Hacker News: fighterpilot

New comment by fighterpilot in "How can we break our addiction to contempt?"

fighterpilot — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 21:51:33 +0000

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 demographic shift

New comment by fighterpilot in "How can we break our addiction to contempt?"

fighterpilot — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 19:57:50 +0000

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.

New comment by fighterpilot in "Gov Parson pushes to prosecute reporter who found security flaw in state site"

fighterpilot — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 19:42:09 +0000

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 sorts and buy into science denialism around GMOs and synthetic pesticides. They would also never accept the tentative evidence that marijuana damages the brains of teenagers.

New comment by fighterpilot in "How can we break our addiction to contempt?"

fighterpilot — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 19:29:14 +0000

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 generous person. Bit prone to conspiracy thinking and bought into fake news on Rumble or something.

The other is very conservative and it's a team/tribe issue with him. He has a strong distrust of institutions that he thinks are run by leftists and would distrust anything they say.

New comment by fighterpilot in "The Methods of Moral Panic Journalism"

fighterpilot — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 19:08:41 +0000

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.vox.com/2020/7/29/21340308/david-shor-omar-wasow...

New comment by fighterpilot in "Gov Parson pushes to prosecute reporter who found security flaw in state site"

fighterpilot — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 17:25:35 +0000

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 they want.

- Denial of the science of sex differences

- Denial of the science of intelligence differences, the relevance of intelligence in life outcomes and how heritable it is

- Belief without evidence that black/white racial differences in outcome are completely due to racism and not partly due to a byproduct of cultural differences

- Anti-nuclear sentiment that wildly exaggerates the risks of nuclear power

- Historical revisionism (e.g 1619 project and NYT begrudgingly making stealth edits)

New comment by fighterpilot in "California tried to save the nation from tax filing, then Intuit stepped in"

fighterpilot — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 14:59:10 +0000

Is there a privacy/surveillance aspect to the argument? Or is the data that the IRS will collect the same either way?

New comment by fighterpilot in "California tried to save the nation from tax filing, then Intuit stepped in"

fighterpilot — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 14:17:52 +0000

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?

New comment by fighterpilot in "Eliminating gifted programs won’t make education fair"

fighterpilot — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 21:54:44 +0000

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 into the same class will handicap the 90th percentile, or leave the 10th percentile behind, or both.

New comment by fighterpilot in "Overly analytical guide to escorting"

fighterpilot — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 21:45:49 +0000

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's your perspective then I can't change your mind because it's coming from a place of ideology.

  "The only people who 'state' right-leaning people's interests are left-wing publications trying to create strawmen. Perhaps listen to others instead of imagining their interests?"

What? Illegal immigration, taxes, crime and the economy are among the top issues for conservatives, and your drug war is making all of those things worse. If you think these aren't concerns for conservatives you are just wrong. Polling of conservatives establishes this clearly as does the rhetoric of leading conservatives. The economy, crime and illegal immigration were all big parts of Trump's platform.

I vote conservative for the most part. I'm just not one of those authoritarian dick head conservatives that try to control other people's lives over victimless crimes. And no, the person who smokes pot isn't a victim. Tobacco and alcohol are worse for the body than the occasional vape, so I completely reject your premise.

New comment by fighterpilot in "Eliminating gifted programs won’t make education fair"

fighterpilot — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 20:34:26 +0000

You're arguing that tests for intellectual ability aren't perfect, and they're therefore useless. This is a bad argument.

New comment by fighterpilot in "Eliminating gifted programs won’t make education fair"

fighterpilot — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 19:56:26 +0000

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 the dumbest fucking idea ever.

New comment by fighterpilot in "Eliminating gifted programs won’t make education fair"

fighterpilot — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 19:55:20 +0000

It's terrible branding because it makes other parents jealous and then this happens.

New comment by fighterpilot in "Eliminating gifted programs won’t make education fair"

fighterpilot — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 19:52:45 +0000

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 backup in case public education goes to the shitter (as it has here).

New comment by fighterpilot in "Overly analytical guide to escorting"

fighterpilot — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 15:29:29 +0000

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 indirectly causing more illegal immigration into the US because it's destabilizing South America.

- The drug war is shifting large profits away from US pharma and into foreign narco gangs, which is bad for GDP growth and therefore the strength of the nation.

- The drug war means taxation needs to be higher because it's expensive.

- The drug war creates more street crime, which ranks highly in what right-leaning people care about.

So I just don't understand why right-leaning people (not just libertarians) are so actively voting against almost all of their stated interests. Add to this a number of other reasons (how bad it is for the black community, how poor whites are being literally killed by fentanyl, how it pushes people into more dangerous and cheaper drugs such as ice and crack, how hypocritical it is for alcohol and cigarettes to be legal, how morally questionable it is to punish a victimless crime), and the case is clear cut to me.

New comment by fighterpilot in "Overly analytical guide to escorting"

fighterpilot — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 14:42:20 +0000

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.

New comment by fighterpilot in "Is nuclear power our best bet against climate change?"

fighterpilot — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 12:48:52 +0000

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's still an incredible safety profile compared to the number of deaths caused by other energy sources.

New comment by fighterpilot in "Overly analytical guide to escorting"

fighterpilot — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 12:32:57 +0000

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. It's a laugh to see all these right-leaning people who pretend to be libertarians (not sure if that's you, but in general) but are actually in favor of a large state and authoritarian government intervention on topics such as drugs.

New comment by fighterpilot in "Investors use AI to analyse CEOs’ language patterns and tone"

fighterpilot — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 11:58:11 +0000

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 gullible investors to overlook the terrible performance of your sector and invest in you anyways, and then take a large slice of the profits when you get lucky? Buzzwords and neat sounding strategies help.

New comment by fighterpilot in "How to get back into a hacked Facebook account"

fighterpilot — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 06:45:24 +0000

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 was proposing wasn't so much for free account closure, it was more for things like false search results, impersonation, account hijacking. These amount to defamation and psychological abuse and these companies are allowing it to happen without providing any human customer service fix.