful, and generally impressive. It still manages to stand on its own, which is more than can be said for a lot of umpteenth volumes in a long series, but that’s not how it was intended to be read. That’s a problem with a lot of sequels that get nominated for awards, actually, and is why I don’t mind “this guy should have won an award a LONG time ago”-style nominations, in general.

            (Though, I must warn you, the first two books in the series are pretty terrible. The first one, specifically, was a deliberate attempt to write a trite, clichéd story, and he never expected to both like the setting and characters, and have other people like it enough, for him to continue it. It picks up quickly after that, though.)

          • Evan Þ says:

            @Vorkon

            … which is why I strongly liked last year’s idea of a Hugo category for multi-book sagas. It got referred to a committee, but fortunately not defeated.

          • Randy M says:

            Recall a year or two ago, the complete works of The Wheel of Time were nominated. Amusingly, the publisher provided them free of charge to Worldcon voters, iirc. (ebook, of course)

            edit: As Evan just pointed out.

          • Nornagest says:

            The first one, specifically, was a deliberate attempt to write a trite, clichéd story, and he never expected to both like the setting and characters, and have other people like it enough, for him to continue it.

            The thing about trite, cliched stories is that the cliches became trite for a reason. So when a competent author picks them up rather than trying to strike new ground, they tend to sell like hotcakes.

            No one would call David Eddings original, for example — he literally wrote a book describing his formula. But he’s not a bad writer, and he was one of the biggest names in fantasy between Tolkien and the Nineties boom.

          • Maybe that’s the problem. I gave up on the series after the sometime in the second book.

            I don’t remember the details, but I think some interesting stuff was set up in book 1, and then it was set back to the beginning in book 2.

          • Pku says:

            Any recommendations for outstandingly good urban fantasy?

            Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere is fantastic (the book form – I wasn’t that crazy about the show’s execution), as well as his short story A study in Emerald.

            Also a +1 for Dresden Files – I think people here would enjoy it. It manages to have actually smart characters, in the sense that you never want to shout “no you idiot!” at the characters, including the villains (unless it’s part of a plot you only find out about later). For example, I’m a non-religious utilitarian, but the christian characters are well-written enough that it made me seriously consider the benefits of faith and virtue ethics.

            What’s the name of the Annie Bellet story you were talking about?

          • John Schilling says:

            Also a +1 for Dresden Files – I think people here would enjoy it. It manages to have actually smart characters, in the sense that you never want to shout “no you idiot!” at the characters,

            Really? I mean, I second the nomination, but I want to shout “No you idiot!” at Harry pretty much every third chapter. Every time he runs into an obvious trap, or into battle with a vastly more powerful foe and not a hint of a plan, for no better reason than that some innocent bystander is in danger. And more so as Butcher keeps upping the stakes, and the consequences.

            It helps, particularly considering the usual motive for his idiocy, that he’s such a likeable idiot.

            If I have a concern for the series going forward, it’s that this dynamic will require maintaining an increasingly narrow balance between Deus Ex Machina Ad Infinitum on the one hand, and a level of darkness that really doesn’t fit the concept or the characters on the other.

          • Vorkon says:

            @PKU

            The Annie Bellet story that the Sad Puppies tried to nominate?

            http://www.johnjosephadams.com/apocalypse-triptych/free-reads/goodnight-stars-annie-bellet/

            Like I said, not Urban Fantasy, but it was still quite good, and most of the rest of what she writes is Urban Fantasy. Shorter, self-published novellas, for the most part. I haven’t read all of her stuff yet, but I can at least say that her 20-Sided Sorceress series, while it might not have been award-worthy, exactly, is still quite fun.

            Also, yeah, most of what Gaiman writes could be considered Urban Fantasy, but then, he’s never had much difficulty getting awards, so I guess that’s one mark against the Puppies’ position. Either way, seconded on Neverwhere, and I’d definitely call American Gods Urban Fantasy, too.

            But yeah, people really shouldn’t discount Butcher, just because what he writes tends to be a bit pulpy. One thing that always strikes me about his work (other than his phenomenal ability to write witty banter, that is; I don’t think it would be a stretch to say he’s better at witty banter than just about any writer working today, with the possible exception of Joss Whedon) is the way he can describe things that are truly alien, overwhelming, terrifying, and just generally beyond the ability of the human mind to adequately comprehend, and really make you feel the enormity and alien-ness of them, better than anyone since Lovecraft, while still managing to present a world that still somehow manages to be ultimately hopeful, uplifting, and fun, despite all that. It’s a pretty unique dynamic, which I don’t think very many other people could manage to pull off. I think that’s part of the reason why the Dresden Files doesn’t really start to pick up until the Faerie courts are introduced.

            @John Schilling

            To be fair, he always knows he’s running into an obvious trap, he just does it anyway.

          • FacelessCraven says:

            @Nancy Lebovitz – “Someone (possibly Torgerson) said that paranormal romance and urban fantasy were getting ignored by the Hugos just as much as milsf. I don’t know whether it’s mere prejudice or lack of stand-out contenders.”

            …I was amused one day to learn that a series I’d been following for some time, which I was pretty sure was sci-fi, was actually classified as “paranormal romance”. If you’ve never heard of it, I recommend the Dr. Zeus books by Kage Baker.

            “Firstly, there is no sense in which Correia was owed a Hugo. Many people write excellent sf for decades and don’t get a Hugo. It really is an honor (and a fairly unusual one) just to be nominated.”

            Correia never claimed to be owed a Hugo. He was nominated for a Campbell, and was then treated like shit by the worldcon clique due apparently to the fact that he’s not a proper blue tribe person. Everything since then has been an extended and highly entertaining object lesson on why people really should not do things like that.

          • Forlorn Hopes says:

            Any recommendations for outstandingly good urban fantasy?

            Gunnerkrigg Court and the Golem and the Djinn are my 5/5.

            For 4/5 I’d say Rivers of London and London Falling. Rivers of London is, IMO, a better done Dresden Files with less action/set-pieces but less standoffish, kind of jerk charachters – and more diplomatic solutions to problems.

            London Falling has some weaknesses, which I can feel but can’t describe, but makes up for it be being so good at capturing the feeling of “ordinary people struggling to deal with the supernatural”.

            If I go beyond books, I’d say the Blackwell Legacy 2 (point and click computer game) for it’s amazing ability to set a mood. And Being Human (UK) Series 1-3, which IMO has the “final word” on the whole angsty political vampire trope.

            I think Gunnerkrigg Court is the only one recent enough to qualify for this years Hugos, and the Sads recommended it.

          • John Schilling says:

            @Vorkon: My desire to shout “No, you idiot!” at the idiot tap-dancing through a minefield is increased, not diminished, if I see him clearly reading the “Danger: Minefield” sign beforehand. Mere ignorance is the least form of idiocy.

          • keranih says:

            the Dr. Zeus books by Kage Baker

            …are bloody well not paranormal romance.

            Well, okay, so it did shift over to being a fairly creepy version of the Alex and Mendoza show towards the end, but still! Cyborgs and lost civilizations and immortals and history and time travel oh my!

            The Graveyard Game was a hauntingly terrific read, and I recommend it to anyone, even if that’s the only one of the series they read.

        • houseboatonstyx says:

          @ Deiseach
          But part of the problem is that the Hugos are used by publishers to promote books, and the books that don’t get promoted are the ones that fail to sell (this is becoming more and more of a problem for all kinds of authors;

          Right. Muggles are a big big market: librarians, chain buyers, review journals. Muggles like Hugo stickers; their bosses can’t complain about those.

          That’s a system that HPMOR really might have destroyed.

          • Randy M says:

            Because people would have found it objectionable? I don’t think it would have mattered much, given that it is only really available on-line. Correct me if I’m wrong.

      • The Nybbler says:

        John Wright writes highbrow SFF. Personally I don’t like it, but both the Sads and the Rabids do and the old guard does not. And Redshirts is decidedly lowbrow. This isn’t really about highbrow/lowbrow.

        • Anonymous says:

          Highbrow in the sense of postminimalism music or conceptual art installations? I’m not sure there is any highbrow SFF.

          To put my cards on the table I’d say that’s a good thing. I think upper middlebrow is the best brow.

          • The Nybbler says:

            Highbrow in the sense of heavy with symbolism and allegory, and not in particularly accessible language.

    • Standback says:

      I’ve been following along fairly assiduously since last year. It’s an interesting situation, and my take on it seems to be… a little bit off to one side.

      For one thing, I think a lot of the value the Hugos provide (provided?) isn’t just selecting the X Best Whatever a year; much more, it’s been a focal point for discussion (and argument!) where pros and fans and anybody interested could swap recommendations (and scathing rants), and talk about what’s new and interesting in the genre. The fact that anybody can participate, and yet it’s only a few thousand people involved, means it’s fairly easy for any individual to jump in and join the conversation.

      In other words, it was a form of community, and community activity.

      That’s kind of the way its processes work to begin with: the nomination phase tends to highlight the favorites of strong blocs and factions – say, fans of certain authors, or subgenres. But the voting stage pits those favorites against each other; something whose appeal is only niche can get on the shortlist, but it’ll never win. The Hugos are really good at boosting works that originate from specific niches, but that also speak to a wide audience.

      But… that’s all really dependent on size. Too big, or spread across too wide a field, and you lose the sense of community and participation. If the field grows sprawling and fractured enough, if there are a hundred different subgenres and any given shortlist only spotlights ten of them, then a bunch of fans find the awards less relevant. And, the small size of the group and the wide spread of work makes the awards wide open to easy influence by groups that are fairly single-minded (or, in the case of intentional attack, disciplined).

      So, boosting nomination numbers tenfold might block slating initiatives (might. it’s a big field), but it would also mean diluting individual influence to the point that average participants would no longer feel very invested in it. Limiting participation would be the same thing, but in the opposite direction – if you can’t afford a trip to Helsinki in 2017, you’re also cut out of the discussion.

      I think ultimately, the Puppy campaigns are a community problem, and will need a community-oriented solution. I’d like to see WorldCon absorb the Puppies who are sincerely interested in promoting great work in the field, and firmly block the influence of those who are just trolling.

      At the moment there’s Vox Day who’s stirring up cheaply-fueled internet outrage any way you can, and opposite them you’ve got WorldCon, whose members are often indignant and happy to return the hostility, and who have pretty good methodology to make changes to the nomination and voting process, but one that moves very slowly and demands lots of buy-in. So I think we’ll be seeing this fester for some time yet, after which things will eventually settle down – either through the Puppies petering out, or WorldCon clamping down on them.

      Where the Hugos are going in the long term is, well, a different question.

      But as long as it gives me good reason to have lots and lots of genre discussion all over the internet, well, I’m really glad it’s there 🙂

    • This might be as good a place as any to mention a theory– that for a very long time, science fiction and science fiction fans were despised by mainstream culture.

      Then, it became clear that it was possible to make money, sometimes a lot of money, in IT, and it also became clear that the fantastic was a normal part of human story-telling (rather than obviously inferior to stories about the real world and contemporary problems) and that there’s a large audience for world-building and whatever you call going over the details of a canon for consistency even if it’s not real-world plausibility.

      I remember when I first saw a polite story in a newspaper about a convention! And NPR did a long eulogy about Gordon Dickson (a solid but second rank golden age author)!

      What I didn’t see coming was that sf fans felt freer to hate each other.

      • Nita says:

        Uh, I think the people who looked down on sci-fi did so because it’s “genre fiction” (fiction that hits well-known emotional buttons using well-known tropes), not because it’s fantastic.

        For example, romance stories often deal with the real world and contemporary problems (actually, not just any passing fad-problems, but the ageless problem of finding the perfect mate), but they are still considered inferior to “real” literature. Or, from the other side, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is clearly fantastical, and yet it’s taken seriously by mainstream critics and scholars.

        • Mystery fiction may not have been respected, but it didn’t get despised the way sf did.

          As I understand it, giving the highest prestige to realistic fiction happened during the early 1900s. Earlier classics with fantastic elements were given a pass.

          And the problems were supposed to be large political problems which hurt a lot of people. Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was getting literature right.

          • LHN says:

            Another data point: it was only over the course of the 19th century that novels themselves became respectable, and some of that may have been a matter of gravitating towards more respectable subjects. In Jane Austen, reading them is treated with some suspicion by more than one character. Not by the author herself, of course, and her protagonists and their love interests tend to read them. Though Northanger Abbey is sort of about the dangers of being too otaku about it.

            By Alcott’s Little Women, novels are in somewhat better odor but Jo is scolded for, and guided away from, writing action serials. (Alcott herself manages to have an entire Western take place largely offstage, with Dan in Jo’s Boys.)

            It does seem true that when poetry was the real high culture literary art, fantastic themes were still okay, especially since that overlapped with interest in classical mythology. Ditto opera, highbrow theater, etc. I wonder if the deprecation of the fantastic was in part a product of a lingering inferiority complex for novels.

          • Louisa May Alcott wrote thrillers under a pseudonym. I’ve read A Long Fatal Love Chase and I recommend it both as a pretty good page turner and as a reminder of how much the world has changed.

          • LHN says:

            Louisa May Alcott wrote thrillers under a pseudonym.

            Interesting! Though since it looks like those are pre-Little Women, the turn away towards more “improving” books seems autobiographical. (Though not knowing her biography in much detail, I don’t know if the motivation was the same as Jo’s.)

      • Forlorn Hopes says:

        What I didn’t see coming was that sf fans felt freer to hate each other.

        This shouldn’t be surprising. The social effects of common enemies are well known.

        Though I do feel that a lot of the vitriol is coming from outside sci-fi. Which is to say that a new generation of sci-fi/fantasy fans are bringing it with them from tumblr/universities/activism/wherever.

        The puppies and puppy-kickers have a lot in common, it’s why they’re drawn to similar books, and why they’re fighting. They’re each other’s outgroup.

    • Iceman says:

      Currently to vote or nominate you only need to pay 50$ for a “supporting membership”, and then you can vote by email.

      I’m going to use this as a prompt to remind everyone that a two-parter of My Little Pony is up for a Hugo this time around, and for $50, you can help Friendship is Magic get the critical acclaim it deserves. (Regardless of how it got nominated.)

      • The Nybbler says:

        The MLP nomination was a nice piece of trolling. Not only is it nominating a kid’s TV show for a Serious Award, but the particular episode is one which is seen by the Puppy sides as repudiating part of the other side’s philosophy. And on the surface it’s a perfectly legitimate nomination.

        • LHN says:

          I don’t think the “kids’ show” aspect is a problem per se. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire won for novel in 2001, and multiple Harry Potter, Narnia, and Henson productions have been nominated for Best Dramatic Presentation over the years.

          (I put Gravity Falls’ “Weirdmageddon” on my own nomination ballot entirely sincerely, albeit obviously without any effect.)

        • God Damn John Jay says:

          which is seen by the Puppy sides as repudiating part of the other side’s philosophy. And on the surface it’s a perfectly legitimate nomination.

          Okay, the idea of a Straussian pony cartoon is too funny for me to not ask you to explain.

        • Iceman says:

          That’s all true, and it’s also a really smart tactical move, too. How many bronies who wouldn’t otherwise participate in the Hugo award process are voting this year because their favorite show was nominated for an award? Notice how last year there was multiple no-awards; perhaps an influx of new people voting seriously might otherwise counteract coordinated anti-puppy voting?

          (Or, from Vox’s point of view, an even better outcome would be some of the bronies voting anti-SJW out of spite. Remember Derpygate? I do. Years later. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.)

          • Nornagest says:

            I may regret asking this, but what the hell is Derpygate?

          • null says:

            Disclaimer: I am not part of the MLP fandom in any capacity.

            So there was a character called Derpy Hooves, and some people thought this was making fun of disabled people.

          • Nornagest says:

            Weird. But I guess I’ve heard of dumber controversies.

        • Nornagest says:

          Would you mind going into a little more detail? I’m passingly familiar with MLP, but only the first season or so. I gather this is more recent.

        • LHN says:

          I’ll leave it to Mark (or someone else) to summarize it, but FWIW the nominated episodes are on Netflix.

        • Vorkon says:

          The Nybbler already posted a link with a pretty good description of the episode and what it’s about, above:

          http://thefederalist.com/2015/04/08/my-little-pony-to-children-marxism-is-not-magic/

        • Nita says:

          MLP is a genuinely good cartoon series (mostly for kids, but potentially enjoyable for adults as well). That particular episode, however, departed from the usual genre and headed straight into Chick tract territory.

        • Forlorn Hopes says:

          I strongly disagree Nita. It’s closer to a Narnia than a Chick Tract, if we are to use religious comparisons.

          I’d happily debate the point, but first you must give evidence. I can’t say more to an assertion than “I disagree”.

          @Mark Atwood
          Please can you go into more detail. I like the show, but I’ve never been a part of the fandom.

          However that sounds fascinating. Please share the details.

        • Nita says:

          @ Forlorn Hopes

          I can’t really comment on Narnia — I’ve only read the first book, and that was 20 years ago. But as far as political critiques go, the episode was like “the Nazis were bad because they hated puppies and opera”. It’s the bizarre disconnection from reality that reminded me of Chick tracts. If you’re going to criticize communism or the SJ movement (according to the interpretation in the linked review), there are plenty of true things you could say. So, why make stuff up?

          Both (actual, Soviet Union) communists and SJ folks believe(d) that individuals can have talents and passions that make them better than others at particular things. If anything, they’re likely to think that you have to develop your special skills, because there’s important work to be done.

          Actually, thinking about this reminded me of a kids’ story series by the Soviet writer Nikolay Nosov. (He also has good realistic, propaganda-free stories, but this series is definitely communism-flavored.) Instead of cute little ponies, the characters are cute little humans, the protagonist is a simple boy instead of a clever girl, and he lives in Flower Town instead of Ponyville. Also, there are no princesses and no money. But most characters are named after their special talents or character traits, just like ponies, and no one seems to think that everyone should be exactly the same.

          Illustrations:
          protagonist
          clever guy and astronomer guy
          painter guy
          mechanic duo

          MLP is at its best when it deals with friendship-related questions kids might encounter in their daily life — e.g., can you be too helpful? what if you don’t get along with a friend’s friend? But every time it strays into political territory, it ends up saying something weird.

        • Forlorn Hopes says:

          can’t really comment on Narnia

          I just meant that Narnia is a high quality religious work, while Chick Tracts are a joke.

          Both (actual, Soviet Union) communists and SJ folks believe(d) that individuals can have talents and passions that make them better than others at particular things.

          Here’s where you’re making a mistake. You’re taking a metaphor literally.

          SJ folk don’t believe that talents are bad. But they do support things like diversity quotas in hiring.

          It’s obviously not the same as taking people’s talents away. No SJW is asking skilled tech workers or CEOs to become less talented. Instead they’re saying choose the less talented person because promoting equality is more important than getting the best person for the job.

          But it works as a metaphor because:

          1) A cartoonishly evil plot is more appropriate for a children’s cartoon than a nuanced and accurate view.

          2) It gets the most important point across – that there is such a thing as taking equality too far.

          3) While communism/SJW don’t say that individual excellence is bad, it discouraged it unintentionally. Why work harder under communist economics when there is little reward for doing so?

          Why work hard to overcome your flaws when you can just blame the patriarchy/oppression?

          —————–

          More importantly you’re focusing on the wrong part of the episode.

          The most important part of the episode is not when it criticizes taking away talent but when it criticizes the idea that people can only get along with people like themselves.

          This barely even a metaphor. The only way it could be more explicit is if they called the village a safe space. And with the huge amounts of SJ promoted X-Only groups, rooms, etc it’s quite topical.

          That aspect of SJ culture is not healthy, and segregation certainly is bad. They have every right to do it, but they also have every right to smoke cigarettes.

          The episodes message that you should accept and befriend people different from you, not isolating yourself with a group of people who’re all the same as you, is a message for our times.

          The deftness in which it told the message, mixed into a good story, and the perfect choice of message all combine to create something worthy of a Hugo.

        • Nita says:

          OK, I see there are some real-world factual disagreements underlying our difference of opinion here.

          SJ folk don’t believe that talents are bad. But they do support things like diversity quotas in hiring. [..] they’re saying choose the less talented person

          No, they’re not. They sincerely believe that our judgment of talent is compromised by bias (not an outrageous claim — we all believe that bias is a thing, right?), so we have to make some adjustments to counteract it — for instance, casting a wider net when soliciting job applications, considering whether we treat outgroup members with more hostility in interviews etc.

          Why work harder under communist economics when there is little reward for doing so?

          Of course there were rewards — bonuses, promotions, vacation trips, the Soviet equivalent of “Employee of the Month”, and so on. (And of course, people who could schmooze and self-promote managed to get more than their ‘fair’ share, especially where performance was hard to measure. But the same is true of the average business environment.)

          it criticizes the idea that people can only get along with people like themselves

          Whose idea is that? The SJ movement is an alliance of many different minority-rights movements. It’s constantly trying to find ways for various groups to support each other and not to tread on each other’s toes.

          And maybe “safe spaces” actually help some people. I’ve certainly seen people defend r/theredpill as a place where men can vent about their terrible experiences with women without being judged.

        • Forlorn Hopes says:

          OK, I see there are some real-world factual disagreements underlying our difference of opinion here.

          Naturally. What else would it have been?

          No, they’re not. They sincerely believe that our judgment of talent is compromised by bias (not an outrageous claim

          IMO there’s an expressed preference / revealed preference difference here.

          SJ say that they want to compensate for bias, but I see a lot of support for quotas and very little for, e.g. replacing job interviews with anonymized aptitude tests. (A policy I support by the way).

          Bias is definitely part of the problem, and part of SJ thinking about the problem.

          But if SJ only wanted to address bias and didn’t want to see less skilled women/minority candidates getting the job ahead of more qualified white/Asian men then I would expect to see as least equal support between quotas and anonymization.

          We don’t see that.

          Of course there were rewards

          Small ones. (I don’t particularly want to get into a debate on Marxist/communist economics. I’m not that interested in the subject)

          Whose idea is that?

          Here’s an example.

          If someone is feeling saying a Trump supporter sharing a campus with them makes them feel unsafe, how do you think they’ll react if their friend comes out the closet as a Trump supporter.

          Or what they’ll say if a friend asks them for advice because their friend came out the closet?

          This whole idea that people with different opinions makes you feel unsafe is coming from SJ culture, and when someone makes you feel unsafe you don’t befriend them.

          And maybe “safe spaces” actually help some people. I’ve certainly seen people defend r/theredpill as a place where men can vent about their terrible experiences with women without being judged.

          Of course they do. Few ideas are wholly good or wholly bad.

          When a safe space is designed to help people get back on their feet to a point where they no longer need a safe space (that means helping the person. Not changing the entire world to suit the person) it’s probably a good thing.

          Feel free to criticism the quality of help provided by r/theredpill but they are trying to provide advice on how to have more successful relationships with women.

        • ChetC3 says:

          IMO there’s an expressed preference / revealed preference difference here.

          IMO, revealed preference arguments of this sort are politically correct straw-manning. When this kind of argument is made in the other direction (“conservatives/libertarians say they support Policy X for purely principled reasons, but their patterns of behavior show it’s really just racism/misogyny/whatever”), it’s treated as clear evidence of leftist perfidy. How unspeakably uncharitable to not take them at their word! But take the exact same approach in arguing against the political left, and all you’ve got to do is slap on a bit of jargon from economics (the good social science) to make it completely respectable. Another one of the sneaky double-standards by which the SSC orthodoxy is upheld.

        • TheWorst says:

          @ChetC3: I agree with both you and Forlorn Hopes, in a way. But I think the point would be better made in the other context. Revealed preferences are a thing, even if everyone switches positions on it based on whose revealed preferences are currently contradicting their stated ones.

          I think it might be a better idea to speak up when conservatives falsely claim that noticing revealed preferences is Leftist Perfidy, rather than when they correctly point out what our revealed preferences are. When someone sometimes says true things and sometimes says false things, chastise them in the second instance, not the first.

          “You once said something incorrect, so you don’t get to say things that are true” seems like a less-useful policy. More true things. Always.

        • Jiro says:

          The revealed preference argument is “they claim to want X, but they don’t do Y, which would actually accomplish X”. There are, of course, possible explanations–perhaps they don’t believe that Y accomplishes X, for instance. It isn’t a fully general argument–whether the argument works depends on what the possible explanations are and how plausible they are.

          Can you think of some reason why SJs would object to anonymized tests to reduce bias? At least, some reason that doesn’t boil down to “anonymized tests would work too well because they would make it impossible to disfavor the ingroup but also impossible to favor them”?

        • Anonymous says:

          The problem is the “SJWs” exist mostly in the heads of the paranoid and the malicious both looking for enemies. Since they only have a tenuous connection to reality they are capable of being endlessly no true Scotsman’ed.

          For example, I’ve seen several articles in left leaning media praising blind auditioning for orchestra spots, but I’m sure that doesn’t count somehow.

        • The Nybbler says:

          I don’t think you have to go to revealed preference arguments. Many SJ types believe, axiomatically, that any difference in outcome between “privileged” and “marginalized” groups is due to some sort of discrimination, by the privileged, on some level. They will say so. They are fine with various neutral methods to remove bias such as anonymization, but if these do not remove the difference in outcome they will not be satisfied that there is no bias and will demand stronger methods.

          Based on the sample of SJ people I’ve had arguments with, they are also fine for calling for explicit bias against privileged groups, to counteract pre-existing biases against marginalized groups. They will not admit to any limit to these biases; if you complain about a bias against a privileged person, they will claim that the playing field is so stacked against the marginalized person that any bias in the other direction is acceptable.

        • TheWorst says:

          @Jiro:

          The revealed preference argument is …

          That’s one of them, yes. It seems extraordinarily sketchy to present that as “the” revealed preference argument, though. I’ve seen a lot of revealed preference arguments, and almost all of them are a good deal stronger than that.

        • TheWorst says:

          @ anonymous:

          The problem is the “SJWs” exist mostly in the heads of the paranoid and the malicious both looking for enemies.

          This is a testable belief; if a person who self-identifies as an SJW can be found, then it will have been falsified.

          I know (too many) people who self-identify as such. There is a good chance you can find plenty of them with a quick search of your surroundings, and/or trivially-easy use of devices in your immediate vicinity.

        • ChetC3 says:

          From the SJ perspective, anti-affirmative action is code for anti-black. Call it a heuristic if you like. As much as you may object, SJ people sincerely believe that their opponents are mostly racist, sexist, homophobic, and generally bigoted. So when their opponents say something is “unbiased”, what they really mean is “biased in favor of professional class white guys” (and maybe Asians). But since econ-speak doesn’t have much cachet in the SJ-friendly parts of the left, they don’t couch their my-opponents-are-evil-liars arguments in terms of revealed preference.

        • Anonymous says:

          TheWorst:
          You seemed to have missed the word “mostly”. The anti-SJW hysteria around here is an object lesson in Scott’s weakman idea. Find one college student on Twitter or twenty-something with a blog on a third tier gawker property and all of a sudden you are justified in your ranting about an emerging evil empire.

        • Dr Dealgood says:

          I don’t think this is really all that complicated.

          Proponents of affirmative action and other quota systems, in the West at least, genuinely believe that there are no significant differences in ability between so-called advantaged and disadvantaged populations. Moreover, they believe that there is a large untapped pool of disadvantaged talent to the point that they expect instituting a quota to actually increase the competence of new hires / students.

          Now, granted, they’re wrong on both counts. The hidden vein of diamonds-in-the-rough they’re imagining largely doesn’t exist anyway, so even if the groups had perfectly uniform abilities you would expect a quota to lower candidate quality. And more importantly, ability is not uniformly distributed between populations. Both of these are well documented.

          That’s where the problem with PC comes into it: it’s very difficult to actually point either of those things out in a politically sensitive way. This isn’t even on the level of rules like “saying that America is a meritocracy constitutes a microagression,” it’s the most ground-floor level of “don’t make openly racist / sexist comments.” It’s like trying to teach proper condom use in upper-crust Victorian London: the restrictions on how you can say things prevent you from being able to make a useful point at all.

        • Forlorn Hopes says:

          This is a testable belief; if a person who self-identifies as an SJW can be found, then it will have been falsified.

          Indeed. I have seen many self identified SJWs, Mostly on twitter and RPG.net.

          “You once said something incorrect, so you don’t get to say things that are true” seems like a less-useful policy. More true things. Always.

          Well said.

          (Also, while people might do so, I didn’t personally oppose revealed preference arguments when they challenge the right. Admittedly I don’t post here that often so it’s not exactly a high bar for me)

          For example, I’ve seen several articles in left leaning media praising blind auditioning for orchestra spots, but I’m sure that doesn’t count somehow.

          Not all leftists are SJWs, I can’t say if those particular leftists are SJW because I don’t know who they are.

          I can say that quotas get far more promotion in SJW circles than anonymized testing.

          Can you think of some reason why SJs would object to anonymized tests to reduce bias?

          I think what happened was that IQ tests got a bad rap because there were racial differences on average in the results – and that soured SJ Tribe on the entire concept of anonymized testing.

          However this is just extrapolation from memories. I can’t verify it with a quick google.

          However while I don’t know the reason why SJ might not like anonymized testing. Given the high profile success of anonymizing musician auditions (one of the reasons I like the idea of anonymized tests) I would expect that if SJ tribe had a better reason than “it counters biases, but can’t promote our tibial members over more qualified members of the outgroup” for not liking anonymized testing I would expect SJ tribe to know the reason.

          Nita?

        • keranih says:

          For example, I’ve seen several articles in left leaning media praising blind auditioning for orchestra spots, but I’m sure that doesn’t count somehow.

          I’ve seen some of those, and I found them surprising in how much trouble they had to go through in order to properly ‘blind’ the auditions – not just full length panels separating the the judges from the candidate, but carpeted walkways so that women’s heels didn’t reveal the gender of the candidate. The resulting shift in hiring percentages did serve as a bit of cold bath to the idea that well, they are already pretty unbiased, right? Evidently, there was still some bias left to shift.

          However…and not to take away from the idea that oh heck yes we need more blinded objective selection tools…in our social world, a one-time individual performance is not the whole of a person’s qualities.

          Will this performer show up at all rehersals? Will they show up sober?

          Will this performer get along amicably with coworkers?

          Will this performer interact with the audience in a manner that draws larger audiences and more ticket sales?

          These are important also, and strong negatives here could – quite fairly – lead to an orchestra rejecting a candidate who had a brillant audition in favor of one with a very good audition performance. Probably the largest issue would be difficulty in objectively measuring reliability/sobriety/charisma, and correctly weighting that against audition performance.

          None of which has much to do with blinding orchestra auditions being written of favorably in leftist press – because the notability is the outcome (more women hired) than the means. If the outcome had been the same number of women vs men hired – or if more men had been hired in blinded tests – we’d not have heard about this from the same people.

          We need to aim at the faulty system, not at the results. This is the SJW error.

          W

        • TheWorst says:

          Also, while people might do so, I didn’t personally oppose revealed preference arguments when they challenge the right.

          Good. I didn’t want to make a claim that strong, but now I will: “Someone I see as being on Your Side once said something that was incorrect, so you’re not allowed to say true things” is an even less-useful policy, and I’d hoped it wasn’t the one ChetC3 was applying.

          The policy I’d promote instead is for everyone to be aware of reality: When “we” say true-but-hurtful things about “them,” they won’t like it. This does not change the accuracy of any true things that might be said by Them about Us.

          It does not matter how strongly our team is convinced that They are the bad guys and we are the heroes of the story. Truth value does not change based on the tribal affiliation of the speaker.

          Anyone who would drink Drano just because someone in the outgroup said not to is an idiot.

          Edit: Scooped.

          We need to aim at the faulty system, not at the results. This is the SJW error.

          This. Faulty results that favor “my team” aren’t less faulty than any other kind of faulty result.

        • Anonymous says:

          I see a lot of very confident holding forth on what SJWs believe in this thread. We’ve got outright marxists and monarchists on here happy to share what they believe, but for this supposedly huge and mainstream group we need to rely on bigfoot reports.

          Hmm.

        • Nita says:

          @ Forlorn Hopes

          I see a lot of support for quotas and very little for, e.g. replacing job interviews with anonymized aptitude tests.

          I’ve seen more debate about quotas than support for them, but I have seen several pieces about blind orchestra auditions, for example. And some people are trying to make it work for tech companies, too.

          If someone is feeling saying a Trump supporter sharing a campus with them makes them feel unsafe

          But they’re not saying that. They’re saying that “Build a Wall” and “Accept the Inevitable” are kind of shitty things to write all over the common spaces. I wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who thought that was a fine thing to do, either. (Or with someone who scrawled “Hillary is Happening, We Shall Bathe in Male Tears!” all over the place, for that matter. “I think Hillary Clinton would be a good president” is a political opinion. “Hurting men’s precious fee-fees is fun” is the opinion of an asshole.)

          they are trying to provide advice on how to have more successful relationships with women

          Well, other safe spaces try to provide helpful advice as well. Some of it may be counterproductive, but probably not all of it.

        • jaimeastorga2000 says:

          @Mark Atwood: Jim wrote a similar review of “The Cutie Map”:

          So I downloaded this My Little Pony Episode, “the cutie map”, And it is pretty good and very deep. 1984, Brave New World, and Harrison Bergeron, written for ten year old girls.

          A commie pony has established a commie utopia, and our major characters drop in to investigate.

          There is the mandatory official happiness of “Brave New World”, the destructive equalizing downwards of “Harrison Bergeron”, and the poverty, ugliness, and lying authoritarianism of “1984”. All depicted for ten year old girls.

          Of course “My Little Pony” is in the business of teaching little girls prosocial lessons, and the first lesson that we are beaten over the head with is “people can disagree, and still be friends”. Which gets repeated numerous times. Sounds pretty bland and innocent as a lecture to ten year old girls. Right? Except that it is set in a society of terrifying political correctness where everyone agrees with everyone or else. Which makes it not at all bland and innocent.

          In other words, Social Justice Warriors, the mob who wants to no platform Moldbug, the rioters trying the shut down the Trump rallies, are behaving like naughty, unpleasant, bad, nasty children. Like naughty ten year old girls.

          Another lesson, less heavily thumped, is that some people are better than other people, and that some people can be better than other people, and still be friends. Also, the commie utopia has no choice in goods, and what goods it does have are no good. The equal ponies are dressed in identical coarse sacks, and eat identical bad food. Since everyone is supposedly equally good at muffin production, the cook is in fact dreadful at cooking muffins.

          At eighteen minutes in the first episode, we find that the incompetent muffin cook has, like Harrison Bergeron, been deprived of her special talent that once made her better than others.

          We also encounter the Overton Window “that sounds extreme”. Or rather “that souNDS EEEXXXTEEEEEEEEME!!” – for views that before the communist revolution would have been utterly ordinary and taken for granted. Even those plotting counter revolution are incapable of crimethink. They want moderate and reasonable counter revolution – nothing EEEXXXTEEEEEEEEME!! They are cuckservative ponies. Communism is horrible, brutal, and failing disastrously, so they want just slightly less communism. But nothing “EEEXXXTEEEEEEEEME!!”

          Yes, My Little Pony features a cuckservative.

          And then, at the end of the first episode, they discover there is no leaving utopia,

          At the start of the next episode, we hear propaganda broadcast by loudspeaker. “Exceptionalism is a lie” say the loudspeakers. But the ten year old girls viewing the episode know the major characters are exceptional – leading to a moral unusual in shows directed at ten year old girls “Don’t trust the mass media – it is probably propaganda.”

          But the major characters have had their special abilities, their superiority, magically removed from them. They are handicapped down to the lowest common denominator. They find that they like dull books and crappy soviet style goods.

          Then comes the pressure to rat out your fellow reactionaries and counter revolutionaries.

          Then Fluttershy discovers that some commies are more equal than other commies, reveals it, and counter revolution ensues – an ending that I fear is far too optimistic. We already know that some commies are more equal than other commies, and no one is revolting.

        • Forlorn Hopes says:

          I’ve seen more debate about quotas than support for them, but I have seen several pieces about blind orchestra auditions, for example. And some people are trying to make it work for tech companies, too.

          I’m aware, I’ve even met some of the people trying it in tech a few years back. (just a casual conversation)

          But I don’t see nearly as much debate about anonymized testing as debate about quotas. And I don’t see nearly as much support for anonymized testing as I see support for quotas.

          But they’re not saying that. They’re saying that “Build a Wall” and “Accept the Inevitable” are kind of shitty things to write all over the common spaces. I wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who thought that was a fine thing to do, either.

          What’s so bad about either?

          “Accept the Inevitable” is a pretty bland thing to say. It’s really just saying “my candidate is going to win! yay!”.

          Build a wall depends entirely upon the motivations for that wall. Which is going to vary by the individual trump supporter.

          (Or with someone who scrawled “Hillary is Happening, We Shall Bathe in Male Tears!” all over the place, for that matter. “I think Hillary Clinton would be a good president” is a political opinion. “Hurting men’s precious fee-fees is fun” is the opinion of an asshole.)

          Note though that these examples are unfair comparison. Both of yours explicitly state that inflicting hurt upon men is a good thing.

          With the Trump chalkings, well it’s entirely possible that they don’t like Mexicans and would feel good if Trump hurt them.

          But it’s entirely possible that they just think “Mexican’s are hard working decent people who’ll do the job for half what I need to feed my family. How am I going to keep food on the table without economic protectionism?”

          (I confidant that in practice, Trump supporters come from both camps.)

          This is how memes forbidding friendship work. Nobody says “don’t be friends with them”. It’s always “don’t be friends with them because they’re assholes”.

          So basically. If you want to know how SJ discourages friendships with people who’re different from you. It’s by encouraging you to assume the worst about people.

        • Protagoras says:

          I know some self-identified SJWs, but they’re not much like the description of SJWs around here; for the most part, their views are pretty moderate. They call themselves SJWs because they’re pissed off at conservatives over various issues and perceived slights, and owning the label is a way flipping off the other side. Kind of the liberal version of being a Trump supporter.

        • TheWorst says:

          Kind of the liberal version of being a Trump supporter.

          It’s nice to feel like I’m not the only person who notices this.

        • ChetC3 says:

          @TheWorst

          I’m saying that the local standards of civility and charity are blatantly tilted in favor of a certain kinds of right-wing rhetoric. If we’re talking about what’s true instead of what’s polite, the default assumption of anyone remotely familiar with neuroscience and human psychology should be that the explanations people give of their actions and beliefs are BS. Instead, the standard around here is that members of the favored classes (the “red tribe”, anti-SJWs, right-leaning angry male nerds in general) must be treated as having super-human levels of psychological insight, in addition to their unimpeachable intellectual honesty and integrity. Anything less will be dismissed as insufficiently charitable. General criticism of the “blue tribe”, feminists, SJs, etc., not being held to the same unrealistic standards is what I’m objecting to, not the truth of any individual criticism.

        • TheWorst says:

          I’m saying that the local standards of civility and charity are blatantly tilted in favor of a certain kinds of right-wing rhetoric.

          This seems true.

          Instead, the standard around here is that members of the favored classes … must be treated as having super-human levels of psychological insight, in addition to their unimpeachable intellectual honesty and integrity.

          This seems untrue.

          My point was that if you think your tribe is receiving insufficient charity, being uncharitable to other people when they are correct is probably the wrong strategy.

          When your side is right, your side benefits from norms that value truth. Hence: More true things, always. The answer is never “less true things.”

          General criticism of the “blue tribe”, feminists, SJs, etc., not being held to the same unrealistic standards is what I’m objecting to, not the truth of any individual criticism.

          I understand that. My point is that this is anathema to anyone who actually thinks their side is correct. Truth is not an unrealistic standard.

          If someone makes a false statement, that means they were wrong. It does not mean that “your side” is now entitled to one “free” false statement.

        • LHN says:

          If someone is feeling saying a Trump supporter sharing a campus with them makes them feel unsafe

          But they’re not saying that. They’re saying that “Build a Wall” and “Accept the Inevitable” are kind of shitty things to write all over the common spaces.

          I think pressing the university into taking action against the chalker (trespassing charges if nonstudents, disciplinary process if students) goes a little farther than that.

          There was also a specific student quote claiming that due to the university “not ending it”, “people of color are struggling academically because they are so focused on trying to have a safe community and focus on these issues”. That sounds extremely close to “a Trump supporter sharing a campus with them makes them feel unsafe”.

          http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/03/emory-u-to-track-down-trump-supporting-chalkers.html

        • dndnrsn says:

          @ChetC3: Yes.

          The most common failure mode of a method of understanding opinions, behaviours, etc based on neuroscience, psychology, etc is coming to a view of the world where everyone else is hopelessly befuddled by their biology and so forth, but you are clear-eyed and above all that.

          Of course, fully embracing a model where everyone is just coming up with after-the-fact justifications for their opinions, which they really derived from their emotions and what is advantageous to believe, which are in large part biologically determined, is rather depressing, to say the least, because it implies you yourself only hold this worldview for such base reasons.

          Turtles all the way down.

        • Nita says:

          @ Forlorn Hopes

          But I don’t see nearly as much debate about anonymized testing as debate about quotas.

          Perhaps because quotas are extremely controversial? And the only positions where I have heard of mandatory quotas are ones where a test-based approach seems unlikely, such as management board members or members of parliament.

          “Accept the Inevitable” is a pretty bland thing to say. It’s really just saying “my candidate is going to win! yay!”.

          Not all interpretations of this phrase are quite so happy.

          But it’s entirely possible that they just think

          It’s entirely possible that people who think that exist. Is thinking that a likely motivation for the graffiti? I don’t think so. When I’m worried about the future of my family, I don’t usually find the nearest political opponent and urge them to “accept the inevitable”.

          “They’re assholes” is what I keep hearing about the dreaded SJWs, although many of them seem to have good intentions.

        • ChetC3 says:

          @TheWorst

          I don’t agree that the claim was true. At best, there’s no practical way to prove it’s false. It’s no better an argument than asking why libertarians don’t move to Somalia if they hate government so much.

        • TheWorst says:

          …is rather depressing, to say the least, because it implies you yourself only hold this worldview for such base reasons.

          Welcome, brother! Pull up a chair and have a drink. The drinks are terrible, but so is everything else.

        • null says:

          You know, it doesn’t help your case by stereotyping your opponents. In any case, I think it’s more of a matter that people bring their own biases into things, and given the tilt of the SSC commentariat this is the inevitable result.

          I don’t appreciate ‘angry male nerd’ used as a pejorative. In general, it is dismissive.

        • I know some smart civil people that I respect who identify as SJWs.

          I’m horrified, but what seems to be going on is that they do a word by word analysis. Justice is good. Extending it so that it has good group effects is good. It is good to be a Warrior for good things.

          Oy! This is like expecting science in science fiction. Of course, there is *some* science, but you shouldn’t default to expecting it.

          Those people look at (what I consider to be) the good parts of Social Justice and ignore how horrible it can get. I’m hoping such people can push the Overton Window in Social Justice rather than being first against the wall when the revolution comes. I have no idea what’s going to happen.

        • ChetC3 says:

          @dndnrsn

          Or you could believe that self-serving confabulation is the path of least resistance, but it’s still possible with effort for people to do better. That’s what rationality, in the non-tribal sense, is supposed to be about.

        • TheWorst says:

          I don’t agree that the claim was true.

          I know! That’s kind of my point. When your opponent says something true, it’s probably a good idea to acknowledge it. Otherwise, it will look like very strong evidence that you aren’t on the right side–or at least that you don’t care whether or not you’re on the right side.

          That’s the whole problem; it seems to me that you’ve made several convincing statements that you care about tribal warfare more than about truth. This is extremely unpersuasive to people who care about truth, and reduces the chances that they will place weight on your statements about truth or untruth.

          When a person is correct, truth is always their ally. To a person who merely would prefer to be correct, truth is still always their ally.

        • ChetC3 says:

          I don’t appreciate ‘angry male nerd’ used as a pejorative. In general, it is dismissive.

          So is ‘post-modernist’. So is ‘SJW’. If there’s some blanket rule in effect against terms that can be used as pejoratives, I haven’t noticed.

        • Whatever Happened To Anonymous says:

          SJW is such an unhelpful concept, it seems like there is always an incentive for anti-SJ people to stretch it as far as they can, and an equally strong incentive from SJ people to define it as narrowly as possible.

        • dndnrsn says:

          @ChetC3: I’ve started a new tree down below.

        • null says:

          There isn’t a rule, but you’re a jerk. There’s also a substantial difference between those insults in that only one of them refers to criteria other than people’s intellectual positions.

        • ChetC3 says:

          What’s the polite way to describe people who promote male nerd identity politics?

        • Forlorn Hopes says:

          Perhaps because quotas are extremely controversial?

          That could explain why quotas get more debate than tests. It would not explain why they get more support (measured independently from the amount of opposition)

          And the only positions where I have heard of mandatory quotas are ones where a test-based approach seems unlikely, such as management board members or members of parliament.

          This doesn’t explain why you don’t see support for tests for programming.

          Not all interpretations of this phrase are quite so happy.

          That’s a joke – if you fight a bear with a chainsaw the bear will win.

          What’s wrong with that?

          When I’m worried about the future of my family, I don’t usually find the nearest political opponent and urge them to “accept the inevitable”.

          You’re not a Trump supporter. You’re not even the same tribe as a Trump supporter.

          Why are you judging them by what you’d do?

          “They’re assholes” is what I keep hearing about the dreaded SJWs, although many of them seem to have good intentions.

          Some are, some aren’t.

          Though the SJW memeplex seems to make it easy for assholes to rise to the top. Requires Hate should be an uncontroversial example of this.

          (Of course. You could say that about Trump)

        • null says:

          What does ‘male nerd identity politics’ mean?

        • houseboatonstyx says:

          @ Whatever Happened To Anonymous
          SJW is such an unhelpful concept, it seems like there is always an incentive for anti-SJ peoaple to stretch it as far as they can

          Datapoint: There is a style of debate (and, charitably, of thought) that I strongly oppose. I do not know an appropriate name for it. I most often see it used to support issues referred to as SJW issues, and by the people referred to (by outsiders) as SJWs. Thus when I want to refer to that style, I call it ‘SJW style’, and the people who use it, ‘SJWs’.

          I apologize to the eggs, if any.

        • Nita says:

          @ Forlorn Hopes

          It would not explain why they get more support (measured independently from the amount of opposition)

          Yes, it would not explain that. Has anyone actually measured the amount of support? E.g., with something like:

          Which of the following policies do you support?
          – blind auditions and similar performance tests
          – demographic quotas
          – etc.

          What’s wrong with that?

          There’s nothing wrong with the joke. It just shows that “accept the inevitable” can mean “lol, you’re fucked”.

          Why are you judging them by what you’d do?

          Because they’re human beings, just like me. What do you think I should do instead?

        • Forlorn Hopes says:

          Yes, it would not explain that. Has anyone actually measured the amount of support?

          I don’t think there’s any formal measurements.

          I’d sooner do a survey of popular websites aligned with SJ tribe rather than a question. This is about revealed preferences not stated preferences.

          There’s nothing wrong with the joke. It just shows that “accept the inevitable” can mean “lol, you’re fucked”.

          Which is not automatically a bad thing. It sounds to me like something you’d say to mate down at the sports bar when their team is loosing.

          Because they’re human beings, just like me. What do you think I should do instead?

          Learn about their culture, then use that knowledge to understand what they likely meant by accept the inevitable rather than using yourself.

          I don’t mind when I get missgendered. I’m human, trans people are also human, so it’s safe to assume trans people don’t mind being missgendered…

          Complete nonsense isn’t it? Same goes for Trump supporters. Judging them by how you’d feel is complete nonsense.

          Calling them assholes because you judged them by yourself in ignorance. We’ll there’s a reason SJW tribe gets a bad rep in a lot of places.

        • Nita says:

          @ Forlorn Hopes

          This is about revealed preferences not stated preferences.

          Right. Also, we want to measure support, not controversy (see: Toxoplasma of Rage). How would we disentangle them?

          And I guess a study of really revealed preferences should look at the things people actually try to implement (various mentorship programs seem to be popular?), not at things they merely comment on.

          It sounds to me like something you’d say to mate

          Like you just said yourself, they’re not even the same tribe. Being abrasive to your mates works as countersignalling precisely because we don’t treat strangers that way and expect to get away with it.

      • Mary says:

        AND your membership will let you nominate next year.

    • keranih says:

      I have been pretty open about being a pro-Sad Puppy commenter here.

      I reject your take on the Hugo kerfluffle in pretty much its entirety, and strongly urge you to expand your reading list.

      Having said that – I think the best solution to any charges of vote fixing is to increase the number of voters, so that any nefarious plans will be lost in the broader poll of preferences, and so a more accurate survey of fans can be conducted. (This is, btw, the Sad Puppy take. If we had 100,000 fans nominating, Vox Day and his ilk would be unable to exert any influence.)

      If we can’t increase the number of votes – and as noted above, the old order WorldCon TruFan contingent is resistant to getting more people involved – then I think the 4/6 suggestion (everyone gets four suggestions for final ballot, the top six get picked) is certainly reasonable. EPH, on the other hand, is a convoluted mess that seems far more trouble than it is worth.

    • Vorkon says:

      I am thinking the solution is to increase the voting requirements. Currently to vote or nominate you only need to pay 50$ for a “supporting membership”, and then you can vote by email. I think they should change it so that only people who have actually physically attended a worldcon can nominate works to the final ballot. Supporting members can still be allowed to vote on the actual Hugo (choosing from among the five nominees).

      That sounds like a great idea, if your goal is the delegitimatize the Hugo, wipe it of whatever prestige it still has left, and potentially bankrupt Worldcon.

      As I understand it, Worldcon relies on supporting memberships to stay out of the red. It’s true that under your plan, it would still be possible to pay for a supporting membership, but the entire reason most people get supporting memberships is to vote on/nominate for the Hugo. That’s the whole reason they tried to sell the Hugo as belonging to the entire SF/F fandom, up until the Puppy kerfluffle, in the first place. There is no way that your plan doesn’t significantly reduce the number of supporting memberships, if not reduce it to an insignificant number. That can’t be good for Worldcon as a whole.

      And that doesn’t even begin to get into how bad the optics would look on this. While I’m sympathetic to a lot of the Puppies’ concerns, as of right now Worldcon has at least some moral highground here: There’s no actual, real-life secret cabal, systematically discriminating against the Puppies. Such discrimination may exist, but it’s all unconscious bias. (Though, I have to admit, it’s somewhat amusing that the puppies seem to have independently stumbled upon the concept of “privilege,” even though they might be loathe to describe it that way, but I digress. :op ) And although I believe a lot of the concerns about slate voting are overblown, and are being used to rationalize away the feeling of “we don’t like the puppies and we want them gone, so we’re going to subconsciously latch onto the idea of them blindly following a slate, despite the organizers clearly describing it as a recommendations list like so many others that have always floated around the internet” I can’t deny that the central anti-puppy argument, that it’s unfair if one group dominates entire categories, is definitely a valid concern, and is worth addressing. However, once you make it so the puppies are excluded from voting altogether, you’ve given up any high ground you may have once had. At that point, you actually are systematically discriminating against them, and you’re no longer just preventing a single faction from dominating entire categories. There’s no way this can be good for the Hugo’s reputation.

      Pretty much the only person who would benefit from a proposition like this is Vox Day, whose entire goal is to ruin the Hugo’s reputation, and who I’m sure would love to bankrupt Worldcon. (And maybe Larry Correia, who gets an opportunity to smugly say, “I told ‘ya so.”)

      Anyway, assuming you’re serious and not just trying to secretly push some Rabid Puppy goal, here is what I have to say about the current proposed changes to the nomination system:

      I think EPH (the Single divisible Vote system you mention) is a lousy idea, but that 6/4 (the proposed change that you can only nominate 4 works per category, but that there will be 6 finalists instead of 5, as there are currently) is actually pretty good. As you say, EPH ensures that, no matter what, there will always be at least one work per category that belongs to an organized slate. It incentivizes organizing around a particular one or two popular works, and encourages other people, not just the puppies, to engage in slate voting as well, rather than nominating everything that interests them, and will only serve to make the finalist less varied in the long run. It’s true that it will prevent one faction from ever dominating a single category, but it presupposes that such factions will always exist, and dispels the illusion that offbeat and niche works could ever possibly earn the nomination, which a nomination system for an award like this should make possible. 6/4, on the other hand, also prevents a single faction from ever dominating, (as there will always be 2 spots not covered by any slate) but at the same time widens the net, and allows a greater diversity of works to show up on the final ballot.

      Anyway, if you’re curious, you can always check the last Open Thread for another discussion on the Hugos, and maybe check out this post for an explanation of why maybe this isn’t the best topic to be discussing here. (Though, I must say, I’m guilty of ignoring that myself. :op )

      • walpolo says:

        There’s no actual, real-life secret cabal, systematically discriminating against the Puppies. Such discrimination may exist, but it’s all unconscious bias. (Though, I have to admit, it’s somewhat amusing that the puppies seem to have independently stumbled upon the concept of “privilege,” even though they might be loathe to describe it that way, but I digress.

        There’s definitely no cabal, but that doesn’t mean that the bias against conservative writers is all unconscious. I think there are a lot of people who would consciously say “You can’t separate the art from the artist, and conservative artists are bad people.” That isn’t a secret cabal, but it’s a lot of individual people having conscious biases against Sad Puppy types.

        I imagine instead of privilege it’s more like being a black person in a town where yeah, there’s no KKK and no Jim Crow laws, but most people will use racial slurs in front of your face, etc. That wouldn’t be unconscious bias or white privilege, it’s explicit racism that just doesn’t happen to be very well organized.

        • This is reminding me about a bit from Megan Mcardle- I don’t have the link handy, but she was asked on bloggingheads about what she’d written that changed people’s minds.

          She wrote about prejudice against conservatives in academia, and she said that conservatives told her they now understood what progressives mean when they talk about microaggressions. However, no progressives learned that they were prejudiced against conservatives.

      • LHN says:

        The Worldcon is (I think) the largest of the fan-run SF conventions (though utterly dwarfed by for-profit cons like Dragoncon or Gen Con). But given the fairly large cons that manage to run without benefit of significant supporting memberships, I’m guessing that the Worldcon would survive without them. It might be smaller and less ambitious, but I wouldn’t think to the point of non-viability.

        As a point of comparison: when the Worldcon is outside North America, there’s a North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC) held in its stead. Those are smaller than the Worldcon, but still draw a couple of thousand attendees despite not offering a Hugo vote.

        I don’t get the impression that the supporting membership was a big deal outside the congoing community until the relatively recent advent (I think 2009?[1]) of the Hugo packet, which gives voters copies of most of the nominated works free. (For a few years it was all of the nominated written works, but some publishers have scaled that back to samples in recent years.)

        [1] Not counting Brad Templeton’s 1993 Hugo Anthology CD, which was a one-off, was sold rather than given to the membership, and didn’t become available IIRC till after the awards.

        That also may have laid some of the groundwork for the most recent controversy, by expanding interest in the Hugo nominations process more widely.

        • keranih says:

          there is no secret cabal

          …you know, I would have bought this, once upona. In fact, I did used to believe this, and poo-pooed the people who muttered about “them, over there, hating us, over here.”

          I used to believe it right up to Easter Monday last year, when vicious, hate-filled, and libelous screeds masquerading as straight news articles hit the presses in international media outlets. Less than 48 hours after the final ballots were announced, multiple anti-puppy people were manipulating the news cycle to push the narrative that racist, anti-woman, homo-hating bigots had “taken over” the Hugos.

          More than one of these screeds were penned by individual authors whose works had been in contention for Hugos, with narry a mention of how they, themselves, had lost out in the voting process.

          All this whilst the various Puppies were still in a dazzled state of “WTF? No, seriously, wtf just happened??!?!” Because no one expected the Hugos to be so jacked up as to be that easily broken. And because we honestly believed that the Worldcon smof to at least have the integrity to not leak the results to the cabal before hand.

          soooo…yeah. A crappy, clumsy, self-foot-shooting cabal, but a secret cabal none the less.

          • Unfortunately, it was very tempting to think that the puppies sweeping the nominations for the Hugos was something they did on purpose, rather than that they gave the system a shove and it fell right over. In other words, there was much less of a conspiracy than you thought.

            It looks like you strengthened the opposition against you.

          • keranih says:

            Unfortunately, it was very tempting to think that the puppies sweeping the nominations for the Hugos was something they did on purpose, rather than that they gave the system a shove and it fell right over.

            Well, yes, esp if respected people in the field (and how can you tell if they are respected people in the field? Why, you see if they won a Hugo!) are telling you that everything was just fine until those noisy kids and their dog showed up.

            I get that people wanted to believe that the system was solid and sound and just. But when the damn tower falls down, it’s really not fair to blame the people on the outside who have been claiming that it has been leaning sideways for years. Human, but not fair. Nor rational. Nor factually correct.

            It looks like you strengthened the opposition against you.

            *shrugs* Mightcould. But we’re not done yet. And I’m with Mal Reynolds here.

          • Anonymous says:

            Unfortunately, it was very tempting to think that the puppies sweeping the nominations for the Hugos was something they did on purpose, rather than that they gave the system a shove and it fell right over.

            Reminds me in a funny of Lithwick’s description of Ted Cruz on the debate circuit. Everyone else was there to have a good time and here’s this guy that comes in intensively preps for a competition that’s supposed to feature extemporaneous speeches, and chivvies the judges for every last point.

            Sure the voting system was “broken”. Heaven forbid every single thing in this world not be completely locked down and unable to be exploited.

            This is why we can’t have nice things.

          • Teal says:

            ^^
            That should be Teal, I forgot for a second that I switched names.

          • Psmith says:

            Everyone else was there to have a good time and here’s this guy that comes in intensively preps for a competition that’s supposed to feature extemporaneous speeches, and chivvies the judges for every last point.

            This may have been true then (although I kind of doubt it), but it certainly isn’t true now. As somebody who used to complain about this sort of thing myself, “oh, they just won by aggressively following the rules, we on the other hand upheld the true spirit of the activity which is to have fun and learn things” is usually an excuse for just not being all that good.

          • Teal says:

            It wouldn’t at all surprise me that the Ted Cruz’s of the world have ruined it entirely. Once you have to lock something down to protect against people like him, you’ll end up destroying what was valuable in the first place. That’s something the Hugos are likely to find out all about in the next few years.

            There’s probably also a warning in there about college admissions and using gamable metrics, but I think I’ll leave it vague.

          • Nita says:

            Everyone else was there to have a good time and here’s this guy that comes in intensively preps for a competition that’s supposed to feature extemporaneous speeches, and chivvies the judges for every last point.

            Uh, I’m gonna side with Psmith on this one. The speeches are put together in a short time, but you still have to prepare to succeed. A debate is of higher quality (which is more fun) if everyone comes well-prepared.

            And it’s a competition, so everyone cares about points.

          • Teal says:

            http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/05/i_was_on_the_college_debate_circuit_with_ted_cruz.html

            My whole college debate experience with Ted Cruz can be distilled into a single, visceral, impression: that of being trapped in a too-small classroom in some dusty Ivy League building, with an opponent too big for the space. My memories of Ted are that he was too loud, too umbragey, and too rehearsed in an activity meant to mirror the clubby, off-the-cuff charms of the British Parliament.

            You braced yourself to be screamed at by someone who wanted it more than anyone else.

            Cruz’s style invariably tended toward the pompous, achieving the unenviable end of making a fun, oratorical activity into a joyless weekend slog. He liked to reframe whatever the topic was to his own advantage, a ploy he used effectively in GOP debates throughout the campaign. (We all heard the endless recitation of his father’s arrival from Cuba to Texas with $100 sewn into his underwear, even if the topic on the table was euthanasia or the line-item veto.)

            Most of my memories of debating Ted Cruz involve being hollered at. Austan was always defter than I was at deflating that which was most infuriating about Ted—the way he’d reframe a debate topic into something he had prepared, or would become fake-angry in ways that suited a 19-year-old even less than it suits a 40-something-year-old. I do remember that he wasn’t funny, and also that he never ever seemed comfortable in his skin. He always wanted to relitigate whatever round had just been decided, even if everyone else was careening drunkenly around the quad.

            There’s more if you follow the links. If you don’t see anything both true and cringeworthy in there then frankly you are probably part of the problem.

          • Dr Dealgood says:

            @Teal,

            Maybe this is just misplaced geek solidarity but that article made me a lot more favorable to Cruz.

            I did some debate myself a while back, constitutional law actually, at a similar age. And participants tended to cluster into the larger group of wealthier vaguely-liberal social butterflies who were there to screw around drink and get laid, versus the few guys like me who came there to win. I wasn’t going to buy a suit and travel a few hundred miles just so that I can play grabass, and it would be insulting to the event hosts and my competitors not to put forward my best possible performance.

            If you want to have a yacht club or café atmosphere then don’t advertise it as a debate.

          • Nita says:

            @ Teal

            None of that sounds very unusual to me. The loudness, the rehearsed style, the reframing, the outrage — all of these are common debating tactics. He does sound a bit more intense than most, especially with the arguing well into the party. Perhaps he didn’t drink alcohol?

          • Psmith says:

            @Teal, yes, I read that Slate piece, and the Jezebel source for the specific claims about debate, before I posted. I wanted to make sure that the impression I got from your original paraphrase matched what the sources actually said, and it seems to me that it does. Cruz sounds like any really good HS/college debater, and his contemporaries sound like people who are upset that they lost fair and square because someone else cared more about winning than they did. (And possibly motivated by a nebulous “creepiness” rather than anything Cruz actually did in debate.). Do you have any experience with competitive debate in the US?

            Anyway, I agree with Dealgood and Nita. If you think caring about winning a competitive event and conducting yourself accordingly is “part of the problem” or “cringeworthy”, you may not be well suited to competitive events in general or competitive debate in particular. Which is fine, but hardly a sign of transcendent moral or aesthetic wrongness.

          • John Schilling says:

            Also: Given the selection criteria, all Presidents of the United States will be people who care about winning competitive debate-like events and conduct themselves accordingly, dialed to eleven. At most, you can hope for a President who fakes not caring. If that’s something you really want.

          • Teal says:

            Just because something is in the form of a competition doesn’t mean it has to be geared to min-maxers.

            De gustibus non disputandum est , but given that there are those of us on the other side that do find that sort of thing cringeworthy and unpleasant, I hope you’ll understand why we want to keep the Ted Cruzes of the world with their win-at-all-costs attitude away from things we like. Like, say, a certain science fiction convention and associated award. Or our colleges.

          • Nita says:

            Even with the fake outrage and folders of pre-made arguments, Parliamentary debating styles are still quite human-friendly. If you want to see real munchkinism, check out Policy debate. (Aww!)

          • John Schilling says:

            I hope you’ll understand why we want to keep the Ted Cruzes of the world with their win-at-all-costs attitude away from things we like

            If you want to keep people with win-at-all-costs attitude away from things that you like, then there is ABSOLUTELY NO ALTERNATIVE but to select people for those things on some basis other than simply winning a competition.

            Elections are competitions. Presumably you are some sort of monarchist? Or do you just like people whose win-at-all-costs attitude includes a highly developed skill of faking nonchalance?

          • Teal says:

            @John Schilling
            I realize that Ted Cruz was until quite recently a candidate for President so it seems like anything involving him must be about that, but I haven’t actually said anything about what I would or wouldn’t like to see in a Presidential candidate. The description in Lithwick’s article reminded me of a certain sad puppy supporter attitude. I made that connection when I brought it up.

            I’m sorry I don’t want to talk about what you want to talk about, at least not right here. Maybe a different thread at a different time.

          • John Schilling says:

            @Teal: Fair enough, and I’d like to keep people like Ted Cruz out of e.g. my entire social and professional life. But there are some things that simply must be dominated by people like Ted Cruz, and among them are A: electoral politics and B: things that are defined by being competitions, like formal competitive debates.

            If you take great pleasure in formal competitive debating among congenial people, that’s rather like taking great pleasure in playing high-stakes poker among congenial people. Fun while it lasts, but it will end in tears.

      • Mary says:

        ” There’s no actual, real-life secret cabal, systematically discriminating against the Puppies. ”

        Some of the anti-Puppy forces knew how many nominations Sad Puppies 3 had gotten before the nominations were announced.

        Either those forces explicitly broke the rules, or they knew what the actual nominees “should” have been, and the authors didn’t get the nomination (you get told in advance, so you can decline before the list is made public), which is to say there was another slate.

    • Vorkon says:

      Actually, as long as we’re on the topic of the Hugos, I’ve been wondering something, and I’m not really sure how to find it out.

      This year, both Puppy lists proposed several video games for the “Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form” award, and I’m kind of surprised that, in that category, at least, none of them managed to get through. I firmly believe that, at the very least, The Witcher 3 and Undertale (the latter of which wasn’t on the Rabid slate, but may have been on the Sad list. I can’t quite remember) are FAR more impressive from a narrative standpoint than any of the movies that made it onto the final ballot. Does anyone know why the puppies failed to make an impact in that category? Were video games found to not be eligible, or is it simply that the category has more people voting in it, unlike the short story and various whatever-zine categories, and was therefore harder to sweep? Either explanation is somewhat disheartening.

  72. Anonymous says:

    There was a brief discussion in a previous thread about land tax (tax that ignores the value of the property). The general sentiment seemed to be that it’s not quite free from rent-seeking, but it still seems to me pretty good compared to an income/sales tax.

    What are the problems with it? I imagine it would be either too low to affect rent-seeking in cities, or too high so that it discourages ownership of rural land that the govt won’t use anyway. What about a scheme where you pay extra if the government is providing a school or hospital nearby?

    • lupis42 says:

      It discourages exploration of new uses of land that would increase it’s value. See http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/02/a_search-theore.html for a start.

      • John Schilling says:

        I find Caplan’s argument unconvincing in that he talks about 100% or near-100% tax rates and imagines he is making a novel, profound, or even relevant point when he says, essentially, “Haha! If the government takes all of the profit from doing a thing, nobody will do that thing!”

        And while he attributes the idea of an ill-defined 100% land value tax (100% per year? 100% on sale of the land?) to the Georgists, the “single tax” link he cites in support of that claim uses as its example a land-value tax rate of 10%, which it claims to be revenue-neutral w/re existing tax codes.

        Might a 10% land value tax be sufficient disincentive to suppress some economically desirable uses? Perhaps. But all taxes must necessarily disincentivize some otherwise-desirable economic activity, and it is far from obvious that the Georgist land value tax would be worse than the alternatives in that regard. And maybe a revenue-neutral land value tax would need to be more than 10%/year. These are matters worthy of serious debate.

        “I have identified a finite economic disincentive produced by your tax, therefore it is Bad and Wrong”, isn’t that. Neither is, “A 100% tax rate will disincentivize everything and so it is Bad and Wrong”.

        • actinide meta says:

          Surely a 10%/year land tax would capture far more than 100% of the present value of land (if it were announced that next year there would be such a tax based on today’s values, I would expect all landowners to scramble to sell all their land, even at negative prices. I’m not quite sure what the equilibrium would be if the tax is based on FMV from year to year, but prices would fall a lot)

          • Shieldfoss says:

            Why would they sell? They would lose the revenues they are currently generating off their land.

          • Murphy says:

            @Shieldfoss

            If you own land worth 1 million at todays prices and it’s announced that a 10% per year tax is going to be applied then if you can’t make more than 100k per year from it then it may be economic to pay someone to take it off your hands.

            Land rarely makes 10% per year net profit.

          • Paul Goodman says:

            I think there’s some stock/flow confusion here. Taxing the stock at 10% a year would clearly be too much. Ideally you’d want to define the tax as a percentage of the rate value can be extracted from the land (e.g. rent, mineral extraction) rather than basing it on the sale value, but in practice they should be pretty closely correlated and taxing the sale value is probably easier.

          • Cliff says:

            “Land rarely makes 10% per year net profit.”

            Your evidence is??

            “Guys, our corporate tax was cut to zero but they want to tax us $100,000/yr on our land value. Close down the nanofabrication factory immediately and pay someone to take it off our hands!”

            A 10% tax on my land value would be about 2.5x my current property taxes. Eliminate my income tax and I would jump for joy, not sell my house in a fire sale so I can live in the street.

          • Murphy says:

            @Cliff

            By chance are you only talking about the land you live on? And I’m guessing you’re not a farmer or otherwise making your living actually using much land?

            Also a ” nanofabrication factory” isn’t a thing.

        • lupis42 says:

          But all taxes must necessarily disincentivize some otherwise-desirable economic activity

          That’s the point in question, actually.

          Bryan is addressing the specific claim that a 1-time-only, 100% (or near 100%) Georgeist tax is, in economic terms, completely distortion-free.

          While I realize that OP was not specifically looking at a 1-time tax, or at any particular level, the point about where and how the distortion works remains valid: I have no incentive to look for oil, diamonds, or lucrative new crops that would grow on my land because finding one effectively raises my tax burden, even if it’s not something that I’m able to pursue.

          If you want to screw someone living in a Georgeist tax system over, discover oil under their house.

          As to *how* distorting it is, relative to other options, in general I’d expect to see NIMBYism increase by several orders of magnitude – because now, any local development that increases the value of land to a future developer costs the present owner money in the short term. There’s also a major question as to how to value the ‘land’ under, say, the Empire State Building – chosen as an example because it’s been developed since before we got off the gold standard, and there’s no reasonable history that could suggest a starting point.

          • John Schilling says:

            Bryan is addressing the specific claim that a 1-time-only, 100% (or near 100%) Georgeist tax is, in economic terms, completely distortion-free.

            Is that a claim that anybody is actually making? I didn’t see it in his cited links.

            I am fairly certain that the word “Georgeist”, in actual use, encompasses a wide range of land-value taxes, not just 100% one time. If not, fine, we need another word for land value taxes of some small percentage every year, because I’m pretty sure lots of people think those are a good idea and it’s not so trivially dismissable that I don’t want to talk to them (and to skeptical economists) about it.

          • lupis42 says:

            The claim(s) that a 1 time tax, or a Georgeist tax (which, you are correct, just refers to a tax levied on the unimproved value of land), or a tax which is both, is non-distorting, or as nearly so as to be safely assumed, is pretty common, and crops up regularly enough that I’d heard variants of it (and some rebuttals) in three different undergrad courses, and it comes up on the internet wherever one finds econ-interested amateurs.
            Bryan’s comment is the first rebuttal I remembered, not by any means the most apt – hence my calling it a starting point.

            As a tax system, it’s not trivially dismissable, but neither is it obviously superior, and there’s a lot of good, recent, well written discussion about it already in the blogosphere, which is worth reading if one is interested in the concept.

          • John Schilling says:

            and there’s a lot of good, recent, well written discussion about it already in the blogosphere, which is worth reading if one is interested in the concept.

            Could you perhaps link to some of that, rather than to Caplan giving a half-assed rebuttal to a strawmanned caricature of a land value tax?

          • Wency says:

            I don’t understand what the gold standard has to do with it.

            In principle, I’d think you rely mostly on comps. Look at what people paid for unimproved land in Manhattan. Or since there’s not much unimproved land in Manhattan, look at what people paid for properties where they intended to demolition any existing structures. Then back out the demolition costs.

            Then try to make some sort of value adjustment for the the Empire State Building’s location relative to the closest available comps. Ideally you can guess at this by looking at additional comps of existing building transactions.

            The answer it gives will be subjective and require judgement, which was cited earlier as one of the bigger flaws of the proposal. In practice, I bet if you asked 20 Manhattan commercial real estate professionals the value of the land beneath the Empire State Building (and they were incentivized to provide an honest, thoughtful answer), their answers would fall within a reasonable range, perhaps +/- 50% or so at most, and maybe much tighter than that.

            Of course, the owners of the property would surely hire an expensive lawyer and/or make political donations to push for a valuation that is on the lower end of that range, or even outside it.

          • lupis42 says:

            Just a comment to the effect that the country was dramatically different the last time there was any unimproved land in Manhattan, such that even attempting to extrapolate the rate of inflation is going to be more about what assumptions you chose then any underlying truth to the answer.

            If one takes the (collective) estimate of property developers as a guide, this means that NYC could dramatically increase it’s tax revenue by removing zoning restrictions.

            The existing landowners would have a strong incentive to ensure that their land was zoned, historically protected, and otherwise restricted such that it couldn’t possibly be put to any use other than it’s current use. I’m not sure which side would win that one, and it might depend a lot on whether the revenue was going to the same level of government as the valuators, and what that level is.

          • Wency says:

            I was thinking about the treatment of zoning as well. The system obviously works much better in a place that is unzoned, e.g. Houston. Zoning causes it to begin to breakdown.

            One solution would be for the tax to be levied by Federal government, with the expectation that the municipal or state government will pay the difference between the unzoned value and the zoned value, while the property owner will only pay based on the zoned value. So if zoning is deemed desirable, the community will collectively take responsibility for paying for the opportunity costs it generates.

            The system probably still breaks down around local politics. It has a lower tolerance for corruption than an income tax system.

        • “But all taxes must necessarily disincentivize some otherwise-desirable economic activity, and it is far from obvious that the Georgist land value tax would be worse than the alternatives in that regard.”

          The claim for the Georgist tax is that it does not disincentivize desirable activity because it doesn’t depend on activity. The tax is on site value, which does not include any value due to things people have done on that land, whether clearing it of trees and boulders, finding coal under it, or whatever.

          One can even argue that it disincentivizes undesirable activity. Consider someone who spends time and money figuring out what currently unused land will be valuable in the future due to things happening around it, such as suburbs expanding outward. His plan is to buy the land now, sell it as soon as it is clear to others that it is valuable. That has no effect on the use of the land, just makes sure that the windfall from its increased value goes to him instead of the present owner.

          The practical problem, of course, is how to measure site value.

          So far as your “all taxes” point, the argument for Pigouvian taxes is that they disincentivize undesirable activity.

          • John Schilling says:

            So far as your “all taxes” point, the argument for Pigouvian taxes is that they disincentivize undesirable activity.

            If you can find an undesirable economic activity that is completely delinked from desirable economic activities, yes. That’s about as unlikely as the reverse.

            In practice, an e.g. Pigovian carbon tax, in the course of strongly disincentivizing the practice of burning coal to generate electricity, at least weakly disincentivizes the practice of generating electricity. The only way that could not be the case is if burning coal was never the pre-tax optimal means of electricity production, in which case the tax would generate no revenue in the first place.

      • Anonymous says:

        I didn’t expect resources on the land would also be taxed. That seems to make the entire thing more complicated for no reason. Land with oil on it will cost more even without a resource tax so you’re still encouraged to not build your warehouse on top of prime farmland unless logistics are that important.

        Thanks for the responses (from everyone), I find the topic interesting but I’m reluctant to comment since I’m pretty uninformed.

        • lupis42 says:

          Well, resources aren’t technically taxed – the value of the undeveloped land is taxed. But if it’s known that the land contains resources that could be extracted, then it’s undeveloped value will reflect that.

          • “But if it’s known that the land contains resources that could be extracted, then it’s undeveloped value will reflect that.”

            Not if getting that knowledge was costly, in which case it, like improvements in the land, produced the value, hence value that goes untaxed. The site value is supposed to be what the value would be if nothing had been spent on the land.

          • lupis42 says:

            If *information about the value of the land* counts as an improvement, and is hence removed from taxing, aren’t we then essentially back to either a fixed acreage tax, possibly adjusted by local amenities/access/density? Even determining what crops can be grown requires figuring out things like the ph of the soil and the annual rainfall, sun exposure, etc – all of which requires cost to measure, just very low cost.

    • The Nybbler says:

      Its main problem is its main draw for backers: it prevents the property owner from enjoying his property if his enjoyment is not among the most productive uses which can be the land in question can be put. Since his neighbors improvements cause his taxes to increase just as much as the neighbors, he’s “encouraged” to improve his land at least as much.

    • Jason GL says:

      I think you’re on the right track, Anonymous, but why not correct for urban vs. rural differences directly? There ought to be a way to tie the amount of the land tax to the population density of the census tract your property is in. For example, suppose you set the tax at $2,000 per acre per year per (person per acre). If you live in a rural county where people are spread out, and there is only one person for every 20 acres of land, then a 20-acre farm will cost $2,000/year in taxes — expensive enough that you would want to sell the land if the land is sitting idle, but not so expensive that you couldn’t operate a profitable farm there. If you live in a dense urban area with apartment buildings where there are 50 people per acre, then a 1/4-acre townhouse will cost $25,000/year in taxes — expensive enough that you’ll be incentivized to convert the townhouse into another apartment building, but not so expensive that you can’t stay in your home if you’re a professional who really enjoys the neighborhood and strongly values privacy.

      This method has the advantage that you still want to search for valuable uses of your land (finding mineral deposits or lucrative new crops, ala Lupis42), and it also has the advantage that (for tax purposes) you don’t much care one way or the other whether your immediate neighbors upgrade their buildings, because the population density is measured across the entire census tract, and not just on your immediate block. It also gets you out from under the need to recruit a legion of unusually competent and incorruptible assessors to calculate fair market value on every property in the country.

      • This would give a lot of people a lot of incentive to change the borders of the census tracts.

        • Adam Casey says:

          So assuming we do something sensible like replacing “census tract” with some rigid thing based on lat/long, what do you conclude then?

          • Well it would still add some distortion[1], but at least it would be distortion that can’t be easily manipulated.

            [1] think of a village that is at the western edge of such a square, building a house at its western edge would end up in the next square thus it would have lower taxes than on its eastern edge. Basically there would be a incentive to build villages where 4 such squares meet.

          • Jason GL says:

            Emanuel, the distortion you mention sounds very benign to me. Compared to some of the downsides of other taxes — like unemployment, under-development, and reduced savings — it really doesn’t sound so bad to wind up with nice, evenly spaced villages at the intersection of latitude and longitude lines.

            From a policy point of view, is there any reason why we shouldn’t shift the entire tax burden (gradually) over to lat/long/pop-density based land taxes and Pigot-style pollution taxes?

          • Anonymous says:

            Every person that moves in next door to you adds to your tax bill? Sounds like a financial incentive for NIMBYism.

          • Jason GL says:

            On the margins, the financial incentive for NIMBYism should be trivial — if there’s 10,000 people in your district, and somebody wants to turn the 5-person single-family home across the street into a 15-person split-level townhouse, you’ll probably be much, much more concerned about whether you’ll like your new neighbors and whether the townhouse blocks your view of the creek than you would about an 0.1% increase in your tax rate.

            If somebody wants to upgrade the 5-person single-family home that’s ten blocks away from you, you’re unlikely to know about it or effectively coordinate with your distant neighbors to stop it.

            Alternatively, if somebody wants to radically change the entire character of your neighborhood, and build thousands of new units, you should expect to receive at least some benefit in the form of higher land values / better job opportunities / cheaper rents, and you can decide for yourself if the benefits outweigh the costs of a higher expected tax burden.

  73. Anon. says:

    The rewards on Numerai seem off by an order of magnitude for what they’re asking…

    • Deiseach says:

      I thought you should run a mile from anyone telling you they had a sure-fire system to win at cards, horse races, or the stock market and if you only fork over your life savings you’ll make a bundle. But what do I know about maths and high finance? I’m sure this time will be different from every other time! 🙂

      • ton says:

        You don’t need to give them any money to participate. Otherwise I don’t see what you mean.

        • Deiseach says:

          You don’t need to give them any money to participate. Otherwise I don’t see what you mean.

          Because sure-fire get rich quick schemes generally turn out not to be, except for the person who liberates the suckers from their money.

          I hasten to add that I am not at all saying Numerai are trying to con people, or that they are doing anything other than what they say: looking for computer models of certain aspects of the stockmarket which they then hope to use to guide investments so as to make a bundle.

          Maybe a crowdsourced semi-amateur effort will fix the problem of, as the linked article by Scott says, “because, you know, eventually they ALL blow-up”. So long as they’re not looking for anyone to throw money at them and all it costs is your time, there’s no loss.

          But I still wouldn’t be tempted by “my predictions are going so well, I should try a dabble in trading myself!”, just as a precautionary note.

          I don’t know: something is twinging my sense of being off about this, even though they’re using the predictions submitted to make actual real life trades and claim to be doing well. I think I’d like a bit more open evidence of “X’s prediction that shares in banana oil would rise so we traded those and here’s the proof” rather than telling financial reporters “yeah we’ve got pots of cash”.

          • ton says:

            That’s a problem for their investors, not you, as someone submitting predictions.

            >But I still wouldn’t be tempted by “my predictions are going so well, I should try a dabble in trading myself!”, just as a precautionary note.

            Nobody’s suggesting that afaict.

            Why do you care what evidence is public? Presumably their actual investors can see their data if they want to.

          • Deiseach says:

            Why do you care what evidence is public? Presumably their actual investors can see their data if they want to.

            True. It’s no skin off my nose. Why should I care? Only if I were going to take up the offer to be one of the volunteers (allegedly) creating their profitability, and I’m not.

            Public evidence would at least show that they are indeed using the submitted models, that those models are working ‘in the wild’, and that they are making the profits they claim to be making by using those models and those models alone. But that is just a personal quirk of mine, looking into the horse’s mouth.

          • Olivia says:

            The reason to use their thing instead of just doing the whole process yourself and making your own money is that their data is made into a format that’s clean. Data cleaning is most of any analysis, and their encoded data is very easy to just run predictive models on without fussing around with missing values and string data and time-series data. You’re doing a lot less work.

      • Jill says:

        Deiseach, I agree. I studied the stock market for a while and it’s the story of “a sucker born every minute and 2 out to get him.”

        There are all kinds of scams, where e.g. people have stocks their “system” told them were great. And you don’t have to give them any money. But they hope you will invest in their recoed stocks– which they have just bought before issuing the list to the public, and which they will then sell at a higher price, after advising everyone to buy them– known as a “pump and dump” scheme, where the public ends up holding the bag and it’s empty.

        Perhaps the scheme most guaranteed to lose money, is the one that the author really believes in. They tried 256, 874 different schemes and found one or two that would have made money over the past month or two. So they assume that it will make money in the future month or two. But, of course, it doesn’t. Because it just made money due to chance. If you test 256, 874 different schemes, a few will make money, just by random chance.

        Funds that have recently made good money are often piled into by new investors– after which the fund loses money.

        The problem with the stock market is that lots of people with extremely expensive computers are trying to predict it– and they are usually wrong too. And many, perhaps most, systems and people who make money in the market do so by chance or luck. So the “system” or the person is unlikely to keep winning for very long.

        People get their egos all worked up when they are successful. They think they understand the markets very well– until they lose their shirt. It’s called “confusing brains with a bull market.”

        The market is probably not possible to predict without insider non-public information.

        • Walter says:

          The market isn’t just complicated, it is anti inductive. If you uncover the sure fire strategy to become rich in the market, it will stop being that strategy once everyone uses it. Solving the market changes the solution.

        • eh says:

          The market is probably not possible to predict without insider non-public information.

          It seems like numerai are banking on what exactly “probably” means and on how fast the market overturns induction, in that they’re trying to take advantage of the gap between discovering a new strategy and exploiting it.

          • Jill says:

            Yeah. They won’t be the first to have failed at that.

            One of many problems here is that almost all new “strategies” succeed for only a little while and then only by chance, and so will not succeed in the future. It’s easy to feel like you know what you’re doing in the market and can do better than everyone else. But it turns out to be the Dunning Kruger effect.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

            And there are tons of market newsletters and software systems that claim to have come up with fail proof systems. But it’s all just marketing.

        • Chalid says:

          You don’t need insider information, you need *better* information, of which insider information is a subset.

          An example of better information – there is a company that takes satellite images of big box-store parking lots throughout the year. So if you see that Walmart parking lots are 80% full this year, and were only 55% full last year, you can infer that Walmart revenues are going to increase. If you are an investor and are willing to pay this satellite company for this information, you will have an edge over other investors in predicting Walmart stock’s behavior around its earnings announcement.

          Or think of news feeds – any news story is available to you, but a real-time feed of all news stories from multiple major sources, classified by ticker and event type, is the sort of thing that can give an institutional investor an edge over some guy just clicking “refresh” on the WSJ’s “markets” page.

          Or of course you can make more intelligent use of the same information as everyone else. This is pretty hard, as everyone points out, but a few people have managed to do it – the success of James Simons was not just luck for example.

          • It might be worth checking on whether companies without mission statements tend to perform a lot better.

            Meanwhile, I’ve learned *my* lesson. If I ever want to find a news story again, I should put it in my lj/dw.

          • YL says:

            That parking lot example is fascinating because everyone uses it and I’m not sure why that’s the one cool use of data that struck a cord with the public. It’s very clever and everyone loves it and now there are several newer hedge funds who like to sell the idea that they’re able to generate edge by taking these techniques and applying them mid-cap or EM companies or using them to analysis the synergy of mergers. It’s cool by why did this one clever idea make such an impact over others? Just interesting.

            Renaissance has looked at using social data – specifically the example I heard involved a use of twitter and weather (???) – but it doesn’t seem to be a major part of what they do at the moment. They do really really care about saving all instantaneous information that may be later updated for accuracy – so like early estimates or rumors basically, they like to save all of those since those are what the market is making some of its moment to moment decisions off of.

            But what I wanted to say originally is that little of what drives the volume of trades is not quant stuff like this – its not accurate or applicable enough for a large systematic fund to use as a primary strategy. The people doing the satellite stuff are your standard l/s equity funds. James Simons started off using price data and is honestly still mostly using price data like everyone else since it’s still the most predictive data that we have.

          • Deiseach says:

            Why is the parking lot more full this date today than this date last year is the first question I’d ask.

            Are Walmart running a big sale that day? Can people get the new widescreen HD TV was $850 now reduced to $500 for today only? Will those shoppers be there tomorrow or next week?

            Certainly if you take that data and extrapolate that this quarter’s earnings announcement is going to show an increase and buy (or sell) stock at the opportune moment, you’ll make a profit.

            But if you’re assuming that Walmart is going to have 80% full car parks all this year, and hence higher earnings for all four quarters, I don’t see that you can assume that on a satellite photo alone. You’d need to see a series of photos over time to make sure that that particular day was not a fluke high volume custom day (maybe the Walmart car park was full not of Walmart shoppers but people parking there because the store next door in the mall was having a huge sale, or Justin Bieber was making a guest appearance, or something).

          • Chalid says:

            @YL

            As I understand it, 10 years ago just having high-quality “traditional” datasets was enough to give you “better” information. It still is, but not nearly so much.

            I didn’t know that the parking lot idea was particularly well known. Other “alternative data” things I’ve seen are cell phone location data, facebook likes, various types of analysis of twitter, web traffic, debit card transactions, TV and radio ad records, hospital billings, and forensic analysis of CEO voice and facial expressions.

            Alternative data is getting bigger. And traditional quant strategies that *don’t* use alternative data have been getting less and less profitable over time, so quant funds are kind of being pushed towards increasing use of this stuff. No individual alternative data source is going to be a fund’s primary strategy, of course – you have to diversify your strategies.

            @Deiseach As I understand it they take photos every day of the year, at about the same time of day (to the extent that the orbital mechanics are compatible with that), except on cloudy days. It’s up to the stock picker to disentangle the effect of special fluke events and compensate for the variations in time and the like.

        • “The market is probably not possible to predict without insider non-public information.”

          Probably true, but “insider non-public information” can simply mean understanding something relevant to the future price of a stock that most people don’t understand.

          Back when I was considering buying the original Macintosh, one of my colleagues at Tulane Business School asked me why I didn’t get a PC junior instead. It occurred to me that the mistake he was making was likely to be very common among investors, who at that point were unlikely to know anything about graphic interfaces or the significance of using a Motorola 68000 CPU in a single user computer, so I bought Apple stock.

    • Chalid says:

      if you’re a guy at home with no special credentials or industry experience, a statistical model of the stock market that, say, predicts stock movements a few percent better than chance is hardly worth anything to you. You need to invest at a large scale to justify the fixed costs involved in actually trading. People don’t appreciate that data is *expensive.* We don’t know what the “features” in in the Numerai data are, but individual data sets for quant funds can run $250k/year or more, and you need more than one of those to get anywhere. Some strategies will need additional costs – e.g. collocated servers.

      So it looks like Numerai does the marketing needed to convince investors to give them a few hundred million dollars, and also sets up trade execution systems and data feeds, creates data cleaning processes, negotiates with data vendors, deals with risk management, legal issues, etc. If you’re some underemployed machine learning specialist who developed a stock-picking model in your spare time, you probably have little ability to do any of that, so taking Numerai’s $5k might very well be the right call.

      • Alex says:

        It bothers me, however, that (generic) you get to develop a model that is useless without “the code”, i. e. you cannot use your model to enter the market yourself because even if you could front the neccessary capital and had the untransformed data, you’d had to transform the data first to be used with your model and this you can’t do.

        This is advertised as “you keep the intellectual property of your model” omitting “which is useful to us and only to us” and implying “we will not pay for the model itself”.

        Also, realistically, “taking Numerai’s $5k” buys maybe 50h of time für the task. If you actually produce a winning entry in that time, that is. If not, you are dollar-auctioning with yourself (put in the additional hour to legitimize the previous hours). IMO there are better gambles to be made in the actual stock market.

      • Deiseach says:

        But will you make $5K? Their top guy so far has done, but $2k of that is for “originality” and their payout rules seem a bit complicated:

        Payouts
        The leaderboard will change frequently as new predictions are uploaded, so payouts will change too. To receive payment, you need to have placed in the top 25 of leaderboard when the timer runs out or you have originality. The final positions will be determined on the 67% held out set. If your model has overfit the leaderboard, you might place significantly worse on the final 67%. If you place in the top 25, you need apply your model to a new live dataset to claim your prize. Remember to store your most recent model in case you win. If you win, we will email you a link to a live encrypted dataset to predict on when the timer runs out. You’ll have 24 hours to use your model to predict on this dataset. By requiring that you upload predictions, instead of the code related to your model, we ensure that you can retain all intellectual property rights to your model. You never have to tell us how you built your model. It’s yours forever, and you can apply your ideas to all of our subsequent tournaments.

        So not alone do you need to place in the top 25, you then have to apply your model to a new dataset, and they don’t actually specify what the prize money is likely to be.

        And going down the leaderboard, some of the “winners” made as little as $69. The top two made what I’d consider reasonable money making this worth your time; the third placed didn’t even break $1k. If you’re really interested in the challenge and not bothered about the money, it’s worth doing, but given that Numerai claim to be real-world trading and paying out to their investors based on the models, this strikes me as a bit stingy, to be honest:

        Numerai (pronounced noo-mer-i) is the raddest hedge fund in the world. It’s a platform for artificial intelligence to access capital markets. Numerai lets users build models on homomorphically encrypted data and connect their artificial intelligence back to the API which commands the capital in the hedge fund. The best intelligences are assigned fund profits. Numerai Fund 1 LP began trading in November 2015.

        “Raddest”? Grownup people use this kind of lingo in serious business proposals? Well, it must be because I’m not Californian – or that I am old, Father William – that it strikes me as de trop! 🙂

  74. R Flaum says:

    Aristotle, On Trolling:

    That trolling is a shameful thing, and that no one of sense would accept to be called “troll,” are agreed; but what trolling is, and how many its species are, and whether there is an excellence of the troll, is unclear….

    • Mary says:

      Go read, everyone. The whole thing is wonderful.

    • Outis says:

      And none of these is the troll, or perhaps some are of a mixed type; for there is no art in what they do.

      But it is not really an art, being without any function; and it belongs not to the serious person to be a troll but to the one who lacks education.

      So is trolling a art or not?

    • Nita says:

      More quotes:

      And this is how the troll generates strife. For what he indicates is known to be false or harmful or ignorant; but he does not say that thing, but rather something close. In this way he retains the possibility of denial, and the skilled troll is always surprised and hurt, or seems to be, when the others take his comments up.

      And so he sets the community apart from each other, and introduces strife where before there was scarcely disagreement. For each person who takes up what was said grasps only a part of it, and insists on that, and is annoyed when others affirm something different. For some indeed see that the troll trolls, and are harsh; but others think that they ought to be more gentle, and others again do not even see the falsity, but grasp the truth which is nearby and insist that the troll ‘has a decent point’.

      One might wonder whether there is an art of trolling and an excellence; and indeed some say that Socrates was a troll, and so that the good man also trolls. And this is in fact what the troll claims: that he is a gadfly and beneficial, and without him to ‘stir up’ the thread it would become dull and unintelligent.

      But this is incorrect. For Socrates was speaking frankly when he told the Athenians to care for their souls, rather than money and honors, and showed that they lacked knowledge. And this is not trolling but the contrary, exhortation and truth-telling—even if the citizens get very annoyed. For annoyance results from many kinds of speech; and the peculiarity [idion] of the troll is not annoyance or controversy in general, but confusion and strife among a community who really agree.

      • Anonymous says:

        I don’t understand… Wouldn’t confusion and strife be an inevitable (And desirable) consequence from educating people to “Care for their souls” and all that? Not everybody in that community is going to grok the “troll” and upgrade their values and beliefs. Maybe they are even right to do so because the “troll” is wrong despite good intentions.

        This whole article is bad imho, it could be summarized as:

        “Trolls are identified or romanticized retroactively depending on whether I end up agreeing with them or not, and most importantly, everybody who goes against Holy Truth is obviously a troll. Seriously don’t listen to them, failure to grok the Holy Truth equals dishonesty.”

        I agree with the author on what a troll actually is but there are much more better ways to deal with the issue. The comments policy in this blog is a good example.

    • onyomi says:

      The classification of the presidents doesn’t reveal much about the policies, but sure seems to reflect strongly on personal style.