Opinionhaver. Articles at Law & Liberty, American Conservative, Aleteia, Crisis, Commonweal & https://xitter.cf/t.co/xEBFFJtYe2. Not one of the other James Heaneys. Acts 20:9.
Twin Cities, MN
Joined April 2009
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Yesterday, I wrote on Reddit's /r/conservative that conservatism is about principles, not blind fealty to every single thing Mr. Trump says.
Today I was banned for that comment. The mods said it proves that I'm not conservative.
This should be funny, but it's just depressing.
!!
Something like 500 hours of my life went into playing this company's games. Not wholly shocking but an unexpected sadness.
James Heaney retweeted
Important corrective, I see this a lot.
It's true the Trust Fund was borrowed & spent & replaced with IOUs from the Treasury, not stored as cash in a vault somewhere or put in risky investments.
But the looming cliff is *when even the IOUs run out*. The IOUs are being honored.
"Raiding" the Social Security Trust Fund didn't speed up the insolvency of SS.
The current problems are the result of
1) The design of SS
2) The 1972 law setting a generous inflation rate
3) Boomers didn't have enough kids.
washingtonexaminer.com/in_fo…
James Heaney retweeted
On AI consciousness: I am a substance dualist and I think it is very implausible that current AIs or anything with similar architecture can be conscious. But, partly because of these views, if you had asked me ten years ago to predict AI progress -- and I was following developments like AlphaGo with interest at that time -- I would not have predicted anything like current progress. I thought superhuman intelligence without consciousness was impossible or at least extremely difficult. I don't think that now.
If (like me) you do not think AIs are conscious, ask yourself whether your skepticism made you underestimate the rate of AI progress. If so this suggests something in your beliefs needs revision. It may not be AI consciousness but you should probably be revising some of your views in philosophy of mind or adjacent areas (like the nature of human thought or language). I have some inchoate thoughts along these lines but haven't worked them out to my satisfaction.
We will, unfortunately -- unhappily -- have to fight 90% of seniors tooth and nail on this.
(They may see reason, though, when they realize the depth of the problem, and, thus, the burden they'd be placing on their already-struggling children.)
89% of seniors (age 65+) believe current retirees’ Social Security benefits should be protected, even if that means higher taxes on younger workers.
Gen Z (Americans under 30) are 8x more likely than seniors to support reducing benefits for current and future retirees to address Social Security’s financial problems.
cato.org/survey-reports/new-…
The marginal voter is never happy, but he is always revenged:
decivitate.jamesjheaney.com/…
In my article today, I answer Mr. Schlichter's question: yes, most of the polling doubt on the Right today is wishful thinking and cope.
That's a lesson I learned the hard way 14 years ago.
decivitate.jamesjheaney.com/…
Is my new @townhallcom column just wishful thinking, or is the blue wave gonna be as flaccid as a Democrat on his wedding night?
“The midterm polls suck, and they might be right – if you believe them, we could be headed for anything from a blue tsunami to a blue wave to a blue trickle. But that’s a big if. To avoid that conclusion, you have to believe that the majority of polls, which are undeniably showing most of our key Senate candidates losing, are inaccurate. Now, this is where it gets tricky, because we want to believe in a massive polling miss. We want to believe that the polls are skewed Dem-ward. We want to believe that there are Republicans out there who aren’t being surveyed by these polls who are going to show up on election day and pull our bacon out of the fire. The power of wanting is potent, and it can blind you. It can make you stupid. It can make you miss the obvious. And that danger exists there. Those polls could be substantially correct, in which case we’re going to have a very bad November 3rd.
And yet…”
Why the Dem-Friendly Polls May Be Way Wrong townhall.com/columnists/kurt…
Apparently, I forgot to share this on Twitter when I posted it last week, but here's some measuring rules for the (probable) Blue Wave.
decivitate.jamesjheaney.com/…
(I avoided value judgments about whether a blue wave is deserved and stuck to its size and historical context.)
It was a real pleasure participating in this September forum with @mungowitz, @PTBwrites, @GaryWinslett, and Jeffrey Polet. I always look forward to the final response essay that buttons everything up, and here it is:
Michael C. Munger revisits the debate over zoning and development, considering how communities can preserve meaningful local input without allowing existing residents to exercise an effective veto over new housing and growth.lawliberty.org/forum/zoning-…
James Heaney retweeted
Michael C. Munger revisits the debate over zoning and development, considering how communities can preserve meaningful local input without allowing existing residents to exercise an effective veto over new housing and growth.lawliberty.org/forum/zoning-…
The breathtaking overconfidence of the LLMs-are-not-in-any-moral-sense-conscious crowd on Twitter has put me in the position of admitting that Bentham's Bulldog is obviously correct in many of these convos. This annoys me! Make better arguments, fellow skeptics!
What is the evidence that you're referring to?
Are you extremely confident that octopi aren't conscious? Can you explain the difference with LLMs? In both cases, we have certain behaviors that differ from ours in lots of ways but are similar in others. They also differ from us in lots of ways but are similar in others.
We know that human brains give rise to consciousness. We don't know under what conditions it does that. So it seems like the right stance to have is higher and higher credence the more complex behavior the thing has and the more it has functions that are consciousness-relevant on our leading theories.
Now, this leads me guessing current LLMs probably aren't conscious, guessing octopi are, and being agnosticish about insects. But being 99.9%+ confident--when consciousness in LLMs isn't ruled out by leading theories--just seems insane.
I mean, for goodness sakes, people!
xitter.cf/thomasunise/status/210…
Easily missed if you're following the Law&Liberty land use Forum through the Forum tab, but I think @joldmcginn's defense of neutral laws today counts as a contribution to the Forum.
('twould be interesting to apply these same principles to ordinary zoning ordinances.)
As data centers expand, communities face questions about energy, water, infrastructure, and regulation. John O. McGinnis (@joldmcginn) considers how neutral laws and market pricing can address those concerns. lawliberty.org/data-centers-…
James Heaney retweeted
Gary Winslett (@GaryWinslett) considers why some communities welcome development while others resist it, focusing on the cultural attitudes that shape local views of growth, property rights, and economic change. lawliberty.org/forum/the-cul…
James Heaney retweeted
If a Canadian doctor says "Would you rather have a Trans child or a dead child?", it is not a threat. They are just making you aware that they now offers both of these services.
James Heaney retweeted
i've tried and failed to make this point as clearly as i want to, but:
AI is weird, in that ppl who are optimistic about the technology's growth are often doomy about its implications; while ppl who are extremely skeptical about AI's capabilities are by default optimistic about it being a "normal" technology that won't change much in the world.
so you have this weird situation where a lot of AI skeptics who haven't been following AI news for the last few years (bc they wrote the whole thing off as NFTs 2.0) have no idea that there exists an enormous contingent of AI ppl who have for 10+ years said that very fast AI progress could be really bad for the world, and therefore they suspect that a conspiracy was concocted in the last two weeks to invent the case for AI safety
