TimS

Karma: 6,409

TimS 25 Sep 2017 23:22 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Document’s comment on: LW Women- Minimizing the Inferential Distance
He does have influence, but I don’t read that as saying things are as bad as they were in the 1950s. He’s pointing out that a lot of the power structure of the Confederacy is still around, to the point that imagining if the Confederates had won is less different from now than many folks ignorant of history believe.

Ta-Nehisi has written very pointedly about DT’s victory, but even then I don’t read him as saying things are the same as 50 years ago. Factually, I don’t see how anyone could claim that. Leading protest in 1950-1960s was literally life threatening. Blessedly, that doesn’t seem to be true in the present.

TimS 7 Mar 2017 18:56 UTC
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in reply to: DataPacRat’s comment on: Open Thread, March. 6 - March 12, 2017
The Articles of Confederation were not amended into the Constitution, they were replaced by the Constitution in a manner that likely violated the Articles. Likewise, the Old Testament leads to Priestly Judaism (with animal sacrifice), not the radically different Rabbinical Judaism.

I think trying to bring these things in parallel with start-up incorporation is inherently difficult. Re-incorporation of start-ups is driven by the needs of mostly the same stackholders as the original incorporation. Most importantly, they are trying to achieve the same purpose as the original incorporation—wealth to founders and/or investors. Changes to foundational governing documents are usually aimed at changed or unanticipated circumstances, where the founders’s original purpose does not address how the problem should be solved.

TimS 6 Mar 2017 14:52 UTC
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in reply to: DataPacRat’s comment on: Open Thread, March. 6 - March 12, 2017
I suspect your proposed charter is practically impossible for you to write. If is was possible for one charter document to scale up and down the way you suggest, then we should expect it to already exist and be in use. After all, people have been writing charter documents for a long time.

In the real world, charter don’t survive in their original form all that long. To pick an example I am familiar with, the US Constitution was ratified in 1789. Fourteen years later, in 1803, the Supreme Court interpreted the document to allow judicial review of whether statutes complied with the Constitution. You’ll have to take my word for it, but whether judicial review was intended by the drafters of the US Constitution is controversial to this day.

It is pretty clear that the drafters would have been surprised by the degree of judicial intrusiveness in implementing policy, just as they would be surprised by how much the US has grown in economic size and political power since the Constitution was drafted.

TimS 6 Mar 2017 14:41 UTC
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in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: AI Research Discussed by Mainstream Media
I assert it is worthwhile to see how the AI-Safety movement is perceived by the mainstream. I agree with your implicit assertion that the the article does not provide much new information to the local community.

TimS 3 Feb 2017 21:49 UTC
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in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Metrics to evaluate a Presidency

In the Senate, there are 26 D and only 8 R up for re-election or replacement.

Worth noting that many of those Ds are in states that voted R in the most recent election. We should increase predicted probability they will lose now, and not be surprised or change our evaluation of evidence when it actually happens.

TimS 3 Feb 2017 17:12 UTC
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in reply to: phl43’s comment on: A question about the rules
Since hyperbole is only loosely connected with evaluating evidence, I’m not convinced it is compatible with rational discussion, at least as that term is generally understood in this community.

TimS 3 Feb 2017 17:08 UTC
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in reply to: math’s comment on: Civil resistance and the 3.5% rule
This depends heavily on how one defines campaigns. Is the NAACP of 1910 the same campaign as Malcolm X in 1960?

I suspect that each group would say no, but their common opponents would say yes.

TimS 28 Jun 2016 20:16 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: Open thread, June 27 - July 3, 2016
No good arguments, or the weight of the arguments for X are greater than the weight of the arguments against X?

TimS 22 Jun 2016 23:26 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: tsathoggua’s comment on: Are smart contracts AI-complete?

You cannot simply set up a new legal agreement and just say “And you don’t have any legal recourse”.

It depends. You probably can’t write a contract that literally says “no recourse for breach.” But you probably could achieve substantially the same effect.
For example, you might define substantial performance so low that it is always met, then explicitly waive any right to good faith and fair dealing) and any injunctive relief. If a court found the contract enforcible, I’m not sure how they could fashion a remedy.

TimS 22 Jun 2016 23:02 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Commander Zander’s comment on: Are smart contracts AI-complete?

In some contexts, ‘smart contract’ is a misnomer: it’s just a computer program that resembles a legal contract but does not interact with the government in any way.

Typically speaking, a legal contract does not interact with the government—only a very small percentage of contracts are adjudicated by a court or reviewed by any government body.

In other words, moving around money, tangible objects, services, and intangible rights is a reasonable shorthand for > 80 % of the things the law would call a contract.

TimS 2 Jun 2016 13:40 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: time’s comment on: Open Thread May 30 - June 5, 2016
Citation, please?

TimS 2 Jun 2016 2:12 UTC
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in reply to: username2’s comment on: Open Thread May 16 - May 22, 2016

Why are you skeptical that political disagreements can break friendships?

Of course political disagreement can break friendships. But I’m urging you to consider that maybe you weren’t friends, so that the likelihood that you could effect outcomes was negligible to the point that Pascal’s Mugging considerations mean that your feelings of moral responsibility do not benefit you and might instead be some sort of Just-World distorted thinking.

TimS 22 May 2016 21:48 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: entirelyuseless’s comment on: Open Thread May 16 - May 22, 2016
Alternatively, the causal arrow goes in the other direction. People don’t give your practical opinions much weight, but you don’t realize the gulf until you have a flare up about ideological disagreement.

I agree that ideological disagree can lead to lower weight to opinions, but if the gulf is as large as OP described, then I suspect the blow up was a symptom, not a cause.

TimS 22 May 2016 17:00 UTC
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in reply to: Daniel_Burfoot’s comment on: Open Thread May 16 - May 22, 2016
That’s a weird definition of compulsion in this context. Others want to make choices. Sometimes those choices impact things you value. Sometime they doesn’t.

But preventing people from acting on choices seems like the common thread. Privileging whether things you value are effected seems relevant to whether the prevention is morally justified, but from point of view of preventing the implementation of another’s choice, the idea of compulsion seems identical.

In short, I assert the morally neutral description of an action ought not to vary based on moral judgment about the action.

TimS 22 May 2016 16:09 UTC
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in reply to: username2’s comment on: Open Thread May 16 - May 22, 2016

But I think the probability (that if Alice hadn’t shouted me down then this guy would still be alive) is nontrivial.

I urge you to consider why you think this is true. You say that many other people warned this couple about the risks and all were blown off. If they had listened to your (or anyone’s advice), there is a non-trivial chance of a different outcome. But was there a non-trivial chance you would persuade them differently?

(I’m also skeptical that your political disagreement had any effect on your persuasiveness regarding the danger of these drugs.)

TimS 3 May 2016 17:51 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: CarlJ’s comment on: Talking Snakes: A Cautionary Tale

The snake is part of their origin story, a core element in their belief system.

Ultimately, outsiders cannot define the content or centrality of parts of a belief system. If believers say it is a metaphor, then it is a metaphor. In other words, if believers retreat empirically to the point of invisible dragons, you can’t stop them. Invisible dragons aren’t incoherent, they are just boring.

a large percentage of christians believe in this story,

That large sub-groups of Christians believe something empirically false does not disprove Christianity as a whole, especially since there is widespread disagreement as to who is a “true” Christian.

and two hundred years ago I’d guess almost every christian believed in it.

Citation needed. You sound overconfident here.

TimS 26 Feb 2016 22:12 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: CellBioGuy’s comment on: If there IS alien super-inteligence in our own galaxy, then what it could be like?
This is only a paradox under naive definitions of infinity. Once one starts talking about cardinality, the “paradoxical” nature of the thought experiment fades away.

In other words, this is not really responsive to James_Miller’s comment.

TimS 30 Jan 2016 20:29 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: bogus’s comment on: [Error communicating with LW2 server]
Alternate hypothesis: NRx stole some genuine insights from other branches of political thought (eg public choice theory, moral drift) & passed them off as original to NRx.

TimS 30 Jan 2016 17:20 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Rationality Quotes Thread January 2016

My understanding was that Thomas only writes his fair share when you include all his idiosyncratic one-man dissents which influence no one and have failed to move the Overton Window. Is that wrong?

Yes. Check out Scotusblog if you want to look at other terms.

What I am bothered by is his apparent failure to contribute much to the Court in asking questions to get to the heart of issues

Oral argument is performance, not persuasion. The evidence of influence is citation of majority decisions in future terms and future courts. In other words, the rest of that paragraph would be just as true without reference to questions at oral argument. Please stop repeating the stupid talking point.

Personally, I am not bothered by Thomas’s originalism, as you seem to think

Thomas is an originalist only if one thinks that the US Constitution is intended to codify natural law. Many originalists across the political spectrum don’t. Further, I’m much more of a textualist, and textualism and natural law get together like oil and water.

But Thomas could easily be one of the 80k that the normal distribution implies, or be a bit below, maybe 97th or 98th percentile or something, which increases the numbers of candidates substantially (more than 3x) while still being plausible. (When I look at thresholds on IQ and characteristics broken down by deciles, I get the impression that for anything which is a fraction of a standard deviation, it is more a difference of quantity than quality; someone ¹⁄₃ or ²⁄₃ SDs lower can do just about anything the other person can do, but with more time and effort, perhaps, while at 1 SD it starts to seem like there are things the lower person just won’t get with any reasonable amount of time/effort. So a lot of 130 is just plain out of reach for 100, but not for 120.)

This is the heart of the issue. I think an 85 IQ would have difficulty consistently simulating a 100 IQ in professional life. But the evidence on this is too sparse for me to persuasively present in this forum. So I’m trying to highlight how we see too many black swans. Which itself is complicated by the difficulty in distinguishing between 120 &130.

TimS 30 Jan 2016 17:07 UTC
0 points
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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”).