Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: lemon10 on March 21, 2024, 03:40:22 am

25x lower

Noting that this phrasing can be ambiguous.  The thing you quote ("25 times better") sort-of-maybe supports the use of "1/25^th of", or 4%[1], but can I just say that that's a horrible phrasing, and the kind of one that gets me almost shouting at the radio/TV for lazy (if not misleading) terminology.

Not your fault, but... <shudder>.

[1] Or very close (exactly 5% would be a 1/20^th, 3% a ratio of 33⅓:1, so if the rounding is to the nearest whole number (after conversion of an exact fraction/percentage) then it's probably pretty accurate to convert back). That's if the "25 times reduction" actually meant that, in context, when it actually could mean so many other things, from the utterly miraculous to mere tweaks, as I'm sure you don't need me to explain.

What else could it possibly mean? Getting n times more computations per watt means a given number of computations takes 1/n the watts.

Of course, the reality is that it's "up to 25 times" which means that you'll never see anything close to that in real-life conditions, but that's not the part to which you objected.

Shame on me for having referred to the topic without reiterating it completely...

When people tried to say that a14.s3 can only be enforced by Congress, I said that Colorado did have the right to bring the case forward because nothing had been done at the federal level. I also said that, had something been done at the federal level, the Colorado case could have been shut down in its infancy while in Colorado by Trump's team.

How? What would Trump's team do? I don't think you understand the process here. There's no escape valve to "shut that whole thing down", the process for deciding cases like this is for it to work its way through the courts and up to the Supreme if necessary.

My question to you was, "If things were as you say, the Colorado case would have been stopped before it left Colorado's Supreme Court. Why wasn't it?"

What is your answer?

It wouldn't be, because that's not how the process works. You haven't explained why you think it would be.

I was making a half-joke, it's probably not literally an intentional campaign by anyone in particular. If I had to blame anyone in particular, though, xkcd would be right up against the wall, making people dumber mondays, wednesdays, and fridays. Or whatever the schedule is.

Everyone tends to use advantageous representations of data,

That's called "effective communication".

The point I was making about "Colorado had the right to bring the case forward because the federal government did not" is similar to the point Texas is making with their new immigration law. Texas is saying that they have the right to enforce border law because the federal government is not. Are these both examples of a state taking action to enforce federal laws when the authority was already delegated to the federal level?

No. Colorado did not have any right to bring the case forward because it was intruding on a power specifically provided to Congress by the Constitution, with no obligation on the part of Congress in any way created. Since Congress had made no law in any way providing for Donald Trump to be removed from any ballot, no state could act to enforce any such law, nor does any state have the power to make such law on its own (which, besides, Colorado never attempted to do, as the legislature was never involved). If Congress had made such a law, states would in fact be obliged to enforce it; similarly, if Congress has made laws providing for border enforcement, which they have, states have the responsibility to enforce them, just as the Executive does as well. The difference is that Texas is following the established law while Colorado was not.

ETA: By the way, in about an hour we get to find out how the economy collapses. Stay tuned!

seemingly aware of common 'graphing tricks' like non-linear axes that might mean either an objection is raised or that you whould raise one yourself (although, in the right circumstances, something like a log-normal or log-log layout showing a linear trend is exactly what you'd expect from perfect data) but missing all kinds of other issues that were at least a problem with the view being presented.

Just as an aside, I'd be happy if I could never hear this dumb take again as long as I live. Non-linear axes are not a "graphing trick". There are no "graphing tricks". When people complain about "misleading graphs", it is usually because they did not understand what the graph was trying to convey.

The level of data literacy out there is depressingly low.

ETA: Anyway, look. You can look for reasons to believe the suspicious-looking data coming out of an arm of a terrorist organization while convincing yourself you're engaging in skepticism by doing so, or you can accept that there's room for doubt and we should not necessarily trust either party. You do not HAVE to take a side. And no, the UN (who trusts the UN, anyway?) or the Lancet (who trusts the Lancet?! Why would a medical journal even have an opinion on data forensics?!?) saying that they can't prove the data is wrong doesn't convince me of anything.

I definitely think the UK's parliamentary system is worse on several important properties. In fact, it seems like you basically have a two-party system anyway, with the lib dems mainly a factor in which side they decide to swing to. The proportional representation countries are even worse, because you don't even get to choose *people* there. I do think there's something to be said for the historical way the US did things, where the state governments, not the Congress (as would be the equivalent of the UK system), choose the President, but it was changed for a reason, ultimately.

When it comes to types of voting, though, IRV is the categorical worst of all. Nobody should ever use instant runoff. It can be shown mathematically to disobey important intuitive rules (monotonicity, for example) and also excludes third parties worse than plurality/FPTP. FPTP behaves fairly reasonably, all things considered, despite its bad academic reputation which isn't based on any evidence.

ETA: In fact, I should say, the main reason that America has a two-party system is because most people genuinely prefer one "major" party or the other over any third party that currently exists. Third-party voters are a Very Online Phenomenon. There are voting systems that specifically give smaller parties a mathematical leg up, like range voting, but that leg up mostly comes as a benefit of people outside the hard core not having heard of them. Is that really desirable, to prefer a candidate nobody hates because that candidate is a total cipher? I personally don't think so.

Hold on, isn't CrystalizedMire also in error? Can we make two ships in a turn? You said:

Shipyard: Produces ships on demand using. Takes up 1 slot. Produces 1-3 ships per turn, depending on shipwright tech level. Built with 2 Alloys and 3 Minerals.

And presumably nobody has more than starting shipwright tech, yes?

What is weaponized speech I'm not talking about the strict definition meant to point at forms of demagogery, exclusionary and demeaning rhetorics, but in a broad sense: treaties imposed on indigenous people conquered, taxlaws meant to be convoluted,

Those aren't speech, they're military action. Laws and treaties are enforced by, well, force. The force is what does the weaponizing - without it, the words are nothing.