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> Oh, there's plenty of room for improvement on me, no doubt. But there's been more than enough money spent on teaching me critical thinking that if I'm not som

> Oh, there's plenty of room for improvement on me, no doubt. But there's been more than enough money spent on teaching me critical thinking that if I'm not somewhere past the median, we're not capable of teaching it. Does this same law (of optimality?⁰ apply to manufacturing processes and various other human undertakings? As for elections: seeing what you've seen, do you consider the system (across all states) to be more or less air tight, and also that this is necessarily knowable?

shadowgovt 3y ago
I don't know what you mean by "law of optimality," so I can't answer that question. > As for elections: seeing what you've seen, do you consider the system (across all states) to be more or less air tight, and also that this is necessarily knowable? It's definitely not airtight. But airtight is fragile. Not unlike the Internet, It's better than airtight: it's decentralized and distributed. Each state runs its own election. Each election district (varies from state-to-state, because it really is fifty states with fifty sets of laws) sets its own policies for running its election. Each polling location is locally administered. The coordination necessary to attack such a decentralized and adversarial system (remember: the party affiliation of individuals within this process varies wildly, with many of the "battleground states" run by GOP operatives) is preposterous to assume, especially as a secret conspiracy. Any such conspiracy would be at a scale that would be obvious. One potential attack vector would be electronic voting machines, but (a) as previously noted: lawsuit, settled, wouldn't have settled if the truth was on the side of those accused of defamation and (b) those digital records are backed (in most jurisdictions, and specifically in the jurisdictions that were considered "battleground" in 2020) by paper records. Aligning fraud in the two records to escape the notice of poll workers, counters, and board officials (who are, again, generally of both major parties) is an absurdly improbable scenario. It's been three years since the 2020 election. That's more than enough time for the accusations levied by one party to materialize into something concrete and legally-actionable, something other than ghosts and innuendo. When all the accuser has is ghosts and innuendo, the critical thinker asks why a concrete story of fraud with numbers and responsible parties hasn't manifested.
- mistermann 3y ago
  > I don't know what you mean by "law of optimality," so I can't answer that question. It is regarding (the italicized part): "But there's been more than enough money spent on teaching me critical thinking that if I'm not somewhere past the median, we're not capable of teaching it." > Not unlike the Internet, It's better than airtight: it's decentralized and distributed. This depends on what variable(s) one is optimizing for - if optimizing for correctness (which is what I'm interested in, [in part] because that is what has been claime3d by The Experts), your argument seems to be doing the opposite of supporting that aspect. > The coordination necessary to attack such a decentralized and adversarial system...is preposterous to assume, especially as a secret conspiracy. Representing a strawman characterization of concerns and then knocking it down is an excellent way to persuade the public, but it is terrible when it comes to logic & epistemology (something The Experts tend to be not very good at (on an absolute scale), but do not seem to realize). To me, this is a very big deal, "pedantry" aside. > Any such conspiracy would be at a scale that would be obvious. "Obvious" is mostly related to belief, not knowledge....but then belief is what matters most, so credit where credit is due I guess? > but (a) as previously noted: lawsuit, settled, wouldn't have settled if the truth was on the side of those accused of defamation Incorrect - this requires that there is zero discovered misjudgments by courts in the past, which is not the case. Legal scripture covers the epistemic issues of this problem extensively, and is why we use "presumed innocent", "beyond reasonable doubt", etc. > is an absurdly improbable scenario Again: belief (derived from prediction, possibly sub-perceptual), not knowledge. > That's more than enough time for the accusations levied by one party to materialize into something concrete and legally-actionable, something other than ghosts and innuendo. It's also adequate for it to not to have happened. > something other than ghosts and innuendo You have no way of knowing if this is all that exists. > the critical thinker asks why a concrete story of fraud with numbers and responsible parties hasn't manifested. A "critical thinker" on a relative scale may be satisfied by only this, but on an absolute scale the competition is much higher.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    > this requires that there is zero discovered misjudgments by courts in the past, which is not the case. Not at all. There was no judgment here in that sense: Fox looked at the circumstances and instead of offering truth as an affirmative defense, refrained from doing so and settled the case. the likeliest conclusion is they couldn't offer truth as an affirmative defense (slightly less-likely conclusion: they could but doing so would open them up to even more liability than the defamation suit). > Representing a strawman characterization of concerns You may not have been claiming a vast conspiracy, but the people claiming election rigging definitely are. Look how many states they tried to sue in. That implied a vast multi-state conspiracy. > Again: belief Sure, I have a lot of beliefs grown from my personal experience. If you're going to argue epistemology, we'll be here awhile because that's a rich and dark sea to swim in. I don't know we'll have a productive discussion if epistemology is actually what you want to discuss. You asked me "seeing what you've seen, do you consider the system (across all states) to be more or less air tight," and I've answered based on my epistemology; I don't have nearly enough drugs to discuss "But how do you, like, know that you know" right now. > It's also adequate for it to not to have happened Unsupported conjecture. As T approaches infinity, odds of action approach 1. T of three years is plenty of time for something to have stuck and nothing has. You can flip that script and say it's been a long time for Trump to not have had criminal charges brought. It's true. It's entirely possible he did nothing criminally wrong. Burden of proof is on the other side to prove he did. > You have no way of knowing if this is all that exists. You're right; I have beliefs based on experience. But the parties claiming an election-theft fantasy have not provided concrete evidence to dissuade that belief; what they have put together doesn't hold up under simple scrutiny. My default belief will be "they're lying or blowing smoke" because that's the skeptical position; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it's also not evidence of evidence (and lacking evidence, the likeliest scenario is "things were basically on the up-and-up" because they tend to be). > but on an absolute scale What does that even mean.

shadowgovt 3y ago

I don't know what you mean by "law of optimality," so I can't answer that question. > As for elections: seeing what you've seen, do you consider the system (across all states) to be more or less air tight, and also that this is necessarily knowable? It's definitely not airtight. But airtight is fragile. Not unlike the Internet, It's better than airtight: it's decentralized and distributed. Each state runs its own election. Each election district (varies from state-to-state, because it really is fifty states with fifty sets of laws) sets its own policies for running its election. Each polling location is locally administered. The coordination necessary to attack such a decentralized and adversarial system (remember: the party affiliation of individuals within this process varies wildly, with many of the "battleground states" run by GOP operatives) is preposterous to assume, especially as a secret conspiracy. Any such conspiracy would be at a scale that would be obvious. One potential attack vector would be electronic voting machines, but (a) as previously noted: lawsuit, settled, wouldn't have settled if the truth was on the side of those accused of defamation and (b) those digital records are backed (in most jurisdictions, and specifically in the jurisdictions that were considered "battleground" in 2020) by paper records. Aligning fraud in the two records to escape the notice of poll workers, counters, and board officials (who are, again, generally of both major parties) is an absurdly improbable scenario. It's been three years since the 2020 election. That's more than enough time for the accusations levied by one party to materialize into something concrete and legally-actionable, something other than ghosts and innuendo. When all the accuser has is ghosts and innuendo, the critical thinker asks why a concrete story of fraud with numbers and responsible parties hasn't manifested.

mistermann 3y ago
> I don't know what you mean by "law of optimality," so I can't answer that question. It is regarding (the italicized part): "But there's been more than enough money spent on teaching me critical thinking that if I'm not somewhere past the median, we're not capable of teaching it." > Not unlike the Internet, It's better than airtight: it's decentralized and distributed. This depends on what variable(s) one is optimizing for - if optimizing for correctness (which is what I'm interested in, [in part] because that is what has been claime3d by The Experts), your argument seems to be doing the opposite of supporting that aspect. > The coordination necessary to attack such a decentralized and adversarial system...is preposterous to assume, especially as a secret conspiracy. Representing a strawman characterization of concerns and then knocking it down is an excellent way to persuade the public, but it is terrible when it comes to logic & epistemology (something The Experts tend to be not very good at (on an absolute scale), but do not seem to realize). To me, this is a very big deal, "pedantry" aside. > Any such conspiracy would be at a scale that would be obvious. "Obvious" is mostly related to belief, not knowledge....but then belief is what matters most, so credit where credit is due I guess? > but (a) as previously noted: lawsuit, settled, wouldn't have settled if the truth was on the side of those accused of defamation Incorrect - this requires that there is zero discovered misjudgments by courts in the past, which is not the case. Legal scripture covers the epistemic issues of this problem extensively, and is why we use "presumed innocent", "beyond reasonable doubt", etc. > is an absurdly improbable scenario Again: belief (derived from prediction, possibly sub-perceptual), not knowledge. > That's more than enough time for the accusations levied by one party to materialize into something concrete and legally-actionable, something other than ghosts and innuendo. It's also adequate for it to not to have happened. > something other than ghosts and innuendo You have no way of knowing if this is all that exists. > the critical thinker asks why a concrete story of fraud with numbers and responsible parties hasn't manifested. A "critical thinker" on a relative scale may be satisfied by only this, but on an absolute scale the competition is much higher.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  > this requires that there is zero discovered misjudgments by courts in the past, which is not the case. Not at all. There was no judgment here in that sense: Fox looked at the circumstances and instead of offering truth as an affirmative defense, refrained from doing so and settled the case. the likeliest conclusion is they couldn't offer truth as an affirmative defense (slightly less-likely conclusion: they could but doing so would open them up to even more liability than the defamation suit). > Representing a strawman characterization of concerns You may not have been claiming a vast conspiracy, but the people claiming election rigging definitely are. Look how many states they tried to sue in. That implied a vast multi-state conspiracy. > Again: belief Sure, I have a lot of beliefs grown from my personal experience. If you're going to argue epistemology, we'll be here awhile because that's a rich and dark sea to swim in. I don't know we'll have a productive discussion if epistemology is actually what you want to discuss. You asked me "seeing what you've seen, do you consider the system (across all states) to be more or less air tight," and I've answered based on my epistemology; I don't have nearly enough drugs to discuss "But how do you, like, know that you know" right now. > It's also adequate for it to not to have happened Unsupported conjecture. As T approaches infinity, odds of action approach 1. T of three years is plenty of time for something to have stuck and nothing has. You can flip that script and say it's been a long time for Trump to not have had criminal charges brought. It's true. It's entirely possible he did nothing criminally wrong. Burden of proof is on the other side to prove he did. > You have no way of knowing if this is all that exists. You're right; I have beliefs based on experience. But the parties claiming an election-theft fantasy have not provided concrete evidence to dissuade that belief; what they have put together doesn't hold up under simple scrutiny. My default belief will be "they're lying or blowing smoke" because that's the skeptical position; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it's also not evidence of evidence (and lacking evidence, the likeliest scenario is "things were basically on the up-and-up" because they tend to be). > but on an absolute scale What does that even mean.