Live data from Hacker News

The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

scottaaronson.blog

411–420 of 653 posts

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Deaths of "many girls", when the parent comment said it was at most 1 out of 2300 participants (a suicide)? Those numbers might, however, be untrustworthy. I don't know India well enough to know how much to trust statistics compiled there. What sources are there on the hospitalisations?

[flagged]

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#412
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sortition may be what you're looking for: "sortition is the selection of public officials or jurors at random, i.e. by lottery, in order to obtain a representative sample". No one can amass power because it's short term and random. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

Do this but with technocracy. Also best of luck being random... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_(probability) and The Problem of Priors.

That link says the Bertrand paradox only applies when the domain of possibilities is infinite. That doesn't seem to cover tasks like randomly selecting people from a finite population.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do this but with technocracy. Also best of luck being random... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_(probability) and The Problem of Priors.

That link says the Bertrand paradox only applies when the domain of possibilities is infinite. That doesn't seem to cover tasks like randomly selecting people from a finite population.

Its not number of people, but number of ways to slice the situation.

In this case: Do we use IQ tests? Do we use random numbers and allow babies to win?

If you want to be traumatized about statistics, I like this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy6xXEhbGa0

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#415

Power corrupts, end of story. Democracy (limited terms), taxation and anti-monopoly regulation are examples that show a path to cure the disease. Nobody should be trusted with too much power for too long.

Yep. It corrupts those people and makes them disconnected. Then they go on to do worse things. The only fix is to change tax policy to not allow billionaires. Redistribute wealth above some amount. One billion seems fine as a starting point.

This obsession over a billion as a marker is toxic nonsense. Having nine hundred something million is not that much different. The main way to deal with this is progressive taxation of both income and wealth which should provide increasing resistance to growth, a mechanism that needs to particular breaking point or limit and is stronger because of that.

One of the best businessmen I have known is Paul Orfalea, broadly known as Kinko. When he couldn't hold a job he started a company, he focused on trying to make things work for employees and customers alike, and it grew. When he sold Kinko's Copies it had a record of serving not only individuals well, but also the broader society as capitalist enterprise ideally should. And he got five billion out of that deal, which he shared with this family. Now I am supposed to believe that this is all a horrible tale of darkness cursing us all because there was some boundary that he accidentally blew through with his extensive business success. In all honesty the one who sounds corrupted and disconnected here is you.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#416
The names of someone close to me and his (adult) daughter both show up in the latest Epstein file release but for innocuous reasons. They both have published a lot and, apparently, Epstein was recommended some of their works.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you actually believe that if your taxes went up, power would be less concentrated, or that you or your countrymen would have more power? Absolutely. The source of most of the corruption I see in the world today is wealth, and specifically wealthy people paying people off to get their own way. If there was less wealth inequality there'd be much less scope for this. Note: I believe this would be the case even if t…

Burning money might actually be a legitimate thing to do since it causes deflation as far as I can understand

Deflation is a very bad thing...

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#418

Power corrupts, end of story. Democracy (limited terms), taxation and anti-monopoly regulation are examples that show a path to cure the disease. Nobody should be trusted with too much power for too long.

Taxation is the mechanism that moves power from the people to the government, and increasingly politicians and their specific interests. Do you actually believe that if your taxes went up, power would be less concentrated, or that you or your countrymen would have more power? Every government goon doing authoritarian dirty work collects a paycheck and wouldn't do their job without it.

If that were true, then the wealthy and political establishment wouldn’t fight tax increases so damn hard. Over my lifetime, I’ve repeatedly watched wealthy individuals spend more money fighting tax increases than they’d end up paying.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think they mean "taxation of the too rich" in that case. Everyone wants taxes to go up on everyone making more than them, and for their own taxes to go down. The problem is this is a collective negotiation, not a discussion about what to ask the genie for when we rub the lamp. If the middle class wants to decrease their own taxes (which is the political issue that objectively affects them the most, and how they l…

> Everyone wants taxes to go up on everyone making more than them, and for their own taxes to go down. That's not true at all. I make a good salary as a software engineer, I absolutely think I ought to be taxed a little more than I am, and would gladly pay that money to live in the better society I believe that would create. I believe this attitude is pretty common in many parts of the world. That being said, I do th…

>...I absolutely think I ought to be taxed a little more than I am, and would gladly pay that money to live in the better society I believe that would create.

The federal government does have a system to accept gifts which you might want to check out: https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html

Whether your gift will make a better society, I can't know - much like your taxes you have very little control over what the money is going to be used for.

>...(there can be no such thing as a free market when such a small number of individuals control such a large proportion of the spending power).

A free market is generally considered a system where there are voluntary exchanges between buyers and sellers based on mutual benefit. It seems odd to claim that since there are some very wealthy people in the country that somehow a consumer can't buy bread from a baker, etc. Maybe you can expand a bit on how you are defining free market.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What exact vaccine are you talking about, first? Gardasil is actually approved for use not only in India itself, but also the US (and Europe), FYI. Trials where also done both in the US, Europe and a bunch of other countries (see https://www.clinicaltrialsregister.eu/ctr-search/search?quer... ). > So WHY did BMGF and PATH not take INFORMED CONSENT before giving a dangerous experimental drug? Why were the minor patien…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN