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[silverspawn]

Ok that's it I'm retiring from online chess. If you find out that I've played another game on my account please punish my socially

[silverspawn]

I've gotten at least 8 phone calls today these guys are relentless

I think next time I'll pick up and tell them to fuck off

[silverspawn]

Who'd have thought that I'd get so many calls that they get annoying just through the annotation in do-not-disturb mode

[silverspawn]

And yes I've been on the phone all day because that's where I play chess because tennis elbow.

Or rather, used to play. I don't play anymore.

[silverspawn]

So there's an amendment, which is pretty straight-forwardly applicable to Trump after the Capitol riots, that should prohibit him from holding office.



... and betting markets don't seem to give a single fuck. I'm a bit surprised because the courts didn't treat Trump so nicely last time

[silverspawn]

"or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof". Seems clear-cut to me.

[silverspawn]

If Trump wins it will not at all be good for my mental health

[faust]

"or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof". Seems clear-cut to me.

Well, I'm not sure what qualifies as "aid or comfort", I would guess the original intention is something along the lines of providing shelter to armed rebels. Trump hasn't really done this, the support he's given that I'm aware of is mostly through his stated opinions (though it's possible he's done something like supported their legal defense, that wouldn't surprise me).

But anyways, it's murky enough that when it goes before a right-wing Supreme Court, they would dismiss it, so Trump really has nothing to worry about in this regard.

[silverspawn]

I just created a full working animation of two pendulums swinging in phase, and another of them swinging out of phase in a chaotic system, using proper differential equations and even having a zig-zaggy spring, in 90 minutes. Or rather, GPT-4 did it at various directions from me. For this kind of thing it really is insanely useful. It would have taken me hours upon hours to do this by myself.

[silverspawn]

But anyways, it's murky enough that when it goes before a right-wing Supreme Court, they would dismiss it, so Trump really has nothing to worry about in this regard.

yeah, this must be what the gamblers think, too

[silverspawn]

I just created a full working animation of two pendulums swinging in phase, and another of them swinging out of phase in a chaotic system, using proper differential equations and even having a zig-zaggy spring, in 90 minutes. Or rather, GPT-4 did it at various directions from me. For this kind of thing it really is insanely useful. It would have taken me hours upon hours to do this by myself.

The "spring" here is the one connecting both pendulums because the point is to demonstrate what can happen when two oscillators are coupled. It can either be simple (e.g., when both swing in sync and the spring is always equally far, this is called an eigenmode, and in this case they just move periodically as if there were no coupling) or complex (which is anything except the eigenmodes, where the spring changes in length and the whole thing is a chaotic, non-periodic system).

[silverspawn]

The chaotic motion looks something like this:



But I found no image with creative commons license so I just did it myself

[silverspawn]

Do countries with high social cohesion have high or low taxes? Instead of diving into the literature, I collected some very limited but unbiased data myself (by asking GPT-4, but social cohesion and taxes were done in two separate sessions). Haven't looked at results yet, but I'm doing now. Low cohesion countries are Zimbabwe, USA, Brazil, and Venezuela; high cohesion are Denmark, Japan, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, and The Netherlands.

And GPT-4 did medium-high and medium-low, so we'll do six catories (none = 0, low = 1, medium-low = 2, medium = 3, medium-high = 4, high = 5). Then we'll take the mean even though it's not an interval scale because I'm GANGSTA. Low cohesion countries first.

Income: 4, 4, 3, 3 ((vs)) 5, 4, 2, 5, 2, 5. Means are 3.5 vs 3.8
VAT: 3, 0, 5, 5 VS 5, 3, 1, 5, 1, 5. Means are 3.25 vs 3.3

very tentative conclusion: Social cohesion is not about taxes

[silverspawn]

Though if anything high taxes seem better, especially if you take out Signapore, which is not democratic and arguably is run in a way that's not replicable

[silverspawn]

But probably this is like asking whether harsh or lenient drug policies are better. The reality is that both can work (Singapore/Netherlands) it just needs to be coherent and consistent

[silverspawn]

fun facts: USA has about 4 gun homicide deaths per 100k people per year, Germany about 0.09, and Japan about 0.01

[faust]

Though if anything high taxes seem better, especially if you take out Signapore, which is not democratic and arguably is run in a way that's not replicable

I mean you say high taxes seem better which implies you're thinking it leads to social cohesion, but I would argue this could also be the other way around; if social cohesion is high, people are probably more likely to accept high taxes.

There is also a lot more granularity in income tax in particular, you can have the same tax volume with a flat tax and a tax that goes up to 100% but I would imagine this correlates to social cohesion in very different ways.

[silverspawn]

yes causation is another point of failure

[Snorka]

I think your methodology on this question is just full of holes. From sample size to lurking variables to using GPT-4 as a source? If I were you I wouldn't even make a tentative conclusion.

[silverspawn]

Disagree! If a phenomenon is sufficiently robust, you should expect to see it despite all those problems. Whereas you wouldn't necessarily expect it to be widely accepted, especially not if it has a political component. This is why even a little bit of data has value; sometimes there's no social consensus on questions even though they have obvious patterns. If the effect is small or nuanced, you won't see it, but if it's simple and obvious, you will.

Also, I now know that there isn't a strong, straight-forward correlation, so if people say that there is (as some do), I know they're not trustworthy.

And using GPT-4 as a source? That's totally legit. It rarely makes mistakes when you ask it about objective data. I'd be surprised if you find anything grossly wrong with any of its categories.

[silverspawn]

To demonstrate this, here's me asking GPT-4 for the 5 US states with highest and lowest suicide rates (on the right) as of 2018 (to bracket the pandemic), and then in a separate session, gun ownership for these states (on the left).



Now if we crudely reduce the suicide data to just two categories high and low and calculate the mean gun ownership rate for each, we get

High: (57.7+61.7+62.8+49.9+56.9)/5 = 57.8
Low: (11.3+20.8+20.8+22.6+20.7)/5 = 19.24

What I just did there also has a ton of problems, like the real rates of gun ownership aren't even known, and I also used GPT-4 as a source. But it doesn't matter because the pattern is so strong that it easily cuts through the noise. Now if anyone tries to tell me the case is unclear, I know they're not trustworthy. And I even kinda know there's causation because reverse causation or common cause is pretty implausible for such a strong effect.

[Awaclus]

What I just did there also has a ton of problems, like the real rates of gun ownership aren't even known, and I also used GPT-4 as a source. But it doesn't matter because the pattern is so strong that it easily cuts through the noise. Now if anyone tries to tell me the case is unclear, I know they're not trustworthy. And I even kinda know there's causation because reverse causation or common cause is pretty implausible for such a strong effect.

There is actually a causal link in presumably the direction you're thinking of here (in that gun owners' suicide attempts are more likely to succeed; they are not more likely to be suicidal), but the strength of the effect doesn't let you conclude that. It is entirely plausible, and if anything very likely, that high rates of gun ownership and high rates of suicide could have several common causes, such as economic inequality, lots of people living in scarcely populated areas, and/or the fact that the same political party advocates for easier access to firearms and less resources to anything that would prevent depression.

Reverse causation doesn't seem plausible to a substantial degree in this case, but that's because the idea that high rates of firearm ownership are caused by people committing suicide is silly, not because the effect is strong.

[silverspawn]

I wouldn't be surprised if such effects exist, but I would be surprised if they're this strong. Though I could be wrong.

[Awaclus]

I wouldn't be surprised if such effects exist, but I would be surprised if they're this strong. Though I could be wrong.

Well, obviously people successfully commit suicide without firearms all the time, and not literally every gun suicide attempt succeeds either although it is one of the safest methods, so I would be extremely surprised if the gun availability -> suicide causal relationship explained anywhere near the whole difference.

[silverspawn]

I really wouldn't (but I also wouldn't take huge bets on it)