The DoomYoshi Musings thread

[Symmetry]

I heard they re-released Age of Empires 2.. any chance it is as good as I used to be?

It's a trick question.

being married entails no girlfriend … if women were attracted to you.. maybe you would understand the concept

I feel so sorry for you at this point.

[DoomYoshi]

This is one of the funniest stories in the news - a brawl started by a clown that wasn't actually there. Alcohol may have been a factor.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49137520

[DoomYoshi]

Yet another article that you probably won't find interesting . . .

https://cmosshoptalk.com/2019/07/30/dot ... -ellipsis/

[mookiemcgee]

Yet another article that you probably won't find interesting . . .

https://cmosshoptalk.com/2019/07/30/dot ... -ellipsis/

...I don't like to use spaces...seems like a waste of space. To each their own though doom

[Dukasaur]

This is one of the funniest stories in the news - a brawl started by a clown that wasn't actually there. Alcohol may have been a factor.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49137520

I can't even count the number of people I've had to put down because they dressed as clowns at inappropriate moments.

[HitRed]

This is one of the funniest stories in the news - a brawl started by a clown that wasn't actually there. Alcohol may have been a factor.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49137520

I can't even count the number of people I've had to put down because they dressed as clowns at inappropriate moments.

[DoomYoshi]

A great paywall picture (from History Today):

[DoomYoshi]

We are now in a strange era when the only sane and effective government in the Americas is in Colombia*:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-vene ... SKBN1WF1UW

Meanwhile, in Africa:
https://citizentv.co.ke/news/all-eyes-o ... ts-284425/

[DoomYoshi]

https://www.feastoflegends.com/

[DoomYoshi]

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/sp ... syndicate/

The biggest drug dealer in the world is a Canadian immigrant.

It's probable that all Asian immigrants to Canada are dope dealers.

[Dukasaur]

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/meth-syndicate/

The biggest drug dealer in the world is a Canadian immigrant.

It's probable that all Asian immigrants to Canada are dope dealers.

It's funny how everybody sees something different.

I read that story too. His ethnic origin was not interesting to me -- there are Mexican drug lords and Russian drug lords and Corsican drug lords. What I found interesting was that his bodyguards are Thai kickboxers, and he travels at will. Other drug lords have bodyguards with guns, and they can never go anywhere, because the guns would be a dead giveaway at any border. Tse's bodyguards go through a metal detector without hassles, and he seems to change countries when he feels like.

[DoomYoshi]

There is absolutely nothing good about this organization:
http://www.centuryinitiative.ca/
they want to grow the population to 100 million in 80 years so that the economy keeps growing. Basically, they want to destroy wilderness.

Here's my policy plan: negative or zero economic growth!
Zero immigration, zero tourism. If you leave Canada, you're never allowed back in. Machine guns at every border crossing.

#KeepCanadaBeautiful

[DoomYoshi]

In case you needed some more evidence that selfies are terrible, or you just like reading about fascinating topics:
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-human ... ehrenreich

[DoomYoshi]

Roll a die. If you get a number between 1 and 6, read this article:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/n ... el-carrere

[DoomYoshi]

Economics:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/1 ... economics/

One reason this was such a radical position was that it was taken at exactly the same moment that microeconomics itself was completing a profound transformation—one that had begun with the marginal revolution of the late nineteenth century—from a technique for understanding how those operating on the market make decisions to a general philosophy of human life. It was able to do so, remarkably enough, by proposing a series of assumptions that even economists themselves were happy to admit were not really true: let us posit, they said, purely rational actors motivated exclusively by self-interest, who know exactly what they want and never change their minds, and have complete access to all relevant pricing information. This allowed them to make precise, predictive equations of exactly how individuals should be expected to act.

Surely there’s nothing wrong with creating simplified models. Arguably, this is how any science of human affairs has to proceed. But an empirical science then goes on to test those models against what people actually do, and adjust them accordingly. This is precisely what economists did not do. Instead, they discovered that, if one encased those models in mathematical formulae completely impenetrable to the noninitiate, it would be possible to create a universe in which those premises could never be refuted. (“All actors are engaged in the maximization of utility. What is utility? Whatever it is that an actor appears to be maximizing.”) The mathematical equations allowed economists to plausibly claim theirs was the only branch of social theory that had advanced to anything like a predictive science (even if most of their successful predictions were of the behavior of people who had themselves been trained in economic theory).

[Dukasaur]

Sorry, but that's a load of crap. Adjusting the models to better reflect the real world is exactly what 90% of economists spend 90% of their time doing.

Anybody can make bullshit smears of other professions. One might say that quantum physics relies on sheltering theories in fantasy universes that are unobservable and untestable and in a sense one would be right. But it would be a pretty unfair characterization of what quantum physicists are trying to achieve.

[DoomYoshi]

I don't believe either author (the author of the book being reviewed or the reviewer) is trying to discredit economists as a profession. Rather, they are the attacking the assumption that economics is a hard science rather than a social science. Also, the idea that people are rational actors is ludicrous. People are 100% of the time acting against their own self-interest since they are 100% hurtling closer to death.

[DoomYoshi]

Where do science fiction writers go when they die?
Minnesota
https://slate.com/culture/2019/11/john- ... books.html

[DoomYoshi]

The reason nobody trusts scientists is because they keep insisting, without evidence, that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cr ... f-science/

[DoomYoshi]

[Dukasaur]

I don't believe either author (the author of the book being reviewed or the reviewer) is trying to discredit economists as a profession. Rather, they are the attacking the assumption that economics is a hard science rather than a social science. Also, the idea that people are rational actors is ludicrous. People are 100% of the time acting against their own self-interest since they are 100% hurtling closer to death.

Let's unpack this in revese order. The fact that we live in a corrupt universe where death is inevitable is not our choice, so it says nothing about our rationality or irrationality. If we had a choice, I think most of us would choose to live in a more sane universe where entropy is either decreasing or at least stays constant. Alas, no choice was given. Point 3 down.

Point 2. We've been through this before. The idea that people are rational actors is only ludicrous because you assign this metaphysical meaning to "rational" which is something akin to "wise." That's a strawman. Chapter one of every social science textbook will tell you that we are not here to answer normative questions, only descriptive ones. When we say humans are behaving rationally, we are only saying that they are seeking the easiest way to get more of what they value at less cost. We don't have the power or the right to decide what they should value. Whether they want more methamphetamine or more doctorates, our job is just to describe how they go about achieving those things. You think humans are crazy because more of them will pursue meth that a doctorate, and you're probably right, but it's outside the scope of scientific inquiry. You're trying to import this metaphysical definition into a place where it doesn't belong.

Okay, on to Point 1, which is the really interesting one. I think the conceit that physical scientists have that they are somehow better than social scientists is just based on the levels of certainly involved, which is a result of the sample sizes they are dealing with. When take flask of hydrogen peroxide and expose it to sunlight, you can say with a great deal of certainty that in time t a certain percentage will break down into ordinary water and oxygen. You can say that with a high degree of certainty because you have a big flask with 6.022E23 molecules in it. But if I could somehow isolate just one molecule and set it aside, you could tell me absolutely nothing about whether that single molecule would dissociate in the next hour or not.

Similarly, you cannot predict whether a single electron is going to be in a particular orbital. If you take a large number of atoms, you can say with a high degree of certainty that such-and-such a fraction of their electrons will be in the 1s orbital, and such-and-such a fraction will be in the d-orbital, and so on. But as the sample size dwindles, your level of certainty does too.

When economists deal with large numbers, they also achieve high levels of certainty. We can find with a high degree of certainty that if the price of cigarettes goes up 10%, then 2% of smokers will quit. That's okay when you're dealing with tens of millions of smokers, but many questions posed to economists deal with much smaller sample sizes. For many products there are 1-digit or 2-digit samples of producers. There are less than 20 major companies in auto manufacturing (ignoring small niche markets) yet we ask economists to predict how those 20 manufacturers are going to respond to a rise in steel prices, and we castigate them when they're wrong. Imagine asking a physicist to specifically predict the behaviour of a select group of 20 electrons!

7 billion people on the planet seems like an awful big number, but you would have to cube that number to get in range of Avogadro's Number. So I think a lot of this divide between the so-called hard sciences and the so-called soft sciences is just a difference in sample size. It's easy to get cocky when you can do an experiment in a controlled environment and with whatever sample size you need. It's a little harder when your environment is the uncontrolled real world and your sample sizes are limited to small numbers of actors in particular markets.

[DoomYoshi]

Neat Chinese thing:

show

Point 2. We've been through this before. The idea that people are rational actors is only ludicrous because you assign this metaphysical meaning to "rational" which is something akin to "wise."

Not true. That is one meaning, but I was thinking of the basic meaning which holds that rational thought involves taking in the evidence and making an informed choice that aligns with one's beliefs and/or the evidence. However, that's not the way people actually think. Instead, they make a choice and then use rationality to justify their decision. Of course, there are several definitions of rationality which somewhat makes this argument a bit slippery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationality
At the heart of the matter is that people routinely make decisions which are contrary to their stated beliefs and logically inconsistent with their stated line-of-thought. Most people hold logically inconsistent beliefs and are unable to even see that their own belief structures are logically inconsistent.
The evidence for this comes from economists! If people were always rational, there would be no undervalued stocks so there would be no way to profit as an investor. Since people are never rational, there is always money to be made.

When economists deal with large numbers, they also achieve high levels of certainty.

Sample size might have something to do with it, but at root is the unpredictability of human relations. To assume that the economy has a reducible complexity is to take an extremely arrogant position, in line with Maxwell's demon. Even if somebody figured out a formula to come out with the next fad 100% of the time, people would react against that and purposely not buy into the fad. Nothing can ever make the economy a real scientific endeavor. It deals with completely imaginary concepts (like property, money and goods) and is therefore always a soft science.

[DoomYoshi]

turns out you can overcome cancer, Parkison's and all diseases with pure willpower... at least according to the Massachussets health department...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... nce-stigma

[DoomYoshi]

Scientists hate him: 6 tips to a bigger e-peen!
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publicat ... -in-athens

They are right to suspect suspicion. Aristotle occupies a unique place in our modern consciousness. His thought, especially his elevation of teleology — a way of explaining things in terms of purposes and ends — was used as a foil by the founders of the modern scientific project. As the founders’ thought has been passed down to us — third-hand, fourth-hand, and eventually as folklore — Aristotle has become a caricature, a bogeyman, a naïve denizen of the demon-haunted world. Of course, an old astrologer could be simply forgotten. But the modern scientific project defined itself in opposition to Aristotle; his mortification is its cornerstone.

has teleology truly been vanquished?

[nietzsche]

there's nothing to be found with reason.