skybrian's recent activity
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Comment on Does he get tossed? Do I have any wagers? in ~society
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Comment on Does he get tossed? Do I have any wagers? in ~society
skybrian Link ParentI think the likelihood of a third term or even becoming the Republican nominee is very low because elections are run by the states. Most likely he won't run. Even if he did try, how many states...I think the likelihood of a third term or even becoming the Republican nominee is very low because elections are run by the states. Most likely he won't run. Even if he did try, how many states would put him on the ballot?
Vance might run.
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Comment on How population stratification led to a decade of sensationally false genetic findings in ~science
skybrian LinkFrom the article: ... ...From the article:
Let’s say the two populations are Northern (orange) and Southern (red) Europeans and we are running a genetic association study (GWAS) of height, which tends to be greater in the North. With enough statistical power, the GWAS will identify all of the alleles that are slightly more common in the North (where people are taller) as “height increasing” and all of the alleles that are slightly more common in the South as “height decreasing”; whether they actually influence height or not. If we then use these “height” weights to build a genetic predictor of height for a completely new set of European individuals, the predictors will seem to show large genetic differences in height between the two groups. And these differences can grow very large as more variants are used in the predictor, since the stratification will always point the same way and accumulate. We thought we were training a predictor of height, but we actually trained a predictor of ancestry/environment that also happens to be directionally oriented with observed height. Not great. And because this is a predictor of environments, it will be correlated with all of the other environmental differences between Northern and Southern Europeans. So not only have we turned an environmental difference into one that looks like a much larger genetic difference, but we start to think that eating pasta or being a fan of Fellini movies or head size is also linked to a genetic propensity for lower height.
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The worst part is that even though population structure itself is random, the GWAS orients all of that structure to match the phenotypes we actually observe, which makes the (false) genetic findings appear eerily plausible: genetically taller in the North and shorter in the South just like we see with our eyes! People sometimes ask why population stratification would just happen to line up so well with what we see phenotypically, but that is exactly what population stratification does: it lines up random genetic fluctuations with the observed phenotype in a way that then persists in independent samples.
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This height example might seem far-fetched, but pretty much exactly what I described actually happened, and it led to a decade-long mess where the field was convinced that Europeans had undergone rapid natural selection on height (and other phenotypes correlated with height like … head circumference) only to learn in 2019 that it was all or nearly all explained by stratification (see Berg et al. and Sohail et al. eLife; or press coverage that concludes “this is a major wake up call … a game changer”). But prior to learning this error, the possibility of selection on head circumference got people speculating what else about the head could be under rapid recent selection. That speculation included an famous opinion piece by esteemed population geneticist David Reich raising concern that genetic analyses may soon reveal substantial biological differences among human populations on traits like intelligence; differences that we as a society were unprepared to grapple with. Naturally, in some circles, Reich’s cautious and circumscribed warnings that we may eventually find challenging genetic differences were read as a kind of Straussian message, a cryptic admission of precisely the “racist prejudices and agendas” Reich was attempting to head off (and, I should note, that he spent another two chapters in his book explicitly denouncing). Snippets from his editorial were further stripped of context, sometimes reworded entirely, and became meme fodder for open racists: Harvard’s superstar geneticist is secretly on our side, the truth about the inferior races will soon be revealed. And these memes continue to get passed around today, more than five years since the motivating height result was shown to be an artifact (in a paper on which Reich is a corresponding author no less). All of which is to say that poor control for population structure can have, well, some pretty big consequences.
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How population stratification led to a decade of sensationally false genetic findings
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Comment on US President Donald Trump blocked from deporting migrants to countries where they’re not citizens in ~society
skybrian LinkFrom the article:From the article:
In a two-page decision following a hearing, Murphy wrote that officials may not deport someone to a so-called third country “unless and until” they provide the deportee and their lawyer written notice of the country to which they are being sent. Then, the judge said, officials must let them apply in immigration court for protection to stay in the U.S. under the Convention Against Torture, which Congress ratified in 1994 to prohibit the government from sending immigrants to a country where they might be tortured.
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US President Donald Trump blocked from deporting migrants to countries where they’re not citizens
29 votes -
Comment on Does he get tossed? Do I have any wagers? in ~society
skybrian LinkMy guess is that there's a decent chance that the Democrats win the House in the midterm elections and he would be impeached again. It's more doubtful that the Senate would convict.My guess is that there's a decent chance that the Democrats win the House in the midterm elections and he would be impeached again. It's more doubtful that the Senate would convict.
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Comment on US tax revenue could drop by ten percent amid turmoil at Internal Revenue Service in ~society
skybrian Link ParentI don't know about other countries, but so far this year, the US Federal Reserve has held interest rates steady. I doubt they would raise interest rates if they see signs of a recession? That...I don't know about other countries, but so far this year, the US Federal Reserve has held interest rates steady. I doubt they would raise interest rates if they see signs of a recession? That would be a situation where they'd be more likely to lower rates.
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Comment on US tax revenue could drop by ten percent amid turmoil at Internal Revenue Service in ~society
skybrian LinkFrom the article: ... ...From the article:
Treasury Department and IRS officials are predicting a decrease of more than 10 percent in tax receipts by the April 15 deadline compared with 2024, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share nonpublic data. That would amount to more than $500 billion in lost federal revenue; the IRS collected $5.1 trillion last year. For context, the U.S. government spent $825 billion on the Defense Department in fiscal 2024.
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The prediction, officials say, is directly tied to changing taxpayer behavior and President Donald Trump’s rapid demolition of parts of the IRS. Senior tax agency officials issued detailed warnings about those outcomes to the incoming Trump administration before the president took office, according to records obtained by The Washington Post.
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Other dynamics could explain some of the projected drop in revenue, experts say. Natural disasters, such as the Los Angeles-area wildfires, could lead taxpayers in wealthy areas to postpone filing until October, said Timur Taluy, CEO of tax-prep service FileYourTaxes.com. And during times of economic turbulence, some taxpayers typically opt for a penalty-free six-month filing extension.
But neither would entirely account for such a large drop in revenue, experts say, especially after the 2.8 percent growth the U.S. economy experienced in 2024. Tax officials entered filing season expecting to collect more revenue that last year, the people said, because of economic growth and the lack of significant tax law changes.
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US tax revenue could drop by ten percent amid turmoil at Internal Revenue Service
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Comment on Religious switching into and out of Islam in ~humanities
skybrian Link ParentMaybe, but I'm also wondering if freedom of religion (both legally and culturally) has anything to do with it?Maybe, but I'm also wondering if freedom of religion (both legally and culturally) has anything to do with it?
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Comment on Religious switching into and out of Islam in ~humanities
skybrian LinkFrom the article: ...From the article:
The U.S. and Kenya have the highest levels of “accession,” or entrance, into Islam, with 20% of U.S. Muslims and 11% of Kenyan Muslims saying they were raised in another religion or with no religion. That said, overall, Muslims are a minority in both places: About 1% of U.S. adults and 11% of Kenyans currently identify as Muslim.
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In several countries, virtually all adults who answer survey questions by saying they were raised Muslim still identify that way today, yielding extremely high retention rates.
Except in the U.S., the survey does not show much variation in Muslim retention rates. In most places, upward of 90% of people raised as Muslims have remained Muslims as adults.
Even in the U.S. – which has the lowest retention rate among Muslims in the countries surveyed – roughly three-quarters of Americans who were raised Muslim still identify as Muslims today.
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Religious switching into and out of Islam
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Comment on Tracing the thoughts of a large language model in ~tech
skybrian LinkFrom the article: … … …From the article:
In the first paper, we extend our prior work locating interpretable concepts ("features") inside a model to link those concepts together into computational "circuits", revealing parts of the pathway that transforms the words that go into Claude into the words that come out. In the second, we look inside Claude 3.5 Haiku, performing deep studies of simple tasks representative of ten crucial model behaviors, including the three described above. Our method sheds light on a part of what happens when Claude responds to these prompts, which is enough to see solid evidence that:
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Claude sometimes thinks in a conceptual space that is shared between languages, suggesting it has a kind of universal “language of thought.” We show this by translating simple sentences into multiple languages and tracing the overlap in how Claude processes them.
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Claude will plan what it will say many words ahead, and write to get to that destination. We show this in the realm of poetry, where it thinks of possible rhyming words in advance and writes the next line to get there. This is powerful evidence that even though models are trained to output one word at a time, they may think on much longer horizons to do so.
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Claude, on occasion, will give a plausible-sounding argument designed to agree with the user rather than to follow logical steps. We show this by asking it for help on a hard math problem while giving it an incorrect hint. We are able to “catch it in the act” as it makes up its fake reasoning, providing a proof of concept that our tools can be useful for flagging concerning mechanisms in models.
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Claude wasn't designed as a calculator—it was trained on text, not equipped with mathematical algorithms. Yet somehow, it can add numbers correctly "in its head". How does a system trained to predict the next word in a sequence learn to calculate, say, 36+59, without writing out each step?
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[W]e find that Claude employs multiple computational paths that work in parallel. One path computes a rough approximation of the answer and the other focuses on precisely determining the last digit of the sum. These paths interact and combine with one another to produce the final answer. Addition is a simple behavior, but understanding how it works at this level of detail, involving a mix of approximate and precise strategies, might teach us something about how Claude tackles more complex problems, too.
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As we discussed above, one way a language model might answer complex questions is simply by memorizing the answers. For instance, if asked "What is the capital of the state where Dallas is located?", a "regurgitating" model could just learn to output "Austin" without knowing the relationship between Dallas, Texas, and Austin. Perhaps, for example, it saw the exact same question and its answer during its training.
But our research reveals something more sophisticated happening inside Claude. When we ask Claude a question requiring multi-step reasoning, we can identify intermediate conceptual steps in Claude's thinking process. In the Dallas example, we observe Claude first activating features representing "Dallas is in Texas" and then connecting this to a separate concept indicating that “the capital of Texas is Austin”. In other words, the model is combining independent facts to reach its answer rather than regurgitating a memorized response.
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Tracing the thoughts of a large language model
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Comment on Things progressives get wrong in ~society
skybrian Link ParentI don't doubt that sometimes that happens, but I do know of a vacant lot that wasn't built on for many decades, and the story behind it was quite different. (Complex family reasons.) So it would...I don't doubt that sometimes that happens, but I do know of a vacant lot that wasn't built on for many decades, and the story behind it was quite different. (Complex family reasons.) So it would be interesting to know how common some of the different reasons are.
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Comment on Things progressives get wrong in ~society
skybrian Link ParentI suspect that the reasons why vacant lots remain vacant for decades are more complicated than "waiting for the price to go up." It would be nice to get some real data about that.I suspect that the reasons why vacant lots remain vacant for decades are more complicated than "waiting for the price to go up." It would be nice to get some real data about that.
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Comment on Conquest of the Incas in ~humanities.history
skybrian (edited )LinkMost history is about terrible suffering, but some is more terrible than others. This article tells a fascinating story, though the tone is often weirdly gleeful for someone writing about such...Most history is about terrible suffering, but some is more terrible than others. This article tells a fascinating story, though the tone is often weirdly gleeful for someone writing about such terrible things. From the article:
There is a part early in Conquest of New Spain when Bernal Dias describes walking into a village and finding a pile of disemboweled native bodies that had been recently ritualistically sacrificed, and then Dias says that such sights were so common in so many villages that he is going to stop describing them, but that the reader should just assume that the Spanish always encountered such spectacles in every single Mesoamerican village or city they entered.
The Incas also did human sacrifices, but nowhere near to the same extent. MacQuarrie mentions it a few times but there were no piles of mutilated bodies in every town. However, the Incas seemed particularly fond of child sacrifices through a practice called capacocha. Like the Aztecs, the Incan leaders demanded periodic tributes from each region of the empire, though giving up a child to be sacrificed was considered a great honor.
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Little did the Inca know that the end of Huayna Capac’s reign was the beginning of the end of the Inca Empire. In 1528, Francisco Pizarro discovered the Incas while on an expeditionary sailing venture south from Panama. Some of his men briefly went ashore at the city of Tumbes in northern Peru where they learned that the Incan Empire was a thing and that it was ruled by the mighty Huayna Capac. Pizzaro’s expedition then turned around and went back to Panama so Pizarro could prepare a proper invasion expedition and ask the King of Spain for permission to do so. Weeks later, Huayna Capac died of smallpox, which originated in Spanish settlements along the north coast of South America and tore its way north-to-south. The total estimated death toll in the Incan Empire was around 200,000.
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[W]hat ultimately decided the matter of succession? As with the Aztecs and Ottomans, it came down to warfare and intrigue. The most ambitious heirs were expected to form alliances with weaker sons and then fight each other in civil wars or murder each other covertly until there was one viable heir left. According to MacQuarrie, “the difference between European and Inca versions of monarchy… was that among the Incas bloody dynastic struggles were expected.” They saw it as a meritocratic process for finding the best heir.
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At Pizarro’s age 15, Christopher Columbus returned to Spain from the Americas. Generations later, many of the early settlers of Jamestown and other colonies in North America were the second sons of nobility and noble bastards who grew up close to wealth but knew they would never have their cut of it due to their circumstances at birth. Likewise, hundreds of similarly-positioned Spaniards found the New World frontier to be a high-risk, high-reward shot at glory and wealth. At age 24, Pizarro was one of the “impoverished, illiterate, and title-less” adventurers who signed up for an expedition to the Caribbean in the name of the Spanish King.
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MacQuarrie describes the conquest of the Mexican Empire by Hernan Cortes as almost provoking an existential crisis in Pizarro. Cortes was another poor, illiterate (though legitimate) low-tier noble from Extremadura, and he was even a second cousin once removed from Pizarro. After only 15 years in the New World, Cortes had accomplished by far the most successful conquistador expedition in Mexico, rendering himself absurdly wealthy, absurdly glorious, and a Crown-approved governor of a gargantuan piece of land at age 34. By that point, Pizarro was already 43 and had never reached those heights.
With his already sizeable ambitions further inflamed, Pizarro launched his own expedition corporation called the Company of the Levant to find and make a Mexico-sized conquest. His business partner was another key player in the Incan conquest: Diego de Almagro, another illiterate bastard of low nobility, but with an even more “sketchy” past.
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A few of these conquistadors had been professional soldiers or mercenaries back in Europe, a few more had been on other expeditions in the New World, but most were poor, ambitious men of varying normal professions (ex. sailors, merchants, blacksmiths, masons, etc.) basically buying a lottery ticket for their own cut of the fame and fortune of a successful New World conquest. Many of these soldiers had bought their equipment on credit from crafty New World merchants. In addition, there were a handful of camp followers, including a priest, some African slaves, some female Muslim slaves, and some of the aforementioned merchants who continued selling goods on credit while on campaign.
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When Hernando Pizarro introduced himself, Emperor Atahualpa finally looked up. He asked Hernando why the Spaniards had been burning Incan subjects alive. Hernando replied with some legalistic arguments for self-defense and then accused one of the native chiefs they had burned to death of being a “scoundrel.”
They stood around awkwardly a bit more, and then De Soto, the allegedly superior diplomat, noticed that Emperor Atahualpa seemed to be purposefully avoiding looking at their horses despite how mind-blowing they must have been. So De Soto decided to get his attention by making his horse rear back on its hind legs and stomp on the ground with a great snort. Amazingly, Atahualpa didn’t budge nor look at the horse, but a bunch of his royal bodyguards freaked out and ran away. Later that day, they would all be put to death by the Emperor for cowardice.
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MacQuarrie does a better job of describing how the Spanish trounced the Incas than Bernal Dias does with the Aztecs, and by MacQuarrie’s telling, the single most impactful element of Spanish military technology was cavalry.
The Inca simply could not beat armored soldiers on armored horses in open combat, especially when they charged with lances. The Inca tried many tactics against cavalry, including swarming, barricades, and missile barrages, and nothing worked. They did not have strong enough weaponry to seriously hurt either the horse or rider, and together, the cavalry could literally trample groups of Incan soldiers to death. There are many instances in MacQuarrie’s telling of the Incan conquest in which a few dozen Spanish cavalry charged into Incan armies of tens of thousands of warriors and at least inflicted dozens-to-hundreds of casualties with no losses, or at most, won the entire battle and routed the whole Incan army.
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Bernal Dias’s Conquest of New Spain is a great book, but in some ways it’s extremely repetitious. I can’t count how many times Dias says something like, “a horde of natives fired 100 bajillion projectiles at us, and every single one of us to a man received wounds, but no one died.” It’s the same in McQuarrie’s Last Days of the Incas: constant references to projectile barrages that wounded and annoyed but virtually never killed. At one point, MacQuarrie notes that the only way for standard Incan projectiles to kill a Spaniard was if they happen to hit the bottom of a soldier’s face where the helmet ended, and indeed, there is more than one account of Spaniards having their jaws fucked up by sling-thrown rocks, and such a hit even kills one of the Pizarro brothers.
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Cortes’s conquest of Mexico was in large part due to his dazzling diplomacy that undermined the Mexican government, built a coalition of loyal anti-Mexican allies, and eventually squashed his Spanish rivals to form a united conquistador force. Meanwhile, Pizarro nearly lost all of his progress in the Incan Empire precisely because he and his lieutenants so badly fumbled the diplomatic and administrative aspects of ruling New Castile that they triggered an enormous country-wide native revolt.
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[The puppet emperor’s escape] was successfully executed less due to Manco Inca’s brilliance and more due to Hernando’s stupidity. Manco Inca told Hernando that there was a big giant pile of treasure a few miles outside the city coincidentally next to this religious site where he wanted to perform some native ceremonial stuff. The Emperor asked if he could go to the site to do the ceremonies and get the treasure for Hernando, thereby killing two birds with one stone. Hernando said that sounded great and let him go. Manco Inca walked out of the city with his entourage and melted into the countryside to lead the rebellion.
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Conquest of the Incas
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Comment on Things progressives get wrong in ~society
skybrian Link ParentAren’t zoning restrictions and local opposition the main things preventing more housing from being built? The profits from building apartments would be plenty if these restrictions were removed. A...Aren’t zoning restrictions and local opposition the main things preventing more housing from being built? The profits from building apartments would be plenty if these restrictions were removed. A land value tax is an attempt to create financial incentives for developers when incentives aren’t the main problem.
I don’t see that as precedent because the grounds for intelligibility would be different. The Twenty-second Amendment doesn’t leave any wiggle room, unlike the fourteenth.