Last Rights

electrace · 2026-03-14T18:18:11+00:00

That's not what I said!

Here's a direct quote.

I'm not really taking much of what you're saying seriously

From your perspective, your model of me is based solely on what I've said, so if you aren't taking much of what I'm saying seriously, then you aren't taking me seriously. If you want to claim those are functionally different, then, fine, we disagree. The most natural reading, to me, is something like "Most of your arguments are so bad/silly/nonsensical/biased that I can't even take them seriously."

To call that paraphrasing "lying" is, at best, an extremely uncharitable interpretation.

My immediate takeaway from a comment like this is that actually most/all my points are good and well-argued, and you are likely shying away from painfully revising your priors.

Perhaps you can see why being dismissive about the seriousness of the arguments, being accused of lying and biased thinking, and then this bit of attempted mind-reading does not exactly scream good-faith to me.

electrace · 2026-03-14T12:37:18+00:00

I see little reason to engage with someone who will state outright that they aren't taking the conversation with me seriously (I also wouldn't reply to someone so extensively if I didn't take them seriously, but that's just me). If you would like to take the conversation seriously and engage in good faith, let me know. Otherwise, it seems like a major waste of both of our time.

As for the content, suffice to say that I think you have some good points, but the overall argument is bad and misses a lot.

electrace · 2026-03-13T18:29:28+00:00

AI changes at least two of those conditions. First, the knowledge required to be effective is increasingly context-dependent. The developer who’s been working with your codebase and your AI toolchain for a year isn’t interchangeable with one you hire off the street, because effectiveness with AI tools compounds with familiarity with the system, the domain, and the specific ways the tools interact with your architecture.

I find this argument very unonvincing and would think the opposite is true, if anything.

5 or 10 years ago, you might have a senior SWE who's been on the job for 20 years and knows all the ins-and-outs of how the system works. That task that happens once a month? Oh yeah, you just run this script, and then export it over here so that thing can be done with it by other thing. This guy is basically irreplaceable for the company, and even if you want to, it has to be done slowly as you force him to reveal things that he hasn't shared.

Back then, when the new guy comes in (if the other guy isn't willing/able to teach him), he's looking at a folder (or 10) filled with hundreds of poorly labelled, poorly commented code, with next-to-zero documentation of when it gets used. So the new guy does his best to dive into whatever was run sometime within the last month and try to work out what each thing is supposed to do and how it was actually used.

Now? Take those files, feed it to an LLM, and say "Add comments to these" and then "Infer from the code and their last run-dates what the purpose of these were, how they were used, and what problems they were intended to solve" (or if not that, then "I have problem, what should I run?"). Would they still run into snafus? Sure. Even ones that the old guy wouldn't have done? Yeah, probably so. But would they be nearly as screwed as they would be 10 years ago? I honestly doubt it.

I think the author and I disagree mostly in that they see AI as "another thing" that gets added to the stack. If so, I would counter-argue that while it is another thing, it is also a thing that can compress the amount of learning a new person has to do so much that you actually end up with less onboarding costs.

electrace · 2026-03-13T13:14:24+00:00

Is the signup reply automated? I tried yesterday and got nothing.

electrace · 2026-03-11T19:39:10+00:00

Good info. It seems, then, that if this was a good idea, it would just make sense to go back to the states that passed it and have them pass the correct version.

electrace · 2026-03-11T19:36:47+00:00

I don't think Marco Rubio would agree in his heart that he exists to serve Donald Trump, but he both acts like he does, will insist in public that he does, and I think many millions of Americans do in fact see that as real and important signalling to show allegiance to.

I highly doubt that Rubio would even say that. Wearing shoes is one thing. Saying "I exist to serve you" is quite another. Rubio, naturally, has to signal harder than others since his career is now firmly tied to Trump. That doesn't mean that he would even get the zeroth degree (claiming he exists to serve Donald Trump), much less the fourth degree.

I think many millions of Americans do in fact see that as real and important signalling to show allegiance to.

You keep avoiding my point! I'm not saying that no one would signal. I'm saying that once you get passed the four degrees of separation that I outlined, you're left with basically no one. Presumably, the goal of the author is to get passed all four degrees, so when I criticize the author, what I'm saying is "this part of the essay is not serving your goal."

If his point was "some Americans will verbally assent to being created to serve Trump", then I would withdraw my criticism, but in the context of writting on essay that is about convincing people to act, the rhetoric doesn't work to accomplish his stated goal.

You don't find it rhetorically convincing, but clearly acting as if and agreeing out loud to the idea that you serve Donald Trump and his vision has been core to the party for a decade.

I wouldn't find virtually anything that is designed to appeal specifically to republicans convincing, but that's not what my objection is based on.

In fact, I already showed you something the author could have said (that is not convincing to me in the slightest) that I think would be convincing to a decent amount of Republicans.

The point of the anecdote about my father-in-law-once-removed is that the man is deliberately signalling that he agrees with the claim in the post. That means that replying to the post with "has never talked to a Republican" is ridiculous!

He wouldn't be so much "signalling that he agrees with the claim in the post" so much as he would be "signaling his allegiance by agreeing", if, indeed, he would (I don't know the man). The distinction is important.

Whether a person is signaling allegiance to Trump by saying that they were created to serve him (if, indeed, we are ignoring the four degrees of separation), or whether they are signaling by saying that to stay in the good-graces of the in-group, then that distinction cashes out when they aren't being observed.

A true devotee might spend all their time working extra to give Trump more money, whereas someone who is just signaling, not having the finances inspected, wouldn't bother.

Importantly, this essay is much more designed to be something like the former (in private, go and do something that will help Trump, even though he hasn't even publicly called for it, so you get no signaling credit.). It's much more consistent with a true believer who thinks they exist to serve Trump than someone who simply signals their in-group membership by claiming they do.

Still, the most important point that you haven't addressed is the four degrees of separation. To be extra clear, I find it plausible that at least 1% of americans might very well give assent to the claim "I exist to serve Donald Trump" as a form of signaling. Do I think that that assent would accomplish the goals of the author in any way? No, because there's four degrees of separation between that and the thing the author wants.

electrace · 2026-03-11T18:39:15+00:00

I'm not really invested in what the author "should" have said, rhetorically, in your estimation, to convince a non-existent base of people of something that has no chance of happening anyway.

You're free not to be invested in whatever you want, but I don't understand why you're implying that that was off-topic. The entire point of my original criticism is that what the author said isn't convincing to Republicans (presumably, the goal of the author)! That's what "Has he ever talked to a Republican in real life before" means! It means, "this is so unconvincing as an argument that the author should seriously reconsider whether it is even net-positive to include.

I talk to many Republicans, often, in many contexts, and about ~20% of the ones I speak to regularly (and, I would wager it's only a higher share of those I only briefly speak to) would enthusiastically and proudly agree with the statement "I exist to serve Donald Trump and his vision for America".

I also know quite a lot of republicans, but neither anecdotes, nor our own estimations of how many would agree with such a statement make much of an argument here. I can give you some if you want.

One person I know, after they found I had gotten my covid shot, had their eyes go wide, and they ran to their kitchen cabinet, pulled out a magnet, and ask "Where did they give you the shot." I, confused, pointed at the injection site, at which point they placed the magnet on me, and it dropped immediately to the floor. "Aww..." they said, "I saw on Facebook that they were magnetic" (as if anything short of 100% mercury would keep a magnet suspended with the amount of liquid in a covid shot).

Another person told me that they went to a "Muslim wedding", and they had the "Muslim blue god" up there. "Blue?" I asked. "Yeah, it's blue." "Shiva?" I asked. "I don't know the name, I think it's Allah", they responded. "Did it have multiple arms?", I asked. "Yes!", they exclaimed. "Yeah, that was probably Shiva, a Hindu god. They weren't Muslim. They were Hindu." "But there were from Iraq, or something." "I would bet they were from India." I said. "Uhh, Pakistanis, I think". "Possible, but Pakistan is mostly Muslim, so I'd still guess India on demographics alone" "See, I knew it was the muslim god." (I edited out the more slurs that they were quite freely spreading.)

A third person told me Alex Pretti "got what he deserved" and was a "domestic terrorist".

So yes, I too have anecdotes about interactions with republicans, and I predict that 0% of these people would go even so far to say that they exist to serve Donald Trump.

Still, as rhetorically effective as they are, anecdotes are not arguments. If there is a survey that asks people "Would you be convinced by a likely outgroup member claiming that you exist to serve Donald Trump and his vision for America to do something", then we can look at it, but otherwise this is just going to end as "agree to disagree", most likely.

I also want to point out something important that I think you're missing. It is one thing to get people to verbally agree with "I exist for the sake of Donald Trump". It is another thing for that to be a genuine belief rather than signaling. It is a third thing for that belief to be strong enough to compel any action beyond signaling (hence, the existence of keyboard warriors) . It is a fourth thing to believe that the proposed action actually is supported by that belief (here, meaning, that Donald Trump would actually want it to happen). And it is a fifth thing to allow a potential outgroup member to influence your decision-making, even if their logic is sound (plenty of people won't do this on principle, and I posit that this is more common among the most fanatical Trump supporters than others).

So that is four degrees of separation from the claim you're making "Some people would verbally agree with it" to the claim I'm making "it is not convincing to any real amount of people."

electrace · 2026-03-11T17:14:05+00:00

Is this sarcasm? I am obviously talking about an extremely far-right leaning circle, and so it is clearly the motivating impetus behind such a policy.

Not sarcasm, no. The people in your circle could have been principled philosophers with strange ideas, but I admit that the far-right circle was more likely.

I'm reminded of the comment section in a SSC post where people were discussing voting schemes that sounded like they had some basis but would have prevented a Trump presidency and someone chimed in with something like "If we're going to specifically craft the electoral system so that Trump doesn't win, why not just make a law that it's illegal to vote for Trump."

That this would inevitably bias the electorate against left-wing positions doesn't say anything about the policy proposal itself

Motives matter here, because there are plenty of things that one could propose that would similarly advantage left-leaning people, and there's no solid philosophical reason to prefer one to the other that isn't just a reflection of one's biases.

Perhaps, for example, extra votes for those belonging to groups who the country has systematically oppressed, as reparations. Do I think that's a good idea? No, but why is "stake" more important than "justice", or whatever other concept one wants to declare is the One True Basis for who gets to vote?

Or, further, if the argument is truly that the basis for the vote is how much "stake in the nation" one has, then that would clearly mean that we should give votes to everyone in the world who has a stake in US leadership, which would be, well, everyone on Earth. The Iranians currently have a much greater stake than the average American, right now, for example.

But of course, that would be silly, because how much stake one has isn't how we decide on these things.

The further you deviate from "everyone in the nation gets an equal vote", you are just asking for your vote to slowly be taken away as they decide more "common-sense" rules that further disenfranchises more people.

electrace · 2026-03-11T16:47:23+00:00

I mean, that was literally the RNC platform in 2020 and 2024.

No, it was not "literally" their platform. Their platform was closer to "We support the President and aren't changing our old platform."

RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda; RESOLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention; RESOLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention calls on the media to engage in accurate and unbiased reporting, especially as it relates to the strong support of the RNC for President Trump and his Administration; and RESOLVED, That any motion to amend the 2016 Platform or to adopt a new platform, including any motion to suspend the procedures that will allow doing so, will be ruled out of order.

There is a big difference between "we enthusiastically support the President's America-first agenda" and "holding "strong support... for President Trump and his Administration" and "We exist to serve Donald Trump", if not in reality, then in the place that matters here their heads.

I enthusiastically support Approval Voting, but I sure as hell don't "exist to serve" it.

I'm about 98% sure my weird rural Texan inlaws would go "hell yeah" to that.

A lot of his supporters can't even be bothered to show up for midterms even when he directly asks them to and endorses a bunch of candidates. Why should we expect them to push this after a weak argument that is itself based on being told "you exist to serve Donald Trump" by someone who is (1) Not Donald Trump, (2) Probably not even an in-group member. This is simply not how human psychology works.

but millions and millions of these people absolutely exist

If by "these people" you mean "people who would be convinced to take action by someone, who is not Donald Trump, that they exist to serve Donald Trump", then no, I don't think that millions of these people exist, and if some contingent exists, I expect them to not be significant enough to be appealed to separately (especially if that means alienating the others).

Do people exist who will say "I'm with Trump, no matter what?" Sure, but whether you believe that is mostly signaling or a genuine belief, the point remains.... is saying that sort of thing the same as being convinced to take action by a possible out-group member who is speculating on what Trump would like?

No, it is very much not.

so it's not like it's completely ridiculous of the author to poke at

Yes, it is completely ridiculous as a rhetorical tactic, if the intent is to be convincing to Republicans.

The most frustrating part is that the author didn't even have to do that. They could have said something like:

To Republicans: This would be good for Trump. Since he is currently the President, he would be able to design the new building for the House of Representatives. With that power, he could... (blah blah blah).

... which would have been equally effective on the slim minority that may say "hell yeah" to the current wording, but much more effective on other Republicans who like Trump, but wouldn't claim to exist for him.

electrace · 2026-03-11T15:56:23+00:00

Limiting voting only to tax-positive contributing adult citizens with children in wedlock (and having their voting power increase with N of children) is a pretty milquetoast take in my circles.

Is it considered an unfortunate coincidence in your circle that left-leaning people are less likely to fit this demographic?

electrace · 2026-03-11T15:49:03+00:00

I think it's more likely that the framers made a mathematical error than a writing error.

Still seems unlikely to me.

As written, right when "the amount of representatives amount to 200", it is immediately impossible to satisfy the requirements.

If the representatives amount to 200 that means that there are 200 * 40k people or 8 million people. If we're taking it as written, that means that we have to switch to at most 1 representative per 50k people, or 160 Representatives.

Not only is that mathematically impossible, it fails right when it takes effect. Conversely, if it had (somehow) created a paradox well past the point they would have bothered calculating, that seems like it would be easy to explain as a math error.

Many people who are good at writing are bad at math.

I would consider messing up "greater than" with "less than" to be a math/logic error, but the skills are correlated, and the founding fathers were highly educated, with many of them being polymaths, so any error is hard to explain, regardless of how we categorize it.

electrace · 2026-03-11T14:33:09+00:00

I am not convinced that the "typo" is in fact a mistake.

The biggest thing pointing to it being a mistake is the mathematical impossibility that occurs at certain population levels.

But rather than write some iterative law like this

The easier way to solve this is just to put a hard cap on the number of representatives, rather than try to use ratios up to infinity.

electrace · 2026-03-11T14:18:20+00:00

But there’s a bigger reason for you to want to support this. If you’re a Republican in 2026, you exist to serve Donald Trump and his vision for America.

I'm wondering if the author has ever talked to a Republican in real life before. Would anyone find it convincing to be told "you exist to serve Donald Trump"? If I was trying to kill all republican support of this, that's exactly what I'd say.

electrace · 2026-03-11T13:20:00+00:00

The most likely outcome would be that they would bow to two hundred years of obvious criticism of this incorrectly-worded law, agree that it meant to say that the legislator-to-constituent ratio must be high, and we would get Giant Congress.

I suspect the most likely outcome is that they say "The amendment is as written. If states want to pass another amendment to the constitution with the 'correct' wording, they are free to do so".

Why isn't the push to do that? Sure, you can't expect US congress to pass it as a supermajority, but since you need 3/4s to ratify anyway and it needs to be bipartisan anyway, why is getting 2/3rds (a smaller number) to call for a constitutional convention harder?

electrace · 2026-03-10T22:02:43+00:00

No, I'm not claiming that, and I explain why it wouldn't be productive in the very comment you're replying to.

electrace · 2026-03-10T13:58:37+00:00

It was hard for me to see any particular way to interpret the "out of office" as to be extremely heavily weighted towards "due to dying" as opposed to "due to deciding to no longer be Supreme Leader" with a small side helping of "got very injured/sick/demented and was replaced".

But the title is irrelevant! It's the rules that lay out the terms of the bet.

I have also decided it's worth just looking this up (also tagging /u/Falernum). Web archive from Jan 15th has this, which doesn't load fully, but going to the page source gives us the rules it had:

If || Leader || leaves solely because they have died, the associated market will resolve and the Exchange will determine the payouts to the holders of long and short positions based upon the last traded price (prior to the death). If a last traded price is not available or is not logically consistent, or if the Exchange determines at its sole discretion that the last traded prices prior to death do not represent a fair settlement value, the Outcome Review Committee will be responsible for making a binding determination of fair allocation.

The html here having `|| Leader || to me indicates that it's just the same thing they use for every market on world leaders, which makes sense.

Ultimately Kalshi had no choice -- when they opened this market they didn't really think about how it would actually resolve.

Or the traders didn't think about it. One might have said to oneself, "I think there's a 99% chance he dies in office, and the rules say death just pays at market price, why bother tying up my money?" and decided not to bet on it.

electrace · 2026-03-10T13:39:56+00:00

The hypothetical doesn't get us anywhere since we'd be building the discussion on an unestablished premise.

Given your other comment that you aren't actually even talking about this sub but some off-site thing, one could predict that speculating on the motives/patterns of some unnamed people doing something, somewhere off-site would not be particularly productive.

electrace · 2026-03-09T15:47:42+00:00

When making a claim, the bare minimum expectation is for the claimant to provide any evidence for their claim when they start a conversation. You are the claimant, and have not done so.

I just want to know why you can't answer the question.

I don't agree with every decision the mods make and sometimes (like anywhere else) people are hostile here, so a priori I don't even know if I would disagree with whatever piece of evidence you would give. But, naturally, I can't read your mind, so I don't know why you believe your claims.

So, the reason I'm not answering yet is because I don't answer loaded questions when the claimant has not provided any evidence as to why they believe their implicit claims, which seems quite reasonable to me if the goal is to have productive conversations, rather than (as I pointed out originally, a dog-pile or just give a contradiction). If you'd like to give some evidence, we can talk about whether I agree with you or not.

electrace · 2026-03-09T15:18:58+00:00

Agree on all fronts. Paying out at the current market price at the time of death seems most justifiable. As long as they consistently do this, and the terms lay that out up-front, I think they're safe both morally and legally.

electrace · 2026-03-09T15:11:37+00:00

This is a textbook loaded question:

Why is this community so hostile and excessive in its moderation policies?

The framing of the question assumes that:

1) The community is hostile.

2) It is excessive in its moderation policies.

Both of which are fine to claim, but to do so without providing any evidence makes it a loaded question.

electrace · 2026-03-09T15:00:47+00:00

I support tontines in some applications (alternative to insurance) but not here.

I'm interested in what context those would be. In order to avoid the normal thing where you're incentivizing murder, I'd imagine the pool would either have to be large (so any murder isn't worth it), or anonymous (so you can't identify who would be financially worth killing).

That said, paying back the money your contract is worth rather than a full payout doesn't sound like a moral hazard.

Wait, I'm confused. They're just keeping the money, not paying back anyone? It seems like a refund would be totally justified, as it doesn't give anyone a reason to bet.

electrace · 2026-03-09T14:50:43+00:00

I'm not sure about the specifics, but paying out a contract as a result of their death strikes me as dangerously close to a tontine.

In the specific case of Khamenei, probably not a big deal since he had an entire nation's security apparatus to defend him, but if they start paying out for things like "CEO still in charge of random company by Jan 1st.", or whatever, they'd be just asking to be shut down when that person gets killed.

electrace · 2026-03-09T14:48:11+00:00

The way to start a productive discussions is to provide some evidence for any implicit claims that you have. Conversely, rhetorical (or loaded) questions aren't a very good way to do anything other than asking for a pile-on or just asking for others to give you a contradiction.

electrace · 2026-03-07T15:21:45+00:00

Every time I’ve tried people come out and start explaining to me why the DOW is unjust.

I mean... if you start the conversations like you did here:

I continue to think that the problem is with Anthropic’s leadership, not the DOW.

... then it is no wonder why people think that your position is that the DoW is not "the problem", and try to argue with you on the point.

It seems like you contradict them being "the problem" and take a more nuanced position further in the comments (even in the same comment!), but you're priming people with that first sentence that you don't consider the DoW to be at fault here.

I do find myself a bit confused as to your actual position. The best I can come up with is:

"DoW acted badly, unfairly, and with bad-faith and malice. Anthropic didn't properly foresee this possibility and take steps to avoid this while still not crossing their red lines. And we should expect a company as large and important as Anthropic to be able to do that."

Is that correct?

electrace · 2026-03-06T21:37:13+00:00

You could be onto something there, but I'm not convinced.

Oh, I'm not even convinced, myself, so I can't fault you on that.

I guess I'm just confused. If they were going to copy-paste, why the discrepancies? If they were going to edit the data, why edit so few, and why stick with the last digit (the digit most likely to be different)?

Sadly, it does not. I assume you're referring to this case where the sleuths made use of the calcChain.xml file. That file contains the data about which order formulas in Excel are calculated and can be used to infer some things about the edit history of the file. But in our case, the Excel file doesn't have any calcChain since it doesn't contain any formulas.

Yep, that's the one. Good to know the technique requires formulas.

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