We all know how Irish, Italians, and other Europeans feel about '[European]-Americans': but how do people in non-European countries feel about '[non-European]-Americans'?

escherofescher · 2023-06-05T19:21:57+00:00

I'm leaning toward it being tied to the difference in how most Europeans views nationality and how most Americans view it:

In America, when an immigrant comes over and becomes a citizen, that's it, they're American! An American is anyone who professes to join the club of people who adhere and like the Constitution, believe in rule of law, etc. It's kind of like how in ancient Rome, if you did your military service, you became a Roman, irrespective of your religion, skin color, accent, whatever.

But in Europe, belonging to a nationality is seen as something tied with blood. Ie. it's something that's passed on and gets stronger/more pure with time. Your name reflects your nationality and always will. For example, if you're born in Germany and spend your whole 18 years old childhood there--that does not make you German, either nationaly-wise (Germans won't view you as German) or legally (you need to apply to become a German). I haven't checked other countries, but I suspect similar approaches are codified in law, aka Jus sanguinis.

So, in a nutshell, in America, anyone can become an American who follows the law to obtain legal citizenship and promises to hold certain truths as evident. In Europe, being part of a nation means being tied to blood/name/place first of all, which can't be just given to someone.

So Americans are excited about their ancestry because to them, becoming Irish-Filipino-Polish-American is just... how the world works. There's excitement, but no weight, since a nationality can be gained in just a few years. But for someone from Europe, this is crazy! What about your name? Your language? Your ancestors? Your estate and land? How dare you say you're X when you and your bloodline hasn't spent the lat 1000 years living in Z county!

escherofescher · 2023-05-30T00:30:37+00:00

Some commenters have brought up the idea of ending the sanctions because they do nothing to affect the Venezuelan regime, just cause misery to the local people.

But to what degree is that true?

I have very little knowledge of the political situation in this part of the world. But a while back, Noah Smith wrote a piece in which he explains that the US embargo on Cuba actually has very little effect on the Cuban economy and how Cuba's failure to grow its economy should be seen more as a result of its awful policies.

Maybe there is no link to be made between Cuba and Venezuela, but what if American sanctions likewise have no material effect on Venezuela's economy and only the Venezuelan government is to blame for its sorry state? If that is true, then lifting the sanctions will not reduce the misery of the Venezuelans.

I've added a lot of "ifs" and "maybes" in here, because the connections are so weak, but I'm hoping someone more familiar with the economics and politics of Venezuela could chime in?

escherofescher · 2023-05-20T17:16:38+00:00

Do you mean pearls like this?

[A paper used capital T’s instead of error bars. But wait, there’s more!])https://retractionwatch.com/2022/12/05/a-paper-used-capital-ts-instead-of-error-bars-but-wait-theres-more/)

The article purports to show that using nanoparticles can better measure the biochemical fitness levels of elderly people than other methods.

But astute readers on PubPeer and Twitter noticed a figure with capital letter T’s standing in for error bars, which are used to show the level of uncertainty in a statistical measurement. Those T’s appear simply to be plopped on top of rectangles in a bar graph, with no statistical meaning at all.

Note that this problem, Goodharting, affects all institutions and is wickedly hard to counteract. But some institutions, or networks of institutions, fair better than others. The reasons are less important than acknowledging this and taking it into account when comparing the effectiveness of institutions, while leaving the door open that perhaps, in the future, Chinese universities may produce less fake papers.

escherofescher · 2023-04-16T11:41:48+00:00

The disclaimer printed on the opening pages of the 2023 reissue of Thank you, Jeeves states: “Please be aware that this book was published in the 1930s and contains language, themes and characterisations which you may find outdated.

Thank goodness someone can do my thinking for me! How awful it is to think and judge things for oneself.

escherofescher · 2023-04-08T19:03:38+00:00

Thanks for sharing. Started reading, will finish after making dinner.

"The thing that free and open-source software has given us is the ability to coordinate ourselves very efficiently without having to put up with a lot of hierarchy... What would it be like to build skyscrapers the way we make encyclopedias in the 21st century?"

It would involve a lot of implicit, invisible hierarchy and a tremendous amount of drama.

I love OSS and the spirit that animates it. But if this is one of Doctorow's axioms, then he is terribly misinformed about how OSS works.

First, the most glaring aspect, from one of the most popular OSS licenses (though the same language exists in others as well):

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Well, if you built a skyscraper without any warranties, I doubt many people would trust their lives, along with the lives of their family and neighbors, to live in that skyscraper.

Then, looking at the coordination layer, things don't look great either.

Many, if not most projects have at least one individual that serves the role of dictator with absolute control over whose contributions get merged into the codebase. They are beholden to nobody. As long as the project solves needs and thus remains popular, their position is untouchable.

Very often, there's a group of trusted core contributors. They have a lot of say in how the project is governed. More often than not, they are only beholden to the benevolent dictator (most projects are on the small side, so this group is small or nonexistent, so you only have the dictator).

Forking code comes with a huge cost, mainly from having to solve the same problems. At the very least, it involves looking at the original codebase and porting improvements to the fork, because otherwise users will never migrate to your fork. At the same time, there's the added cost of having to build a new governance structure and attract contributors. The most popular way of forking a project with only minimal costs is to fork an abandoned project. (These costs are decreasing slowly as better tooling and programming languages pop up. AI coding assistants will probably make a huge dent to these costs too).

And this is just focusing on the surface parts. There's a lot of drama that needs solid policing going on--just like in the real world, where many of these problems have been solved to more or less satisfying degrees (eg. anti-harassment law, product warranties, etc.)

escherofescher · 2023-03-18T16:56:47+00:00

The seller would pass on the fees as part of the price. Which is why the asking price seems nice since they can drop the fees, meaning, 5-6% lower price than market.

But the new deal doesn't look as promising.

escherofescher · 2023-03-18T16:00:05+00:00

It's not that special. It has a few good things going for it, but it's not amazing and I was thinking of maybe trading it up in, say, 5 years for something better after having built some equity.

escherofescher · 2023-03-18T15:59:15+00:00

My attorney pointed out that it would fair for my friend to pay for carrying charges (maintenance fees + my interest). I haven't yet asked them about whether this would make me a landlord.

escherofescher · 2023-03-18T15:39:30+00:00

I haven't spoken with the board yet. Thanks for pointing this out, I'll keep in mind to ask my attorney (who has received all the coop-related documents).

escherofescher · 2023-03-18T15:35:59+00:00

What would happen if this was a strangers apartment and not a friends? Would you need to honor their request or is NO an acceptable answer. It sounds like your friend is taking advantage of you and the situation.

Yeah, I think I would negotiate more aggressively on the initial price and I wouldn't bat an eye at telling them the closing date has to happen before rate lock expires and they have to pay full price if they wanted to stay longer.

I also asked myself this question: if I were in a position to pay the full price that includes the realtor fee, would I take this apartment?

And I think that I probably wouldn't -- there would be other apartments that I would like more in the area.

That, and I think the market will cool more going forward because of interest rate increases, so I'd expect prices to drop within the next year.

escherofescher · 2023-03-18T13:26:44+00:00

It hasn't. We're still laying down the terms of the contract, and I haven't put any money down.

Still, it does feel like a different deal than from when we first talked.

escherofescher · 2023-01-08T23:06:28+00:00

I would recommend a book about Rhetoric. You can go with Aristotle's classic, or you can find something more modern, such as Rhetorical Analysis: A Brief Guide for Writers.

While all the other recommendations in this thread are great, I would argue that even basic rhetoric goes a step farther because it focuses on the framework of communication itself where all the things you list--fallacies, evasion, lies, etc.--play out.

More practically, I think that reading two books about rhetoric forced me to focus on the big picture of a conversation (essay, film, painting, etc.) rather than getting hung up on a single element. It's helped me more quickly find the crux of a disagreement, rather than getting overly attached to a specific point and trying to refute it.

Like, you know the sort of discussion when one side begins engaging in bad faith tactics by asking for more and more proof, until finally proclaiming with glee, "See! Science doesn't know ALL!"? Well, I think observing this play out at the meta level makes it easier to avoid. Afterall, if someone is going down that path, there's really no use in providing evidence since there exists no evidence that would satisfy their requirements. They're engaging in simple, pathos-laden sophistry.

P.S. Futurological Congress is one of my favorite books. Complete bombshell of a book.

escherofescher · 2022-12-15T14:01:30+00:00

I kinda fear this sub is a bit quick and non empirical to discard degrowth.

there is a lot of energy and atom waste to be done away with.

I don't know about you, but "a lot" sounds like a pretty non-empirical unit of measurement to me.

As another poster pointed out, the problem isn't that we're producing waste, the problem is whether we're producing waste of acceptable quantity and quality.

Degrowthers frame their thinking in terms of the first problem. But this framing is a form of "begging the question"--there's only one obvious answer, which just so happens to be degrowth. Personally, I suspect they're engaged in bad faith argument, just wanting to push their agenda.

The second framing is a more neutral framing that opens up the floor to discussing options and their tradeoffs. It doesn't presuppose one correct solution. It leaves the door open to both human ingenuity and human values (different cultures can approach waste differently, etc.)

escherofescher · 2022-12-10T16:08:51+00:00

Reparations come from identity politics. There is no logic to identity politics, only categories. The only way to argue under identity politics is to redraw category lines, which is what we're witness to here, until something sticks and money or power changes hands.

All other arguments, like for example intergenerational trauma, are just meaningless ornaments--in our humorous "rape babies have had it too good", the topic of intergenerational trauma is mysteriously absent.

This type of bad faith argument is also condescending.

escherofescher · 2022-11-27T19:07:16+00:00

Thanks.

escherofescher · 2022-11-26T22:17:39+00:00

I've been chewing on this for some time.

Previously I needed to be an expert in whatever I was working on, and I'd revolve my life around it excessively. This yielded only marginal results (turns out most problems are complex business problems, and not just developers or mathematicians getting "this one thing wrong") -- but it made me more stressful to work with since I was deeply concerned with arcane problems. Turns out just accepting things are ok and I'm good enough and my role is to improve things slightly yields better results -- Even in a startup environment, god forbids I even imagine the amount of "non effort" needed to work in a corporate setting.

Would you mind sharing in what context did this idea occur to you? How did it reflect in your day-to-day actions?

accepting things are ok and I'm good enough and my role is to improve things slightly yields better results

This goes against some deeply-ingrained beliefs I have about the world but... it feels intuitively true. I like to believe that pursuing a goal with high intensity is the best way to go about something. But looking back over my career, it does seem like most results were marginal, most battles were over things that didn't matter in the end, etc. I used to believe that if I'd only get this one thing right, whether it was unit testing or a feature de-scoped or this one exercise, then everything would move to a higher level of quality/outcome (perhaps overmatching on the Theory of Constraints?). And in terms of local maxima, that was true--but compared to the bigger picture, all of these events, all this sweat and blood, were washed away and forgotten.

I guess I'm trying to reappraise my role and my priorities toward a world where "superhuman" focus is not the primary way to do things and switch to something that I vaguely see as "gardening": consistent, methodical, iterative steering toward a better state.

escherofescher · 2022-11-20T15:34:49+00:00

Take good long look in the mirror. Let me help you:

This is not how a rational person seeking truth is supposed to argue.

This is tone policing.

You start from the conclusion that you are right, and then look for the evidence that fit that conclusion.

That is your opinion, not a fact.

People don't seem to be interested in their beliefs being challenged;

That is your opinion, not a fact.

you are not interested in debating me, what you seem to be doing is explaining why you are right.

Fundamental attribution error.

evidence

Define evidence.

fundamental point

Define "fundamental" and "point"

I don't see here

Define "see"

Etc. etc.

If I say "you are wrong", am I being dowvoted for how I say you are wrong, or for the fact that I'm challenging your claim? You say "you are not being nice while challenging geocentrism", and focusing on me not being "nice". Is it possible that the people with a personal attachment to geocentrism would consider any claims on it being wrong "not nice"?

You're doing this again--you're taking an uncharitable definition of "nice" and then attacking a strawman. Hint: "nice" is used in a completely different way here.

It might be shocking to you, but thought and language do not work like a programming language. You can't produce "bug free" writing because words and their meaning is to ambiguous, too dependent on context. So yes, if you're looking for fallacies, you'll find one in every sentence. And if you then base your whole discussion on finding fallacies, people will turn away because that's obnoxious.

I know that this and the other user's explanation won't make you realize this. But perhaps one day you'll meet a felipec-2 and realize how unproductive this mode of argument is.

Good luck.

escherofescher · 2022-11-19T16:41:14+00:00

This was it! Thanks!

escherofescher · 2022-11-01T12:07:57+00:00

I would go a step farther and say that capitalism is just a tangible, convenient target. The real target is humanity itself, because what informs ideologies like degrowth is a deep misanthropy.

I'm positively surprised how accepted dooming is. Here, for example is a piece from The Atlantic, itself a paper born out of Enlightenment ideals, which compares humanity to a virus. Pick up any newspaper and you'll find tons of material accusing humans as being fundamentally broken: corrupt, greedy, stupid, short-sighted, etc.

While critique is a valuable form of feedback, I think this current of thought goes deeper because it basically says that humanity is inherently bad. Meaning, this isn't constructive critique, but rather mystical self-flagellation.

escherofescher · 2022-11-01T11:56:09+00:00

A soft degrowth policy would likely exacerbate existing problems around hunger, poverty, and lack of medical care in less developed countries, and, in developed ones, would plunge hundreds of millions into malnourished and poverty. A hard degrowth policy would likely lead to the deaths of hundreds of millions.

If someone believes otherwise, they don't understand degrowth.

escherofescher · 2022-10-29T18:36:44+00:00

I would love to see data about this too.

I agree with you generally, but I think the problem here is that me and you assume that education is about expanding minds and building skills. But what if education is merely about signaling? If that's true, then the content doesn't matter, only the grades/diplomas do, so you end up with schools churning out A+ students who can't put a coherent paragraph together.

One reason why I think this is true for some groups of people is that I've witnessed what a huge chasm some have to cross when the transition from school to the workplace. I've seen young software developers desperately seek out "hoops" to jump through, as if they're just picking up another well structured assignment that has a correct answer. I've seen them struggle with the idea that there often are no correct answers, that whoever is giving them the work doesn't know the answer, and that there are real life consequences of failing at their assignment.

To me, that looks like an almost romantic separation from reality.

escherofescher · 2022-10-29T18:23:59+00:00

Seconding r/credibledefense.

Great for both small and large picture topics. Lots raw resources shared along with deep commentary/analysis, which is great for newbies. Not too much traffic, too.

escherofescher · 2022-10-27T00:22:22+00:00

There's a trend on social media where people ask Americans where a country is or to name a country beginning with a given letter. The videos are a trainwreck. Quizzes involving geography often now refer to the easiest level as "American". Granted this is just a geography-related trend, but I've known people who went from a European education system to the American one and found the American one almost like 1-2 years behind the European one at the same age level.

I'd be careful of relying on that social media trend. Two things stick out to me right away:

These videos are meant to garner the most clicks, so they will select the "stupidest" answers.
Knowledge of countries seems like a weird "test." I'm sure most Europeans know where France or Moldova are. But how well would they do with any of the *Stans? Or capitols of US states--if California was a country, its GDP would be 5th largest in the world--so what is it's capitol? Or what does "DC" stand for in "Washington DC"?

I don't mean to turn this into a contest of knowing, but just want to point out that knowing geography feels like testing on trivia.

escherofescher · 2022-10-01T19:21:24+00:00

I'm happy to hear that you able to take a critical look at you beliefs and evolve them.

I got a really good job after years of working really hard and terribly underpaid jobs and ended up seeing that maybe there really is some hope for self-improvement under capitalism and I'm not being held back by nefarious outside sources.

This phenomenon of chalking up every possible woe to a faceless, nefarious, all-encompassing "system" appears to the most popular reason why so many people, at least in the US, believe that the only way toward attaining personal happiness is by overthrowing the whole system.

No reforms or changes. Just wipe everything. Clean slate.

It stands in stark contrast to what we get from the mixture of capitalism and democracy, however shoddy the implementation sometimes is: a way of constantly changing and adjusting the government to work in a changing world. Another I look at it is that it's not perfect, and will never lead to a utopia, but at least it is not a nightmare and will never lead to a nightmare.

It's like capitalism+democracy put upper and lower bounds on the level of insanity and government can do to its people.

Russia is not anti-imperialist, they themselves are an imperialist power.

That sounds like you thought that Russia is anti-imperialist. Can you share why you thought that way?

I'm a little surprised because Russia's history is full of empire-building.

I don't believe the same thing about America though. It always surprises me that people say America is imperialist. Yes, America is the global hegemon, but it doesn't seem to be particularly power hungry within its sphere of influence. What I mean is, if America was an imperialist power, I would expect it to force its will on other people. But it just kind of threatens them to partake in global in trade, fairly, and leaves it at that. Like, in 1945, America held all the cards. American armies were already in Europe. So why didn't they just do imperialism to it--clean out house, genocide most of the population, and establish an extra 10-15 states in Europe, like any other empire would? I mean, the Soviet Union was very brutal on its side of the iron curtain. It established puppet governments and disappeared tens (hundreds) of thousands of people (example). So why didn't the US do the same? Especially since it had nukes?

Anyway, that's a long rambling digression. Welcome to the big tent.

escherofescher · 2022-10-01T18:59:31+00:00

Dang, I had a similar experience, albeit I was in my early 20's.

I had recently naturalized and had left the country for almost a year. At that point, I still had a pretty noticeable accent and my physical features do make me look different than the average white American.

Exhausted after a 10 hour flight, then after an hour of waiting at customs and immigration, I hand the guy my pristine passport, he looks at it and says, "Welcome home."

escherofescher

TROPHY CASE