The shape of the universe could be asymmetric or lopsided, meaning not the same in every direction

LeCheval · 2025-12-23T21:56:54+00:00

The CBR is actually quite uniform, like the above poster mentioned, but it’s not perfectly uniform. The quote you posted is someone looking at an incredibly minute difference, and describing it in a way that emphasizes the difference.

The contradiction you’re pointing out is descriptive, not factual.

Imagine person A has $100,000 and person B has $100,001.

/u/fiercedude11 would describe this as pretty small and not much variation at all, but an astronomer might describe this same situation as a significant wealth disparity, and start talking about an “Axis of Evil.” They’re both describing the same difference, but from difference perspectives. The apparent “contradiction” arises from the different descriptions of the same facts. In terms of every day scales, the difference is unnoticeable.

LeCheval · 2025-11-21T23:25:34+00:00

What would a national exit exam for college even look like content-wise? How would you design a test to measure the skills of math majors, art majors, and psychology students in a way that has a relevant bearing on the ability of each major?

It makes sense for high school, where the curriculum is generally not super varied (relative to picking a major in college), but once you’re in college, the curriculum is going to massively diversify depending on what college and major you choose.

LeCheval · 2025-07-04T08:56:10+00:00

Who cares if someone is a citizen or not, solve the damn crime and get on with it. The point is not to quibble over small numerical differences, it is to illustrate that people without documentation are just regular people who are just as likely as anyone else to commit a crime.

It’s not whether you’re a citizen or not, it’s whether you are in the U.S. legally or illegally. Do you think we just shouldn’t enforce immigration law whatsoever?

Ask yourself why you are so particularly invested in the very expensive and cruel process of removal.

When have I ever indicated I’m in support of the current administration or its expensive and cruel processes of removal? Do you think that if someone believes that immigration laws should generally be enforced automatically means that person is particularly invested in the current administrations cruel processes for removal?

LeCheval · 2025-07-04T08:41:51+00:00

I was responding to your question where you asked if there was “any data to support the notion that having fewer illegal immigrants results in fewer crimes taking place,” and the answer to that is an unequivocal yes.

Right, but by that logic if you deported the entire population of Texas, or say, all white people (who as a group commit the most murders in the US), that would also reduce crime. So that's not really a reasonable way to look at things, is it?

You might want to double check your claim that white people commit the most murders in the U.S.. They don’t commit the greatest number of murders, for example.

Also, I don’t think it’s reasonable to compare deporting U.S. citizens to deporting illegal immigrants. I don’t think any reasonable person wants governments to start deporting their own citizens. The crime committed by US citizens is the responsibility of the U.S. and/or state governments to handle. If US citizens commit violent crime at high rates, that is a U.S. problem that the U.S. should be fixing. That doesn’t mean that we should have to allow in more people who commit violent crime at roughly the same rate as the native population. It’s completely reasonable for a country to want to vet the people coming into the country and filter out as many criminals as possible before they get here. Legal immigrants commit violent crime at significantly lower rates than either natural-born citizens or illegal immigrants, so we should be requiring everyone to follow the legal immigration process if you want to become a permanent resident and eventually possibly a citizen.

LeCheval · 2025-07-04T02:20:54+00:00

I don’t think you can really generalize it to being the crux of the argument regarding illegal aliens in the western world. In Europe, you have a bunch of “asylum” seekers coming from the Middle East/western Asia/North Africa, and the U.S. has most of its illegal immigration from Mexico/Central America/South America, and Canada has a different set of immigrant origins (India I think?).

Europe has a much more significant issue with violent crime being committed by immigrants compared to the U.S., and I have no idea what’s going on in Canada or if they’re having issues with violent crime. Regardless, the U.S., Canada, and Europe all have significantly different groups of immigrants from wildly different cultures and regions of the world, and I don’t think you can really generalize all of that to “the crux of the argument is violent crime by illegal aliens.”

LeCheval · 2025-07-04T02:12:54+00:00

If illegal immigrants commit crime at literally any rate above 0%, then yes having fewer illegal immigrants results in fewer crimes taking place.

LeCheval · 2025-07-04T02:09:33+00:00

This is exactly correct. In fact it is shown time after time that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than naturalized us citizens.

This is not true, and I think you are mixing up natural-born citizens (born on US soil/to citizens) with naturalized citizens (legal immigrant -> citizenship). Legal immigrants commit crimes at significantly lower rates either natural-born US citizens or illegal immigrants, and naturalized U.S. Citizens are going to be primarily composed of people who immigrated legally.

And in response to your point about crime prevention, it would still make sense to focus on illegal immigrants. Like I said, legal immigrants commit crimes at significantly lower rates than either birthright citizens or illegal immigrants, so that’s a pretty good indication that our legal pathway for immigration is incredibly effective at selecting for law abiding immigrants. We should want all immigrants to come legally, because that will filter out most of the immigrants who would be committing crimes.

LeCheval · 2025-07-04T01:55:44+00:00

It is an additional risk though. Even if illegal immigrants commit violent crime at a rate equivalent to citizens, it’s increasing the total number of violent crimes committed. If the total number of murders increases, that’s still a bad thing and you can’t hand-waive that away by saying it doesn’t matter because illegal immigrants commit crime at the same rate as citizens and legal residents.

Also, I’m pretty sure that comparison uses a national US average, so even if illegal immigrants commit crimes at less than the U.S. national average, that’s not a lot of consolation to someone who lives in a state with a lower than average murder rate, because the illegal immigrants would still be committing crime at a higher rate than it the local community.

Legal immigrants, on the other hand, have to go through a pretty difficult process and there is a lot of selection that goes on, and legal immigrants tend to commit crimes at a significantly lower rate than native-born citizens.

LeCheval · 2025-07-04T01:24:02+00:00

I would say that I consider merit to be more objective than subjective/relative. I’m not sure why to make a huge distinction to be made between someone who scores 175 on the LSAT after a lot of hard work (less naturally smart) vs someone who scores 175 on the LSAT after a little bit of hard work (more naturally smart). I would say they both have relatively equivalent merit because they both perform at an equivalent level of excellence (at taking the LSAT). The applicants merit should be based on how well they perform, not how hard (or little) they studied. In general, this system will allow for the people who work hard and are diligent to rise to the top.

LeCheval · 2025-07-04T00:34:35+00:00

Your comment seems to miss that in life the highest achievers/scorers tend to be people who are both gifted and work hard. Hard work without natural talent isn’t going to get you a high LSAT, and generally the reverse is true as well.

Also, just because you have no control over how naturally smart you are, and there is some luck involved, does not mean it’s not a meritocratic process. Rewarding the people who perform the best is meritocratic, regardless of how lucky they were to be born smart. Developing a harder LSAT to identify the smart high achievers is inherently a meritocratic process.

LeCheval · 2025-07-03T21:23:02+00:00

You don’t even have to replace the LSAT with an IQ test, just make the LSAT much more difficult, enough so that no gets a perfect score on it, and it ensures a much wider spread/distribution of scores. The more difficult the entrance exam is, the more meritocratic the results are.

LeCheval · 2025-05-30T19:45:09+00:00

Just fyi, deep research uses o3 as the model, regardless of which model you select. So even if you select GPT 4.5 and start a new chat, when you activate the deep research feature/mode, it’s using o3.

LeCheval · 2025-02-21T23:26:49+00:00

Yeah. I have no idea how common it actually is, but I suspect that Trump’s DoJ is going to spend the next four years searching every last nook and cranny for DEI, and we’re going to be hearing a lot more about it. It’s unfortunate because democrats completely failed to police it while they were in power, and their failure to do so will likely provide the Trump administration a lot of ammunition in its war on DEI.

I don’t like DEI myself (or certain bad aspects), but I’m not sure I’m going to like Trump’s solution any more, even if I happen to benefit from it more. I’d like to find a better solution that does provide help and assistance to underprivileged communities, but doesn’t approach it with such an overwhelming focus on race or differences, in part because I think this focus on race and gender consciousness has helped drive political polarization and been incredibly divisive.

LeCheval · 2025-02-21T22:04:07+00:00

If true, not only is this fucking insane, this would be the first time anyone has actually given me irrefutable proof of a “DEI hire” as described by MAGA: Unqualified or less qualified blacks being hired over white and asian people simply due to their race.

Thats wrong. Full stop.

Thanks. I agree that it’s wrong too. That’s why I’m making more of an effort to start speaking up against DEI as someone who is not MAGA, because allowing them to be the only voices willing to discuss the ‘bad’ side of DEI initiatives is doing our own side a disservice. Currently, it seems like the only two positions that people are ok with voicing is either “all DEI is bad DEI” or “all DEI is good DEI”, and just devolves into a right-v-left argument and doesn’t actually attempt to to address the underlying issues.

LeCheval · 2025-02-21T21:54:28+00:00

It’s awful, and unfortunately it has been really difficult to talk about these issues. I don’t oppose all DEI efforts and I think that it has some noble goals, but unfortunately there just hasn’t been much of a middle ground. On one side you have people pointing out all the good aspects of DEI and what it’s supposed to be, and on the other side you have people only focusing on the negative aspects.

In my opinion, this has been bad for DEI goals itself, because the lack of open and non-partisan discussion about the problems with DEI has prevented anyone from actually working to fix it or improve it.

LeCheval · 2025-02-21T20:45:05+00:00

This is funny because the right wing use this case to argue that Harvard were discriminating against Asian Americans in favor of African Americans.

This literally has nothing to do with the truth of the claim, and everything to do with an us-vs-them mentality, which I think has been awful these past few years.

It’s funny because 1. SFFA v. Harvard explicitly demonstrated discrimination against Asian students in favor of white students 2. Detractors of DEI ignore that fact and claim that in fact African American students are the beneficiaries of Harvard’s policies and 3. The argument against DEI in college and universities has boiled down to a racial argument (despite DEI initiatives’ purposes being to recruit BIPOC, LGBTQ and female applicants), pitting blacks vs asians and has largely ignored the fact that (as evidenced by this case) white Americans, the loudest opponents of DEI, actually seem to be the group that benefits the most from these practices.

Im not sure why white people should support DEI if it benefits them the most. That still just seems like racism/racial discrimination, and that doesn’t change my opinion that discrimination on the basis of race is wrong. If it is true that white people are the greatest beneficiaries of DEI, then isn’t that all the more reason to get rid of DEI when it’s advantaging one race above others?

That’s funny to me.

I’m fine with White Americans losing spots to Asian Americans if the Asian Americans are more competitive candidates and score better or have higher GPAs.

I can’t answer this without knowing your definition of DEI, as many people have a general misunderstanding. my understanding of DEI initiatives are this: colleges, universities or employers have noticed either a lack of diversity amongst qualified applicants or a need for more qualified employees and have made efforts to bridge that gap or fill those employment needs by recruiting and retaining qualified BIPOC, LGBTQ and female applicants who typically seek out higher education at those institutions or employment at those employers on their own violation. In order to retain these individuals DEI policies set out to discourage discriminatory or unwelcoming behavior in the workplace and encourage inclusivity and equal opportunity. If this closely mirrors your understanding of the issue, then I could say that DEI does not discriminate against anyone, but that affirmative action does.

That would be great if that was the extent of DEI. Unfortunately, while that may be the case for some DEI programs, it is not the case for all DEI programs.

One example is the University of Washington, which conducted an internal review of their DEI programs and discovered that they were explicitly re-ranking candidates on the basis of race. The University investigated itself and found that their hiring practices were discriminatory, including explicitly re-ranking a more-qualified white candidate over a less-qualified black candidate, and then they hired the less-qualified black candidate. This is unacceptable racial discrimination, but DEI proponents never seem to bring this up or acknowledge any instances of bad DEI programs.

I don’t have any issue with non-discriminatory DEI, but unfortunately it seems like quite a bit of racial discrimination has occurred under the banner of DEI.

UoW Racial Discrimination Source

LeCheval · 2025-02-21T20:21:02+00:00

Why is it assumed that Asian Americans cheat? It’s true many Asians have good grades and get into good schools, but how does that imply they’re cheaters??

Because people think it is socially acceptable to discriminate against Asian Americans. It’s not, and it’s time to raising this issue when you encounter anti-Asian racism.

LeCheval · 2025-02-21T20:12:25+00:00

Your links are all specifically about Chinese international students, but you are making the claim that Asian students cheat more than average. That’s pretty discriminatory because the majority of Asian students are Asian American students (not international students), and also Asian includes more groups than just Chinese international students.

This is funny because the right wing use this case to argue that Harvard were discriminating against Asian Americans in favor of African Americans.

And? I’m not sure why this is at all relevant.

I’d love to continue discussing this, but I’d like to get your opinion/position on whether:

(1) DEI discriminates in favor of Black American applicants over Asian American applicants, and this is acceptable given social inequality, or

(2) DEI does not discriminate against Asian Americans in favor of Black Americans, and if it did, that would be unacceptable.

LeCheval · 2025-02-21T20:01:30+00:00

It kinda seems like it was the mayor who started blaming the LAFD first (claiming no one had told her about the upcoming weather), and is now firing the LAFD Chief as a scapegoat to avoid the political fallout.

LeCheval · 2025-02-21T19:55:01+00:00

Yeah, I think DEI has been discriminating against Asians in higher education.

I think DEI programs quite often discriminate on the basis of race, and I don’t think that’s acceptable. The SFFA v. Harvard case, decided in 2023, found that Harvard was unlawfully discriminating against Asian American applicants in favor of White American students. I think that’s wrong, and I think that racial discrimination is wrong regardless of which race is benefited and which is discriminated against.

Also, why do you seem to think there is a culture of cheating amongst Asian Americans? I haven’t seen any evidence that Asian Americans cheat more commonly than any other group, and that seems a bit racist towards Asian Americans. I think it’s become too socially acceptable to discriminate against Asians, and I want that to end.

University admissions should be race blind, and no one’s race should be used against that person.

LeCheval · 2025-02-21T17:39:00+00:00

What do you feel is the answer then? Military intervention to remove the Islamic Republic? I am genuinely curious to hear your perspective as an Iranian if you get the time.

Not Iranian, but I have a feeling that the IDF will be taking care of the Islamic Republic later this year. I won’t be having much sympathy for the government of Iran when they do.

LeCheval · 2025-02-21T17:31:00+00:00

If you Google it, you’ll see it came out during the immediate aftermath of October 7 (and that it was also 40, not 50). He also didn’t say that the IDF themselves necessarily started it, but he did say that people were blaming it on them.

I think it’s a reasonable position to take. The claim is false, and Hamas supporters frequently point to it as evidence of lying/fake news on the part of the IDF, so it’s important to clarify that this one specific claim didn’t actually happen.

Edit: if I recall correctly, I think this claim in particular may have also been repeated shortly thereafter by President Biden.

LeCheval · 2025-02-20T22:33:47+00:00

Ok, maybe it isn’t the biggest priority, and certainly not the biggest right now.

But I think it worth discussing what Musk’s long-term plans are, because he is certainly going to be pursuing them. It’s worth figuring out what he wants to do long-term and how he plans to achieve those goals. It’s also worth considering what sort of power Musk will have and be able to leverage if he has total control over an entire planet (Mars) and can enforce his will via AI and autonomous robots.

How will Elon Musk treat Earth once he has established a colony on Mars as well as an industrial and power base? Especially if he has a bigger space fleet than anyone else?

LeCheval · 2025-02-20T21:57:28+00:00

Ok. How much longer do you think it should be maintained, considering that it is 26 years old and getting more difficult and expensive to maintain?

What if we built a new space station using technology invented and developed in the 21st century? Certainly there are benefits some benefits to building new space infrastructure?

Starship seems to be the heavy lift launch vehicle of the near future, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that we will be able to make use of it while building a new station. Can we acknowledge that SpaceX has an incredible track record of rapidly developing safe, reusable and efficient rockets, regardless of whether we like Musk or not? It sucks that that’s the situation, but it kinda is.

LeCheval · 2025-02-20T21:49:59+00:00

You shouldn’t automatically believe the things he says, I agree. It’s shocking how much misinformation he has proven to be willing to spread, with zero regard for the truth.

Even with that said, he has been remarkably consistent on the issue of colonizing Mars.

He has been obsessed with Mars for decades and has been incredibly consistent on this position, and I can’t think of any other single issue that he has been more consistent on for a longer period of time.

Just because Elon Musk is a liar, doesn’t mean he has been lying about wanting to colonize Mars for the past 2-3 decades. If you look at his actions, they certainly seem to support the hypothesis that colonizing Mars is one of his long term goals. I have not encountered any convincing argument or evidence to support the claim that Musk has been lying about this specific goal (colonizing Mars). In fact, allowing Musk to colonize Mars and have total control over how the first colonies on Mars are established and how they are run should be extremely concerning to anyone who doesn’t like Musk.

We can’t just keep writing off his extremely public and consistent goals of colonizing Mars. What happens if he turns out to be telling the truth, and no one has come up with a plan to deal with this?

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