Grim's Hall

Will AI P-Hack in Social Science?

No! But, at the same time, also yes.

Wishful Thinking on Violence

Shooting News Weekly (h/t Instapundit) has some valid criticisms of "violence interrupter" programs from Blue states, but this isn't one of them.

After Pritzker touted his meetings with “community violence interventionists” and state-funded “peacekeepers,” praising these “trusted messengers” whose “genuine relationships with the community are crucial to mitigating violence,” some uncomfortable information emerged. As first described by CWB Chicago, one of the “peacekeepers” Pritzker was photographed one-on-one with was apparently wanted on outstanding criminal warrants in four states; worse still, six days after the photo-op, the man was allegedly involved in a high-value commercial burglary culminating in a car crash that killed an innocent motorist.

The awkward photo showing Pritzker grinning alongside the “peacekeeper” has now been removed from the governor’s website. Seeking transparency on how (or even whether) the participants in taxpayer-funded violence intervention programs are vetted, the activist group Judicial Watch initiated a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for information from the governor’s office on vetting, background or other checks, and selection criteria both generally and specifically with respect to the “peacekeeper” in the photo-op, including knowledge of his criminal history and warrants.

Sorry, but who do you think could possibly act as a 'violence interrupter' except someone with gangland ties? That's who's causing the violence! You need an interlocutor with enough trust and standing in that community that their words will carry weight among the gangsters.

I've been talking about the Iraq period lately, and how we were successful in bringing violence way down from 2007-2009. Who do you think we met with? It wasn't UN leaders or peace-centered NGOs, I can tell you that. It was the leaders of the very tribes who had been shooting machine guns and mortars and rockets at us not very long ago.

One of them had been a general officer in Saddam's Special Republican Guard. That guy was extremely instrumental in bringing peace and setting up a tribal council that could field effective militias to bring control to the area. He had respect among the people we wanted to move out of the insurgency and into cooperation. He understood the military enough to get what we wanted, and was embedded in the tribal life enough to convey it to them on terms they could accept, and to serve as an intermediary for negotiating peace terms.

If you want to play this game, you can't be too picky about who you sit down with. You might even get to like them after a while; I often did.

"Why Did You Have Real Bullets?"

I also missed this bit.

Apparently the sense of safety and entitlement among these upper middle class women is such that they assume that the police are there to protect them, even from the police themselves. That's not really what police are for; indeed, Federal and even the Supreme Court have been clear that the police have no duty to protect you.

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm, even a woman who had obtained a court-issued protective order against a violent husband making an arrest mandatory for a violation.... [this pertained to] a lawsuit to proceed against a Colorado town, Castle Rock, for the failure of the police to respond to a woman's pleas for help after her estranged husband violated a protective order by kidnapping their three young daughters, whom he eventually killed.

For hours on the night of June 22, 1999, Jessica Gonzales tried to get the Castle Rock police to find and arrest her estranged husband, Simon Gonzales, who was under a court order to stay 100 yards away from the house. He had taken the children, ages 7, 9 and 10, as they played outside, and he later called his wife to tell her that he had the girls at an amusement park in Denver.

Ms. Gonzales conveyed the information to the police, but they failed to act before Mr. Gonzales arrived at the police station hours later, firing a gun, with the bodies of the girls in the back of his truck. The police killed him at the scene.

That's what the police are for: they exist to kill or imprison at the convenience and for the purposes of the state. The bullets are always real.

It's strange that these protesters had come to the conclusion that the police are a threat, but never realized that the police are meant to be a threat to them as well.

Bad for the VA

Just yesterday we were celebrating a positive change on a core Constitutional right; today, a negative one that will discourage effective treatment of disability.

Veterans and their advocates slammed a new rule by the Department of Veterans Affairs for determining disability compensation, predicting it will lower their payments for service-related illnesses and injuries.

The rule, effective immediately, states that a disability level must be based on how well a veteran functions while on medication and not on the underlying impairment itself.

Essentially, the rule is that if treatment is successful, your disability rating can be lowered (thus lowering your monthly compensation for the injury). That will tend to discourage things like taking one's medication as regularly, pushing one's self in physical therapy (which is uncomfortable, even painful, but highly beneficial), and otherwise engaging the process wholeheartedly.

Several of my friends have VA disability ratings, and as high as 100%. Is the person with the 100% disability rating really incapable of doing anything at all? No, that is not the case. What is the case is that every one of these people have suffered injury and life-altering damage, and only through hard work and effort have they been able to regain something akin to what life might have been like had they not chosen to serve in combat. That effort and pain shouldn't be punished.

Perhaps it would be better, if these sorts of savings are a concern for the Federal government, not to start so many wars. Perhaps; but if I were a gambling man, I'd wager we're just about to start another one with Iran. The politicians are always willing to roll the dice with servicemembers' lives, and in fairness those who enlisted knew that when they took the oath. All the same, gambling with their lives brings about a responsibility that the government shouldn't be allowed to shirk.

UPDATE: The VA backs off of this one.

Good for the VA

The Veterans Administration has for decades been undercutting the Second Amendment rights of many of its members. It has finally stopped doing so, and is instead working to undo the harm they have caused.

The Lenten Fast

My experience of taking a dry month last September/October in preparation for my last Strongman competition was encouraging. I have decided to do the Lenten fast from alcohol as well, since I did not find the month so very hard and in fact noticed significant benefits. Perhaps aligning it with a religious observation might bring spiritual as well as physical benefits: we shall see.

A Trinity of Observations

Lent begins today, it being Ash Wednesday. As mentioned, the Lunar New Year just occurred, which occasions lengthy celebrations in the Far East. Also, it is now Ramadan. Two of these involve fasting, the other raucous feasting; but it does mark a period in which much of humanity will be irritable, either from hunger or deprivation or, alternatively, from hangovers.

Late February is a tough time to pick for a time of deprivation and fasting, but it does have the effect of heightening the experience.

Year of the Fire Horse

Happy Lunar New Year. This is the Year of the Fire Horse, the least auspicious year in the 60 year Chinese astrological cycle (12 animals x 5 elements). It is a year marked historically by calamity, and children born this year — especially female children — are considered unlucky in Chinese culture.

However, it is also considered a time for bold action to try to offset the luck cycle. The Chinese Cultural Revolution was begun on this year in the last cycle; it also turned out to be a great calamity in spite of the boldness of the attempt.

Requiescat in Pace "Gus" Duvall

An actor with many memorable roles, Robert Duvall described "Gus" McCrae as his favorite and most meaningful. There are many memorable scenes with that character, some of which are referenced here pretty regularly.

The one I think about most, though, is this one. The first time I saw it, it seemed almost cruelly flippant; but the longer I live, the more I agree with his companion's conclusion. "He's right, boys. The best thing you can do with Death is ride off from it."

Now we ride off from his. Dust to dust.

Public School for Slow Learners

AVI is reflecting on Sunday School.

I was thinking of something by CS Lewis in relation to this - something about the world as a hotel vs. a prison vs. a school - and tracked it down today.
Christ said it was difficult for “the rich” to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, referring, no doubt, to “riches” in the ordinary sense. But I think it really covers riches in every sense—good fortune, health, popularity and all the things one wants to have. All these things tend—just as money tends—to make you feel independent of God, because if you have them you are happy already and contented in this life. You don’t want to turn away to anything more, and so you try to rest in a shadowy happiness as if it could last for ever. But God wants to give you a real and eternal happiness. Consequently He may have to take all these “riches” away from you: if He doesn’t, you will go on relying on them. It sounds cruel, doesn’t it? But I am beginning to find out that what people call the cruel doctrines are really the kindest ones in the long run. I used to think it was a “cruel” doctrine to say that troubles and sorrows were “punishments.” But I find in practice that when you are in trouble, the moment you regard it as a “punishment,” it becomes easier to bear. If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.
Imagine a set of people all living in the same building. Half of them think it is a hotel, the other half think it is a prison. Those who think it a hotel might regard it as quite intolerable, and those who thought it was a prison might decide that it was really surprisingly comfortable.

At the sheriff's debate this weekend, the sitting sheriff was discussing a program he's introduced into his jail to allow prisoners access to GED qualified courses, with an eventual possibility of proctored exams to gain a GED. In that sense the prison is become a school. You can't leave, the discipline is authoritarian, and the food's not that good, but you do have a chance to learn and improve if you choose to do so.

Yet if you go to our public schools these days, you'll find they are surrounded by fences, with single points of entry, with metal detectors and armed deputies guarding them and inspecting your bags for contraband. You can't leave during school hours, the discipline is authoritarian, and the food's not that good, but there is a chance to learn and improve if you choose to do so.

You might get a degree that's the rough equivalent of a GED, maybe; I would wager that the average GED holder knows more than the average high school graduate, because they cared enough as an adult to study when nobody was forcing them.

The school buses are yellow instead of white, there's more color on the walls, you have a little more choice of what clothing to wear and you do get to go home and night and on weekends. Still, the similarities are striking. Prison is just public school for slow learners, I suppose.

A Feast in Iraq

I came across this picture this morning while looking for something else, but since I was just talking about some of those meetings and conversations with the tribes it seemed relevant. This was taken from a meeting at a tribal compound near Mahmudiyah in February 2009. The feast followed a meeting between ourselves and their sheiks, one of whom was a US-educated engineer. It was a majestic feast, featuring boiled sheep, rice, vegetables, and those delicious sheets of bread you can see draped over everything to soften from the steam.

I imagine they had watched Lawrence of Arabia, and were trying to live up to expectations to some degree. Exactly as pictured in the movie, we never saw any women there -- though you can see one of ours in the photo. Everyone was armed, but we felt enough trust with them at that time to remove helmets. In 2007 we were getting attacked daily, but in 2008 there was very significant improvement. I stayed for the first half of 2009, and I think that year only once did a patrol I was with get fired upon. It seemed like we had won.

Cf.

In academic or legal publications, one occasionally sees the abbreviation "cf.," which means "confer." It usually follows a claim or a case law finding, with the intent being that you consider it against an alternative claim or finding that the cf. cites.

So here is a good example:

The New York Times: Gabbard’s 2020 Election Claims Put Her Back in Favor With Trump. "Ms. Gabbard appeared at a warehouse in Fulton County, Ga., where ballots from the 2020 vote were stored. As the F.B.I. conducted a raid, she observed and oversaw their work. After the operation, Ms. Gabbard met with the F.B.I. agents and put Mr. Trump on speaker phone to address them... with the renewed investigation into baseless claims about fraud during the 2020 election, she is back in the spotlight, and Mr. Trump’s good graces." [Emphasis added.]

cf. Not The Bee: FBI says they have found major irregularities in the 2020 election in Georgia. "Yes, they are officially investigating whether Fulton County conspired to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump. The irregularities, including illegally certified ballots and thousands of double-scanned ballots, led the FBI to establish that there is probable cause to raid the election office and look for motive. Here are the five major irregularities cited...."

I wonder how much longer the 'baseless/no evidence/unfounded' language game can continue? There's lots and lots of evidence now. Proof is still being established, but evidence has been clearly demonstrated for years.

Follow-Up On The Sheriff’s Debate

I went to the event. Nobody was checking voter registration cards or IDs. There was no obvious security or LEOs with pepper spray either. That was all talk.

Mostly the debate was exactly what you would expect. The only very interesting thing was the question about ICE. Sheriff Farmer described the process by which ICE might issue a detainer for someone the deputies had arrested, and that it was up to ICE whether or not to drive out and pick that person up. He said he would cooperate with Federal agents if they did, but didn’t go any farther than that.

His opponent said that he would “aggressively” cooperate with ICE, and used most of his time on that question to rhetorically paint illegal immigrants as inherently bad people, and then to tie them to murder, rape, human trafficking, and child abuse. That was the biggest difference between the candidates apparent in the debate.

I thought the sitting sheriff displayed an appropriate amount of realism as to what can be accomplished with the resources and budget of this rural North Carolina county. His opponent promised to do more, but of course he did.

A good question from the audience touched on the common peace issues raised in the last post. Both candidates gave proper answers grounded in being employees of the people and bound to provide security for public debates without taking sides, regardless of their personal ideology. I don’t know if they both meant it, but they did at least know that this was the right thing to affirm.

The Common Peace

Not long ago... ok, it was nearly twenty years ago... I was in Iraq working with the tribes as we were trying to bring peace to a long-troubled land. One time I had a conversation in my bad French and a tribesman's bad English (but very good French) about Thomas Jefferson. We talked about different ways of approaching democracy, of trying to achieve fairness in outcomes, of trying to get past Sunni/Shia or Arab/Kurd/Persian divisions, as well of course as resolving the old unsettled tribal feuds that were behind a lot of the trouble.

I think about that a lot these days.

Tomorrow the Republican party here locally is holding a candidate debate and meet-and-greet for the candidates for sheriff. They have decided, the GOP, to rent a private room so they can close the event except to registered Republicans, who are supposed to present their voter registration card at the door. A local GOP party official has been posting on Facebook about having Democrats who show up arrested for trespassing, and has alluded to the possibility of pepper spray being employed against them.

Now I should mention that, although this is a primary election, there are only the two Republican candidates; whoever wins the Republican primary will be the sheriff. That is partly a failure by Democrats to field a candidate, but it does have the effect of eliminating both Democrats and unaffiliated voters from the chance to see the candidates debate for the quite important public office. The decision to privatize a public good is coherent with a lot of Republican ideas -- some of which I agree with, such as privatizing public education given the collapse of the effectiveness of the public education system in much of the country -- but here many citizens will be excluded from even listening to the discussion.

It seems to me that upholding the common peace, which allows us to debate and discuss our problems together even when we disagree, is a matter very much germane to the question of who would make a better sheriff. It's certainly something we should be thinking about; that common peace seems somewhat frayed of late.

The Man Who Fell to Earth

I can't recommend highly enough a biography of John von Neumann, "The Man from the Future," by Ananyo Bhattacharya. The author's appealing style, choice of anecdotes, and mastery of a wide variety of scientific fields make him a skilled and entertaining biographer.

Von Neumann, born in 1903 to a wealthy, titled Jewish family in Budapest, was one of an unparalleled outbreak of geniuses from that doomed demographic cluster, including Leo Szilard and Edward Teller. As Bhattacharya notes, even in such august company, if Teller and Szilard seemed like men from Mars, von Neumann hailed from another galaxy. Later, at the IAS in Princeton, where he regularly rubbed shoulders with Albert Einstein and Kurt Gödel, von Neumann struck contemporaries as the sharpest of the three.

Bhattacharya calls him the Man from the Future because he played the part of Johhny Appleseed in so many new fields. Few mathematicians affected so many areas, from quantum mechanics to the Manhattan Project and the nascent computer business, including some of the first stirrings of interest in the possibility of artificial intelligence. Along the way he planted some of the earliest seeds of political and economic game theory as well as nanotechnology.

Edward Teller was among the many colleagues who marvelled at von Neumann's ability to speak to that crowd's often precocious children. Teller said that von Neumann managed to speak to Teller's 3-year-old son as an equal, and he always rather wondered if von Neumann wasn't communicating with his colleagues by the same technique. He was never unapproachable or condescending, however, but unusually sociable and well-liked.

Von Neumann's father, who saw the writing on the wall even before World War I, insisted that his sons study something remunerative and learn the many languages that would ensure their ability to earn a living in whatever new country they might be forced to adopt. His mother, an accomplished musician, insisted on piano lessons. To please his father, von Neumann enrolled in the University of Göttingen. On the train there, other students, knowing a little of his already promising published career, assumed he would be studying Maths. No, he said, I already know Maths. I'll be studying Chemical Engineering. He excelled by giving it a minor fraction of his attention while he continued to pursue his real interests, including overhauling troubled fields in mathematics. To please his mother, von Neumann took piano lessons. His family wondered why he seemed to do little but play scales, before they discovered he was making appropriate noise while he read a book on the piano stand.

He lived to be only 53, dying the year after I was born.