afthonos

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181.
by afthonos 6y ago
That sounds amazing. Do you have a link, by any chance?
182.
by afthonos 6y ago
You believe the police over the alleged victim literally saying it didn’t happen?
183.
by afthonos 6y ago
They can. As in, it is a possibility contemplated, and almost never implemented.
184.
by afthonos 6y ago
> Our political structure makes it seem like they do, but that's a bug in our political structure, not an actual necessity. Again, "no decision" is a decision, especially in the presence of alternatives. > If "e
185.
by afthonos 6y ago
Decisions have to be made—including doing nothing. Someone is always "ruling". Diffusing responsibility does not change that fact (though it can have other significant benefits). I'm sympathetic to your POV, by the way, becau
186.
by afthonos 6y ago
Given that we agree on just about everything, I think we're going to end up arguing about whether "convince" and "persuade" are synonyms. :-) I agree that minorities have rights, and that you therefore don't fo
187.
by afthonos 6y ago
I’m confused. Are you arguing for being ruled by non-experts? Sounds like you think we already are, what’s the problem? The opposite of “expert” isn’t “uses magical common sense to arrive at the right decision”, it’s “crapshoot”.
188.
by afthonos 6y ago
Alright, fair point about the analogy. Still, we generally believe (perhaps incorrectly…) that people can change their minds, so I'll stick by it. Regarding feeling good: yeah, that's a problem, and that makes it harder, no argume
189.
by afthonos 6y ago
> How is that justified if the beliefs are not known to be wrong? My bad, I thought you were arguing that "prejudice" is something that can be argued-out-of, whereas a "genuine difference in priority" cannot. If you
190.
by afthonos 6y ago
I think the argument doesn’t suffer if you replace “prejudice” with “strongly held beliefs”. The human mind doesn’t have a secret truth-o-meter, so from the inside, prejudice and strongly held beliefs are indistinguishable. The fact that so
191.
by afthonos 6y ago
Exactly!! I can’t stand his smug, self-satisfied style, and yet he has some of the most insightful thoughts around. One day, maybe I’ll grind my teeth through one of his books.
192.
by afthonos 6y ago
I don’t think it’s your point, since that would contradict what you’re saying. I don’t believe you can do what you think you can do. And you literally can’t convince me unless you can invent a non-algorithmic way of describing how you would
193.
by afthonos 6y ago
That's a very strong statement, especially since it's a mathematical fact that you can't describe how you can solve it…I'm skeptical. :-)
194.
by afthonos 6y ago
Can you solve it? Are you conscious?
195.
by afthonos 6y ago
Leaving aside the disturbing American trend of minimizing the value of the elderly, your math is based on comparing with life expectancy at birth. You should instead be looking at life expectancy at time of death, which is significantly hig
196.
by afthonos 6y ago
I think that’s only valid if there is actually a serious danger to being a police officer. While officers really like to play up their dangerous job, it’s actually quite safe, because it turns out most people know that killing a cop is a st
197.
by afthonos 6y ago
"Created by the courts" is what opponents of any doctrine say about it. The Supreme Court's view of it is probably quite different. :-) In other words, I think the only ways to get rid of qualified immunity are (1) to get SCO
198.
by afthonos 7y ago
I was not being literal, though I’m fairly sure I’m right for some not-too-loose definition of the term. Inspiration did come from The Narrow Corridor[1], which has a good history of the building of state capacity in Europe, and how it affe
199.
by afthonos 7y ago
I don’t disagree. But we seem to be bad at re-evaluating old decisions (definitely in my case), and it doesn’t help when politics is basically a team sport in the US.
200.
by afthonos 7y ago
Those are unfortunately baked into our accounting, much like “killed by bandits” was accounted for in medieval trade until states started being able and willing to provide meaningful security.
201.
by afthonos 7y ago
> If a city is going to go bankrupt, it will be because of pension and healthcare costs and not infrastructure maintenance costs. If all else fails infrastructure can be abandoned but pensions and health plans will be politically untouch
202.
by afthonos 7y ago
But if the stock market is trying to predict the future , instead of describe the present , the big question is what window does the stock market operate on, and what window do you? Maybe stocks are going up because the aggregate feeling
203.
by afthonos 7y ago
>..., conscription, ... What?
204.
by afthonos 7y ago
“Equivalent” is also a matter of perspective. For a terrorist, procuring the necessary explosives to injure 1000 people may be harder than procuring the equivalent sarin gas. For a state, the calculus changes, as do goals. Storage, transpor
205.
by afthonos 7y ago
That’s not her middle name. It’s her maiden name.
206.
by afthonos 7y ago
I think the point is that it's possible to opt out now . It wasn't always so both due to the effort (moving to a large city was much harder when you had to walk with your stuff for several dozen or hundred miles) and to the laws
207.
by afthonos 7y ago
They were asked about this in their briefing a few days ago and made a multi-point response: 1) There are no objective criteria for calling something a pandemic. 2) They did not feel they knew enough about the propagation pattern to make th
208.
by afthonos 7y ago
Yes.
209.
by afthonos 7y ago
I don’t know in what way it isn’t treated as a big deal. There are daily updates from every country; the news covers the epidemic in detail; China quarantined tens of millions of people; major trade shows are being cancelled. Unless you lit
210.
by afthonos 7y ago
This is terribly sad. I remember running into someone like that on Usenet back before I could tell they were obviously sick (I was still a kid). It was very hard to realize this person simply did not share some concepts I took as building b

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