OK - really I was just pushing back on the popular idea (which had been my idea too up until now) that what he said was indubitably, prima facie illegal. The bit that got out for main public consumption was that he was asking Raffensperger to find votes for him, but the context (believable or not) is his assertion of fraudulent ballots, and the thing to be found is the fraudulent votes.
I understand that a reasonable person would be highly suspicious of the context.
I'm not saying you can't make an argument, but on its face, Trump is saying that criminal stuff is going on with the vote, and if Raffensperger isn't stopping it then he's basically part of it.
The case depends on what the jury sees as the intent behind the words, but the words themselves are not incriminating *if you assume that Trump truly believes what he's saying about the ballot fraud*. It's possible both for Raffensperger to feel threatened and for Trump not to have meant it as a threat.
I was on your side with this, but after seeing Pinky's take, I was curious and looked up the transcript of the call. I didn't read the whole thing (ain't nobody got time for that), but I went through all 19 hits on "11", and the most natural read of it is "there was a ton of fraud, tens of thousands of bad votes, you don't need to track all of them down but just 11,780". That to me is less obviously felonious than "you need to change this many votes for me" -- not that there isn't plenty overall to make a case, but the one quote is not the slam dunk I had thought it was.
The "typical" black names in these studies usually indicate not just Black, but poorer inner-city Black. See e.g. this UCLA study. So it's a good bet that the results are more based on what the names might indicate about SES rather than race.
I normally try not to comment on this stuff, because half the people in the conversation aren't really interested in having a conversation. But this was like the eighth time in the last 2-3 days that Chip has posted this sort of transparent invitation to give him a bat to clobber you with.
You're so funny -- you keep begging for someone here to say something that will let you call them RACIST. You don't really seem to care about actual individual Black people, you just get off on judging people in your outgroup.
For any legal or impeachment action, definitely -- no reason to think this will end up anywhere close to that level. But for our individual assessments and conversations, there's plenty of room to suspect that Biden's own hands are not 100% clean here.
I just worry that the eagerness for many to declare Biden guilt-free makes it a little bit easier in the long run for politicians and those in their orbit to do this kind of stuff, knowing that their own side will likely never hold them accountable.
Lying is a stretch, since you could make a colorable argument for their side.
"Interpreting" on their own, uncharitably, and then letting the media fit it into the overall narrative.
It's the College Board that claimed that Florida law would not permit full coverage of the AP content. At which point several Florida school districts decided on their own to drop the course (no reason to offer it if students couldn't get the AP credit). Florida's Education Commissioner said a couple of days ago that the given learning target can be taught consistent with Florida law.
I think that for those motivated to do so, it's possible to come up with a plausible take on the events that absolves Joe of any wrongdoing here... but at this point it's seeming much less likely. I mean, imagine you were hearing all this info about some politician you didn't know or care about in another country. What would you be assuming about them now?
My experience at our company has been that when we shifted to WFH, the people who are naturally productive became a little to a lot more productive, the people who were average slid back a little, and the people who were below average got a lot worse with no one looking over their shoulder. But I'm at a small company with hardly any pure managers and not a lot of repetitive, predictable work -- pretty easy to game if you're the kind of person to do that.
BIPOC makes sense to me as a pushback against scope creep. Native Americans were decimated and Blacks were enslaved, and these things have clearly had multi-generational social and economic effects for these groups, going way beyond the impact of discrimination in this country towards others in the "POC" umbrella.
It's scary to realize that you can't trust "authorities" -- so when people first realize that, the temptation is to find someone else to trust rather than to adapt to the uncertainty.
Anyone over 10 should understand that even bad things can have individual aspects that were good, without that fact changing the overall valence of the thing. There's even a proverb about it that perhaps you might have heard before.
As for the standards -- the College Board basically admits it here while claiming unconvincingly that it's different:
"College Board officials denied that the AP course echoes the new Florida standards, noting that while the course "includes a discussion about the skills enslaved people brought with them that enslavers exploited as well as other skills developed in America that were valuable to their enslavers," the class does not frame slavery in a positive light."
But anyway, I'm done commenting about it here, and will just stick to silently judging people based on how much they try to cling to this criticism actually being reasonable.
I mean, for those who care about actually being right instead of just being on the right team, this is not even a close call -- it's a ridiculous slander. Someone even pointed out that those AP History standards that people were giving Florida a hard time about for rejecting included line making the same point that people are calling out now. This is pure political BS, and it's breathtaking how extensively it's now treated as "fact" in the mainstream press and general political conversation.
I was already familiar with the couplet that inspired that one, so it didn't have as much of an impact for me -- mostly I just wondered whether he had come up with the idea independently or if that was his source (subsequent research showed the latter was correct).
Some of this is just emphasis -- definitely ChatGPT is not "intelligent' like a human is, but it has some intriguing abilities that line up with aspects of human intelligence. E.g. a simple chatbot wouldn't be able to draw analogies based on vector arithmetic.
Hmm, this was just posted a couple of days ago - are you thinking of something else? One thing it does is clarify that LLMs are more than just markov chains on steroids - words/tokens end up with intricate complicated relationships, so saying they just predict the next word is dramatically oversimplifying.
I’m certainly not saying that ChatGPT should be called “intelligent”, but to say it’s not anywhere near close, I think one ought to have some idea about how human brains store and access information and how it would be dramatically different.
Here is a good explainer on LLMs -- detailed but accessible to the layperson. Helpful background for our future philophical conversations about ChatGPT and how "intelligent" it is or isn't.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Learning to Tell Them Apart”
You should’ve posted something on abortion or Israel/Palestine right before you were ready to test.
On “Trump and 18 Others Indicted By Fulton County Grand Jury: Read It For Yourself”
OK - really I was just pushing back on the popular idea (which had been my idea too up until now) that what he said was indubitably, prima facie illegal. The bit that got out for main public consumption was that he was asking Raffensperger to find votes for him, but the context (believable or not) is his assertion of fraudulent ballots, and the thing to be found is the fraudulent votes.
I understand that a reasonable person would be highly suspicious of the context.
"
Just to add, I guess I'm responding more to what Burt said above -- the presentation of the one quote made it sound worse than it is in context.
"
I'm not saying you can't make an argument, but on its face, Trump is saying that criminal stuff is going on with the vote, and if Raffensperger isn't stopping it then he's basically part of it.
The case depends on what the jury sees as the intent behind the words, but the words themselves are not incriminating *if you assume that Trump truly believes what he's saying about the ballot fraud*. It's possible both for Raffensperger to feel threatened and for Trump not to have meant it as a threat.
"
I was on your side with this, but after seeing Pinky's take, I was curious and looked up the transcript of the call. I didn't read the whole thing (ain't nobody got time for that), but I went through all 19 hits on "11", and the most natural read of it is "there was a ton of fraud, tens of thousands of bad votes, you don't need to track all of them down but just 11,780". That to me is less obviously felonious than "you need to change this many votes for me" -- not that there isn't plenty overall to make a case, but the one quote is not the slam dunk I had thought it was.
On “The Bigger Question To The Richard Hanania Kerfuffle”
The "typical" black names in these studies usually indicate not just Black, but poorer inner-city Black. See e.g. this UCLA study. So it's a good bet that the results are more based on what the names might indicate about SES rather than race.
On “Open Mic for the week of 8/7/2023”
This is all good and well, but I'd be surprised if it moves the needle much on the conversation -- seems like a high-vs-low decoupler situation.
"
LOL, you're not fooling anyone.
"
I normally try not to comment on this stuff, because half the people in the conversation aren't really interested in having a conversation. But this was like the eighth time in the last 2-3 days that Chip has posted this sort of transparent invitation to give him a bat to clobber you with.
"
You're so funny -- you keep begging for someone here to say something that will let you call them RACIST. You don't really seem to care about actual individual Black people, you just get off on judging people in your outgroup.
"
For any legal or impeachment action, definitely -- no reason to think this will end up anywhere close to that level. But for our individual assessments and conversations, there's plenty of room to suspect that Biden's own hands are not 100% clean here.
I just worry that the eagerness for many to declare Biden guilt-free makes it a little bit easier in the long run for politicians and those in their orbit to do this kind of stuff, knowing that their own side will likely never hold them accountable.
"
Lying is a stretch, since you could make a colorable argument for their side.
"Interpreting" on their own, uncharitably, and then letting the media fit it into the overall narrative.
"
It's the College Board that claimed that Florida law would not permit full coverage of the AP content. At which point several Florida school districts decided on their own to drop the course (no reason to offer it if students couldn't get the AP credit). Florida's Education Commissioner said a couple of days ago that the given learning target can be taught consistent with Florida law.
"
I think that for those motivated to do so, it's possible to come up with a plausible take on the events that absolves Joe of any wrongdoing here... but at this point it's seeming much less likely. I mean, imagine you were hearing all this info about some politician you didn't know or care about in another country. What would you be assuming about them now?
On “Zoom To End Full Time Work From Home. No, Seriously”
My experience at our company has been that when we shifted to WFH, the people who are naturally productive became a little to a lot more productive, the people who were average slid back a little, and the people who were below average got a lot worse with no one looking over their shoulder. But I'm at a small company with hardly any pure managers and not a lot of repetitive, predictable work -- pretty easy to game if you're the kind of person to do that.
On “Making Love in a Canoe”
I have broadly similar tastes as you in this area, and so I found this quite informative -- thank you for your sacrifice.
On “The Buckley Overture”
Here is a quick review of her 2nd Royal Infant opera -- perhaps points to an explanation of her obscurity and lack of internet footprint today.
On “Open Mic for the week of 7/31/2023”
BIPOC makes sense to me as a pushback against scope creep. Native Americans were decimated and Blacks were enslaved, and these things have clearly had multi-generational social and economic effects for these groups, going way beyond the impact of discrimination in this country towards others in the "POC" umbrella.
On “Mini-Throughput: Einstein’s Greatest Mistake Edition”
It's scary to realize that you can't trust "authorities" -- so when people first realize that, the temptation is to find someone else to trust rather than to adapt to the uncertainty.
On “Open Mic for the week of 7/24/2023”
Anyone over 10 should understand that even bad things can have individual aspects that were good, without that fact changing the overall valence of the thing. There's even a proverb about it that perhaps you might have heard before.
As for the standards -- the College Board basically admits it here while claiming unconvincingly that it's different:
"College Board officials denied that the AP course echoes the new Florida standards, noting that while the course "includes a discussion about the skills enslaved people brought with them that enslavers exploited as well as other skills developed in America that were valuable to their enslavers," the class does not frame slavery in a positive light."
But anyway, I'm done commenting about it here, and will just stick to silently judging people based on how much they try to cling to this criticism actually being reasonable.
"
I mean, for those who care about actually being right instead of just being on the right team, this is not even a close call -- it's a ridiculous slander. Someone even pointed out that those AP History standards that people were giving Florida a hard time about for rejecting included line making the same point that people are calling out now. This is pure political BS, and it's breathtaking how extensively it's now treated as "fact" in the mainstream press and general political conversation.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Batchin’ It Again”
I was already familiar with the couplet that inspired that one, so it didn't have as much of an impact for me -- mostly I just wondered whether he had come up with the idea independently or if that was his source (subsequent research showed the latter was correct).
On “Open Mic for the week of 7/24/2023”
Oh OK, I took "previously" as "a while back".
Some of this is just emphasis -- definitely ChatGPT is not "intelligent' like a human is, but it has some intriguing abilities that line up with aspects of human intelligence. E.g. a simple chatbot wouldn't be able to draw analogies based on vector arithmetic.
"
Hmm, this was just posted a couple of days ago - are you thinking of something else? One thing it does is clarify that LLMs are more than just markov chains on steroids - words/tokens end up with intricate complicated relationships, so saying they just predict the next word is dramatically oversimplifying.
I’m certainly not saying that ChatGPT should be called “intelligent”, but to say it’s not anywhere near close, I think one ought to have some idea about how human brains store and access information and how it would be dramatically different.
"
Here is a good explainer on LLMs -- detailed but accessible to the layperson. Helpful background for our future philophical conversations about ChatGPT and how "intelligent" it is or isn't.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.