fighterpilot

6 ms·

1.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
There was a miscommunication. I meant that one of the biggest differences between Democrats and Republicans is the level of tertiary education, and this gulf has been widening over the last 20 years. Scott Alexander has written on this demo
2.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
That's really interesting. I would think that growing polarization specifically around education has something to do with the acceleration of conspiracy acceptance on the right that you've described.
3.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
Yes, there's a niche part of the left - the new age/hippie types, very high in openness and very low in conscientiousness - that is profoundly anti-science (or perhaps just ignorant of it). They tend to buy into woo-woo of all sor
4.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
Can you share that hypothesis? You are obviously contributing to this thread in a balanced way and in good faith and I really want to hear it. I know two anti-vaxxers. One is not political at all but isn't that smart. Very nice and gen
5.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
Unconvincing. The author ignores the most egregious examples of cancel culture in order to argue their case. See: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin... https://www.v
6.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
The left has its fair share of growing anti-science sentiment. I agree it's quite a bit worse with Republicans but it is growing in both directions, which is a concern. People pick their science a la carte as long as it confirms what t
7.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
Is there a privacy/surveillance aspect to the argument? Or is the data that the IRS will collect the same either way?
8.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
Do private tax prep companies have an argument they advance about why automatic filing is a bad idea? Or is it just pure behind scenes lobbying?
9.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
Surprised I need to spell out what should be the obvious to an educated crowd, but intelligence is a spectrum with gradations of smart and gradations of stupid. The 90th percentile learns much faster than the 10th percentile and mixing them
10.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
Your argument is that the cost and side effects don't matter, the war on drugs must be won no matter what. You hand wave away the negative consequences (illegal immigration can be magically dealt with with better enforcement!). If that
11.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
You're arguing that tests for intellectual ability aren't perfect, and they're therefore useless. This is a bad argument.
12.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
The only part of that which is dumb is the ill-advised label, which can easily be changed. Everything else makes sense. Borderline intellectually disabled people and Terence Tao-level prodigies should not be in the same class. That is t
13.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
It's terrible branding because it makes other parents jealous and then this happens.
14.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
This is the Handicapper General playing out in real life. Stunning to see the social consequences of seething jealousy manifest politically. I will be a big supporter of the right to private education going forward, there needs to be a back
15.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
Ok, you are not a hypocrite, but I still think it's objectively bad policy from a cost-benefit standpoint, and it's bad from every political perspective. Four arguments that might move a right-leaning person: - The drug war is ind
16.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
Opportunity cost of tax revenue. "Why should everything be taxed be default?" The opportunity cost point was the least important in that list. If you don't want to tax it, that's fine with me.
17.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
Ok but what is the tail risk here. Can you outline a series of causal steps where a molten salt reactor will cause more than 100,000 to 500,000 deaths? If you're just saying that perhaps maybe there will be 2,000 deaths, well that&#x
18.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
Drug gangs destroying South America, tens of thousands dying due to Fentanyl-laced pills, lost tax revenue, huge taxpayer expense, petty crime used to fund overpriced drugs, are all signficiantly worse things than what you are afraid of. I
19.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
You don't need to be able to discriminate well, you just need a small non-consensus signal that may not even be perceptible to humans. But you're right to be sceptical. Hedge funds are largely a sales job. How can you convince gul
20.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
It's not really free when I'm paying via advertising revenue. It's just indirect payment. I don't see a fundamental difference between paying $20/year and contributing $20/year in ad revenue. Anyway the laws I
21.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
We need strong consumer protection laws and a body that can issue large fines in response to violations. The stick is the only thing that's going to cause change. It is not acceptable, for example, that Google is allowed to ruin someon
22.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
Yep got locked out of Google for no reason and it was impossible to get in touch with a human. Extremely rage-inducing. There needs to be far better consumer protection on a government level with big tech (mostly Google and Twitter/FB,
23.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
What did it look like before 1950?
24.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
What do economists think about this explanation?
25.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
Let's take a step back. What about molten salt reactors? I feel like it is a mistake to think future nuclear reactors have the same safety profile as old ones when thinking about tail risks.
26.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
Not all value add is compensated, that's the concept of positive externality, and it's a market failure. If we want to get really precise, we can say that people give other people money for any number of subjective reasons, but th
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by fighterpilot 5y ago
That's why I said I could go on about why it's not perfect. I admit there's downsides, but I still view it as a great thing on net, due to the general tendency to align incentives with value provision.
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by fighterpilot 5y ago
In a free-market system, merit is defined by your peers. If you can add unique subjective value to them, they will give you money in return for that unique subjective value add. That's by and large a great thing, because it means that
29.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
> This is basically the the same logical errer again It's not necessarily a logical error. Extreme value theory should be the default tool for understanding tail risks (e.g. earthquake magnitude), unless we have good theoretical&#x
30.
by fighterpilot 5y ago
Your point is that there is a long tail risk which exists which might not show up in the historical data. I think this is wrong because Chernobyl is that tail risk and it is already inside the data, and moreover the odds of that tail risk h

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