Yep, basic intervention-heirarchy stuff.
My grumpy take is that people, including good well-intentioned people, just aren't very good at numbers and it holds us back a lot, because we concede a lot of ground to people who are (or claim to be) good at numbers. It's not the political battle of our times, but it's a thing.
To me, it's deeply weird to care one way or the other. American civic religion is just so over-the-top.
Deeply weird
Okay but you really need another layer of reflection on whether it's the people who are abnormal, or the extreme political views they aren't tolerating.
Please don't throw those golf courses into a briar patch
"I am not here to make a careful comprehensive argument, because people have already done that. I am here to be rude, because this is a rude technology, and it deserves a rude response." anthonymoser.github.io/writing/ai/h...
This guy is good too ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-...
Not saying that the bombs made no difference, they certainly did, but they likely didn't stop a full-blooded invasion -- it wouldn't have gone that far.
The Japanese were, when you look at the history, on the verge of surrender -- albeit deeply divided on it. The anti-surrender faction fought their case to the bitter end even after the bombs.
I mean if you find yourself in a booth on voting day, but people aren't being asked to vote for Hitler-lite against Hitler, they are being asked to commit to supporting Hitler-lite as the best possible of all possible opponents for Hitler, years in advance.
Yes, as you can see I was joking
That the number of medals he had was accurate, because the director was committed to historical accuracy?
If you are going to break your electorate up geographically or otherwise, it should be broken up according to voter turnout, not population. Don't turn up? Your district gets shrunk in size at the next election.
Having a bunch of "districts" to divide the population up just confuses things (never mind how unrepresentative single-member districts are of political minorities). Let local government advocate local perspectives and central government make decisions with a mind to national interests.
All democratic representatives should be elected "at large" and not represent a particular geographic area. We have ways of delivering democratic representation for sub-regions of a nation: different levels of government like states, provinces, regions, cities.
Their tail's not gonna be between their legs is it. They'll be on whatever's being boosterismed next
That idealism is based on things that were taught *far too late* in a university maths degree by some great professors. But probably only a part of the picture.
I wish maths could be taught better. I have some idealism of what I think this would look like (like "hey, you can't do maths without words, your formulas should be part of a sentence with full stops and commas, you need to explain your answer in words so that they can be read"
"Revenge? Of course. But why wound his body with bullets when I could set his soul afire with a slanderous mambo? Listen, if you will, to my revenge: uno, dos, tres!"
Like with any form of enforcing rules (cops, judges, umpires, moderators) discretion is both absolutely required to do a decent job, and is also a pathway for bias and corruption.
Perhaps the more interesting thing is this line of questioning from the Greens, which had the acting Foreign Minister responding in a way that neither denied the initial claim, nor showed any particular hostility to the line of questioning.
They all murdered their nemeses (?) by the age of 18, but are gradually killed off in revenge by the loved ones, hence the declining percentages over the age ranges. War is hell.
It's a political question and will be played out in the political sphere. I expect that, like previous speakers of first-term governments, he'll be moved on discretely in a few years.
A perfectly sensible bit of guidance very poorly applied. Swarbrick's comments would not have drawn the slightest attention had he not interfered; all disorder was caused by his hair-trigger approach.
I imagine that, after a discrete period, Brownlee's going to be retired and they'll bring in someone else who's aged out of cabinet and doesn't care about parliament as an independent institution.
Did he... vote against the naming?
And when you set unrealistic standards, the inevitable failure to sustain those standards will be expressed when you are under the most strain and least able to minimize your internal biases.
I was a football referee for many years and there was always a particular type of referee who tried to set standards that were impossible (like say one swear word and you're off), and it turns out those guys couldn't sustain their own standards, and had no tools to solve problems.
Now that happens, fine, but perhaps when you're kicking people out on a hair trigger to manage the debate, this isn't the time to also come in with innovative interpretations of your power. Just let bygones be bygones, jeepers. Worse things have been said in parliament about less important issues.
Brownlee from the outset of the debate decided he was going to come down hard on provocative speeches, and had already kicked a Labour speaker out. So he wasn't at this point specifically biased against Swarbrick; he was just managing the debate poorly, with unreasonable standards
Chloe Swarbrick 's language is more considered, more thoughtful than any of the other three examples, none of which generated any complaints to the Speaker. It's entirely within the realm of robust parliamentary debate.
Let's look at three instances of the term "spineless" being used in parliament. These were the top three Google results. Fourth, Chloe Swarbrick. It's not a nice thing to say but it is entirely within the realm of normal parliamentary discourse, "robust debate".
The problem with capitalism is eventually you run out of other people's money to spend
"at least he's still got all his fingers so far 🤞"
There are people I respect who are impressed by generative AI. But it's very much "despite" not "because"
Update: she's not thankful
Gonna just go tell my partner I'm not allowed to get sanitary products for her anymore when I do the shopping I'm sure she'll be thankful
I don't disagree with any of that.
Clearly road safety is much more important and should have much more spent on them, but I don't think the case that this is a *bad* investment has been made, only that it's not too important one way or the other.
Per-capita still isn't the right comparison though? We're comparing a small problem with a small cost of improvement, with a large problem with a large cost of improvement. What's the cost per life saved? NZTA theoretically sets its VSL at 12.5million; this would fall well within that.
...I'm not sure these are numbers that can be compared like-for-like? What's the cost per life saved?
Exactly -- it's astonishing how effectively a high-dimensional vector space can model an underlying dataset, and at the same time it's also astonishing how easily people wishful-think it as real cognition, despite how far and how irreparably it obviously falls short.
It's a pretty sexy bike
The thing I've noticed is that a LOT of former councilors are running in a lot of races, both those who were previously defeated, and those that didn't run. I think the "run for local office" campaigns have really succeeded, and there's also a lot of organising on the centre-right and right
No, health boards are abolished. But fun fact, Dunedin has 20 candidates for mayor and 54 for Council!
It's hilarious how many of the "use cases" for AI are literally solved problems.
Today was the greatest day of our dog’s life. The day that every dog hopes will come—we accidentally fed him two dinners.
I’ve had nothing to do with that pedophile since he stole all of my teenage masseuses.
Which Simpsons gif or screenshot that isn't really a meme would you like to become a meme?
@criminalsimpsons.com These aren't reptile eggs
UK users when the website asks them where they're posting from today.
(I don't like delivered food either)
A taxi requires two trips at different times (there and back), so potentially up to twice the transport cost for a human than for food. Moreso if you consider motorbike/cycle delivery as two-wheeled taxi service is not common in NZ.
wife guy (complimentary) (also complementary)
Hot
New Zealand is with you in your hour of need, swaying gently from side to side
Do you know any good defamation lawyers that Joel might use?
That thumping sound you hear is Ray Chung’s lawyer concussing himself against his own desk. thespinoff.co.nz/politics/14-...
But also, when men -- or anyone -- talk about their feelings in an impulsive way, it can do harm to themselves and others, e.g. treating people as therapists who aren't, or just outright nastiness. I'm very clear with my partner that I share my thoughts at my pace, after processing them.
I want my elected officials to be getting laid, so I'd never vote for Ray Chung
Labour would do this to a too-far-out agreement with the Greens with their eyes closed, particularly if NZF were a third coaliton partner.
Chung said: “I’ve actually never known anyone with [tawdry description of sensitive parts of a professional collegue's body that I won't repeat]" Of course he hasn't. It's pretty evident he hasn't ever known a woman in any way.
for the last round of counting, the remaining part of my vote contributing to the outcome would have been, I can't remember if it was a millionth or a billionth of my full vote. So deep preferences really are irrelevant. Yet of course everyone wants to rank someone last and that's emotionally fair.
Yes indeed. We do have local elections coming up. An election ago I estimated that in my local authority, with magnitude 14 and Meek's method spitting a very easy breakdown of how your vote gets split ("keep values"), it's likely that if my preferences had run through 13 winners and been in play...
This is the InternetNZ board election, which has been a source of controversy as the "Free Speech Union" has tried to stack the board so that they can promote their far-right agenda. There has been a countermovement of progressive BlueSkyNZers becoming InternetNZ members.
In a multi-winner-election, STV starts to move towards the properties of "Single Non Transferable Vote", i.e. the voting system where everyone votes for one candidate and the N candidates with the most votes are elected. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_...
But basically, if more people bullet-vote (only give a 1), the election starts to take on the properities of a plurality election.
@drdrehistorian.bsky.social Is there a quick-and-dirty outline of the impact of optional preferences in Queensland? I feel it's well-traversed territory.
The fact that this is multi-winner STV doesn't really impact the vote-splitting issue except that with multiple winners your very deep preferences matter less. With only two winners here, it's in many senses closer to a single-winner election than to a complex many-winner STV election.
There's a wealth of information from the instant-runoff elections (single-winner STV) in Australia, due to the mix of rules between states, especially compulsory preferences vs optional preferences, and the big impact it has on the strength of preference flows. Queensland vs other state elections
It's fine as practical advice, but STV systems certainly obey later no-harm criteria and this is evident from the algorithm, which only considers a preference once the fate of all higher candidates has been decided. www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE3/P5.HTM
i.e. you can take away the power of other voters' lower preferences, where you agree with their top preferences but disagree on lower preferences. Bit too obscure for practical advice in an election like this though.
Its also vulnerable to small manipulations ("Hylland Free Riding") if voters are able to identify that their preferred candidate will be easily elected, and focus their top preferences on more marginal candidates so other peoples' votes are made to do the work of electing that preferred candidate.
It's vulnerable to vote splitting if people get picky and don't express enough preferences, leading to their vote exhausting.
There are some technical free-riding exploits that remain even for the very good STV counting method used here, but they'd be very marginal for this election due to its characteristics. Rank all candidates updated to FSU. (and no harm or benefit really to whether you keep going to till last)
there's an incredibly corny Tim Finn song about this that gives me joy www.youtube.com/watch?v=3naS...
AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. "Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—" MY POINT EXACTLY.
TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand.
Wait, Keir Starmer?
I will have mixed emotions. Glee, schadenfreude, anger at the harm already done, trepidation at what big tech will foister on us next... a real mix.
Will this demon open and close the door in order to let faster molecules out and hence freeze me?
I presume absolutely nothing else happened in all of Scotland yesterday, given that they've found space on the front page to squeeze in a story about people using toilets. I guess some days there just isn't much news
Rewatching Dirk Gently because everyone in it is having a great time, and that includes Elijah Wood who has a Terrible Time for most of S1. But also fuck Max Landis for obvious reasons.
Yeah my partner couldn't stand season one though she could see how good bits of it were -- eg the bridge scene. Season two reset that really well (partly by being unbelievably queer)
The character of Farah really suffered for this. A great kickass character held back by being fed some horseshit lines.
I do love Dirk Gently (especially Bart and season 2) but there's also a few bits where the characters are trying to say something meaningful and you can tell they're held back by the writers not being good enough people for their own characters.
There's no way Dedekind cuts are real.
They just need a prime minister to flub his lines in a debate and they'll be away laughing
I'm an emotional sucker for Mr Pump's speech. "In A Myriad Of Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game."
on that dumb fuckin post about using AI for your "first draft": i have in fact tried "ask the chatbot for writing ideas" (intrepid journalistic risk) all of its ideas are always bad, any topic for *anything*, it's like i've just set myself the most tedious homework average output is average
Having interacted with and edited some LLM-generated writing at my work (against my will, but I can't control others' processes), I've been finding my own report writing is being influenced by LLM structures (bullet points with. Capitalized Headings for each point...) even though I never use LLMs
Single Transferable Boat
"expecting Scandinavian responses from Anglosphere shrunken states (both in social licence and resources) is a problem" Great sentence.
Not really the best at all, but my dad was insistent that we had to watch The Pink Panther 2. And very frustrated when the video store mixed up the videos and we had the first Pink Panther movie instead.
Within the framework of representative democracy, only proper proportional representation systems can really represent what voters are asking for.