skybrian's recent activity

  1. Comment on "The reason I'm not an atheist is that I think the philosophical arguments against it are unanswerable" (gifted link) in ~humanities

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    “Not particularly bad for the time period” isn’t the same as “not terrible.” It’s a very low bar. As you say, brutal, by our standards.

    “Not particularly bad for the time period” isn’t the same as “not terrible.” It’s a very low bar. As you say, brutal, by our standards.

    3 votes

  2. Comment on "The reason I'm not an atheist is that I think the philosophical arguments against it are unanswerable" (gifted link) in ~humanities

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I’ve only skimmed the article, but they don’t say “unique,” they say “new,” and it seems likely that the combination of monotheism and universalism (not based in one city or region and anyone can...

    I’ve only skimmed the article, but they don’t say “unique,” they say “new,” and it seems likely that the combination of monotheism and universalism (not based in one city or region and anyone can join) was understood to be pretty different to the people who lived in the Roman empire at that time.

    We don’t know for sure why Christianity became so popular with the ancient Greeks and Romans, but that doesn’t mean we have to throw up our hands and say it was random. The ideological content likely played some role. This popularity can’t be explained by it becoming the state religion because it became popular first and then became the state religion a few centuries later, in 313. Constantine was going along with a trend that was well under way.

    After Christianity becomes the state religion of the Roman empire, things do change quite a bit. In particular, religious disputes became much more prominent. The Christians cared what people believed, not just that they did the rituals correctly. Now they had the power and the emperor making laws about religion was considered as legitimate as other laws. Modern religious tolerance hadn’t been invented yet.

    Other aspects of Christianity resulted in a state religion that was different, such raising the status of the poor and an emphasis on charity towards the poor, which resulted things like building hospitals. I don’t imagine those hospitals were any good by modern standards, but I don’t think the Romans built them before that?

    I think it’s fair to say that other popular world religions and ideologies also had reasons why they became popular, but they were sometimes different reasons. Being adopted by the powerful definitely gives an ideology an edge, though.

  3. Comment on Everyone's got a proof when they explode in ~humanities

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...]

    From the article:

    The problem with logic is that if you do it wrong even once it blows up. The principle of explosion states that, if your logical system has a single contradiction in it, you can prove anything in that system. When you have a statement P that is both true and false, combine it with whatever you want: “P OR Geodude from Pokemon is real and my best friend.” Well, P is true, so the whole statement is true, since a true statement OR anything is still true. But P is false, so the only way that whole statement is true is if Geodude from Pokemon really is real and your best friend. You use the contradiction as a sneaky little u-turn to drive wherever you want to go.

    Yet despite the hair-raising risk of explosion mathematicians will still edge themselves into almost exploding, all the time, for fun. This is called a proof by contradiction. You start by making up exactly one thing and asserting it is true without evidence. Then you do math using your new toy. If you reach a contradictory conclusion — that is, if you find a single bomb, which has enough destructive power to blow up all of math — then you say “Okay this is a bomb, but math has not been exploded, which means math has zero bombs. So the thing I made up must not be true, because it led to a bomb.” And then you come away with a bit of useful knowledge: the thing you made up is not true. The benefit was in the turning away, not from blowing yourself up for no reason.

    [...]

    If you are going to assume something without evidence, it is really, really important to a.) remember the thing that you assumed and b.) recognize the first contradiction you see as a signal that your assumption is wrong, not an excuse to walk up “P is true” and then walk down “P is false” and keep proving stuff. Because if you take that path just once, that’s it. Everything you find afterwards is meaningless, but will seem locally true, and the further you go the more it seems like you’re on to something because you keep proving stuff. This is the wretched loop behind most screeds about new physics, new philosophy, etc.

    [...]

    The whole point of the proof by contradiction is to be hyper-vigilant for when you’ve hit the bomb so you can stop trying to prove anything and declare a victory of discretion. The whole point of a thought experiment is to try to prove things that follow from your experiment; that is, to assume you haven’t hit a bomb. And if you hit the bomb and don’t notice, you probably can come up with a great proof of the outcome you’re arguing for, because you can come up with a great proof for anything.

    This is why, while I love thinking and I love experiments, I am generally not a fan of thought experiments. [...]

    6 votes

  5. Comment on US landlords want to be paid for pandemic losses and hope to reach a deal with the Donald Trump administration in ~finance

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    "On average" doesn't really seem relevant here? Some landlords might not have had any losses, but other landlords did. It's not like the landlords that had high rents and paying tenants would have...

    "On average" doesn't really seem relevant here? Some landlords might not have had any losses, but other landlords did. It's not like the landlords that had high rents and paying tenants would have helped other landlords that were losing money.

    Although, it might have turned out that way for large landlords that were diversified.

    10 votes

  6. Comment on Are there alternative ways to invest savings? in ~finance

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    It seems unfortunate that providing people with a place to live is assumed unethical by default. But I suppose it’s true of any service that really matters that there are good and bad ways to do...

    It seems unfortunate that providing people with a place to live is assumed unethical by default. But I suppose it’s true of any service that really matters that there are good and bad ways to do it.

    Many people need cars too, but car dealers don’t have a good reputation.

    3 votes

  7. Comment on Notes on a US non-profit indicted for bank fraud in ~society

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    My impression is that he’s playing investigative journalist but his sources in the industry won’t talk on the record and he’s limited to evidence that’s been published on the Internet. At the end...

    My impression is that he’s playing investigative journalist but his sources in the industry won’t talk on the record and he’s limited to evidence that’s been published on the Internet. At the end of the piece he gets across that he tried to get some of the non-profits to respond to him but they ignored him. But instead of just saying that he puts it in a snarky way.

    His sympathies don’t seem to be with Trump, but with the companies that were getting pushed around by pressure tactics from outsiders. (From their point of view.) He summarizes his article at the very beginning, but without telling you who he’s talking about, perhaps to create some suspense:

    A claim which will be more surprising: some regulated financial institutions have delegated authority for account- and transaction-level decisioning to a non-profit.

    That is, they rely on SLPC’s list to decide whether to debank people and organizations.

    Another: that non-profit includes a private intelligence agency, which runs covert assets, publishes intelligence estimates, develops target lists, and communicates them to decisionmakers.

    Still another: the non-profit organized a coalition of the willing as an outgrowth of its intelligence agency. The willing non-profits, that is. The coalition engaged in a years-long campaign to coerce financial infrastructure and other firms to give them the ability to direct accounts to be closed. The infrastructure built to do this against domestic terrorists was applied to an American politician’s fundraising efforts, and no one seemed to think that was odd.

    That is, they were pressured into using SLPC’s list, which effectively gave the SLPC the power to deny transactions and close accounts. And then the nonprofits used that power to not just go after Nazis but anyone that they don’t like. (He doesn’t really substantiate that.)

    It seems like McKenzie believes financial regulation should work differently, somehow. It shouldn’t be up to SLPC to decide who to debank. Perhaps the concept of an “accountability sink” applies here? Without providing proof, he seems quite sure that in some places, financial institutions have written code that automatically denies accounts to anyone on SPLC’s list:

    As a longstanding financial infrastructure enthusiast and practitioner, I am confident that SPLC screening is used on an advisory basis in very many sectors of the financial industry. It is also used in a delegated authority fashion for some products at some firms, in the fashion that Amazon used to. In the delegated-authority cases, an SPLC hit kills an account application or transaction as cleanly and automatically as an OFAC hit does.

    He very vaguely alleges that SLPC now has enormous power, just from updating their list:

    And, again, you are reading the tip of the iceberg. There is much more use of the SPLC list in the financial industry, in much more important products than workplace giving.

    For example, I would guess Stripe somehow uses it? McKenzie isn’t going to speak for Stripe, though.

    In short he’s making a procedural argument. The current procedures suck.

    Please, we beg you, do not ask Compliance to run a parallel criminal justice system. We will do it if you force us to, but you will not like the outcome.

    But assuming that debanking sometimes needs to happen, I wonder how it’s supposed to work?

    The issue is that the current procedures are a sort of shadow justice system. It evolved as the result of organizations making expedient decisions rather than someone designing it from scratch to make individual decisions fairly. Justice is expensive, so companies mostly don’t do it. They outsource and automate their decision-making whenever it’s allowed.

    Maybe the actual government should produce this list using a system that also protects the rights of people who might get put on the list unfairly? But that’s certainly not going to happen during the Trump administration.

    3 votes

  8. Comment on Are there alternative ways to invest savings? in ~finance

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I'd recommend having some money in a different financial institution. If a bank's systems go down (like happened with Patelco, due to a cyberattack) then you'll still have your money eventually,...

    I'd recommend having some money in a different financial institution. If a bank's systems go down (like happened with Patelco, due to a cyberattack) then you'll still have your money eventually, but might not have easy access to it for a while.

    6 votes

  9. Comment on Are there alternative ways to invest savings? in ~finance

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    There are financial products for people who are concerned about ethics when investing. The acronym for this is ESG. It wouldn't be about day trading. But it would probably be difficult to find an...

    There are financial products for people who are concerned about ethics when investing. The acronym for this is ESG. It wouldn't be about day trading.

    But it would probably be difficult to find an anti-capitalist ESG fund. If you hate what nearly all companies do then it's going to be hard to build a diversified portfolio.

    3 votes

  10. Comment on Notes on a US non-profit indicted for bank fraud in ~society

  11. Comment on Notes on a US non-profit indicted for bank fraud in ~society

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] ... ... Edits, since I have a bad habit of posting before I read to the end: There's a very long history with much more about major US...

    From the article:

    White collar prosecutions are structurally difficult because they frequently depend on intent. It is difficult to prove intent beyond a reasonable doubt, as it frequently depends on subjective mental states which we cannot directly observe. This problem is discussed in the literature including in book-length treatments.

    There exist ways to overcome this difficulty as a prosecutor.

    The classic one is waiting for the criminal to violate Stringer Bell’s dictum on the wisdom of taking notes on a criminal conspiracy. You then introduce their notes into evidence. They will frequently contain explicit statements demonstrating mens rea (a legal concept of a “guilty mind”). The register of those statements will be less guilty and more gleeful. Crime is awesome! Wow I sure hope the government never reads this! Because we are committing so much crime right now!

    [...]

    As Bits about Money has covered frequently previously, the anti-moneylaundering (AML), Know Your Customer (KYC), and related regulatory edifices function in a subtle manner. They do not simply proscribe conduct and rely on perfect enforcement by the financial industry. To achieve the overall objective of stochastically interdicting crime, the regs are designed to force criminals into repeated unpalatable tradeoffs. One is “You can choose making money, or you can choose never interacting with banks, but it is very difficult to choose both.”

    We then follow the criminal into the bank. “By the way, lying to a bank is a crime. It doesn’t matter what you think while you’re doing it. It doesn’t matter why you did it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a sinner or a saint. It doesn’t matter if it is a big lie or a little lie. It doesn’t matter if the bank believes you. Lying to a bank is a crime. And everything you say to a bank will be recorded for decades. It will be routinely forwarded directly to law enforcement if the forward-deployed intelligence analysts we force the bank to hire believe there is even a tiny chance law enforcement will find it useful.”

    Al Capone infamously went down for the tax evasion because it was easier to prove than the murders. Drug smuggling is sometimes difficult to prove, but the smugglers will want their money in the regulated financial system. The mandatory questionnaire at account opening will ask “Why are you requesting this account?” They will probably not write down “Drug smuggling!”, because a wag who tries doing so will quickly realize this does not successfully result in a bank account. So they will write any other answer. Now they have lied to a bank.

    [...]

    Why do these indictments, and hundreds more, rhyme so much? Why can we employ these charges to such devastating effect against the rich and powerful, even those in positions of public trust, even those with allies who still love them? Because we maintain textbooks of how to make these cases and make them stick.

    [...]

    For example, we in the financial industry are obliged to file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs). These are basically three-ish page memos. Combined with statutory tools such as those discussed above, these memos will giftwrap charges and convictions. They get saved by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) for decades and some small fraction of the four million filed every year will eventually be read by a public servant.

    The bank pays the screening vendor which fires the alert, the bank pays the intelligence officer who reviews it, the bank pays the senior compliance analyst to spend a few hours collecting data from various employees and web applications into a single coherent narrative. And then the public pays the prosecutor to copy/paste the SAR into an indictment. (Accept this as a slight exaggeration, but if you can’t name a paragraph lifted from a SAR into a federal criminal indictment, you will be able to in about five minutes.)

    [...]

    One critique is that this regime is functionally an end-run around the Fourth Amendment. Civil libertarians have made this point for decades, but never with the economy of phrase as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) internal magazine Cornerstone’s article The Currency Transaction Report: Controversial To Some—Essential To All.

    Why is the CTR so useful to law enforcement, ICE?

    ICE: ICE special agents utilize CTRs to establish links between individuals and businesses, and to identify co-conspirators and potential witnesses. This information is often utilized to meet the 'probable cause' requirement necessary to obtain search, arrest and seizure warrants.

    Is this surveillance regime narrowly tailored?

    ICE: ICE conducts approximately 1 million record checks of BSA data each year.

    [...]

    Which brings us to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

    [...]

    There are a variety of ways for the DOJ to get the CEO’s email. It may have been attached to a SAR, and therefore filed automatically with FinCEN. The other way, of course, is to pivot from a SAR (or any other reason to open an investigation) to a request that the bank produce records. Subpoenas are not strictly required; that document exists to exonerate the bank. A financial institution, concerned it is falling under negative government attention, might proactively offer to share what they know.

    In any event, the feds got what they needed.

    ...

    And now the data product you’ve been waiting for: the SPLC Extremist Files. Like the OFAC list, it’s available for free on their website, but there do exist screening providers which will happily charge you for it. Part of that work is for scraping, part of that work is for e.g. matching names to e.g. charity EIN numbers, etc. Your screening vendor will happily tell you, though, that the data product they’re selling you is really SPLC’s considered judgement, packaged in a way that makes it easy to include into your pipelines.

    Why would you buy this data product? In part, it is because the financial industry broadly considers the SPLC an extraordinarily trustworthy non-profit. It is widely believed that if they say you’re a Nazi, you’re a Nazi, and we don’t want to do business with Nazis. Financial institutions, like other firms in capitalism, have broad discretion (with some specifically enumerated exceptions) in choosing who they do business with.

    ...

    Now, a quiz: do you think Compliance at a bank is neutral on “Can the bank delegate transaction-level decisioning authority, in any part of the business, however small, to an entity under federal indictment for bank fraud? Does the answer change if they are convicted of bank fraud?”

    Edits, since I have a bad habit of posting before I read to the end:

    There's a very long history with much more about major US political events and their effects on industry. It leads to a coalition of non-profits calling for Facebook to ban Trump from running political advertising in 2021.

    Wiley Coyote Charities, an IRS-recognized 501c3 non-profit organization in a universe not too far from our own, has chased its hated nemesis for years. The orange road runner is tantalizingly close. Focused and untiring, perceiving himself close to ultimate victory, Wiley Coyote Charities salivates. This time, this time for sure, he will be sated. He will be free.

    Wiley Coyote Charities speeds past a sign reading “Danger: Plausible Non-Partisanship Ends.” The only danger is to that blasted bird.

    Wiley Coyote Charities is, to the appearance of observers of the race, now running over two miles of clear blue sky. He has not yet looked down. We know what will happen when he does. Blame the road runner all the way down.

    ...

    On the SPLC specifically, I don’t really specialize in charity effectiveness ratings, but so I am not accused of hiding the ball: I think they achieved a meaningful and historic victory in the cause of righteousness many years ago. They have dined well on that reputation for a very long time.

    To those who think their mission remains critical and more intrinsically noble than simply the pursuit of political power for their favored coalition, I will say this. If the coyote has a noble mission on his back, he owes it to the mission to let the damned bird go, before he takes that mission off the cliff with him.

    2 votes

  13. Comment on Are there alternative ways to invest savings? in ~finance

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I'm only able to remember it now because I've gotten it wrong before...

    I'm only able to remember it now because I've gotten it wrong before...

    2 votes

  14. Comment on Are there alternative ways to invest savings? in ~finance

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    No, they aren't federally tax exempt. They're exempt from state and local taxes. (Apparently there is one exception when using certain bonds to pay for higher education.) Also, there are muni...

    No, they aren't federally tax exempt. They're exempt from state and local taxes.

    (Apparently there is one exception when using certain bonds to pay for higher education.)

    Also, there are muni bonds which are tax exempt.

    11 votes

  15. Comment on Israel is destroying towns and villages in southern Lebanon in ~society

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...]

    From the article:

    Corey Scher is a postdoctoral researcher at the Conflict Ecology laboratory at Oregon State University, which does satellite monitoring in conflict zones. He's been studying both Gaza and southern Lebanon — and he says a similarity is starting to emerge between the two.

    "Previously damaged areas in Lebanon are now being completely leveled. And it looks like what Gaza looked like, when we also saw a complete leveling," he says. "The striking part for me, and a commonality, is that you just see large swaths of towns, villages being effectively wiped off the map."

    [...]

    Israel has also been striking crucial infrastructure like bridges in southern Lebanon, taking out every major crossing over the Litani River heading to the south during the past two months of war. In the final hours before this current temporary ceasefire was announced, an Israeli strike hit the coastal Qasmiyeh bridge, the last remaining crossing to the south.

    [...]

    Humanitarian organizations have also noted that critical water infrastructure has been hit by Israel — again a documented pattern in Gaza as well, and something NPR has reported Israel doing in past wars in Lebanon.

    In a statement in March, Oxfam warned that Israeli forces were "using the Gaza playbook in Lebanon," noting extensive damage to water infrastructure, but also electricity networks and bridges, "cutting off vital supplies and services for entire towns and villages."

    6 votes

  17. Comment on Jakarta’s remarkable urban transit transformation in ~transport

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] [...] [...]

    From the article:

    For many years, the first word most foreign visitors learned upon moving to Jakarta was macet, traffic jam.

    Traffic was so bad that transport experts warned in 2013 that if nothing was done, the city could achieve total gridlock, with every part of the city experiencing a traffic jam. In 2014, Jakarta was crowned the world’s most congested city by the Stop-Start Index and a year later was ranked far below other Asian cities on livability by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

    Ten years later, Jakarta has the world’s largest and one of the most used bus rapid transit (BRT) systems. The old, crowded diesel commuter trains, famous for allowing passengers to ride on the roofs, are now electrified, air conditioned, and run on regular schedules linking the suburbs to the city center. There are multiple subway and light rail lines crisscrossing the city. The transformation has been remarkable: in 2015, less than 20% of residents were within walking distance of transit. Now, nearly 90% of the city has access to BRT or trains.

    [...]

    Just over a year after Jokowi took office, Japan and Indonesia signed an agreement to provide a 77 billion Japanese yen (US$623 million) loan to build a mass rapid transit (MRT) line. While the groundwork had been laid over the previous decade, many credited Jokowi with brokering the agreement. The loan had an interest rate of just 0.1%. Japan would also provide technical expertise for the building process; Japanese train systems are built quickly and efficiently at low cost, and Indonesia hoped to learn from them. Having Japanese and central government oversight would also hopefully reduce corruption.

    It was a big risk. Indonesia only had a decades-old colonial era domestic railway network and little rail or railway manufacturing capability. There was no evidence that the country had the capability to implement such a large-scale project, and many expected it to either go over budget, or be heavily delayed. After all, strange pillars still dotted the Jakarta skyline from the last time the city had attempted a similar project. In 2003, construction started on a monorail project in Kuningan business district. That project never got beyond basic pre-construction, the funding either wasted or, as many Indonesians believe, stolen.

    This time, it would be different. Japan would play a role in basic design, construction, and introduction of transportation systems, including trains, signals, and gate systems, as well as their operation and maintenance.

    But Japanese contractors were insistent that, while they might build the railway, it was up to Indonesia to run it. Much of the technology would come from Japanese companies like Sumitomo and Nippon Sharyo, but construction, operations, and maintenance would all have to be done by Indonesian companies or the government. “In the future, it will be the local staff of Jakarta MRT who will have to manage this railroad. The Japanese way of doing things will not always be applicable here. For these reasons, we placed an importance on their autonomy when transferring the technology and operation know-how to the local staff,” says Mariko Utsunomiya from Japan International Consultants for Transportation.

    For the most part, the MRT was built underground or alongside existing large thoroughfares, minimizing the need for expensive land acquisition. When land was needed, the project used international standards to determine fair compensation and ensure fair process. Still, issues around some stations, particularly in South Jakarta, did result in the deadline being pushed back from 2018 to 2019.

    [...]

    While the MRT was still being built, the central government also approved a plan to have the state railway operator build two Light Rapid Transit (LRT) lines using domestic trains and technology. With knowledge gained from working with Japan, the Indonesian government would try to build its own infrastructure. The first line opened in 2023, slightly delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic but on budget.

    The success of the LRT and Phase 1 of the MRT has opened the door to more international investment. MRT Phase 2, also funded by Japan, is under construction and should open in late 2026.

    JICA and ADB are funding the MRT Phase 3 East-West Line, and a South Korea consortium, led by the Korea Overseas Infrastructure & Urban Development Corporation, Korea National Railway and Samsung, will build Phase 4 for 21 trillion Indonesian rupiah (US$1.9 billion). By 2045, if all goes to plan, there will be 10 LRT and 4 MRT lines with over 100 miles (160 km) of track added to the network.

    [...]

    Despite making remarkable improvements in the last decade, Jakarta’s public transit still isn’t enough. The city has recently overtaken Tokyo as the world’s largest city, with a metro population of over 41 million people, and it is still growing rapidly. It is projected to add another 10 million people in the next 25 years.

    [...]

    This has meant that despite the growth in transit ridership, there are still more cars in Greater Jakarta now than in 2019, when the MRT opened. Ride-hailing apps have also exploded in popularity; GoJek and Grab now provide on-demand motorcycle and rideshare to millions of Jakartans everyday. The sheer number of them means that fares are cheap — often just a little more than the train for a ride that requires no walking or transfers.

    This means one of the core drivers of the transit development push — air pollution — has actually worsened. Danny Djarum, an Air Quality Senior Research Lead at WRI Indonesia says that PM 2.5, the measurement of inhalable airborne particulate matter, is now eight to ten times higher than World Health Organization guidelines. “We’re still one of the top 5 most polluted cities in the world,” he said.

    5 votes

  19. Comment on US National Security Agency using Anthropic's Mythos despite blacklist in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    No, they didn't ask to be blacklisted. They asked that the DoD abide by their contract, which said that their tools could not be used in mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. The...

    No, they didn't ask to be blacklisted. They asked that the DoD abide by their contract, which said that their tools could not be used in mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.

    The DoD insisted on 'all lawful uses' which, since the Trump administration has its own interpretations about what laws mean, effectively means they could do whatever they want.

    When they couldn't come to terms, the US government claimed they were a supply risk and couldn't be used by any government agency, and Anthropic sued them because that's illegal retaliation. So far they've won in court, but it's still going through appeals.

    10 votes

  20. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of April 27 in ~society

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    If you put it that way, yes, I don’t see any reason to count on them. There are upcoming court cases where it looks like there’s a decent chance that they won’t do what Trump wants, but they’re...

    If you put it that way, yes, I don’t see any reason to count on them. There are upcoming court cases where it looks like there’s a decent chance that they won’t do what Trump wants, but they’re still conservatives.

    2 votes