methodologicalTerrorism

[methodologicalTerrorism @methodolog73944]

@eigenrobot That's the problem with load bearing polite lies--in order not to exceed their capacities, you need to know it's a lie--and in order to know it's a lie, you need to be able to stop lying, at least temporarily.

And to stop lying you need to tell the truth.

[methodologicalTerrorism @methodolog73944]

@St_Rev Speaking precisely, it's constructivism that's true, and relativism is the coward's response to this.

[St2station @St2station]

‘Let’s not politicize’ X or Y is just how Western ruling parties say ‘This story that broke the usual narrative embargoes we have in place is incredibly bad terrain for my side to fight on, so can you kindly not give battle? Cheers!’

It is so utterly transparent.

[methodologicalTerrorism @methodolog73944]

I'm not saying we would have won in Afghanistan if it weren't for the CIA running around torturing people and protecting the worst of the warlords--but it would have helped to have some kind of definite chain of command so we'd all be pulling in the same direction.

[methodologicalTerrorism @methodolog73944]

We never saw these kinds of semi-threats when the Army and other services got cut back in the 90s.

It's almost like everyone who actually wants to serve their country goes into the actual military and the "IC" is just a holding ground for assholes with delusions of grandeur.

[methodologicalTerrorism @methodolog73944]

If the CIA disappeared in a puff of smoke I'm not convinced the net effect on US security would be negative. It was originally supposed to focus on analysis and correlation, which sure would have come in handy, but instead Donovan wanted to play cowboy so here we are.

[avery creed @avery_online]

everyone agrees that cultural genocide is good. the only thing that they disagree on is which cultures are okay to genocide. when it's a culture that's okay to genocide they don't call it genocide. I hope this clarifies things

[Reitarded @Rei00Unit]

McNamara morons, who were found unsuitable for combat deployment, were in the 10-30th percentile. So whenever someone talks about how we need another war to cull the "bottom percentile", they're not even proposing anything eugenics, they're just giddy about killing young men

[Henry Shevlin @dioscuri]

When my analytic philosophy friends complain about "corpo speak"

[sneakn @sneaknsneak]

From my distant perspective, I can't help but feel that top leadership at anthropic is deeply untrustworthy. I'm not sure what they could do at this point to change my mind.

[methodologicalTerrorism @methodolog73944]

@MunicipleOrrery @anon4tweets "Cause it publicly to be proclaimed that every able-bodied person of the same county, on feast days when he has leisure, shall use bows and arrows, or pellets or bolts, in his games, and shall learn and practise the art of shooting."

[methodologicalTerrorism @methodolog73944]

@kitten_beloved Over the long run, looking honest is a function of being honest.

Thinking that you can stably be predicted to do the thing without actually doing the thing is the great folly of our age.

[PoIiMath @politicalmath]

It is not fully recognized, but the "experts" who signed this letter were not really representative of true experts in the field. Lots of PhDs candidates and med school students in this group.

The problem was that the real experts were too timid to object. They didn't want to be called racists so they let this left-wing group take the megaphone and become the voice of institutional public health and science.

[𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖊 🕯 @atlanticesque]

Every loser abundo who cries crocodile tears about how the democrats are so flawed and how they wish there was a respectable republican to vote for is fucking lying. They’re invertebrates who will always succumb to social pressure and vote for insane leftists. They’re useless.

[Eric S. Raymond @esrtweet]

I'm here to tell you a dirty secret about Gödel's incompleteness theorems, after having been asked whether we might hit a "Gödel limit" when trying to prove the correctness of computer programs.

My qualification to speak on this is that I'm a software engineer who used to be a mathematician with a strong interest in foundational logic and mathematical philosophy, and I still track the field.

Here's the skinny about Gödel limits...

Gödel's incompleteness theorems are theoretically and philosophically tremendously important, but most mathematicians don't expect the limits implied by those theorems to be important in practice - not at the proof scales accessible by humans.

We don't know for sure, but the intuitive sense of most mathematicians is that true but Gödel-inaccessible theorems are probably far away from us in very weird corners of the space of all formally possible propositions.

The reason for this intuition is that you have to do very odd contortions to construct a proposition that demonstrates Gödel-inaccessibility. Such constructions are not mathematically natural questions.

Consider the contrast with the Continuum Hypothesis or the Axiom of Choice. These arise from very simple and natural questions the answers to which turn out to be unprovable in standard set theory. They are not weird, twisted constructions made specifically to force the axiom system to rupture something.

Because all reasoning about computer programs is reasoning about finite sets, it seems highly unlikely that being able to prove the correctness of a program will ever depend on even unprovable propositions as natural as CH or AC, which are axioms about what you can do with infinite sets.

Still less likely does it seem that the proof of any program will ever depend on a proposition that is Gödel-inaccessible.

So, in practice, it is not worth worrying about Gödel-inaccessibility of program proofs. Unless you're the sort of person who worries compulsively about, oh, I dunno, being beaned by a meteorite made of solid platinum, in which case there probably isn't much I can do to ease your tension.

Of course, we could be wrong. There could be a landmine, or any number of landmines, in the regions of proof space we care about. The real worry about the Riemann hypothesis isn't whether it's true or false, but that it might turn out to be such a landmine.

Then again, the Riemann hypothesis involves claims about infinities. Even if it does turn out to be Gödel-inaccessible (and the most mathematicians don't worry that it is) it would be quite a bit more shocking if a proof on finite sets turned out to be.

[methodologicalTerrorism @methodolog73944]

@LexerLux @MunicipleOrrery If you're transacting in dollars, you're in somebody's AML/KYC jurisdiction.

Apparently GoFundMe lets you use a public-facing nickname if you want.

https://t.co/yjTtaOwdlg

[methodologicalTerrorism @methodolog73944]

@sgodofsk ...What exactly is the function of government, in your view, and how does this serve it?

For that matter, what is the function of disgust, and have you tuned yours to serve it?

[MAGA Jay Cutler @MAGAJayCutler]

Everyone who says this is full of shit btw

It’s just a shitty attempt at taking the moral high ground as if we haven’t watched the left’s utter contempt for patriotism for YEARS

[Mickey Kaus @kausmickey]

I ran for office in CA in 2010--not especially well--but I did get to attend some local Dem party meetings. (I was running as a Democrat.) At one, I think it was in Eagle Rock, I had the misfortune to be preceded by a tall, handsome Latino running for another office. He was charismatic, funny, friendly, articulate, thoughtful. They loved him. This guy is a potential governor, I thought. Then I realized: He's just starting. By the times he's promoted himself to the level where he'd run for statewide office he'll have made so many commitments to so many interest groups --especially, but not only unions--that he'll be indistinguishable from all the other hack party Dems. And if he doesn't do that, he won't get promoted by them.

The CA Dem party--statewide and in LA--is a giant machine that produces a certain kind of go-along operator. The prototypical product is someone like Javier Becerra, a nice man, not too smart I'm told, who hasn't achieved much-- whom even the Bidenites didn't think a lot of--but who pays his dues and promises not to thrown any wrenches into the machine. He's experienced! Karen Bass is another product--smarter, but her achievements are actually negative: Her city burned down. She's experienced too!

Experience, in this context, *means* being part of the machine. There's no other way to get it. This wouldn't be such a problem if there were in-party Gorbachev-style reformers running around. But none are in sight. It wouldn't be such a problem if there were a competing machine producing equally experienced, unimaginative apparatchiks. Voters could then choose which machine to pick, and by doing so hold the other machine's feet to the fire (if it's possible to hold a machine's feet to the fire).

But there isn't a competing machine. There is only one machine: the Democrats. Once (not coincidentally when the state GOP was more viable) the Democratic machine probably served the electorate well. But rot gradually set in, as unions demanded big salaries for less work, as bad teachers weren't weeded out. New non-profit bureaucracies grew up to "solve" problems like homelessness, but they siphoned off a lot of money in salaries--which gave them a vested interest in making sure the problem was a permanent one. Regulations, seemingly sensible in themselves, added up to insanity--as when the heavily populated Palisades burned down because an earlier fire on its outskirts wasn't completely extinguished, in large part because that might have harmed some endangered plant species (resulting in fines!). https://t.co/U5wTMri9mx

Mayor Bass didn't fail. The machine she heads failed. It has stopped serving the voters. The only way to change (or, crazy thought, replace) it is with an outsider--almost by definition someone who lacks the "experience" of placating Democratic interests.

That's Pratt. I'm sure he'd make mistakes. (Hard to believe he'd make as big a mistake as appointing his sworn enemies to high positions, the way Trump did in his first term.) But Pratt seems quite willing to correct his missteps. And he has the one thing that a holder of LA's "weak mayorship"--where you have to talk other people into doing what you can't do yourself--must have, which is energy.

Following Jim Newton's weary advice is like giving Leonid Brezhnev four more years in 1977. The message: The machine is tackling the problem, and if it's failing that's because our problems are intractable, Nothing can really be done. Maybe incrementally. At great expense.

That's what the people with experience say.

PS: Newton says it's "gibberish" for Pratt to talk about building big drug treatment facility on federal land. Why is it gibberish? It's entirely conceivable that the Trump administration (or even the Shapiro administration) would give LA a piece of land. Such a facility has been tried in San Antonio with apparent success.

[methodologicalTerrorism @methodolog73944]

@politicalmath @patio11 @MunicipleOrrery, if you want to understand liberalism, you should understand that it arose primarily as an attempt to answer these kinds of questions (with respect to any kind of government, not just representative ones.).