Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

scottaaronson.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 653 posts

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#451

Post by pavel_lishin »

idiotsecant wrote: post #443
viscousviolin wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard about lottocracy/sortition for the first time not long ago and I quite like the idea. The last time was when I heard a professor talk about it, and I was recommended reading the book "Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections" by Guerrero [0]. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/217981747-lottocracy

Before you get too excited about this just imagine the average line of people at the DMV or the Grocery store and now imagine that those people are in charge of the lives of hundreds of millions. If you think HOAs are bad, you aint seen nothing yet. The current system of oligarch patronage is bad, but at least it keeps the train mostly on the rails.

But aren't most HOA horror stories based on people who'd been running them for years if not decades, and only end happily when someone replaces those entrenched in power with new people?

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#452

Post by jMyles »

kiba wrote: post #427
HaZeust wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew about the strategy for using randomness to control corruption, but didn't know it had a procedural name in governance. Thanks for this!

We really only practice it in one instance in modern democracy and that's jury duty, but that should be expanded into more roles and duties. That's one way to make society truly democratic. In any case, you might be interested in Georgism, which is an anti-monopoly ideology most famously associated with very Strong Opinions on taxation of land and natural resources and untaxing production, along with taxation on poll…

> We really only practice it in one instance in modern democracy and that's jury duty,

...and even there, it's terribly corrupted. There are all kinds of bizarre ways that people are excluded from juries which bias the result. One commonly-cited example is that people who report moral objections to capital punishment are excluded from being empaneled on a federal jury, under the pretext that because capital punishment is legal under federal law, they'd be unable to carry out the gammut of their duties. Of course this has the convenient result of dramatically biasing juries in favor of the state.

There's also no commonly-implemented proof-of-randomness for selection. We're told that people are randomly selected and get a notice in the mail, but there's no public event where one can go and watch a number tumbler generate the entropy used to select names from the voter rolls, etc.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#453

Post by andrewflnr »

praptak wrote: post #265

Since it's ultimately about morals, maybe it is time to reread CS Lewis' "The Inner Ring" from 1944[0,1]. It's about the same kind of choices but in situations which are much harder to extricate oneself from than just a random sleazeball messaging you out of the blue. [0] Link: https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/ [1] HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38696764

It's also one of the major subjects of his novel, That Hideous Strength. The novel is honestly a bit of a slog until it gets going, but I appreciated it more as I started feeling the same pull to be on The Inside. The speech linked above is simply very good.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#454

Post by jMyles »

nicoburns wrote: post #327
alphazard wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

Is there a strong correlation between higher taxes and decreasing wealth inequality?

The one part of your comment with which I certainly agree is:

> Note: I believe this would be the case even if the money was literally burnt/disappeated rather than being given to the government (not that I suggest that's what we do).

...except, I am perhaps prepared to suggest actually implementing such a system, at least as an experiment.

Removing spending power from places where it's concentrated seems to have obvious benefits, but giving it to the state (the entity in which political power is maximally concentrated, at least with respect to the legitimate initiation of violence) seems like it's moving the power dynamic in the wrong direction.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#455

Post by jMyles »

ozgrakkurt wrote: post #386
nicoburns wrote: post #327

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

In the traditional / academic sense of the word, it _is_ deflation. The repurposing of inflation/deflation to refer to consumer price action is much more recent.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#456

Post by weirdmantis69 »

nicoburns wrote: post #327
alphazard wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

[flagged]

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#457

Post by weirdmantis69 »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #410
nicoburns wrote: post #327

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…

[flagged]

That was my thoughts exactly.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#458

Post by stef25 »

vee-kay wrote: post #309
stef25 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that deadly unproven vaccine It was not.

[flagged]

Drugs in clinical trails like this have made it past the animal testing stage and the healthy volunteers testing stage. Efficacy wise, yes they are unproven.

To be the devil's advocate, it can be difficult to explain informed consent in the case of mental incapacity or whatever. In that case, a responsible adult can sign.

> Answer me honestly: Did that same billionaire (Bill Gates) and his organization (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) do the same exact trials in his home country (USA)? "clinical trials of unproven vaccines on thousands of poor minor girls, without consent of then and their parents"

As far as I know not so yes that's correct.

I said before they might have gone to those regions in India to bypass strict ethical committees in the west. And yes, that's definitely questionable.

The thing you completely ignore is that none of the deaths were because of the vaccine.

Yes, there have been problems with FDA. But modern medicine is mostly completely safe, so if the whole system was riddled by fraud this wouldn't be possible.

One day you or someone close to you may need life saving treatments and then you'll be thankful for the pharma industry.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#459

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

mapt wrote: post #355
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just silly. Not many animals will stand completely still while you attack them. It sure sounds tough though! Literal war with people for being successful, how much time have you spent on this line of thought?

The prospect of "Attack" and "Literal War" is limited by the fact that worst-case resistance involves a drone strike, and worst-case compliance involves retaining enough wealth for you and everyone you know to live on the beach sipping mojitos for the rest of your natural lives, while holding a nice trophy. Just not, you know, a space program and a larger military than Krushchev's reporting to you personally.

Worst case scenario? It was the first you brought up.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#460

Post by stef25 »

vee-kay wrote: post #429
ogogmad wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of informed consent is a serious possible issue here. Lack of accountability might be another one. Being cheaper, by contrast, shouldn't be seen as bad. But all of this needs to be proven.

[flagged]

Did you even read what you posted ? Talking about the 7 deaths:

> Five were evidently unrelated to the vaccine: One girl drowned in a quarry; another died from a snake bite; two committed suicide by ingesting pesticides; and one died from complications of malaria. The causes of death for the other two girls were less certain: one possibly from pyrexia, or high fever, and a second from a suspected cerebral hemorrhage. Government investigators concluded that pyrexia was "very unlikely" to be related to the vaccine, and likewise they considered a link between stroke and the vaccine as "unlikely."

End of discussion.

Post reply on HN