frontier64

Karma: 536

frontier64 Apr 23, 2025, 4:07 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: Yair Halberstadt’s comment on: How to end credentialism
I’m not saying it isn’t a problem at all. I think I explicitly acknowledged that there is a problem where I said “the majority of the downside.” But it is a problem that the free market can resolve. The free market can’t resolve the doctor problem because the government literally requires the worthless undergrad degree to allow someone to practice medicine or else they’ll be jailed.

frontier64 Apr 21, 2025, 6:41 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: Yair Halberstadt’s comment on: How to end credentialism
Employers who poorly select employees will most likely be out-competed by employers who make better decisions when selecting employees. We already see this in hiring for software engineers where many employers will accept a bachelors degree or other experience which demonstrates coding skill.

And for software engineering, at least when I went to school, you still had to be able to program at least a little bit to get a degree.

The majority of the downside from credentialism comes from fields where it’s literally illegal to work if you don’t have the right college degree

frontier64 Apr 21, 2025, 5:24 PM
1 point
0
on: How to end credentialism
Instead of doing this why not just, not require credentialism? Let the free market regulate doctors. Eliminate laws which put onerous credential requirements on professions where there’s high demand and low supply.

frontier64 Apr 21, 2025, 1:30 AM
1 point
0
on: frontier64′s Shortform
Putting a finite value on both an infinite lifespan of infinite pleasure and an infinite lifespan of torture allows people to avoid difficult decisions in utility maximization such as Pascal’s Mugging.

Maybe this is why so many people seem to naively express that they don’t actually want to live forever because they would get lonely and all their friends would die and etc. They’re actually enacting a smart strategy which provides protection from edge case situations. This strategy also benefits from having a low cost of analysis.

frontier64 Apr 19, 2025, 5:52 PM
0 points
0
on: It Was You Who Made My Blue Eyes Blue
Sorry to necro, but the sailor didn’t give anybody any new information with respect to eye colors that they didn’t have already. Each person A-E knew that there were 4 other people minimum with blue eyes and they also knew that each other person knew there was at least a minimum of 3 people with blue eyes.

Everyone suddenly gaining the common knowledge that at least one of them has blue eyes is not actually new knowledge at all.

ETA: I envision a story where they realize that if Enuli never takes the Sparkroot again and is no longer a genius logician they can save themselves that way.

frontier64 Apr 18, 2025, 5:14 AM
2 points
1
on: Two New Newcomb Variants
[I’m not completely sure EDT can’t do better than this, so corrections with even more elaborate schemes encouraged]
I blindfold myself, weigh two random boxes, then weigh the other two random boxes. I pick the box pair which weighs the least then randomly select between those two. If no weight difference then select randomly. This should net you the maximum amount of $301 if the hosts naively compete against each other as you describe in your scenario (i.e. competing against each other by putting more money in boxes just to arrive at the same 25% equilibrium without any sort of cooperation between them).
Hosts are incentivized to put the maximum amount of money in each other box because if only one Host is putting money in the other boxes they guarantee themselves to be in that least heavy pair (total weight of $202 in pairs without their box and $102 in the pair with their box). If 3 of the Hosts are putting money in the other boxes but 1 Host isn’t, he’s screwing himself because his box will never be the least heavy pair (total weight of $502 in the pair with their box and only $402 in the pair with the other two boxes).

frontier64 Feb 24, 2025, 1:29 AM
1 point
0
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: The case for the death penalty

I think a lot of such people can be “cured” by high certainty of being caught, not by severity of punishment

This stems from a misunderstanding of how the career-criminal mind works. They don’t really care about being caught. They remember how out of the last 40 or so times they walked into Walmart and left with ~$100 in unpaid merchandise they only got caught half the time and the other half of the time they got let off with time served of 10-20 days. Either they get away with it or they gotta wait a couple weeks before they get to try again. Not a big deal either way.

So much of the crime plaguing modern America is open and obvious and even caught on camera. It’s just that the criminal justice system refuses to punish repeat petty offenders.

What punishment do you think someone who has been convicted of stealing 15 times before should get on his 16th conviction?

frontier64 Feb 24, 2025, 1:22 AM
8 points
0
in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: The case for the death penalty
I’ve reviewed many of these cases and it typically means the prosecutors changed from a tough-on-crime prosecutor to a restorative justice prosecutor who’s looking to get a nice media headline. The convicted man is still obviously guilty, but because they found one piece of evidence that cuts against guilt, but is in no way exonerating, they decide to let the convicted rapist/murderer/etc. go free.

Best example is the Central Park 5. If any aspiring-bayesian take a look at that case they’ll realize very quickly that the 5 people convicted definitely held down a woman while she was being raped. Yet for some reason they are now lauded as innocent men wrongly convicted.

frontier64 Feb 24, 2025, 1:14 AM
3 points
0
in reply to: lsusr’s comment on: The case for the death penalty
I’ll let you operationalize it and give you 3 to 1 odds.

edit: My main point is that a lot of people who are otherwise very smart have no idea how the criminal justice system works. They think our prisons are overflowing with people convicted of non-violent drug offenses when nothing could be further from the truth. Our prisons are overflowing with robbers, stabbers, rapists, arsonists, burglars, and murderers. That’s because the media and activist groups lie and misrepresent the truth. We wouldn’t ever have to execute a non-violent drug dealer to free up prison space.

frontier64 Feb 23, 2025, 5:56 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: lsusr’s comment on: The case for the death penalty
I would say this clearly falls outside my bet as I said “solely for sale of Marijuana” and this news release says, “were each sentenced today to 30 months in prison” and “pleaded guilty in November 2023 to conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana and conspiracy to commit money laundering”

So really a no-brainer. Unless I can look at their sentencing agreement and it says they got time-served on the conspiracy to commit money laundering and their sentence to 30 months is solely for the conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana count.

It seems like you’ve done some research on this topic now. Do you want to take me up on my bet?

edit: Also your article is for a 30 months sentence which started back in November 2023. I’d also bet that those defendants are either released right now or are very close to it.

frontier64 Feb 22, 2025, 9:39 PM
1 point
0
on: The case for the death penalty
What you describe is the system of justice we had back 250 years ago. The whole reason for the formalistic procedures involving a jury and Judge and all these rights given to the accused were because if he was convicted then he was most likely looking at a quick public hanging. The State has to prove guilt beyond any and all reasonable doubt because there’s no going back once the guy’s head rolls off the chopping block. Over time however, punishments got more lenient, judges became way softer, and due to the way the appeals process and appellate courts work, justice can only get ratcheted one way, softer.

Now somehow there’s US Supreme Court precedent saying it’s cruel and unusual punishment to execute someone for a crime that didn’t result in anyone’s death. How does that make any sense when back during the founding of the US they were executing people for horse thievery?

Your post is obviously correct and I think there’s about 3 reasons right now that it’s anathema to public policy. 1) The general public has a totally mistaken understanding of why people commit crimes, how they could be made to stop, and how criminals are being punished right now. 2) Judges and other people in the criminal justice system are numb to just how evil criminals are because they have to interact with these depraved people every single day. 3) There is now a sizable portion of the population who is actively pro-criminal because they hate the US.

frontier64 Feb 22, 2025, 9:03 PM
4 points
4
in reply to: lsusr’s comment on: The case for the death penalty

Right now there are people in prison for selling marijuana in Washington state

I’ll bet you $100 there is nobody in prison solely for sale of Marijuana in Washington state.

frontier64 Feb 7, 2025, 2:19 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Thread for Sense-Making on Recent Murders and How to Sanely Respond
I think we tend to agree on the method to safely talk to a journalist. At least, the method that I see you write about is virtually the same as the method I suggested in my comment.

What I want to emphasize though is that for most ordinary people whom journalists will try to talk to, the format will mostly be just talking to the journalist and letting them write an article later. Most journalists will not do the whole long form interview that recorded and video taped with people who aren’t already famous.

So for your average person who doesn’t already know the depths of journalist depravity, it’s much better to just have a blanket “don’t talk to journalists” rule.

frontier64 Feb 7, 2025, 12:51 PM
1 point
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in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Thread for Sense-Making on Recent Murders and How to Sanely Respond
Did you ever have a positive experience where the interviewer didn’t misquote you?

frontier64 Feb 7, 2025, 3:32 AM
−9 points
−8
in reply to: jbash’s comment on: Wired on: “DOGE personnel with admin access to Federal Payment System”

Some of that action is clearly illegal under black letter law

This is one of those concrete claims which you will be unable to provide evidence of. The chief executive restructuring government departments is not ‘clearly illegal under black letter law.’

frontier64 Feb 7, 2025, 3:21 AM
15 points
−3
on: Wired on: “DOGE personnel with admin access to Federal Payment System”
The President is the chief executive of the United States and is supposed to control all the government agencies operating inside of it. Theoretically, Trump has the power to walk into any government office and start doing whatever jobs he wants to do himself. There is no reason why he can’t hire people to do this for him instead. He also has the power to grant security clearances to whoever he wants to. The chief executive of the US has a lot of power.

Trump is doing an end-run around the old chain of command because US case law has set the legal precedent that government employees can’t be fired at-will. This is why Trump is offering to buyout government employees instead of just firing them. This is also why Trump has a separate team directly accessing the systems at the treasury and other departments. If he just sent word down the chain of command to ‘find government corruption and spending on stupid things and eliminate it’ nothing would get done. Much of that preexisting, unfirable chain of command is either incompetent or participating in the corruption themselves.

Obviously if the new CEO of a private company wanted to shakeup the old system he would just fire the old workforce like Musk did with Twitter.

frontier64 Feb 7, 2025, 3:05 AM
0 points
−2
in reply to: ChirpingSubagent’s comment on: Thread for Sense-Making on Recent Murders and How to Sanely Respond
The majority of journalists are in the top 5% most evil people in the whole world. If you care about getting the truth out about something do not talk to journalists at all unless: 1) it’s being recorded by both you and them; and 2) you have the ability to get your recording in front of the public. Most journalists will literally just lie about what you say to them to the public in order to make their story.

I am in a position where journalists often try to ask for comments and my policy is never talk to them. The few times I have made the mistake of giving them a couple comments they have literally lied about what I said to them in their subsequent article.

I guess if the story you’re trying to tell is interesting and aligns with the journalist’s worldview there’s a chance they won’t deliberately misquote you. But if its something important then you shouldn’t run that risk.

frontier64 Jan 17, 2025, 1:25 AM
3 points
0
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Parasites (not a metaphor)
12mg pills. I learned my dad apparently takes it more often than yearly. Takes it every couple months for a week.

frontier64 Oct 13, 2024, 4:59 PM
5 points
9
in reply to: Logan Zoellner’s comment on: Most arguments for AI Doom are either bad or weak
Ok, then my answer is read the sequences.

frontier64 Oct 13, 2024, 1:34 PM
5 points
3
on: Most arguments for AI Doom are either bad or weak
Have you read the sequences? My response depends on whether you have or haven’t.