popra

Are we now going to disregard anything that can't be properly defined in 10 words or less because otherwise it just sounds funny to "idiots off the streets"? I guess the two paragraphs on wikipedia are too elitist for the idiocracy yall seem to yearn for.

Imagine those idiot doctors going through all those years of medical school instead of just buying a dictionary. LMAO what a bunch of losers.

Nice try building ttat straw man, but if your choice is an anti-democratic one—as is often the case with populists (read the fxcking paper)—then by definition you’re dismantling democracy, not practicing it. Deal with it.

"which they aren't" ... OK, you seem oddly confused about what's actually being discussed.

Let me help: here's a passage from the paper itself "On one hand, some scholars argue that populism is inherently illiberal [...]. Populist movements embrace majoritarian politics and seek to suppress opposition, often through a charismatic strongman who pledges to dismantle institutional constraints in the name of executing the people’s will. Under this interpretation, populism becomes synonymous with authoritarianism."

So while you clearly don't perceive populism as anti-democratic ... because you're immune to "doublethink", or something — others, including some of the people actually cited in the paper clearly do. Also, famously: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/think/article/abs/po...

And oh BTW, no. The majority choice is not automatically a priori democratic, unless by "democratic" you mean the literal Greek etymology of the word and not its actual meaning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy

What if the choice of the majority of the people is anti-democratic?

It would seem that that would make you anti-democratic while trying to be pro democracy.

So given the "consensus" that "genes have a significant influence on differences in human behaviour, interests, capabilities etc.", you're basically saying that a significant and spontaneous, yet undetected, mutation appeared in the human female population, during the '80s [1] ?

[1] https://m.imgur.com/t/the_more_you_know/pkZPrOI

"[...] the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy."

This is a dubious claim to say the least. There was little to no pro gay rights or gender equality activism in the traditionally very conservative little corner of the Earth where I live (ex communist, eastern European country). However, coinciding with the recent rise of the alt-right, we've had a sudden surge of anti-gay rhetoric packaged along with strong anti-establishment speech - this seems conspicuously similar to the ultra-conservative speech (both Russian and American) attacking liberals. To the point where the governing, majority, LEFT party initiated a referendum for changing the constitution to define the "Family" as the result of the marriage between a man and a woman. Interestingly, the referendum is supported by most (I think all) political parties and a vast majority of people. The "Marxist warfare against the white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy" doesn't and didn't exist here, yet we have the same alt-right crap being used by the governing party to "feed" the masses, distract from their image of a deeply corrupt party and thus grab more power. Similar things are probably going on in other places, the "Marxist threat" is mostly a boogie man used for a plain old power grab.

Not sure I understand your point, in a zero-sum game the third party could still do some redistribution to keep the habitual loser "in the game"

Update: scratch the above, you're right. But in my experience the ones arguing that we're in a non zero-sum game also argue against redistribution.

Genuine question: I've never understood the non zero sum game idea in the context of economic inequality. If I win more than you lose, overall it's a non zero sum game, as in, our combined gaines are greater than before (the pie is larger), but you still lose(you get a smaller piece). Would someone be interested in highlighting some counter arguments to this?

Haven't read the full paper but is seems to suggest that returns on capital investments are declining because of consolidations. Companies in dominant positions make huge profits(compared to the rest of the players), while those that are not in dominant positions make far less profit - but on average the returns on investment are on the decline. Furthermore the huge profits deincentivise risk taking for the dominants, hence they invest less. But not being an economist, I may be way off.

I believe this is the paper about the declining labor and capital shares mentioned in the article http://home.uchicago.edu/~barkai/doc/BarkaiDecliningLaborCap....

What about those who don't have funds to begin with, hence can't pay for adequate legal representation and have to take a plea bargain. Would you say those don't have basic human rights to begin with?

You are awesome for taking the time to explain. Thanks.

I would love this too

You're assuming "outside influence" is the same thing as "different views". For example, in information ops you only have to use sensemaking on a target (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking) to feed little bits of info or ideas that favor your goal. The end result is that the target feels protected from outside influence but it's anything but.

I like to think of myself as technically minded. However, your stereotype of technically minded people seems to sugest that either I accept the "natural truth" of stereotype accuracy or forfeit my technically minded view of myself. I will do neither.

The claim that one can engage in stereotyping people while exibiting fair threatment of the same people as individuals is dubious to say the least given the definition of stereotyping.

Once engaged in stereotyping no amount of post factum fair threatment of the individual will make up for the unfairness.

Later edit: People are imperfect pattern recognisers, in fact our pattern recognition generates a significant amount of false positives. From an evolutionary perspective this was acceptable at a time when tigers could be lurking in the bush. The penalty for running from an imaginary tiger in the bush is insignifiant compared to the penalty of not running from an undetected tiger.

> HR finds some excuse to fire you

Which shouldn't be surprising, because unless carefully expressed, skepticism towards the stereotype threat effect can be interpreted as a justification for stereotyping, especially when the skepticism is expressed in the context of political tenets.

I can now reply to your comment here, so I will reply again :)

You say that reality tends to punish irrational practices which means that some escape this punishment. Hence I will conclude that with time irrational business practices accumulate in the free market.

I can't reply to your last comment below so I'll reply here.

To me it seems that you are using some game theory ideas to explain how markets behave. The problem is that you forget to incorporate concepts from the "reality" you speak of in the last reply - more precisely timespace.

If you incorporate timespace, the enounciation becomes "the probability of the market punishing dumpers increases with time and becomes certainty after an infinit milenia have passed"

You're just arguing that dumping can be fought with dumping and hence it's not rational for economic agents to engage in dumping. When did a rational argument stop the market from doing something?

Oh wow, I still find the level of effort the HN crowd puts into being helpfull, amazing. You sir rock!

That you very much, I'll look into those.

As someone intrested in the subject but with 0 insight or knowledge, would these algorithms be a good match for short text clustering? For example identifying identical products in a price comparison app based on their similar but not identical title/name and possibly other attributes.

> No. I'm using "regulation" in a more general sense here, to mean "giving market participants incentives to behave in particular ways, and not to behave in other ways".

I'm using regulation in the sense of preventing destructive behavior.

> You are incorrect. To take just the most obvious example, prices in a free market are regulated by supply and demand. That is "self regulation", as opposed to, say, prices being regulated by government dictates.

I'm not against free markets, free prices for their most part are essential signals for free markets. We're not talking about price control.

> Just as a brief response, you are making an underlying assumption that the only thing stopping, for example, milk suppliers from leaving harmful microbes in milk is government regulation. Do you have any support for that assumption?

You conveniently ignored my previous examples of destructive byproducts of free markets. Monopolies for one are inevitable in pure free markets. Your assumption is that ALL suppliers will by some magic willfully expend the effort to provide people with safe milk. Care to explain why all of them will do that?

> If you object that no reasonable person would have different preferences for microbial content in milk, I suggest that you spend some time looking into the disputes over whether pasteurization actually removes beneficial microbes (and nutrients) from milk. It is by no means the slam dunk that you appear to think it is.

I will argue that no reasonable average person is equipped to reliably determine what safe milk is. You might be better equipped than the average, but most people around you aren't. Even so, you may have a different preference towards microbial levels in milk, but if you get them wrong you will become sick, and in some cases infectious. Once you're infectious, you are a danger to me. Putting someone at risk is a form of aggression. And in that case my rights of not being subjected to aggression thump your rights to choose specific levels of bacterial content in milk. Same argument goes for some drugs, food, guns, medical drugs, pollution or chlorine in the water for that matter or a lot more other regulated things.

> And one of the things I read was that the industrial companies who imposed those conditions had government monopolies;

There were thousands of private mining companies, thousands of private textile/cotton companies, and so on. Thousands of anything doesn't make a monopoly. I'm not sure what are you referring to.

>> as opposed to the slaves who voluntarily agree to be slaves?

That was a question for you, based on a statement of yours, not my statement.

> You're not reading very carefully. Slavery was legal, because governments legitimized it; there was never a time when it was illegal (prior to it being outlawed in most of the developed world over the past century or two). But it wasn't voluntary for the slaves, so you can't use slavery as an example of a free market having "awful" effects.

OK ... So basically your argument is ... because people had their freedom taken from them by some who then proceeded to sell and buy them, effectively turning them in commodities - this can't be used as an example of buying and selling?? You will have to elaborate on that, because if that's your argument it's dubious to say the least.

There was a need for labor in the market, and the market happily fulfilled the need by stripping people of their freedom and turning them into cheap commodities - it externalized the suffering. The fact that governments eventually taxed this trade (I'm assuming this is what you mean by "governments legitimized it") did not legalize it or legitimized it, since it was a practice already very well entrenched. I hope you are aware that slavery did not start or end in the US, in fact it predates by a lot most forms of anything which would resemble a government.

> Nothing you say in any way establishes that regulation by government works better than regulation by free market participants. All you're doing is describing what government regulation does.

Regulation by free market participants? Is that a joke? You mean like rating agencies giving AAA ratings to subprime CDOs? Free markets do not self regulate, they simply don't exist to do that. Free markets don't have foresight or a self preservation instincts, why exactly would they self regulate? Monopolies, strange things, pure free markets inevitably lead to monopolies and monopolies inevitably destroy free markets.

I wonder, in your ideal world, would you do a microbial test on every milk carton you buy? I guess not, you would vote with your money, right? You would buy from trusted brands which have their milk tested by a third party, like a private milk rating agency. I bet you would only buy AAA milk ;). But what if all the milk producers would get together and get to an understanding that none of them will ever rate their milk and thus save themselves a lot of money? Where would you buy your milk now? You would grow your own cows, produce artisan milk? Multiply that for all the products you consume, how much effort would you need to expend in order to participate (and not get completely trashed) in a market unregulated by the government?

> Government regulators do not give or receive anything as part of the transaction, which is the definition of "a party to the transaction".

Governments are elected and as such they represent the people and the peoples will, thus any terms added by the government are in fact terms added by those participating in the transaction. The timing when the terms are added doesn't matter.

> And those terms are not voluntarily chosen by the parties;

Yes they are, when I buy milk, one of my terms is that it should have microbial content below dangerous levels as stated in the regulation related to microbial content of the milk.

> They were side effects of markets that were meddled with by governments in different ways than governments meddle now.

Really? I suppose you have an example to back that up? While you think of one, I suggest reading about working conditions and child labor during the industrial revolution.

> Slavery, for example, was clearly not the result of a free market transaction; the slaves didn't voluntarily agree to be slaves. It could only exist because governments legitimized the taking of slaves by force.

WAT? Before slavery, slavery was illegal? And the slaves didn't voluntarily agree to be slaves, as opposed to the slaves who voluntarily agree to be slaves?

> The problem with that is that all other methods of regulating the behavior of sellers do even worse.

I think this is where our views diverge. In essence what they're doing is false advertising: "buy this product because it's at X% discount!!!" when in reality it's at a lower discount or in some cases it's not even discounted.

Advertising is regulated, and there are good reasons for that, just think about an ad like "smoke cigarettes, they cure cancer" (granted, hopefully, an overblown example).

Some view free markets as a goal onto themselves, I think this is a mistake. The goal is (or should be) a good society, whatever your definition for "good society" is. Just because the best societies so far developed using some forms of "free markets", doesn't mean that pure to the extreme free markets would be a better means to the goal when compared to more regulated markets.

> The definition of "free market" is that all transactions are voluntary.

That is correct, once both parties agree to the terms (price, quantity, quality, deadlines and so on) the transaction goes through. People usually view governments (the regulator) as third (intrusive) parties to the transaction, that's not true. Governments are representatives of the people, and as such, regulators simply add a priori terms to a transaction.

Historically, regulation has managed to right some (not all) of the more awful side effects of free markets, including: child labor, deadly workplaces, labor bordering slavery, labor inequality, disastrous environmental externalities and more. Is regulation always perfect? No. But then again, by your own admission neither are free markets :).

They're overcharging today compared to yesterday, so that tomorrow, on the day of the sale event, they can display a bigger discount. And all of that to "incentivize" (read trick) the buyer to spend his money.

It has nothing to do with free markets at work. It's simply a shady, dubious practice.

> Prices fluctuate all the time, sometimes daily, sometimes hourly.

Right, the problem comes when the stores inflate prices artificially just before a sale event so that they can display a bigger discount percent on the day of the sale. This in turn makes the consumers think they're getting a better deal than they're actually getting, it's also a bigger incentive for them to spend their money.

The problem is that it's a fake incentive. While this is not a crime it's certainly deceptive and shady.

You don't have to write the unit tests up front for the full app - in fact doing that could be considered going against agility.

The way TDD is usually done is that the developer writes the tests for the feature she's currently working on, before actually working on the feature.