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The mods were probably still work shopping their 400 word OP through committee in an attempt to contain the clusterfuck that will be this year.
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Jan 31, 2024 17:40
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Xiahou Dun posted:Not at all. You're massively overestimating how hard it is to teach enough probability to realize gambling is a scam. In terms of pure mathematical knowledge, something like craps is trivially, obviously a bad game unless you're the bank and all you need to know is how to work out the probability of two rolls of a die : something a child can learn in a couple of minutes. These aren't complicated proofs, you can get the idea by just chunking through the odds with normal calculations. I don't think it's quite this simple - there's a pretty far gap psychologically between mathematical expected value and vibes. Its pretty much the X-Com effect where missing on 95% feels worse than it is but winning on 30% feels amazing and knowing doesn't really change that. The Lotto is still a massive money maker even though everybody knows you're losing money on it.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:48
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Xiahou Dun posted:You're just saying that the math is unintuitive but with more words, again. No poo poo, people without sufficient mathematical education don't have enough knowledge of math : you're repackaging a tautology and pretending it's a point. I think if that is your criteria for sufficient mathematical education, I'm not sure how you'll ever achieve it. How do you make people understand something at a intuitive level and ignore their gut? There are some things that you can know academically but it still won't feel right in practice. It would be amazing if you pulled it off though, the rational market that economists love to model with could actually exist.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:05
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Xiahou Dun posted:If you walk a group of 8 year olds through the math of how craps work, I don't think they're ever going to play craps because it's really obvious how stacked it is. If you put that in a larger curriculum, they can generalize. I think that's because most people have a lot of personal experience to extrapolate on for this topic. I've bought lotto tickets even though I should know that I'm just gonna be out a few bucks.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:22
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I mean at least on the House rep scale, I think it's fair enough to blame the voters instead of fixating on the person they vote in. At the presidential level it's less clear why the candidate isn't ideal but sometimes the lovely part of the democracy are the people doing the voting.
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Feb 14, 2024 17:49
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burnishedfume posted:I may be the one misreading here, but I read "destabilizing military capabilities" as "military capabilities that cause destabilization", not that Russia is about to get super destabilized. Though it's hard to say for sure until they say something concrete about it. That's how I read it as well, so Russia having the knife to our throats somewhere? What else can they own at this point?
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Feb 14, 2024 19:48
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I dunno if this is just a modern thing or a me thing, but I've been feeling more despair at politics than usual because it feels like people are incredibly entrenched in their positions. If people will vote for Trump regardless of what's going on, it just seems like a big fraction of the country is beyond convincing on anything.
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Feb 16, 2024 19:14
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GlyphGryph posted:Every time I see the spending breakdown in US education, I just... I genuinely can't make sense of where all that cash is actually going. It doesn't ever seem to add up. Feels like the same could be said of the US healthcare system, lots of money going in, but output is lacking.
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Feb 27, 2024 20:01
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Fork of Unknown Origins posted:But we know where that money is going at least. Nobody is making a profit on public education like drug companies, insurance companies, etc are with healthcare. I mean I think looking at what's happening with colleges, where a lot of money is being siphoned off to "administrative" tasks instead of the faculty or the facilities. I'm sure there are tons of profit seeking actors in the system.
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Feb 27, 2024 20:12
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Jimbozig posted:The video doesn't show him hitting the target. I'm calling fake news on this old man's story! Mongolians gave Joe the trick bow with the active seeker arrows.
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Mar 12, 2024 18:38
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Majorian posted:In the interest of not turning this into electoral strategy chat, I'll keep this brief: If I'm correct and it's not just 100% hate that motivates rural voters, then one probably doesn't need to throw trans people or abortion rights under the bus at all. You court them by giving them something to vote for that will positively, materially affect their lives and then running on it like crazy. Will it work to win over every single voter in those states? Of course not. But it'll peel a good chunk of them off. Enough to win states like Iowa? Who knows, but it's probably worth taking a chance. But isn't that what people are saying before, that historically policy things that "materially affect their lives" aren't enough to swing the voters? What are specific things/message that you are proposing would work here?
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Apr 7, 2024 17:45
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Majorian posted:To make any impact on this particular election, Biden's going to have to run pretty drat hard on his accomplishments and convincingly make the case that they will materially benefit rural voters' lives in the medium-term future. That's a tough case to make, but according to this NYT piece that's the campaign strategy for the moment: That's kinda been the default strategy for decades and it's kinda had middling success? I guess it seemed like what people were proposing is that there is a pitch that Democrats haven't been doing that would work wonders but never saying what it is while the "rural voters are motivated by hate side" are arguing, if I can put it charitably, that the Republicans win by default on vibes if the Democrats advocate for positive social change (LGBTQ issues, gender equality, etc.) so your economic policies would have to do some heavy lifting to counteract those negatives. You don't need to believe rural voters are all fascists to believe that those changes make them uncomfortable to some degree.
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Apr 7, 2024 18:18
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Does Tiktok being a platform impact the free speech component at all? It's not like forcing the sale of a platform is the same as restricting what can be said to me, but I would be curious to know if any precedent exists.
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Apr 24, 2024 16:42
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koolkal posted:That's just shifting the blame though. The White House has entire staff whose jobs are to come up with statements, properly frame them, and then disseminate them to the media. Like, that TheDailyBeast headline I noted above was from a statement that was emailed directly to them. I don't see why we have to consider this case when it's pretty clear the administration isn't backing the Palestinians as much as we would all like - this is like saying dems are bad for intentionally kicking a puppy after they bumped into a puppy on the way to kill a man. Like of course they won't come out in support of the protestors, why would you fixate on improper use of language instead of what they're doing unless there's some sort of imaginary grievance pile you're trying to get as high as possible?
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Apr 25, 2024 20:52
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Majorian posted:This isn't an issue of them not coming out in support of protesters "as much as we'd like." (which I don't think anyone here expects of this administration anyway) It's an issue of how they've been framing these protests since just after October 7. This just feels like the right wing outrage machine tuned to a different frequency. If you want to believe that off the cuff responses to a reporter are elements of a deliberate smear campaign, you do you. For the record: Majorian posted:Let’s put our cards on the table on this issue: do you think that the WH intended to associate the protests with terrorist groups by deploying the term “terrorist” or not? My point here is that the answer to this question is basically a Rorschach test of how evil you think the dems are. It's the same thing as asking if Biden in his heart of hearts actually wants the genocide to happen or if he's just along for the ride. It's basically just a purity test designed to stir poo poo up. So no, I don't think the dems sat down and decided to discredit the protests for PR. Maybe they did, who cares.
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Apr 25, 2024 21:41
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Xiahou Dun posted:A common idle thought of mine is how improved the US political landscape would be if there were a disincentive to having two massive political parties to the exclusion of everything else. Measures like ranked choice voting are a good start, but the system would work much better if we had two dozen little parties creating a kind of de facto parliament-light. I mean ultimately the same problem of politics rises up in those systems as well right? Replace a party with a coalition and you get the same wailing and gnashing of teeth. The fundamental truth of democracy is that there are a lot of people who disagree with you and you need to find some sort of common ground to create a ruling majority while deep down everybody wishes for a god emperor who would punish the "right" people because it would be much easier. I don't know why people have this fantasy that things would be significantly different (ok, it might be slightly better) when we have historical examples of what sort of thing would happen like the UK Labor Party under Jeremy Corbyn.
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May 5, 2024 21:31
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PhazonLink posted:so dumbasses. Dumbasses wouldn't be a problem if there weren't so many of them.
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May 16, 2024 06:11
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Gripweed posted:The default on these kinds of things should be to release the records. If Congress asks for something, the President should hand it over unless he has a drat good reason not to. And “Congress is mean to me” isn’t a good reason. “Releasing this information may benefit my political opponents” is a terrible reason. That the President should release records just cause Congress asks even if they have no legitimate reason sure is a take I guess.
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May 16, 2024 17:34
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