Senior Scientist at GNS Science (New Zealand equivalent of USGS more or less). Programmer, modeller, dabbling in physics, geology, geophysics. Back-roomer and like it that way.
Phil Scadden
As far as know, you are correct. You need to live or work here. The millions of spare dollars option has become politically more difficult after Thiel got citizenship. I would also say that mostly law applies in-country but various tax, finance provisions etc apply to permanent residents even if not resident. Similar provision apply in UK so I suspect these are pretty common.
It is possible for employers here to make a case to bring in essential workers from overseas, but the bar is very high. While the isolation facilities are being besieged by citizens trying to return, I doubt there will be any change.
I think the worst way to have a political discussion is to discuss the actions or proposed actions of any political actor. Politics exists because we need collective solutions to particular problems, so I think the best way to approach politics is discuss a particular problem that needs a political solution. As always, best to discuss the nature of the problem in detail before thinking about an solutions and gentling re-routing any solution-type discussion back to the problem. Solutions need discussion of consequences first and foremost. Pushing discussions towards those in the best way to get any value at all out of your time. We recently had referendums on legalising dope and euthanasia and I thought some of the material presented for discussion by electoral commission was exemplary.
Inevitably though, peoples judgement on the pros and cons of various consequences is going to be based on their values. I’ve seen some evidence that this might be partly genetic. I seriously doubt any discussion will change a persons internal value system (what they would instinctively judge good/bad before any reason cut in), but discussion can/will shape how a law is framed. Ie, don’t even bother trying to change someone from Right to Left or vice-versa, focus on effective solution for a problem that doesn’t offend their values or yours instead.
It would be a pretty quiet house here if we couldn’t discuss politics. I should admit that I am in part of world where I think political tribal divisions are still not too bad—in a small country, it is hard for media to survive at all, so outlets do not want to alienate audience by showing any obvious political bias. Global media however is having an unwelcome influence.
Just found this and I have question and comment.
Q. Here (NZ), local body elections are usually STV for both mayor and councillors. It was seen as a way to get around vote-splitting leading to an unfavoured winner largely. There is always idle tea-time discussions about strategic voting without anyone getting sufficient interested to really analyse it. Your comment about it strategic voting in preference system revived my curiousity. How do you game an STV system? The best we could manage is that it seem best to rank all the candidates, rather than just ranking the ones you want to win.
And comment on how to get away from FPTP. NZ moved to MMP in mid 90s. It happened via two referenda. The first was simple question about retain FPTP or change system, and a second question asking for preference among various proportial systems. There was overwhelming support for change and MMP won the preference. A second referendum was stark choice between MMP (with all the parameters defined) and FPTP.
Doing the move this way, allowed for a vote for change away from FPTP BEFORE having to make decision on what to change to, with option of changing your mind at second referendum if you hated the proposed replacement. Those fighting for reform are not splitting their vote around different systems until a decision to ditch FPTP is made. It should be said that public had appetite for change but neither major party did.
I think MMP won the proportional preference because people wanted local representation. I believe the change achieved it’s goal but strategic voting in almost the norm and we occasionally have the tail wagging the dog (which usually results in electoral punishment for offender but some parties are slow learners—well one in particular). With no upper house and only the Queen’s representative with reserve powers, MMP has worked a brake on parlimentary power.
Thanks for this (and love the cards—a brake on just skimming it). So I am goofing off reading LessWrong when I should be working. Furthermore, completing the current job will make it possible to do more exciting things and please my colleagues. Why am I goofing off and reading an article on self-control of all things? I got a useful insight though. The priority one job is QC of a dataset. It is intense, boring, but too complex, too important to delegate. I diagnose Depletion of Energy and thus deserve a break! Nice rationalisation. Thanks very much. Now back to work...
Fascinating question as what advice I would give my high school self if I could. “Dont be such a prat” would be good start. Listen much more than talk, figure out how people work without trying to change them. Try lots of things (safely) and have fun. Be an agent for good things. Read everything (not advice I needed). Dont wait till uni before trying to change the world. Dont be afraid to fail, just learn from it. Master calculus as fast as you can and then learn the science properly instead of way curriculum prescribes. Master some form of coding. Find some physical activity that you really like (with the old dictum of “if you cant do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly”).
Those reviews are very helpful, but looking at “Derek” comments in the Cochrane blog, it is not at all clear whether these are critiques of MMT or critiques of Kelton ( or more specifically what Kelton believes that governments can do given that MMT is an accurate representation).
I am also very suspicious of how this would work within a democratic system. Many countries do not let governments set interest rates—that is the role of the independent central bank to control inflation. I would feel happier about governments printing money if the central bank was also dictating the level of taxation (the amount of money to be destroyed but not how that tax is distributed).
I would say our engineering workshop is staffed by inventors. We need people to invent solutions to problems—they do it, usually in collaboration with the scientist that has a problem. I think this is a pretty common setup although not the model for lone inventor producing killer product that is patented and sold. I rather liked their solution for remote camera lens cleaner - (drone with super soaker. No public video sorry).
“feel rejuvenated after having done”?? About the only thing that I can of is “sleep”. Is that my advancing years?
Perhaps I am too cynical here, but the first step towards a peace plan has to be desire for peace. It seems to me that Netanyahu needs arab aggression to stay in power (and stay out of jail), while Hamas needs Israeli aggression to retain support for violent resistance. Until that changes, well good luck. There is an old comment about the prayer for the “Peace of Jerusalem” by Meron Benverish, “You can have peace or you can have Jerusalem.” I dont see that changing in my lifetime.
I suspect that is asking too much of the religiously zealous. A Buddist country with oversight of an internationalised quarter seems more likely to fly.
After reading Amos Elon’s “Jerusalem—City of Mirror” (good book for anyone wondering why this is so hard), I thought the best we could hope for would be a meteor strike cratering the whole of the temple mount for starters.
To understand the danger, think of the geopolitical implications of 4th temple nutters blowing up everything in the Al-Aqsa compound ( a serious proposition).
This was a fascinating post, but I found a surprising statement in the introduction:
“who are shy about telling us when their peers’ work is completely wrong.”
This runs deeply against my experience. I would say writing a paper gleefully proving your peers wrong is second only to writing a paper with an important new discovery in terms of academic satisfaction. In the middle of one controversy a colleague claimed (or maybe quoted) “Every paper published is a shot fired in a war”.
This is obviously running counter to your experience and I wonder how you came to that conclusion? Are we talking about well-cited papers that are “completely wrong”—or just that newer papers have effectively replaced them in the corpus.
Comment on “paper x” to my mind is the usual vehicle for complaining about faulty methods and poor statistical analysis. Since journals that accept comments tend to give a right of reply, review can be pretty light.
I would agree though that commenting on flaws like this is not as satisfying (mostly) as proper paper where an alternative hypothesis is promoted and opponents flaws lightly commented on. It is still a lot of work to comment and not a lot of point unless driving new science other than ego-tripping.
However, my original point remains—I don’t think researchers are remotely shy about criticizing the work of their peers.
One more primary failure: Containment.
Thesis: Preventing travel (get the planes out of the air) from infected areas would contain the virus. Individual countries (including China), showed that virus could be controlled eliminated, if infections were not imported.Antithesis: It costs too much, kills the tourist/travel industry; I want to travel; Restrictions on freedom are evil..
Well once it took hold, the restrictions happened anyway. Doing it early would dramatically reduced cost. If the symptoms had been as alarming as say Ebola, then I think early action would have been easier. “Coronavirus = cold” was all too common—maybe it should have been called SARS immediately?
I had similar thought, but then most of the languages I use don’t support matrix operations directly in the language anyway. Great believer in “tried and true” numerical analysis libraries though.
I think you should be looking more at question of dilution of power. Concentrating power is hands of a one or handful of people makes the system very dependent on the person holding that power. I would propose republics/nominal monarchies with head of state only having reserve powers, are more stable and produce better government than hands-on head-of-states.
Just because a country has been under a monarchy for a very long time, doesnt mean that it was “stable”. Look for “dynastic change” in the line. Often rather violent, but one way to get rid of a bad/unpopular ruler. Republics makes it easier to dump the head of state without violence so that is improvement.
I value the diluted power of parlimentary democracies, with the select committees and multiple reading of bills, but I would struggle to find empirical data to support that. How do you define “politcal performance” or “leader competence” in measurable ways? How do you evaluate the quality of political decisions? How a country performs economically or militarily is dependent of a myriad of factors (including luck), many outside the control of the government. Governments will claim credit for whatever went well, and drop shoulders on anything that didnt—how do you objectivity assess those claims? Eg how much of the USA current position due to good governance or how much due to being a resource-rich country colonised at time when industrial revolution was able to exploit those resources?
Learning a lot from this discussion, thank you. I am in agreement with idea that viability of UBI depends on people who are currently working more or less continuing to work. If everyone stopped working, then obviously UBI (and civilization) fails. In fact, you need a large proportion (dependent on level of UBI) to keep working and paying taxes, otherwise UBI consumption simply fires inflation. On the other hand, everyone who does work has more spending power than those who don’t so it seems to me there is powerful incentive to work. I can see that people might use it to reduce work hours, but given experiments on 4 day week, I dont think that would necessarily reduce productivity in many industries.
I cant see a way to determine by reason alone that UBI will be successful without actually running trials over long period to assess response.
NSW should have gone into hard lockdown (NZ style) as soon as the superspreader event was discovered. Qld, Vic and WA went early and eliminated quickly. Delaying lockdowns and doing them half-heartedly just means they gone on for longer and longer, doing far more economic damage than a short, sharp lockdown. It is very depressing to hear that large nos of new cases have been out and about community while infectious.
There is a tricky free speech issue around deliberately lying. At the moment, you can construct a major lie and publish as widely as you like without consequence provided it is not defamation. Note that I am not talking about propogating someone elses lie that you believe to be true. If I look at Fact checkers, I see some monstrous stuff that is plainly a deliberate creation. Someone’s belief that vaccines are bad, means they feel at liberty to make up crap to support their viewpoint (for instance). I’d like to see a consequence very much like defamation laws that could be applied to malicious lies that demonstably inflict harm (with the same kind of levels of proof that apply to defamation). Deliberate lies are risk to intelligent public discourse.
The essence of free speech is the ability to criticize government members and policy without fear of reprisal. It does not give the right to defame government members (at least here in NZ). Nor should making up lies about government policy be allowed as free speech.
I think it is civil proceedings just like defamation. The defense against “making stuff” up obviously is your source.
Writing from NZ. We have friends from US who worked here for 10 years (got permanent residency) before returning to the US in 2018. Because the husband has a significant respiratory complaint, he was very vunerable to Covid, but thanks to permanent residency, they were able to return here, do their 2 weeks in managed isolation facility and are staying here till safe.
I would note that permanent residency makes you subject to local laws as well, at least here. A colleague from US who now has NZ partner was surprized to discover that the law here would regard them as married as far as the Marital Property act. Not a problem for her but not hard to imagine situations where that might be a nasty shock. On the plus side, permanent residents get full voting rights. NZ is cool with dual citizenship which our Iranian neighbours are thankful for. Much easier to travel on a NZ passport.
Of course, no chance of getting into NZ nor I suspect Australia at the moment. Even citizens in long queue with Managed Isolation booked out till June.