You might try reaching out to Alex Tabarrok over at Marginal Revolutions. Econ professor that writes (or at least blogs) a fair amount about healthcare and healthcare policies and regulatory actions.
jmh
Karma: 1,641
The political parallel in the USA to what you are describing may be of some interested to you if you’re not already looking or aware. Depending on who one speaks to or reads the US Civil War was either all about slavery or not really about it at all. I suspect those are the political endpoints and it’s hard to claim that the war and the issue of slavery were somehow completely unrelated and completely independent of one another. But, I think it was from of the Confederate political discourse where a number of the Southern States held the position that if the secession had been about slavery they would have preferred giving up their slaves rather than go to war. Only 4 of the Southern States were large plantation states that depended on slaves for their agricultural production work—and I think that was even more concentrated into a small number or plantation owners rather than a large portion of the State’s population. Most of the other States, and slave owners, only had a few slaves that were largely more like household servants (and to some extent tenant farmers).
So the issue of slavery and abolition was similar in that it was about a small special interest group that was driving the the politics about preserving slavery rather than a large wide spread social institution (that probably is too strong as it was wide spread but the dependency on slavery was not).
I’m interested in another aspect of your research here. What was the position of the abolitions in the UK regarding indentured service? I don’t know that history so don’t even know if that had been abolished already but in the USA for a lot of the smaller slave owners their slaves were much more like indentured servants, could and did earn some money on the side (when the owner was not being a complete jerk about things) and some even bought their freedom that way. Now, some of the owners took actions to make that effectively impossible for the slave even to the extent of violating the laws governing slavery. But I’ve also heard some horror history that similar treatment occurred for some of the indentured servants in the UK where the family they were indentured to did similar things. So wondering if the abolitionist movement was fighting a similar battle there and if that the industry of indenture didn’t have some similar political economic characteristics of concentrated special interests competing for political support?
It’s beneficial for A and B to engage in mutual trade of goods and services. If A and B would not have traded unless C was involved, and C takes a 20% cut yet A and B still want to trade despite that, then C is probably an economic good. Introducing buyers to sellers (and vice versa) is a whole job in modern economies after all.
I find the phrasing of C as an economic good a bit odd. I suspect economists would refer to C as and entrepreneur acting to move the allocation of resources towards equilibrium of some unmentioned economic good or resource. I think C would be better viewed as acting in some type of economic role rather than as some economic good. Is there something in your thinking I am missing that makes it better to describe C as an economic good that is somehow taking a 20% cut of the value of the exchange between A and B?
Curious as to why China will take longer than the USA. Is the thinking there that China is already behind so could gain a bit of ground before they need to take action (basically a scenario Katja is arguing against) or something else?
I’ve enjoyed the post and think the closing advise is really good. As I read I was reminded of a neighbor of mine 10+ years ago who said pretty much the same thing about his job as you have. Also some old sayings like “The expert is the person that can answer one more question than anyone else in the room.” and “right time, right place”.
We don’t live in an optimized world, its messy, flexible, dynamic and because of those pretty robust. I don’t think I would like living in a truly optimized world.
BTW, having read PHM I didn’t find the “spoiler” all that spoiling in the sense that if I read the book after reading this I would have felt cheated about something about the story.
Quite true, but doesn’t that suggest one question even using the word naive(ly)? In what sense is it adding value to the exchange? If the point is why someone is missing/ignoring X and Y then perhaps it’s important. But if the exchange is about why and how X and Y matter using that terms seems like it runs a risk of derailing the constructive input.
[For clarity, this is best seen as directed and the exchange rather than just Zack’s post.]
I wonder if the starting point of apologies are an acknowledgement of harm is correct. I suspect a more accurate statement is that apologies are sometimes such an acknowledgement but other times are doing something quite different. Similarly, I wonder why it seems the idea of accepting some apology implies or requires forgiveness/absolution.
I’m also curious what the authors’ views might be if we flip the situation. Forget “I’m sorry.” and replace that with “Thank you.”. Is there some symmetry? Should there be? The argument, as I understood them, suggest symmetry might be implied and if so do all the arguments still make sense?
I think human intelligence and history might suggest that is incorrect, turning up the compassion and turning down selfish. I agree it is a really complicated area. I’d point to things from economics (Mandeville, Smith and others) and recognition of things like the saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.
Perhaps we’ve not tried but we don’t seem to channel at a social level our compassions as well as we do out selfish interests. It’s not the driver of the incentives it seems to me but the environment and institutional structures that are mediating the interactions. But even if our social institutions that mediate our interactions in beneficial ways worked well for our compassionate impulses I’m not sure they work well for AI as that seems to be more of a monolithic entity that a real composite of individuals as human society is.
I know this is a quick take but I think perhaps too quick. I suggest first clarifying just what you aim at with the term religion. Are we talking about the organized religions and all their canon or a general belief and faith in some supernatural entity?
first that its claims are completely and utterly false; obviously the christian god doesn’t literally exist, jesus never came back from the dead, etc.
seems a very strong claim. There are modern cases of dead but return to life. The point here is about what technology is available to establish death and recovery. Not so say there is a case to be made that dead three days and then alive is not an extreme claim and deserving of skepticism. But is that an issue for those with faith or orthodox religion or a case of historical inaccuracy?
I also find the concept of truth rather complicate in this area. Can er really know the truth about something that is suppose to exist outside our universe and its laws?
I see you posted in a reaction to some readings. Just curious, have you ever seen “The Hogfather”? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett%27s_Hogfather). It’s a pretty quirky movie but one of the lines has always stuck with me and it seems very related to your post. It is actually a something of a retelling of some type of Christmas story, the Hogfather is basically Santa Claus. At the end Death (the character) says “If they cannot believe the little lies, how can they ever believe the bit lies?” The point being that perhaps a lot of what we see as moral and right is just BS but very valuable both socially and individually.
Doesn’t the same general way work—at least for charging at a station. I suppose a similar approach could be used for home charging by requiring the hook-up to have some meter applied and then report consumption by the meter—or add the tax to the electric bill for collection.
But yes, it is a bit of a different setting for collecting tax revenues for electric vehicles. But might also just be one of the add-on fees public utilities already add to my bill to cover the infrastructure build and maintenance costs.
I was thinking in terms of what we’re thinking the numbers mean I suppose. Probabilities seem to imply some underlying fact of the population or process that we can (or are assumed to) know. The likelihood is more about putting numbers or weights on things in a way it’s consistent with what we observer. As you say, there is some proportionality between them.
Of course they are difference and it would not make much sense to just replace the label while leaving the underlying “thing” the same. But given the concerns about probability I wondered if a shift in thinking from p(x) (or p(x|B) ) to L(x) might help with some of the difficulties the OP sees.
I wonder if changing the terminology from probability to likelihood would help a bit?
If the problem is purely grip strength then the observed results should be that when women try opening the jar their hand slip before the cap starts turning. Is that the case? Not sure myself.
For example, I suspect many more women moisturize their hands than men. That is going to change the adhesion of skin to cap producing the “grip” to turn the cap. (Here the analogy might be comparing tire compounds for long lasting tires and performance tires and cornering speeds of the same car on a test track.) What might happen when that is controlled for—assuming the view is correct?
Another thing no one has mentioned is hand size. I definitely notice a difference when opening jars of different sizes. Would be interesting to see if ratio of diameter of cap to span of hand is well correlated to ability to open a jar independent of some standardized measure of grip strength.
Both have very recognizeable verbal tics. Gemini likes the word “exact,” like “this is the exact right blah blah blah.” Claude likes the words “genuine,” “honestly,” “worth,” “real.” They each have their own distinctive approaches to human diplomacy, trying to “gently” deliver critical feedback and so on.
I think you can add ChatGPT to that as well. I get that type of response frequently when posing some questions and generally when posing a follow-up question.
To prevent food spoilage, companies that manufacture products not only want to prevent containers leaking or opening but want to prevent bacteria going into the products.
It’s actually a pretty old home production technique too, and I agree it has little to do with keeping the jar from accidentally opening or content spilling out. I suspect the vacuum itself is more by-product than intentional design.
Which seem to get to the core of the issue here. Is the situation really gender related or targeted? I don’t know if some of the comment about it being about pushing some pro-masculine conspiracy are really jokes or serious comment. Hopefully the former. I suspect the resulting challenges for many women, like the vacuum itself, is something of a by-product and may well be unavoidable if one wants to have the content stay good while stored.
I think the question here might come down to using the right tools, rather than suggesting the manufacture solve the problem.
Just curious, as many comment seem to be focused on vacuum being the source the force required to open, is this about first time you open a jar or that or times where someone else has closed the jar and you then want it open?
Quick additional question, but data might be scarce, have you considered looking at the grip profiles for left and right handed people for open the standard jar? Hand position is different and I’m honestly unsure if the structure of the wrist is such that twist strength is symmetric.
And while it seems to be getting better (soft take here as I am not left-handed) but used to be the case that the world really punished left-handed people. If necessity is the mother of invention I somewhat wonder if that doesn’t explain part of the the (old) perception that left-handed people are smarter than others.
In many cases you can also just hold the jar upside down and hit it with the heel of the palm of your other hand.
There are also band wrenches made specifically for opening jar which provide a nice level to increase the torque force when someone wants to open something with a twist off lid (not recommending this but you could probably use an oil filter band type wrench).
Thanks.
If I think I’m a BB then I should not be very confident in 2+2=4 or that JenniferRM is connected to a human or even is an account on LW. All my memories and thinking (and quite likely any sensory input) is fake so disconnected from any external territory.
If I assume I’m simulated then it’s more complex.
I don’t think I am either, so I am quite comfortable with 2+2=4 and, since I think I can trust my senses, I can even verify that claim with my fingers and counting. These days I would have to question the JenniferRM is actually human and not some modern LLM that is fooling me a bit more. But, as you note, I do have some history to fall back on that precedes the more advanced LLM that can fool me and could be posting so still have a strong sense you’re not one. But, yes, your point stands, I would trust the math more than the account. But that is possible, for me, just because I don’t see myself as a BB or simulation.
As for the “we”, that was probably sloppy on my part. I tend to interpret claims of being a simulation to mean we’re all in one, not that the speaker considers they are (or might be) one. I should change that view.
Yes, for some of the states the immediate cause was Lincoln but for others they did not succeed until Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to subpress the rebellion—and did so it seems to avoid having to provide troops.
My point about all about or little/not about slavery has to do with the separating that out of all the other inter-State politics and political economy going on. Some what to make it the central source which doesn’t seem fully supported.
I wish I could recall the source for the claim that many (most? could have been wrong on that) would not have fought a war just for keeping Slavery but alas cannot. I think the “serios historians” seem to be a kind of shady trick to disqualify historians that might cast things is a different light. Here’s a link to one that suggests it wasn’t all about slavery, or even primarily about slavery. I think the quote from Woodrow Wilson might be worth considering.