roenxi

33 ms·

601.
by roenxi 9mo ago
There was never much of an argument behind "too big to fail", it is generally a euphemism for upper-class welfare. In a more realist world, "too big to fail" is a mis-statement of "too risky to keep". Everythi
602.
by roenxi 9mo ago
> An asker going into a guesser culture is like a client that doesn't respect congestion backoff; the guesser protocol is meant to ensure fairness for clients. The metaphor might be a bit strained, because a congestion protocol is f
603.
by roenxi 9mo ago
The thing that jumps to mind is the Security Council, which they can parley into diplomatic favours from other people. And the whole point of the UN is that it was the victors of WWII explaining to the rest of the world how international af
604.
by roenxi 9mo ago
I dunno, reading it in context of the whole statement, "...and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states" deserves a bit of focus. The UN is structurally designed to
605.
by roenxi 9mo ago
One aspect of that which is interesting is that what the article calls "Guess culture" is fundamentally exclusionary. If you aren't initiated into how the signalling system works by an insider or in a position of sufficient s
606.
by roenxi 9mo ago
> If you do the math on the number of pairs of EU countries that need to find bilateral solutions ... it becomes clear why the EU government exists. It's just not efficient otherwise. (Answer: 351) That logic doesn't hold. If i
607.
by roenxi 9mo ago
That sounds like a significant problem ... for either the Germans or the French to resolve. The only thing stopping foreign investors is law enforcement officers telling them to stop. The Germans can, literally, just not do anything except
608.
by roenxi 9mo ago
Is supporting Philippine control of the Philippines a hard position to argue to? It is really easy to propose better strategies than almost anyone was going with in the early-mid 20th century, it is hard to overstate how badly the leadershi
609.
by roenxi 9mo ago
Are you suggesting that LeMay or Kissinger believed that invasions promoted regional stability? On what basis? When Kissenger wanted stability he famously promoted détente with Russia and negotiating with the Chinese. Kissinger did a lot of
610.
by roenxi 9mo ago
> - Even policymakers who have publicly admitted that Iraq was a massive intelligence and political failure all agree that regional stability was always the main goal. And in their spare time they pretend to sell bridges to people? Nobod
611.
by roenxi 9mo ago
There is a lovely synthesis of A and B though - looking at the Wikipedia page for the right Roosevelt, he was involved in the Philippine–American War where they occupied the Philippines in the first place (or pacified, if you prefer, I supp
612.
by roenxi 9mo ago
Oh yes, sorry. I was thinking FDR when I wrote the comment - but happily I can leave it unchanged since the same complaint applies to Theodore Roosevelt as well with only some minor tweaks. They weren't as bad as the Europeans, but the
613.
by roenxi 9mo ago
Yeah but the US presidents would say that - they typically have track records of wanton destruction that are rather easy to criticise. It is notable that Roosevelt was part of a generation of global political leadership that bungled their w
614.
by roenxi 9mo ago
> The idea that a medieval peasant would be envious of our standard of living is doing nothing to further the point you are trying to make. It is a fair chunk of the point I'm making - you still have the option of living like a medi
615.
by roenxi 9mo ago
Yes with the important caveat that a lot of the time people don't have a crystal ball, can't see the far future, don't know if their intents will materialise in practice 12 months down the line and should therefore store info
616.
by roenxi 9mo ago
There was presumably a lot of money and status on the line, so I'm sure had he realised what was coming he'd have been happy to learn enough logical notation to express !(It's OK To Be White) && !(It's !OK To Be
617.
by roenxi 9mo ago
> I had been vaguely aware that he had some community around him, but on the event of his death, I tried watching an episode or two of his show. I do wonder if Scott Alexander means this in the sense that he watched a few shows because A
618.
by roenxi 9mo ago
> Mass market handcrafts are no longer a viable means of subsistence anywhere in the West. Mass market handicrafts have never been a viable means of subsistence anywhere, ever, if we benchmark against what I think a reasonable lifestyle
619.
by roenxi 9mo ago
Sure, I don't know why anyone would want to hand-weave cloth in this era of miracles where a machine can do it for you faster and better. It looks like hard work and it is technically a waste of time. But, hypothetically, if there wa
620.
by roenxi 9mo ago
I'm pretty sure you're literally just wrong on that one - no special knowledge of the weaving market but it seems people do still make a living from hand-weaving fabric. Eg, I found https://loomandstars.com/collect
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by roenxi 9mo ago
Prices don't represent anything absolute, they just capture the cost of reallocating a marginal number of goods to produce this particular thing instead of some other thing. If there is so much of something that everyone can have one,
622.
by roenxi 9mo ago
And it isn't like people can't do still everything they could do yesterday. There are just more and better options. Economically AI is no particular threat to the median human and even knowledge workers are still going to have fin
623.
by roenxi 9mo ago
There are probably some more subtle tipping points that small models hit too. One of the challenges of a 100GB model is that there is non-trivial difficulty in downloading and running the thing that a 4GB model doesn't face. At 4GB I t
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by roenxi 9mo ago
I enjoy a good whine about how it is all going wrong as much as the next person, but this is a piece of academic arrogance. He's way outside his area of specialisation and his advice seems to be either trivial or bad. If we just go thr
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by roenxi 10mo ago
Sock puppeting is different from a throwaway account.
626.
by roenxi 10mo ago
If there are sock puppets around here they are probably native internet crazies or maybe lazy covert software salesman. Most of the posters just represent the wide variety of opinions on a planet with 8 billion people competing with each ot
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by roenxi 10mo ago
Israel is openly committed [0] to seeing regime change in Iran; they were mowing down civilian and military leadership just last year. The US got involved. There is the history of western involvement [1] in overthrowing Iranian governments.
628.
by roenxi 10mo ago
> I sourced my claims: smallpox, polio, measles, mumps. 1. That isn't what sourcing a claim means. It means to provide sources for why your claims are true; or at least where you heard the claim first. Picking specific examples is h
629.
by roenxi 10mo ago
Yeah. That is a really good argument for recommending people get the vaccine. But it concedes any reason to start coercive medical treatments. The COVID vaccines were very much about personal protection. It circles back quite neatly to the
630.
by roenxi 10mo ago
> That's quite a claim. I see you provided no sources. Why do I need to source anything? Nobody credible ever claimed the vaccines would slow the spread, no evidence was ever provided that vaccines slow the spread and theory suggest

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