I would put the odds at 99.9% that the US will hold an election in 2028 and that it will be the international consensus that regardless of the outcome, the election will be decided fairly by the voters and will not be "hacked" or "unfair" as current and past fringe commentators have tried to present.
I mostly agree, but GOP efforts to disenfranchise voters they don't like have only stepped up further in recent years. (In particular, the SAVE Act, if passed, could really mess things up even more.) But I think the left sees the whole frothing-at-the-mouth "stop the steal" stuff as counterproductive and won't go that route, so I'd agree that, for the most part, the 2028 elections will be judged to be fair and free of fraud, regardless of outcome, at least by anyone who is not a Republican.
I'm Canadian and don't technically have a dog in this race, but I do enjoy calling people out on convictions they present but deep down don't earnestly hold.
Would you be open to a $10,000 bet that the 2028 election is, as decided by unbiased international publications (BBC, Reuters, etc.), fair?
Obviously we're not actually going to make that bet personally, with each other, because a) we are random people on the internet, and setting up some sort of trustworthy bet/escrow system is more work than I want to get into, and b) I will likely forget about this subthread by tomorrow, but:
Yes, if there was some sort of prediction market around that, I would absolutely make that bet. My rationale:
Elections are run by each individual state, not by the federal government. The federal government certainly has the ability to set standards for those elections (and something like the SAVE Act, if passed, will disproportionately disenfranchise likely-Democrat voters), but election integrity is managed by the states. The states don't really have an incentive to mess with their elections. Deep blue and deep red states will get the outcome that likely-of-the-same-party election officials expect/want without the need for any meddling. Swing states generally have enough people in power from both parties that those elections are going to be watched very closely by people who will call out irregularities and provide actual evidence of such, if it truly exists.
The only thing I'm worried about is legal disenfranchisement, but it's unclear if anything new there that happens in the next 3.5 years could meaningfully swing an election.
Regardless, I am less worried about 2028 than I am about the mid-terms in 2026. Not worried election-integrity wise... just worried about the Democrats getting their shit together and retaking at least one of the houses of Congress (and if they can only take one, preferably the Senate, even though that will likely be the more difficult one, as usual).
If you're being honest about your position that 2028 won't be a fair election, I'm effectively offering you free money, right? There are loads of bet/escrow systems out there - I'd be happy to do all the facilitation myself.
I think most folks believe at this point the election itself will be fair. The real question is whether those in power will accept the election results or not.
Anecdotal, but I've gotten three recruiting emails from them now for joining their iOS team. I got on a call and confirmed they were offering FAANG++ comp but with the expectation of in-office 50h+ (realistically more).
I don't have that dog in me anymore, but there are plenty of engineers who do and will happily work those hours for 500k USD.
So in the end did he get anything? I dont know how these things work but did he just walk away with ~50k in pre tax income and 0 for RSU or did Musk pull a Twitter and not even pay him for those months?
In my experience, having watched friends enter that position, it's drugs which cause drug addiction. Mental health might play a factor, but if I gave the average HN user meth or crack every day for three weeks, their brain chemistry would be almost irreversibly changed and would spend years, if not the rest of their life, wanting more. Same goes for powerful opioids.
One can argue that certain people are more predisposed to enjoy being high, I'm one of those people. When you see incredibly rich and successful people like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Chris Farley, and Philip Seymour Hoffman ultimately losing it all to that desire, I feel like it's hard to blame something like lack of opportunity or government welfare dependence.
The "bad" drugs, crack/meth/opioids/etc. make your brain feel a way sober-type people can't really imagine. I don't know what the answer is.
Not like people in other countries don't have access to the same drugs. It's not solved 100% anywhere, but the magnitude is very different in say Canada.
End of the day, it's still societal issues that's causing some people to go down this path. Most of the drug addicts have some level of "atypical" upbringing. Maybe abusive childhood, constant foster care, growing up in a bad neighborhood with the wrong influence etc. Seems like we should be focusing on solving those issues, which not only benefits the topic at hand but society and communities in general.
I don't think this is true. "Only" a quarter of people that try heroin become addicted. Similar numbers with alcohol (15% of people that try alcohol develop a problem with it), but given alcohol is more widespread, there is some selection bias because only a subset of people try heroin, whereas nearly everyone tries alcohol. I would not be surprised if the overall addiction risk is very similar between alcohol and heroin.
I think it's much more likely some sort of genetic trait underlying it.
> In my experience, having watched friends enter that position, it's drugs which cause drug addiction. Mental health might play a factor, but if I gave the average HN user meth or crack every day for three weeks, their brain chemistry would be almost irreversibly changed and would spend years, if not the rest of their life, wanting more. Same goes for powerful opioids.
I bet if you gave the average HN user meth or crack every day for three weeks, almost certainly nothing would change except their toilet flushing slightly more frequently!
My point was not about basic mechanism of dependence which sure will happen to anybody. It was about what causes them to seek out and take those things in excess in the first place.
> One can argue that certain people are more predisposed to enjoy being high, I'm one of those people. When you see incredibly rich and successful people like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Chris Farley, and Philip Seymour Hoffman ultimately losing it all to that desire, I feel like it's hard to blame something like lack of opportunity or government welfare dependence.
Individual cases and especially these extreme outliers are no good. It's not that one single government policy or social problem is the cause of all drug addiction, but they could contribute to the issue on a population level.
I think it's hard to imagine someone who prefers homelessness to living somewhere cheap. I understand there's a lot of nuance and for the majority of homeless folks, $750 rent isn't necessarily more realistic than the $3000 rent I remember in NYC, but for the people for whom cheap living _is_ a viable option, I'm struggling to believe that their AA group or a friendly coffee shop owner are their reasoning for choosing NYC over a highway town outside of Rochester.
I actually think it's a bit infantilizing to suggest that any otherwise capable person would choose sleeping on the streets or in shelters over a basement apartment in a cheap, boring town.
Speaking personally, I'd prefer living in quite literally any town in the entire country if it meant a roof over my head.
I'm not speaking out of my ass, I was homeless myself on and off for nearly twenty years, and have relationships with homeless people in my community still.
Almost no one "prefers homelessness" to anything else per se, but they may decline the terms on which housing is offered. For example "break all your social ties and move away from the only city you know" is extremely hard for anyone to accept.
Look at some other conversations in this comment section! A lot of people want to "solve homelessness" but a lot of them also don't care what happens to the homeless people on the way. "Come with us, to a place you've never heard of and know nothing about, where all your needs are met"? No thanks my man I have read Maus.
Truthfully, for all intents and purposes, I'm the one speaking out of my ass on this topic. These are some really good points. You describe a real-life experience which I clearly lack; I definitely concede my previous point. My apologies.
FWIW I think it's really admirable of you to maintain those community connections, not everyone would do the same.
Can you explain what is so difficult to move to another place? I mean choosing homelessness or new life where you don’t know anyone but have roof over your head makes me pick only one choice here… I am an immigrant and changed my locations several times.
Yeah, I should have made this clearer. When I wrote, "some homeless people voluntarily choose the lifestyle" I did not mean to imply that they prefer it to all other possible lifestyles, simply that they could get indoors if they wanted to, but that would come with downsides that they choose not to accept. But I did meet one person who explicitly said, "I have a home but I have no desire to live in it." But much more common was the sentiment that they could get a place to live but then they'd have no money left for anything else.
My understanding is that countries who have "solved" homelessness either -
• Societally and culturally produce so few individuals who would behave the way America's most problematic homeless do that direct 1on1 intervention is feasible. There are school districts in the US where the truancy rate exceeds 70%. There are other countries where this is not the case. Switzerland and Norway come to mind.
• Involuntarily commit or arrest individuals who are mentally unfit to function in normal society. Institutionalization, basically. China and Russia come to mind.
If there was a silver bullet which was politically acceptable to "solve" America's homeless problem I ensure you, folks in California would have tried it.
1. Yes, it's cultural and we keep encouraging people to be selfish. Our influencers, the media, this push of "make it in your own" despite no one in history truly being self made. And if we're being frank, prejudice is still alive and well which underfunded certain kinds of areas. We don't want to help those people. And we have 50 mini countries to balance this between.
2. Almost. They don't use for profit prisons who are incentivized to punish. Other countries actually focus on minimizing recidivism. But America keeps falling for "Hard on Crime". Again, that selfishness: "I would never do that, that person deserves to suffer".
>If there was a silver bullet which was politically acceptable to "solve" America's homeless problem I ensure you, folks in California would have tried it.
I agree. But politically people treat reformation as "free handouts". With that attitude nothing will change.
>But America keeps falling for "Hard on Crime". Again, that selfishness: "I would never do that, that person deserves to suffer".
We really need to repeal the 93 crime bill. We have the most incarcerated population in the world by both ratio and total numbers. Way too many offenses are felonies and once people get marked by the system, they will most likely never excel in society, much less get by.
And what happens if they don’t find a job? Do they become homeless? I know a few Americans who moved to Finland. They accepted lower wages for a better quality of life.
At a certain point after decades of low wages, the “quality of life” you speak of has been eroded severely. But hey, at least there aren’t any rich people around.
California, like most of the USA, contains a very broad spectrum of political opinion. There are plenty of conservative right wing folk there, it just so happens that the current state of things there leads to them not holding huge amounts of power at the level of the state legislature or governor's office.
This is marked contrast to, for example, most European countries (particularly the two you've mentioned) where the number of people who simply do not see a role for non-carceral government action (i.e. the first solution you've described) is quite small.
Combine that with a referendum process, and you've got a situation in which there are lots of things that could theoretically be tried but will not be, even in California.
Have we ever observed revolutionary change in tech which ran contrary to evolutionary change?
This seems like such an odd thing to expect will just "happen". Any other world-changing or impressive tech I'm familiar with has evolved to its current state over time, it's not like when Jobs announced the iPhone and changed the game there wasn't decades of mobile computing whose shoulders it stood on. Are you talking about something like crypto?
It's admittedly a bit confusing what you're asking for here.
What did Musk's promised driverless taxis provide that existing driverless taxis don't? The tech has arrived; it's a car that drives itself while the passenger sits in the back. Is the "gotcha" that the car isn't a Tesla?
He promised that you'd be able to turn your own Tesla into an autonomous taxi that would earn you money.
That is a massive lie, not splitting hairs.
Obviously, we're very desensitized to lying rats - but that's what he did.
Looks like it's still in the works. Sometimes when technologists promise something their timelines end up being overly optimistic. I'm sure this isn't news to you.
By your language and past commentary though this seems like the kind of thing which elicits a pretty emotional response from you, so I'm not sure this would be a productive conversation either way.
(Throwaway as this topic can be inflammatory for those unfamiliar with the literature)
Behavioral patterns and personality traits have been pretty conclusively proven to be genetically inheritable. "Behavioral Genetics and Child Temperament" (Saudino) investigates this, as does "A genome-wide investigation into the underlying genetic architecture of personality traits and overlap with psychopathology" (Priya Gupta, et al).
There's no doubt that nurture and culture play a massive role in one's later personality and behavior as an adult, but it's incorrect to disregard genetics in this conversation. Some people are predisposed to be shy, some people are predisposed to be aggressive. Smart, critical people are able to appreciate genetic differences amongst broad human groups without letting that lead to unsavory viewpoints.
