The Testing Chat III: The Time of Great Chatting

[evilsoup]

have you seen any big hollywood blockbusters with a black woman protagonist?
No, therefore it is clearly impossible.

also, they're playing with very large amounts of money, so risk-aversion is the norm
if you're the guy who insisted on a black woman protag and the film flops, guess whose nuts are going to be on the chopping block
nobody ever got fired for casting a white protagonist

[Veef]

someone should get fired for casting Seth Rogen in things

[RyanThunder]

inclined to think that societies should operate in an orderly way akin to well-functioning machines

Because that's exactly how they should operate.

Actually, I suppose a better statement would be "If properly constructed, why wouldn't they?"

Furthermore, what's the point?

[RyanThunder]

have you seen any big hollywood blockbusters with a black woman protagonist?

I thought Colombiana was pretty good.

[Aaron]

What film is that again?

[RyanThunder]

It's Zoe Saldana Murders A Bunch of Unquestionably Evil Thugs: The Movie

[Losonti Tokash]

Look, having a female protagonist is already seen as a risky move by Hollywood
having her be from a minority too would give the execs panic-induced heart attacks

don't forget jennifer lawrence is also shaped liked a human being, pretty risky

[Jung]

inclined to think that societies should operate in an orderly way akin to well-functioning machines

Because that's exactly how they should operate.

Actually, I suppose a better statement would be "If properly constructed, why wouldn't they?"

It's a nice idea in theory

In reality I notice a lot of people who think they know how to make a better society seem to treat the fact their ideas don't work politically/socially as an error in humanity instead of an error in their brilliant plan

And seem drawn to authoritarianism to "solve" that problem

[Infinity Biscuit]

The amount of complaining people do about the "plebians"* messing things up for all the smart rational people goes with that, too. It helps demonstrate that it's not so much about finding actual solutions and improvements so much as finding ways to feel superior.


*believe it or not I've seen this word used outside of SD.net culture not too uncommonly

[RyanThunder]

Well, those "plebes" do fuck up a lot of shit on us.

I'll save you the time it would take to read an appropriately spittle-flecked rant: tl;dr everything would be so much better if you would all shut the fuck up and listen to me.

ok I'm done, now.

[Losonti Tokash]

i guess the obvious question is what makes you not a plebe

[RyanThunder]

Giving enough of a shit about a public problem that you're willing to unglue your face from vapid pop culture nonsense long enough to put serious effort into trying to solve that problem, I figure.

But I don't like that term. Everybody affected by something deserves to have input on it.

[Jung]

Authoritarianism doesn't have a great record either.

The idea of the efficient rational authoritarianism is kind of weird if you look at the reality

Look at real authoritarian regimes like the USSR, Maoist China, Nazi Germany, the Japanese Empire, North Korea etc. they're hardly bastions of rationality or seem to run their countries terribly well

[RyanThunder]

Very true.

Hoping to get a rationally run society through pure authoritarianism is pretty silly. Even if it worked at first, it's incredibly difficult to ensure that it stays that way for any useful period of time before it becomes corrupt and ineffective.

Ideally, I think, you have a way to distinguish people who are qualified to solve a problem from people who aren't, and then those people come up with the solutions with feedback from the people affected by their solution.

[evilsoup]

There is a push in the UK towards 'evidence-based policy' (randomised trials of new policies and so on); it's happening slowly (probably slowed by the general contempt all right-thinking people have for politicians, causing said politicians to try and appeal to the focus groups more and more, which in turn fuels further contempt), but I think it will inevitably take a greater role. Ultimately, that is the best solution to this stuff.

Of course, America is too big to be governed effectively by a central government, so you're probably screwed.

[Oxymoron]

Can you give me more details about what that 'evidence-based policy' entails ?

[evilsoup]

well (there's more to it than I can think of off the top of my head):
let's say that you want to introduce some reforms into the benefits system, let's say how jobseeker's allowance is handled. Under the current system, the government might ask for volunteers amongst the local branches (if we're lucky; too often it's just LOL I KNOW WHAT IM DOING), and observe how well the new scheme or whatever works
of course, this gives rise to systemic bias, since by definition thge offices who are going to volunteer for these trial schemes are going to be the best motivated, best-led lot

an evidence-based approach would use the techniques of science (IIRC this was mostly inspired by medical research) - so instead of asking for volunteers, just randomly select a decent proportion of the offices, which reduces the bias as much as possible.

So basically, applying the same standards to policy as you would to scientific research.

[Oxymoron]

Did they also test the effect of this particular policy's introduction ?

[evilsoup]

It's not really used much yet, and progress on getting politicians to implement it is slow, but I'm sure it'll end up being used

[adr]

that sounds ok but there's one key question that is going to be pain: who and what defines success?

I like to say "if at first you fail, redefine success" and it is an inspiration to slackers everywhere but it can also be sinister - they might have a set goal in mind that doesn't agree with everyone else. for example rigging the success calculation that high taxes lowers a plan's score (e.g. the goal is to maximize "efficiency" defined as economic growth divided by tax rate. guess who wins the most every time. now that's kinda transparent but a clever group could cover up the pre-determined winners with expert obfuscation and since we're just non-experts we'd better defer to their merit)

[evilsoup]

well, yes
but you've got to look at the alternative, which is just politicians following their gut feeling, and their guts all feel different things
ideally the opposition would get involved in drawing up some objective standard, along with the civil service

so yeah, that's a problem, but not an unsolvable one, I think.

[adr]

yeah


so my brain adventure right now is involving space pirates. our heroes are taking a ride on a battleship back home and we get a distress call from a civilian ship that is under attack. being the only ship in the quadrant means we gotta get involved despite having passengers

well anyway the negotiations get underway and we get a step one where they release a few of the hostages. that means we send our shuttlepod to pick them up

but what if it is a trick and the released hostages are actually pirates???? they could attack after boarding or if they hijacked the shuttle it could be a reasonably effective weapon against the ship. it is small and doesn't pack much fuel but still could do some damage if it decided to ram. (and the loss of the shuttle itself of course strands any away teams and additional hostages, precludes an armed boarding party, so def don't want to lose it regardless)

easy solution to the inside attack: search them before boarding the shuttle. but what about turning the shuttle into a missile? the pilot could very well lose a struggle for control

a few possible solutions come to mind: the shuttle could be physically dependent on the mothership. so instead of having an engine of its own, it just packs some material that is vaporized by the ship's laser to provide propulsion. this is actually a pretty efficient use of resources so it may be done that way.... but the tricky part is how would the ship's laser angle to slow the shuttle down at the destination? so I think a traditional engine is preferable

but then a simple solution struck me: it could have a PREFIX CODE for remote control!!!! in fact it prolly doesn't need a pilot at all since it could just be controlled from the mothership, but we'd want one anyway as a backup in case control fails and friendly face for the passengers



so in st2 I kinda wondered why starships would have remote control access at all and the comment to saavik about "you need to understand why things work on a starship" in response to 'I don't understand' is totes weaksauce.

but now I realize it'd prolly be pretty nice to have for people like spacedock control, so I guess it makes sense that it could be there.

[Civil War Man]

I have heard that there's a movie about Toussant L'Ouverture that has some pretty big names behind it (I think Danny Glover's directing or something), and they're filming it in Venezuela because no US studio would greenlight it due to the lack of white heroes.

How much is racism on the part of the studio, and how much is it the studio assuming racism on the part of the audience? No idea, but in either case it shows a breathtaking amount of moral cowardice.

[Shroom Man 777]

Very true.

Hoping to get a rationally run society through pure authoritarianism is pretty silly. Even if it worked at first, it's incredibly difficult to ensure that it stays that way for any useful period of time before it becomes corrupt and ineffective.

Ideally, I think, you have a way to distinguish people who are qualified to solve a problem from people who aren't, and then those people come up with the solutions with feedback from the people affected by their solution.

ironically you do realize that if your vision of a hyper-aseptic sterile technomeritocraticoubersociety of super-perfect order does comes true

you yourself would probably be relegated to, idk, recycling asbestos-based chinese breakfast cereal boxes into paper mache arts and crafts project materials or something

[evilsoup]

fortunately they'll find that pacifying drugs in the food supply increase productivity, so he'll be happy enough