- Football - in the least having sensors used to determine touchdowns when the officials on the field are in doubt. It would qualified if these are used to overrule upon challenge or if the officials can use them similar to how every score is reviewed by rule.
- Baseball - in the least the calling of balls and strikes by an autonomous system. To be clear this is not overruling the umpire but autonomously determining in the first place.
Monday, May 10, 2021
WWCF: Sensors in Football or AI Calling Balls/Strikes in Baseball?
Sunday, May 9, 2021
Does Ranked-Choice Voting Really Work?
an electoral system in which voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots. If a candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, he or she is declared the winner. If no candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated. First-preference votes cast for the failed candidate are eliminated, lifting the second-preference choices indicated on those ballots. A new tally is conducted to determine whether any candidate has won a majority of the adjusted votes. The process is repeated until a candidate wins an outright majority.
- Jesus
- Almost The Devil
- A Goofball
- The Devil
- Jesus - 38%
- Almost The Devil - 30%
- A Goofball - 20%
- The Devil - 12%
Under RCV we don't yet have a winner because no candidate has a majority. So, we eliminate the lowest first-place vote getter and give his second-place votes to the remaining candidates. Presumably in this hypothetical everyone who voted for The Devil, who has now been eliminated, put Almost The Devil as second place. Therefore, the new results are:
- Almost The Devil - 42%
- Jesus - 38%
- A Goofball - 20%
- Almost The Devil - 52%
- Jesus - 48%
- In repeated experience voters should get better and better at using the new system. This is similar to rejecting the argument that a simple one-time experiment in a classroom "proving" prisoner dilemma problems mean people will fail at coordination ... therefore, government force is required to make them make the right choices.
- Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If this is a 90% solution to known problems with elections and democracy, it might be worth this hypothetical, unlikely risk.
Saturday, May 8, 2021
The Seductive Allure of Socialism
See this for more on the source for the above image and related story.
Friday, May 7, 2021
Fighting Words
- If you support government schools, you are part of the problem. Do whatever you can to get your kids out as well as help others to get out as well--especially the most needy, inner-city kids and others. Starve the beast. It does not serve its customers, children and their families.
- Social Security and Medicare = Welfare. And it is unsustainable welfare at that.
- (Related to the above) Baby Boomers need Millennials and immigrants (especially illegal immigrants) to bail them out of their financial peril.
- Most news is entertainment and most of that is proverbial porn. Watching and reading popular news sources is entertainment with negative intellectual value--it is making you dumber.
- Support for the Pledge of Allegiance is virtue signaling, and recitation of it is an activity of un-American obedience.
- The national anthem being played before sporting events is state worship of dubious origin, and the rationale given for its continuance is awkward at best.
- You don't own "your" culture. You are a part of a greater human culture and many, many subcultures. Hopefully you are contributing to them, and hopefully you are finding where they are and how they are changing beneficial to you. Regardless, to claim ownership is nonsensical.
- The push for National service is motivated in large part on resentment. People resent how good life is for the young, and how bright and relatively easy their prospects are; therefore, they want to instill hardship on them, and they believe the only way for them to develop character is for them to be placed into a form of involuntary servitude.
Thursday, May 6, 2021
When a Deal is Not a Deal
Swift is doing the exact same thing, which is why the story of her breakup with Big Machine and the question of who was right or wrong ultimately doesn’t matter; Swift, like Chappelle, is taking her masters, whether she owns them or not.
That’s the part that Logan forgot: when it comes to a world of abundance the power that matters is demand, and demand is driven by fans of Swift, not lawyers for Big Machine or Scooter Braun or anyone else.
That is part of a very good analysis of how content creators are ultimately king. The story rankles me some from the standpoint of the ethics of going back on a deal even if the deal was not made under purely power symmetrical terms.
He relates it to NFTs. The persuasive claim he makes is that NFTs derive value from the collective agreement, Arnold Kling would say consensual hallucination, that there is value.
Near the end Thompson concludes:
If the creator decides that their NFTs are important, they will have value; if they decide their show is worthless, it will not. And, in the case of Swift, if she decides that albums are valuable they will be, not because they are now scarce, but because only she can declare an album “Taylor’s Version”.
Wednesday, May 5, 2021
Annuities - A Troubled Solution in Search of a Problem
The math is clear. A certain income can leave retirees better prepared for an uncertain lifetime. But retirees’ reluctance to annuitize suggests that the irrevocable decision to exchange liquid wealth for guaranteed income is about more than math.**
Tuesday, May 4, 2021
Briefly Evaluating Biden’s First 100 Days
- Drug Prohibition - Perhaps this summarizes where we are. I am shocked, SHOCKED!. We elected an OG drug prohibitionist and a bully cop, and we’re surprised that instead of legalization we got more of the same. (0/1)
- War - The administration seems to be content to continue Trump's policies on China, but the promised withdrawal from Afghanistan is potentially a significant improvement. (0.5/2)
- Taxes - The plan so far is not too surprising, but it is still undesirable. The corporate tax increase is much much bigger once you account for the fact that Trumps reductions we’re paid for with reductions in loopholes. Going back to the prior rates without the loopholes is a big net increase on AN ENTITY THAT DOESN'T PAY TAXES! People pay taxes. When you tax corporations, the tax incidence falls on owners, employees, and customers. (0.5/3)
- Education - Biden specifically and the administration and Democratic Party generally cannot part ways from the teacher’s unions. Clearly the direction is for the government to vastly increase its role. They lost me at "12 years of [compulsory] schooling is not enough". (0.5/4)
- Immigration - Finally something we should be able to give a clear win on, but . . . it is hard to see these as anything more than better promises but very short actual results. Still, let's grade on a curve and hope for the best. (1.5/5)
- Housing Development - It appears there is hope that the Biden administration will lean toward YIMBY policies. As Republicans and many conservatives retrench deeply into antidevelopment rhetoric, the progressives may stumble into enlightenment simply by trying to be the opposite. (2.5/6)