namlem

7 ms·

31.
by namlem 1y ago
The French government and private interest groups alike attempted to manipulate the Citizens Convention for Climate back in 2019 and were not successful fwiw. When lobbyists tried to approach delegates outside the convention, they were quic
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by namlem 1y ago
Elected representatives do not write laws. Their legislative aides write the laws. While some state governments have highly professionalized legislative aides, in the federal government, such positions are typically poorly paid stepping sto
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by namlem 1y ago
There are many proposed models for how to incorporate sortition into governance. Some examples: - A randomly selected lower house with an elected upper house (or the reverse) - policy juries which deliberate only on one specific piece of le
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by namlem 1y ago
It still runs into the problem of rational ignorance. When your vote is diluted by millions of others, it doesn't make sense to spend significant effort on thoroughly researching the issues at hand.
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Random selection is necessary to create stable meritocratic institutions(assemblingamerica.substack.com)
360 points by namlem 1y ago|300 comments
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by namlem 1y ago
It would be incredible for LLMs. Searching it, using it as training data, etc. Would probably have to be done in Russia or some other country that doesn't respect international copyright though.
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by namlem 1y ago
Actually, it's elections that are fundamentally undemocratic. Democracy literally means "rule by the public", which elections are not. Elections are merely rule by elites which have the nominal consent of the public. In pract
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by namlem 1y ago
When France had a citizens' assembly on climate, lobbyists from both the government and corporations tried to approach some delegates outside of the assembly and they were promptly snitched on.
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by namlem 1y ago
Yep! I actually wrote a piece about how the Venetian system might be adapted for the modern day: https://open.substack.com/pub/unfacts/p/the-case-for-a-techn...
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by namlem 1y ago
Keep in mind that Athenian democracy was ended through conquest by Macedon, not internal collapse.
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by namlem 2y ago
Yeah tbh. Didn't even realize the ads were an issue. I'm a patreon subscriber and have bought two of his books, so I don't feel bad about blocking ads.
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by namlem 2y ago
The real magic bullet would be searching lib-gen and sci-hub as well
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by namlem 2y ago
Yep, thought the same thing when reading the article. Christian morality. I think it's a good thing for society to care for the poor and downtrodden, but when it reaches the point of self-flaggelation, it's gone too far. Imo, we n
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by namlem 2y ago
Sorry but the idea that such a system of personal involvement is a practical solution is a pipe dream. We need some system of involuntary confinement that isn't prison or psych hospitals imo. A place where we can put these people in hu
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by namlem 2y ago
Yep. The problem is the system of elections itself. Biden and Obama also issued a lot of dubious pardons and commutations. The incentives of elections naturally favor short-termism and populism. Instead of having the people vote on candidat
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by namlem 2y ago
Nope. Such content was banned.
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by namlem 2y ago
Supposedly the CIA was able to get remote viewing to work at significantly above chance in their experiments, but they weren't able to get it to work reliably enough to actually be useful. And there are... downsides to messing with suc
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by namlem 2y ago
o1-pro is way smarter still
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by namlem 2y ago
The Iran nuclear deal was a huge mistake fwiw. We should have responded to Iran's nuclear ambitions with extreme violence. Thankfully there is still time to correct this mistake, as they don't have the bomb yet. The last thing we
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by namlem 2y ago
Dictator's Handbook completely changed how I think about politics. Strongly second that one.
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by namlem 2y ago
And Lina Kahn came in
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by namlem 2y ago
Yep. Spectrum should be allocated based on Harberger taxation (sometimes called self-assesed tax)
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by namlem 2y ago
They're eager to link his designs to terrorists and criminals, but not the pro-democracy rebels in Myanmar who are slowly starting to win against the tatmadaw.
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by namlem 2y ago
Train LoRas for models that can take them
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by namlem 2y ago
In this case the manufacturer is destroying the value of an item after you bought it. So you can't just not buy it and no one will pay you for it. I agree that regulation should be used sparingly, but I could see a justification for so
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by namlem 2y ago
Value is destroyed by deadweight loss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss?wprov=sfla1
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by namlem 2y ago
Here is someone who has thought about second order effects https://x.com/memeticsisyphus/status/1832869758179381487
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by namlem 2y ago
Here is a good explanation of why you should be against it https://x.com/memeticsisyphus/status/1832869758179381487
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by namlem 2y ago
Cloned wooly mammoths aren't a public good like roads
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by namlem 2y ago
SpaceX already built their launch/catch tower and didn't even bill the taxpayers for it.

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