A little bit of neuroscience and a little bit of computing

  • 7 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: January 19th, 2023

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  • It’s reasonable to me to say you cannot sue the president for vetoing a bill, or criminally prosecute the president for commanding the military. The constitution says the president can do those things, and that the check on presidential power is congressional acts including impeachment.

    Yea I dunno … why not just have no immunity? It’s not like the whole idea of the separation of powers is to ensure power is freely exercised … it’s the opposite.

    If a president has to pause for a moment before doing something to ask their lawyer if it would be a crime … maybe that’s the point of having fucking legal system and constitution?

    Sotomayer’s dissent provided pretty good evidence (AFAICT) that the framers would have put criminal immunity into the constitution if they thought it wise … because it was a known idea at the time that had been done by some states regarding their governors. They didn’t. Cuz that’s the whole point … “no man is above the law”.

    And as for Congressional impeachment being paramount … I’m not sure that’s either necessary or even consistent with the Constitution (again, as Sotomayer’s dissent addresses).

    For example … Article 1, section 3 (emphasis mine):

    Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

    In short (AFAICT) … impeachment and general legal liability are not the same thing … and the latter totally still applies.

    Beyond all of that, the general law probably achieves everything that the majority’s decision was worried about (while they were conspicuously not worried about all of the other things that one should be when crowning a king). Civil immunity is a well established doctrine (government’s just too big and complex a thing for civil responsibility to make sense). And while I don’t know anything about it, there are similar-ish ideas around criminal responsibilities that just don’t make sense for the very nature of a governmental responsibility, war, I think, being a classic example. Sotomayer again speaks about these things.

    Overall, once you start to squint at it, the whole decision is kinda weird. To elevate the separation of powers to the point of creating literal lawlessness seems like plain “not seeing the forest for the trees”.

    The bit I wonder about, without knowing US Constitutional law/theory well at all … is whether a democratic factor has any bearing. A criminal law is created by the legislature, a democratic body. And also caries requirements for judgment by jury. So couldn’t an argument be made that the centrality of democratic power in the constitution cuts through any concerns about the separation of powers that the SCOTUS had, and enables democratically ordained law to quash concerns about whatever interference the judiciary (or legislature?) might exercise with the executive.

    I know there’s the whole “it’s not a democracy, it’s a republic” thing … but the constitution dedicates so much text to establishing the mechanisms of democracy (including the means by which the constitution itself can be altered) that it seems ridiculous to conclude that democratic power is anything but central.



  • Yea, the point of any thing like this would be to provide a better grip on what’s going on with these phrases and to break down the opacity of their coming from another language.

    The thing with latin though is that it isn’t quite an alien language to english speakers … so many components of it have ended up in language that an english speaker can kind of “triangulate” some of it.

    The “ad” in “ad hoc”, for instance. It’s the same “ad” in “advance” or “addition” “admit”. And “hoc” is related to English “here”. It literally means “toward this (thing)”, which takes on the meaning “for the purpose of this thing” … that is, being “for a specific thing”, not “general purpose”.


  • Seems to miss some big ones and providing understanding of them.

    “Et cetera”

    • “and other things”
    • abbreviated to “etc”
    • not pronounced “excetera” … but honestly I wouldn’t worry about it because this is the sort of alteration the Romans would have made and did make, and language is always evolving.
    • IMO, basically a distinct English word now

    “Exempli gratia”

    • “for the sake of an example” / “for example”
    • abbreviated “eg”
    • basically a distinct English word now in the abbreviated form, pronounced “ee gee”.
    • easily substituted with a plain English translation “for example”

    “Id est”

    • “that is”
    • abbreviated “ie”
    • like the above, basically a distinct English word now, IMO.
    • easily substituted with its plain English equivalent: “that is”
      • especially given how close the Latin is to the English …. Notice how similar the two phrases sound … that’s not a coincidence, these languages are related after all.



  • they drive away potential allies because the concept of harm reduction is anathema to their binary thinking. If you’re not ALL in, you’re the enemy.

    I can resonate with that. But I come back to … “it’s totally ok for people to create their own spaces, especially on federated social media and especially for minority groups/ideas”.

    There are likely plenty of other spaces for “potential allies” to engage and talk about veganism if they want to, or plenty they, or you, could make on their own.

    Tacitly admitting that vegans are usually antisocial zealots. “It’s right in the name!”

    Well, they’re running their own social media platform, so I’m not sure how anti-social they are.




  • I suspect the basilisk reveals more about how the human mind is inclined to think up of heaven and hell scenarios.

    Some combination of consciousness leading to more imagination than we know what to do with and more awareness than we’re ready to grapple with. And so there are these meme “attractors” where imagination, idealism, dread and motivation all converge to make some basic vibe of a thought irresistible.

    Otherwise, just because I’m not on top of this … the whole thing is premised on the idea that we’re likely to be consciousnesses in a simulation? And then there’s the fear that our consciousnesses, now, will be extracted in the future somehow?

    1. That’s a massive stretch on the point about our consciousness being extracted into the future somehow. Sounds like pure metaphysical fantasy wrapped in singularity tech-bro.
    2. If there are simulated consciousnesses, it is all fair game TBH. There’d be plenty of awful stuff happening. The basilisk seems like just a way to encapsulate the fact in something catchy.

    At this point, doesn’t the whole collapse completely into a scary fairy tale you’d tell tech-bro children? Seriously, I don’t get it?














  • Backing up “word is” by an article that says “word is” is kinda meager though.

    Well I’m relaying what is basically common knowledge in the industry shared by people in the industry. The thing about promotion/hiring budgets is something I know directly or through people at their companies.

    Sure, it may not be industry wide, of course, but I’ve not seen any hint of a countervailing trend or pattern. What’s more, in the tech industry, it makes sense. There’s a fair amount of pivoting which is often deemed to be done best by hiring (at least some) new staff with the required expertise/experience. And maintaining existing/legacy systems is often de-prioritised such that those who’ve been at the company for a while who understand the existing systems well are not as valued as those who may help the company “grow”. Which is why I bring up the possibility that these patterns may spread to other industries.