Do you doubt that even one does? Because if one does, it gives them such a ludicrous advantage that the others can't even be competitive if they don't.
The evaluation of programmers isn't nearly as objective as the evaluation of athletes, and I'm not convinced modafinil and amphetamines have a statistically significant advantage (how much does programming ability even matter for getting ahead anywhere?), let alone a ludicrous one. On the other hand, the advantage from steroids is ludicrous on multiple factors including stamina, recovery, strength etc. The advantage from cheating and lying in the science game is also very high in my experience, although difficult to measure.
I don't agree. I've tried those and many other options and never found anything that provided a consistent advantage. The best physical advantage probably comes from good sleep and exercise.
His dad works for Nintendo, if you question him, he'll make your playstation 3 catch fire.
Jokes aside, I would be interested to see if there is any "sources" to his claim, but in all likelihood there isn't and there never will be.
there is no evidence that the alphabet-boys hijacked the term "Conspiracy theorist" and used the media to change people's perception that conspiracy theorists is batshit crazy people with tinfoil hats.
How many years were you not labelled a tinfoil-hatter if you tried to describe the echelon program pre-snowden, even though he wasn't the first to leak about FIVE EYES, especially the part how the western SIGINT community circumvented the laws prohibiting domestic dragnet spying in their own respective countries?
> there is no evidence that the alphabet-boys hijacked the term "Conspiracy theorist" and used the media to change people's perception that conspiracy theorists is batshit crazy people with tinfoil hats.
I don't know where do you got this particular claim from, seems like a straw man honestly, but here is the CIA's 1967 "Countering Conspiracy Theories" memo:
Propaganda operatives, whether commercial or military, seek what are called "placements". These are packaged kernels of message content to be repeated by media gatekeepers, who may be reporters, editorialists, authors, movie directors, computer game studios, or social-media "influencers".
Zero Dark Thirty and Argo were important movie placements by the spooks. Diamond, cigarette, car, beverage, and now phone product placements are a familiar movie phenomenon. It appears that there is significant budget available for funding movies and games that present CIA programs in a positive light, which also generate direct revenue.
I think people give too much credit to the government for being a rational and calculating actor. I don't find it difficult to believe that they attempted a "men who stare at goats"-style program. They are absolutely not above throwing a billion dollars worth of shit at the wall just to see what sticks. These are the same people who thought they could implant cats with listening equipment and train them to eavesdrop on Soviet officials, which went about as well as you'd expect.
That's how all of physics is constructed. Even things you may think are obvious, like Newton's 3 laws of motion, are only accepted because they agree with our measurements. How else should we determine their validity?
> There are literally infinite ways to create equations that satisfy measurements.
There really aren't. You seem to be thinking of something like in the movie The Number 23. But we're talking about equations, not numbers. Take Newton's Second Law (f = m • a). What equation can you write that expresses that relationship that can't be simplified to f = m • a?
The uncertainty principles are inequalities, not equations. And that is something you can write with multiple forms.
As for equations, notice that many equations in Physics have a constant which turns a proportion to an equation. This is where you have leeway in constructing more or less arbitrary equations based on the variables you think are important enough to observe.
Coming to your example, Newton's f = ma equation is really f/m proportional to a. The units are chosen carefully to make the constant 1. This works under the assumption that mass is constant and acceleration is measured measured from a non accelerating frame of reference with non relativistic speeds. So, yes there are several other ways to write that equation.
I don't doubt that you've seen examples of that, but I've seen plenty that go the other way. Heavily downvoted comments that are only slightly defensive of him, and others that rise to the top for bashing him when it isn't even relevant to the conversation. It really depends on the thread. Different topics attract different crowds.
It's not weird at all. Soldiers on opposite sides have a lot in common, just as you might have a lot in common with someone of your profession from a different country. Their conflict is that of their respective countries, or they may think they're serving a good cause. But in either case, it's not personal.
It's also a mistake to think that every time a soldier shows an ounce of humanity, they're only doing it to "help their conscience". Soldiers are usually not the tortured individuals Hollywood portrays them to be. Why should these two men's consciences bother them? NATO troops thought they were defending the oppressed, and Serbian troops thought they were defending their sovereignty.
I think you are attributing a lot of what goes on to choice - war has a poor track record in this regard and soldiers are often recruited very young and/or conscripted. Even the US recruits soldiers defined by the Convention on the protection of children (below 18). Schools are used for recruiting in many places.
This aspect of war is really sad - giving kids and young adults guns and sending them off to shoot people is widely glorified.
It is estimated that 70% of conflicts involve child soldiers, though any measurement is hard due variable definitions and the difficulty in measuring.
I'm talking about the men in this article. Both of them were career military officers. It's fair to say that that was their choice.
Certainly there's propaganda that goes into recruiting naive young people in the US, but it's quite a stretch to equate that with child soldiers. I chose to enlist and so did everyone I served with. The vast majority of us do not regret it or feel that we were conned.
> Certainly there's propaganda that goes into recruiting naive young people in the US, but it's quite a stretch to equate that with child soldiers.
The US has signed The Convention on the Protection of Children. This agreement defines a child solder as one below the age of 18.
You may not feel conned but it’s not just about you - it’s the places they go, the decisions they make and the population they supposedly protect that should also matter.
There is little difference in maturity between a 17 year old and an 18 year old, and I would not consider either a child. And 17 year olds cannot be deployed.
But since we're being legalistic, yes, we signed the convention. But we did not ratify it. It is not legally binding on us.
> But we did not ratify it. It is not legally binding on us.
Yes, mostly.
“When a state has signed the treaty but not ratified it, it is not yet bound by the treaty's provisions but is already obliged to not act contrary to its purpose.”
I enlisted right out of high school. Did my 4 years and got out.
I think it made me more mature, or at least less naive about certain things...eventually. The experiences were valuable but it took a long time for me to fully reflect on them and extract that value. I was 22 when I got out, barely past being a teenager.
Money wasn't a factor for me. I had 96% of my tuition to a good engineering school paid for by scholarships, which I gave up to enlist. My reasons were a combination of things. I had a lot of friends who enlisted and I felt bad that they were risking their lives and I wasn't. I was also sick of school and saw war as an adventurous alternative, and a way to prove myself as a man. And I genuinely believed in the mission at the time.
I think the influence of money on soldiers going into actual combat is overstated. It's true that there are a lot of people who enlist for a paycheck, vocational training, or as a way to pay for college. But you get to choose your job. I was in the infantry, and pretty much everyone I knew legitimately wanted to fight, which is the only reason to join the infantry. If you're after job security or education benefits, you can be a clerk or a mechanic or a thousand other things that will generally keep you away from enemy fire. There's an idea floating around that the government keeps people poor so it'll have an endless supply of desperate peasants to feed into the meat grinder, but that doesn't hold up in my experience.
> This aspect of war is really sad - giving kids and young adults guns and sending them off to shoot people is widely glorified.
The American war machine has a lot of white supremacy elements built into it. Not just camps named after Confederate war criminals but actual common training refrains like "if they's brown, shoot them down" were taught during the invasion of Iraq which played at least some role in the war crimes at Mahmudiyah and Falluja. The Mahmudiyah murders and rapes were most eggrigious especially attempting to cover it up and lay the blame on Al Qaeda.
The Mahmudiyah rape and killings were war crimes involving the gang-rape and murder of 14-year-old Iraqi girl Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi and the murder of her family by United States Army soldiers on March 12, 2006. It occurred in the family's house to the southwest of Yusufiyah, a village to the west of the town of Al-Mahmudiyah, Iraq. Other members of al-Janabi's family murdered by Americans included her 34-year-old mother Fakhriyah Taha Muhasen, 45-year-old father Qassim Hamza Raheem, and 6-year-old sister Hadeel Qassim Hamza Al-Janabi.[1] The two remaining survivors of the family, 9-year-old brother Ahmed and 11-year-old brother Mohammed, were at school during the massacre and orphaned by the event.
Five U.S. Army soldiers of the 502nd Infantry Regiment were charged with rape and murder; Specialist Paul E. Cortez, Specialist James P. Barker, Private First Class Jesse V. Spielman, Private First Class Brian L. Howard, and Private First Class Steven D. Green[2]).
Lets not forget that Trump also pardons these kinds of criminals.
The very few who actually sign up when they are 17 are almost all 18 before they go to bootcamp, and of the extremely rare ones who aren't they are 18 before they go to their first command or do anything at all. They are not allowed to deploy outside the US or participate in any hostilities until they are 18.
As I addressed in my comment above. 17 year olds are allowed to sign up with their parent's consent, but are not allowed to deploy outside the US or take part in any hostilities.
There's an element of the "just working here" mentality, but it's more than that. I was in Afghanistan more than a decade ago, and in my mind, we were fighting against the abuses and brutality of the Taliban. The guy shooting at me from a mountainside with a PKM was "one of them", a legitimate bad guy.
In retrospect, I realize that guy was probably much like me. A young guy, full of testosterone and looking for adventure, with notions of being part of something grand and heroic (repelling an invader) and a certain naivete about the larger forces and agendas that were using him. We'd probably get along if we met now.
Awhile back I saw a conversation on Reddit between an American soldier who fought in Ramadi (or maybe Fallujah, I can't remember) and an Iraqi soldier who was there at the same time fighting against the Americans. There was no ill will at all, just storytelling and reminiscing, and talking about the courses of their lives, families, and careers since then. The fact was that these guys had almost everything in common about that time in their lives, and had similar motivations for taking part in it. The only difference was that they happened to be on opposite sides.
> Awhile back I saw a conversation on Reddit between an American soldier who fought in Ramadi (or maybe Fallujah, I can't remember) and an Iraqi soldier who was there at the same time fighting against the Americans.
Any chance you might be able to dig up that link? I think it might be interesting to read it.
Unfortunately I can't find it now. I was looking for it earlier because I wanted to reread it myself. Wish I'd bookmarked it at the time. Sorry about that.
Sure, let me just call up all my buddies from my old platoon and apologize to them because some internet know-it-all said I should feel sorry for them. They're all doing great, so they'll laugh at me, but that's probably just an act. Thanks for enlightening me to their true plight.
Have you looked at the actual numbers? I said usually. The veteran suicide rate is roughly double that of civilians [1]. Obviously that's a problem, but it's still a very small minority. Veterans are not dropping like flies.
> Then he told me to go fly a kite, because that’s usually what happens when people are wrong and have zero evidence that their stance is right and yours is wrong.
It's also what happens when socially clueless strangers interrupt your conversation to make rude comments and you have the good sense not to waste your time on them. Idiotic comments don't deserve well thought out replies.
> they take out a large short position, then they publicise their research. If the market agrees with them, the uncovered fraud tanks the stock price, and they make a healthy profit.
This is giving the market a lot of credit for being a rational and well-informed actor. The market is not full of people who calmly evaluate a short seller's argument and make a logical decision. It's full of people who lack the time, experience, and confidence to question the "financial expert" making dire predictions on the morning news and think "I should get out of this stock just to be safe".
Oh, I agree completely. Individual market participants make tons of mistakes, and absolutely won't be able to evaluate short (or long!) arguments correctly in many cases. That's actually one of the key elements supporting the efficient market hypothesis, and why so much ink is spent encouraging small investors to use index funds.
But it's a question of scale. The fact that any one investor may make mistakes doesn't mean that the market as a whole, in the medium or long term, also makes these sorts of mistakes.
"Some hedge fund guy released a report saying stock X is bad and the stock tanked 30% from small investors panicking before recovering when people realised it actually wasn't bad" is pretty silly, yes. And it's a bit rough on the small investors selling at a loss into the large investors who are able to correctly analyse the report, absolutely. But does any company actually go bankrupt in cases like this? The answer seems to be no; there's no evidence for it happening, and it's hard to see how it even could. Confused retail investors can lead to price volatility, but they don't make or break a new share offering.
Normally that's not really the case. There's a lot of academic and practical evidence that the most rational investors generally determine the prices of stocks, because even if there are a lot of irrational investors making random or systematic errors, a minority of rational investors all betting in the same direction ensure that prices are close to "correct", for some reasonable definition of correct.
In practice you just don't see examples of productive companies driven into insolvency by short sellers.
> Outside of a city, good luck getting the police to come to your house. Where I used to live they would take at least 20 minutes and it wasn't particularly rural.
Even living in the city doesn't necessarily help. I once called the police because a guy was in my apartment complex looking for me with a gun. It took them 45 minutes to arrive, and this was in the city only a mile and a half from the nearest police station.
It was pretty clear to me after they arrived that since I lived in a bad neighborhood, they didn't want to deal with the situation. They figured they could wait, let whatever was going to happen happen, and then roll in and take statements.
That's a poor excuse. They're low resolution, but not so low resolution that you can chant a slogan and then claim you meant something else entirely. Why not "reform the police", or hell, even "disarm the police"?
Do you think "disarm the police" would be going better than "defund the police"?
(I suspect it would actually be quite a bit more incendiary.)
Communication (even at length) is hard. We all bring different baggage to every attempt to speak and listen. It's probably ~impossible once you mix in uncharitable readers/listeners.
I can't speak for the campaigners, but I suspect "reform the police" won't cut the mustard for them because it's the sort of thing the establishment says before it fails to deliver meaningful change. "Today I'm calling for the establishment of a bipartisan commission on police reform", and its short imperative slogan--"reform the police"--could be an inspiring message if people had the impression that is how the gears sound when they're spinning up to change something.
But it's not very fair to insist people should be chanting a demand that seems to translate to "promise to look busy for a few months so that we'll go home and hope we don't notice when you don't solve the problem."
"Reform the police" has long been the tagline for ineffective measures. We've been trying to do it for decades; "defund the police" is in part a response to the reform argument.
"Disarm the police" would receive the exact same pearl clutching responses.
I'm not sure how either of these articles support your point.
Your first article is someone criticizing prior efforts by others to reduce public education funding. The only person using the word "defund" is the author. Though interestingly, there is a mention of conservative attacks on programs like sociology, anthropology, minority studies, and gender studies. I assure you that many conservatives really do want to abolish funding for those programs.
The second article is a single person using the word "defund" to describe Obama's reduction of military spending. Again, somebody using the word to describe somebody else's actions.
Interestingly, both of those articles are by people who oppose defunding. Perhaps they used that word precisely because it implies "remove funding entirely", which has an exaggerated emotional impact?
In any case, neither example is the same thing as a large social movement using it as a slogan, especially when that movement publishes things like "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police": https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
When things like that appear in the New York Times, is it so unreasonable for people to take their word for it? Or should we keep insisting that they don't really mean it?
And before you tell me that that's just one person's opinion, I'll just point out that so were both of your references, and those are the opinions of people who aren't even supporters of those movements. The "defund the police" movement has its own people using the term and saying "yes, we mean literally abolish the police".
The first article also quotes someone else saying defund. Eliminating sociology, history, anthropology, and language aren't mainstream conservative positions. Minority studies and gender studies maybe.
I picked 2 old articles from different political tribes to show it isn't new or just 1 tribe. Defund the Pentagon is a slogan now. Bernie Sanders[1] and Barbara Lee[2] proposed cutting the military budget by 10% and called it defunding.
I don't see anyone saying defund can't mean abolish. But most people who mean abolish say abolish because defund can mean reduce funding.
It's unreasonable to listen to people on the fringe of a movement and ignore the majority. It's unreasonable to read NYT opinion pieces and ignore NYT news pieces.[3] It's unreasonable to ignore actual legislation. It's unreasonable to ignore all the top search results.
