TimS

Karma: 6,398

TimS Jan 30, 2016, 5:07 PM
0 points
in reply to: bogus’s comment on: Rationality Quotes Thread January 2016
It’s a controversial position that natural rights are what the Constitution protects, even among legal scholars who think the Constitution should be interpreted according to original public meaning (most “originalists”).

TimS Jan 30, 2016, 5:05 PM
0 points
in reply to: Zack_M_Davis’s comment on: Rationality Quotes Thread January 2016
So, the 14th Amendment protects “privileges or immunities.” There’s some of historical evidence of what those might include. But in the Slaughterhouse cases, the Supreme Court drained the phrase of any legal significance. There are many legal scholars across the political spectrum who think the Slaughterhouse cases are inconsistent with original public meaning.

Those scholars who think Obergefell, Roe, and such are consistent with original public meaning tend to say that “substantive” due process should be understood as code for “privileges or immunities.”

TimS Jan 27, 2016, 3:20 PM
3 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Rationality Quotes Thread January 2016

That would be reasonable to note if he wrote many majority opinions, played a large role in changing the others’ opinions (of course, then he’d look less ‘extreme’ if he was contributing behind the scenes, wouldn’t he?), or in any way was not a ghost who could be replaced by his clerks with no one the wiser.

You are repeating a Democratic Party talking point as fact. A particularly stupid talking point. One of the reasons I used Thomas as an example is to try to push against this stupid assertion by those who are otherwise my political allies.

In point of fact, Thomas writes about ¹⁄₉ of the Supreme Court opinions and deals with about ¹⁄₉ of the other legal work (motions, etc), as would be expected of a body with nine members. I can’t speak to behind-the-scenes influence. As a lawyer, I don’t think any of the current Justices has historically notable intellectual influence except Scalia (Rehnquist also was unusually influential, by he is no longer on the court).

Speaking of which, neither Rehnquist nor Scalia are outside the mainstream of American legal thought. Their legal theories are notably on the conservative side, but well within the current Overton window of legal thought. To say Rehnquist and Scalia are as extreme as Thomas is another Democratic Party talking point.

I can only point to my professional work as an attorney for special education students to give you a sense of my experience with what an 80 IQ student is like.

That’s not an answer to any of my other questions. Why do you think your limited, bubble-filled experience is good evidence for overriding a century of carefully constructed tests drawing on millions of nationally representative people and exhaustively vetted for bias as documented in books like Jensen’s Bias in Mental Testing?

(Even if we granted your special ed beliefs accurate status, although I don’t know about that either—I too was a special ed kid, but any lawyer who spent some time with me as my family fought the school district would not have had a representative impression of special ed kids, both because I was unrepresentative (and that’s why I was mainstreamed), and because the long cumulative day to day interactions are different from occasional interactions. My mom still works with special ed kids and mentioned that one of her teachers had her nose broken by one of her kids who was handleable right up until he broke her nose; one of my best friends was also in special ed, and he could be a pretty decent guy for weeks or months at a time until his anger problems finally exploded at you—we drifted apart so I’m not sure what happened to him but last I heard he was in prison, which did not surprise me in the least bit. Life is as much about the lowest points as the average points.)

I see a wide range of students in my practice with many different profiles. It would be a mistake to conclude that a student with your profile was representative of all special education students. Given the broad scope of special education coverage, no special education student is truly “typical” of special education in general. At best, one student might be typical of a sub-population of a particular eligibility category, but likely not.

My experience with special education is presented to justify my conclusion that a student with an IQ of 80 is incapable of producing the kind of work Thomas routinely produces. I’m skeptical whether many 100 IQ students could create a career path like Thomas’ path. That’s relevant to the argument because the number of “black swan” high IQ people we observe should be related to the mean IQ of the population.

Separately, I’m well aware that an 80 IQ student is not typical of a special education student. In point of law, an 80 IQ by itself is not likely to lead a student to be formally included in special education. At a minimum, student must be within a particular category of need, such as autism spectrum or emotional dysfunction, to be entitled to legal classification as a special education student.

TimS Jan 27, 2016, 2:37 AM
0 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Rationality Quotes Thread January 2016

Clarence Thomas is widely considered one of the worst Supreme Court justices in memory, and is famously uninvolved, going years without a question; he has also written harshly about how he feels affirmative action cheapened his degrees.

Thomas is extremely conservative, far out of the mainstream of American legal thought. That said, worse Supreme Court Justice is roughly like worst tenured physicist at MIT. It hardly means he isn’t smart. In particular, not-talking-during-oral-argument doesn’t mean not involved, and is another arguments-are-soldiers attack by liberal American legal society on someone who is admittedly far out of mainstream legal thought.

Your reference to his position on affirmative action is particularly confusing to me, because his point is a standard, fairly mainstream argument against AA. If that was his most extreme legal position, he’d be the swing vote, not the farthest right (or second farthest, depending on how one counts Alito).

The rest of your post is well taken, and I will have to think on it.

When was the last time you saw a retarded person bashing their head against the wall?

I can only point to my professional work as an attorney for special education students to give you a sense of my experience with what an 80 IQ student is like.

TimS Jan 26, 2016, 10:57 PM
2 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Rationality Quotes Thread January 2016
That’s not what that link says—best I can tell, the book summarized states living in a high-IQ country is more predictive of good life outcomes than your own IQ.

Getting down to brass tacks, we are assuming a lot when we compare IQ numbers from different tests. WIAS-IV is not necessarily comparable to other tests in English. Assuming that the French language test measures the same thing as the WIAS-IV assumes the very conclusion that I’m not agreeing with. (Although I’m not arguing this point in our other discussion).

TimS Jan 26, 2016, 10:52 PM
0 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Rationality Quotes Thread January 2016

it seems to me that I observe too many intelligent black folks for the mean to be in the 80s.

You, personally, observe too many? Is that statement true? Or do you merely expect to see many?

By convenience sampling in my personal life and observing public figures, I see a certain proportion of successful folk are black. Extrapolating from the proportion I see, 60k smart black folks is plausible. A much lower number is not plausible. What number of smart black folk should we expect to see if the mean were 85?

TimS Jan 26, 2016, 8:03 PM
2 points
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Rationality Quotes Thread January 2016
It seems like a core assumption of the “intellectual” realists. I’m conceding it to strong-man the opposing argument. If we don’t assume IQ is culturally independent, the correlation between IQ and life outcome looks like a hidden-variable measure of social acceptability—i.e. an expected status quo bias if people prefer those they perceive as in-group. That just weakens the realist argument.

TimS Jan 26, 2016, 7:58 PM
2 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Rationality Quotes Thread January 2016
From personal experience, there are lots of dumb lawyers. When I say highly successful, I mean roughly the level of screening that occurs through promotion from fresh-out-of-academy lieutenant to colonel.

For reference, Clarence Thomas easily clears the bar I’m trying to set, as did Johnny Cochran before he died. For entertainers, it seems clear that talent isn’t correlated with intelligence. But I think staying power requires some, so the ultra-successful are candidates.

For my broader argument, the categories I set out are potentially under-inclusive. There are lots of folks (like business people) not included in the categories I explicitly listed. We also haven’t included any children, on the grounds that we don’t agree on how to identify them.

TimS Jan 26, 2016, 6:33 PM
0 points
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Rationality Quotes Thread January 2016
More technically, the assumption that IQ is a good measure of intelligence across different sub-cultures.

TimS Jan 26, 2016, 6:30 PM
2 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Rationality Quotes Thread January 2016
First, 42 million includes children for who I doubt there is a public criteria we can agree on as proxy for intelligence. Second, I’m not sure IQ > 130 is .13%. Wikipedia suggests 1%.

Since those cut in opposite directions, let’s pretend they wash out. I am comfortable asserting there are more than 60k black folks in the set of:
- senior military officers (colonel or greater)
- highly successful national public intellectuals (eg Powell, Coates, Rice)
- highly successful lawyers (Clarence Thomas is top 1% of lawyers)
- highly successful MDs & research PhDs (eg Neil DeGrasse Tyson).
- highly successful media/entertainment personalities (Sean “Diddy” Combs, Oprah, etc).
- highly successful technocrats (mayors / police chiefs / school superintendent in large metro areas)

TimS Jan 26, 2016, 5:45 PM
1 point
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Rationality Quotes Thread January 2016
Pardon my ignorance, but all the “intellect realism” theories seem like they can be charitably paraphrased as group X:
- has a different mean IQ than the general population and/or
- has a different standard deviation for IQ and/or
- has a significantly skewed distribution from the normal curve
I’ve seen claimed IQ means in the 80s for black Americans. Observationally, American public life includes many black people for whom I find it implausible that they aren’t pretty smart—eg Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Condeleeza Rice.

If I assume no difference in std dev or skew in intelligence distribution, it seems to me that I observe too many intelligent black folks for the mean to be in the 80s. Moreover, adding an assumption that std dev is lower doesn’t help—now the successful black folk are explained, but I don’t observe enough extreme low IQ folk.

That’s why I conclude some error exists in the assumption of an 80s mean IQ.

TimS Jan 26, 2016, 3:37 PM
7 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Rationality Quotes Thread January 2016

I don’t believe you’re evil for rule-lawyering and depriving people of good quotes.

One can debate the norms of a thread, or one can look at the listed expectations of the rationality quote thread:

No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please

Have you done more? I haven’t counted and don’t care. I don’t think rationality quotes threads have any value beyond karma mining anyway. I object to accusations of “rules-lawyering” on the grounds that it is an almost always an attempt to pretty up “I disagree.”

I believe there are stressors in your life that pressure you into acting that way, unaware of the social consequences in their enumeration.

Telling someone else what their motivations are is trying to pick a fight. Stop.

TimS Jan 19, 2016, 3:43 PM
9 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: How did my baby die and what is the probability that my next one will?
No, my answer would not change.

First, I don’t believe the assertion. Second, the kind of work to generate this kind of answer is different from providing service for the client. I enjoy advocating for clients, not meta-level analysis of advocacy. Think medical care vs. MetaMed.

TimS Jan 19, 2016, 3:40 PM
2 points
in reply to: WhyAsk’s comment on: Open thread, Jan. 18 - Jan. 24, 2016
There’s no reason you should be a pariah accidentally simply because you have clarified your goals or gotten better at implementing them.

One possibility—your estimate of how many people are not friends to you. That sucks, but you can’t force another person to be a good person at you.

Remember the right way to approach someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet, and apply the same principle to in-person interactions.

I’d like to find a way to present myself favorably to almost any crowd.

This is a much harder, and dramatically different goal, from not being a pariah.

TimS Jan 19, 2016, 3:30 PM
11 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: How did my baby die and what is the probability that my next one will?

If you (very understandably) want a probability estimate from an actual obstetrician, you might try explicitly looking for an obstetrician willing to give probability estimates. That is, contact some local obstetricians and ask not “Can I consult you about this?” but “Are you willing to give me your best estimate of probabilities?”. You may of course find that they all say no, or that they have no actual understanding of probability.

From my experience sitting on the other side of those conversations, I’m never going to give a number. First, producing the number is very resource intensive, likely more difficult that figuring out the correct things to do for the client.

Similarly, I’m not confident that I know (or remember) all the relevant facts about your situation that would effect my professional opinion. In particular, I’ve always found there were facts I was told and forgot or could have discovered but didn’t. Even though I can perform quality work, failure to keep all those facts in mind during this estimate is not providing an opinion to a reasonable degree of professional certainty.

Third, my clients are human, and like all humans, are bad at probability. If I tell a client they have a 60% chance of winning and we lose, the client will be mad at me. That by itself is reason to give qualitative estimates, not quantitative ones.

TimS 19 Jan 2016 15:16 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: Open thread, Jan. 18 - Jan. 24, 2016
Likely strong factors include:
- Ease of applicability. If the average middle manager cannot apply a technique easily or straightforwardly while working, the major pressure to use a technique will be social signalling (cf. corporate buzzword speak).
- Measurable outcomes. If the average middle manager cannot easily observe that the technique makes her job easier (either the productivity of subordinates or her control over them), then she will have no reason to emotionally or intellectually invest in the technique.

TimS 19 Jan 2016 15:10 UTC
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Open thread, Jan. 18 - Jan. 24, 2016
Yes. That assertion threw up a red flag that the author was overstating the importance of the methodology.

TimS 8 Jan 2016 18:22 UTC
0 points
in reply to: entirelyuseless’s comment on: [Stub] The problem with Chesterton’s Fence
The steelman opponent of the fence is “I see a reason not to have the fence, and any benefits to having the fence is outweighed by the benefits of removing the fence.”

By contrast, the Chesterton’s Fence argument is that there are unrecognized benefits of the fence. In practice, this easily devolves into an argument about the relative costs and benefits, but that is probably a distinct argument.

TimS 8 Jan 2016 17:11 UTC
2 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Open Thread, January 4-10, 2016
Respectfully, Trump is very skilled at sounding authentic. I’m not sure that he is authentic, but some other politician could easily be more authentic while lacking Trump’s skills at sounding authentic.

TimS 8 Jan 2016 17:01 UTC
2 points
in reply to: philh’s comment on: Open Thread, January 4-10, 2016
There’s a lot of reasons to think that national polling is not predictive of a primary race
- First, the relevant decisions are made state-by-state.
- Second, the sampling issue for primary voters is much harder that for general election voters. Among other reasons, people are paying a lot less attention, so people who care strongly are probably more over-represented than is typical.
Does winning the [Iowa and New Hampshire] primaries not make him the Republican party candidate? Are there other primaries that aren’t being bet on?

Yes to your second question. Also, winning one or both of the early primaries is not a strong predictor of who will be nominated in contested primaries.