onecornerface

[onecornerface]

I hate Twitter, but it actually really sucks that Twitter's algorithm has turned starkly against me ever since Trump won the election. There are a lot of great drug policy people on Twitter, and I liked interacting with them, and now it is more difficult. This is part of what has badly interrupted the momentum of my writing on drug policy-- the thing I've written about way more than anything else. It sucks.

[onecornerface]

I am working on a post arguing that we must aim to make The Coffin of Andy and Leyley community a place that supports both people who enjoy gushing about how they jerk off to TCOAAL and people who really really don't want to be exposed to the eroticization of TCOAAL's subject matter. I think these are both legitimate manifestations of TCOAAL fandom and that we must recognize the value of mutual respect.

[onecornerface]

Oh here's a summary of his whole setup. From pages 149-150 of Lottocracy:

"(1) Single Issue: rather than a single generalist legislature (whether unicameral or bicameral), in a lottocratic system there are several standing, single-issue legislative bodies, with each legislative institution focusing on one policy area or sub-area (e.g., agriculture, immigration, health care, trade, education, energy, etc.).

(2) Lottery Selection: the members of each single-issue legislature are chosen by lottery from the relevant political jurisdiction.

(3) Learning Phases: the members of the single-issue legislatures hear from a variety of experts, advocates, and stakeholders on the relevant topic at the beginning of and at various stages throughout each decision-making session.

(4) Community Consultation: beyond the learning phases, the members of the single-issue legislature spend structured time talking to, interacting with, and hearing from members of the public, including activists and stake-holders affected by proposed action.

(5) Direct Enactment: the members of the single-issue legislature have the capacity either to directly enact policy or, in some cases, to do so jointly with other single-issue legislatures.

(6) Structural Assemblies: there will be a number of assemblies, consisting of randomly chosen citizens, who will have responsibility for monitoring and maintaining the basic organization and support of the network of single-issue legislatures, including setting rules of procedure and deliberation, resolving jurisdictional issues, considering topical merger proposals, allocating funds based on budget proposals, and regulating the process by which people come to speak in the learning phase.

(7) Executive Assemblies: rather than an elected or parliamentary-appointed executive, there will be a number of assemblies, consisting of randomly chosen citizens and their appointed administrative officials, who will comprise a structured network that has responsibility for regulating and overseeing the federal judiciary, regulating and overseeing a number of administrative agencies, responding to emergencies and crises, regulating and overseeing the foreign service and negotiation of foreign agreements, and initiating the process to deploy the armed forces."

I disprefer representative democracy that fits the dictionary definition of plutocracy because it fits the dictionary definition of plutocracy, regardless of my ability to ponder worse forms of plutocracy, real and hypothetical. This is because I have the ability to ponder real and hypothetical forms of representative democracy that fit the dictionary definition of plutocracy less than the one I live in does.

that's really cool anon. hey have you heard about fabricated options?

[onecornerface]

I'm not sure if Guerrero proposes a selection method after the sortition. I'm listening to various parts of the 'Brain in a Vat' interview, and he doesn't seem to. But he thinks the participants should undergo a 'learning phase' early in their time in the government, and that their work should be supplemented by various (I assume non-lottery chosen) expert aids.

I disprefer representative democracy that fits the dictionary definition of plutocracy because it fits the dictionary definition of plutocracy, regardless of my ability to ponder worse forms of plutocracy, real and hypothetical. This is because I have the ability to ponder real and hypothetical forms of representative democracy that fit the dictionary definition of plutocracy less than the one I live in does.

that's really cool anon. hey have you heard about fabricated options?

[onecornerface]

I honestly don't have a strong view on affirmative action overall-- partly because I don't know enough about the empirical evidence on (1) *how* it is actually practiced (whether by name or otherwise), or (2) what its *effects* are (on its direct recipients, on broader marginalized populations, on the quality of work done as a result, etc.). I've heard polar-opposite claims, including from philosophy professors, on what the empirical evidence shows about both of these things. I don't think I can resolve this without doing a lot of direct research myself, which isn't on my agenda currently.

I think increasing the (gender/racial/class/disability) diversity of at least some professions is a good goal, for at least various instrumental reasons. For instance, I think some fields of political philosophy, applied ethics, and social ontology would be a lot better if more perspectives from marginalized perspectives were more salient. I strongly suspect economics would be a lot better if a lot more poor people were economists.

This might also vary by profession. For instance, it sounds like black doctors DO tend to treat black patients a lot better than white doctors do, but that black cops do NOT tend to treat black civilians better than white cops do. If that's true, then there could be significantly more reason to aim at increasing racial diversity in medicine, but not in policing.

And I think the notion that affirmative action is a severe injustice against white men isn't very credible. I can grant that it *might* be a pro tanto injustice against white men, just as I can grant that taxation *might* be pro tanto theft. Any number of things might be pro tanto injustices-- I'm pretty agnostic on a lot of the underlying normaive theory, and I'm sort of a (methodological) Rossian pluralist (with Chappell-style "beneficentrist" leanings). But I think this can be outweighed, *if* the benefits (including benefits to marginalized people, or to quality of scholarship) turn out to be large enough.

So I can position myself against *some* critics of affirmative action. That said, this is potentially compatible with a position that rejects affirmative action overall (though I'd still want to disaggregate a lot of more specific factors and practices-- there are a zillion actual and proposed versions of it), *if* it turns out to be too stigmatizing to actual or suspected beneficiaries, or if it fails to benefit anyone except the wealthiest people of color (cf. Taiwo on "elite capture"), or whatever.

But in any case, affirmative action is a topic that has been debated for a few decades, with (I'm pretty sure) fairly sophisticated arguments on multiple sides. I've recently seen some comment threads, even among philosophers, who talk about affirmative action in a pretty low-quality way and with a lot of confidence and moralized scolding-- and largely as if these decades of analysis and argumentation never happened.

Philosophers should have the skills to discuss affirmative action in both a more-informed way, and in ways that more carefully account for the limits on their empirical knowledge. A lot of people seem to lower their usual standards of rigor for this one topic, and a handful of others. It doesn't have to be this way.

[onecornerface]

Many episodes of the show “Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction” are on YouTube. On the page for the first episode, the first visible comment is by someone who says they used to watch the show with their grandmother, who died twelve years ago. I also used to watch the show with my grandmother, who died twelve years ago.

[onecornerface]

A really good-looking book was recently written advocating this, called Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections by Alexander Guerrero.

Starting at 46:55 of this interview, Guerrero addresses some concerns about whether his proposed system would worsen corruption. However, it seems he mainly only addresses here a worry about naked bribery (direct offers of cash for policy) rather than the more subtle kinds of bribery that are more common in America's present system (e.g. implicit offers of later jobs for policy).

I think his idea is to have pretty short periods of time for most people working in government policy-making. So I wonder if he could argue that companies won't have enough time to form the sort of lasting relationships with those policy-makers that the current jobs-for-policy system seems to rely on. Maybe he could also argue it wouldn't be cost-effective to offer long-term jobs to people working in the government for such short terms. I'm not sure.

In his book chapter 15 "Lottocracy, Democracy, Legitimacy, and Political Morality" there is a section called "Accountability and Responsiveness" where he discusses the more general concern for how to secure accountability to the public (or related concepts such as 'responsiveness' which he distinguishes from 'accountability') without the prospect for re-election.

I've skimmed this section, and it looks like his idea is soooomething like (this is my reconstruction, not his wording): "Lottery-chosen representatives will be driven by a mix of motives, much like the general public, including selfish motives, tribal motives, and more expansive moral motives. This mix of motives, as in many jury trials, will be likely sufficient to deliver good results within the proposed system of short-term lottery-chosen participants, in light of the broader incentive-system developed throughout the rest of the book (the details of which I haven't read/watched enough about). At least, no worse than the mix of motives that voters have when electing representatives. And the selection-effects that currently ensure a prevalence of shitty elected representatives won't be present anymore. Meanwhile, the idea of accountability mechanisms within a traditional principal-agent setup are less clearly important here, compared to other motives."

That's a highly fallible reconstruction on my part, skipping tons of important details of how he fleshes out accountability and responsiveness and their significance or lack thereof on various construals. From skimming, I'm not sure what exactly his position is--I'll have to read the whole thing later.

But both here and in his interviews, on a lot of subtopics, he seems to frequently argue along the lines of "Sure, this is an area where lottocracy is probably flawed-- but it's not obviously more flawed than electoral democracy, which is already very flawed. And even if lottocracy is more flawed than electoral democracy in this particular way, lottocracy is still likely better than electoral democracy in enough other ways as to be better overall."

I get the sense Guerrero's overall style of argument is highly non-utopian and comparison-based, compatible with conceding pretty serious flaws in his proposals.

I disprefer representative democracy that fits the dictionary definition of plutocracy because it fits the dictionary definition of plutocracy, regardless of my ability to ponder worse forms of plutocracy, real and hypothetical. This is because I have the ability to ponder real and hypothetical forms of representative democracy that fit the dictionary definition of plutocracy less than the one I live in does.

that's really cool anon. hey have you heard about fabricated options?

[onecornerface]

This has somehow exploded to be maybe my most widely-shared post, even though it is pretty short and less informative than some other stuff I've written about flat earth and The Final Experiment (TFE). I figured I'd compile a set of links to some of my longer posts on this topic:

An early post I made about TFE, with some updates/corrections

Some notes on Will Duffy (leader of TFE) and his loss of optimism about the goodwill of the flat earth community

A few notes on the value of TFE

My praise for Dave McKeegan (one of the globe-earth participants in TFE)

A few comments on flat-earthers' weird argumentative method

Summary of some bizarre acts of abuse by major flat-earthers

And if anyone wants to see the videos of the main TFE participants, here are the YouTube pages of:

Will Duffy (TFE official page)

Dave McKeegan (globe earth) (my favorite)

MC Toon (globe earth) (good debunking content, kinda a dick)

Jeran Campanella (ex-flat-earth) (probably questionable, but I'm still proud of him)

Many of the videos on each of these channels are fantastic. Some are great summaries of the whole ordeal, and some are insightful analyses of particular aspects of it. Some are more beginner-friendly, and some make more sense only in light of background context. However, I've watched many of them only once and weeks/months ago, so offhand I'm not sure which particular ones to recommend.

The most famous documentary about the flat earth movement is "Behind the Curve" (2018). Three of the major figures in that film are (1) Patricia Steere (host of one of the most popular flat earth podcasts), (2) Jeran Campanella (host of another of the most popular flat earth podcasts), and (3) Robbie Davidson (host of the most popular flat earth conference).

In early 2025, all three of them renounced flat earth theory, in direct response to the observations of the "Final Experiment" Antarctica expedition (which Jeran went on).

[onecornerface]

Update: I wrote the above post several months ago, and I have learned more about the flat earth discourse since then. In my original post, I said there was a consensus among flat-earthers that Antarctica was a ring around the known world (as per the Alexander Gleason azimuthal-equidistant map pictured above). This is basically the consensus among high-profile flat-earthers on YouTube, and it seems to be the sizeable majority view among modern online flat-earthers in general. However, I have since learned there are a few flat-earthers who propose alternative maps.

A few flat-earthers propose an “inverse azimuthal-equidistant” map, where the Arctic Ocean is around the perimeter, and Antarctica is in the center. The Inverse AE map has nearly all the problems of the regular AE map, plus a bunch of new problems such as failing to explain why there are way more flights over and near the Arctic than there are flights over and near the Antarctic. Moreover, while the inverse AE map can explain the 24-hour sun in Antarctica during one half of the year, it has an inverted version of the same problem–it cannot explain the 24-hour sun in the Arctic, during the other half of the year. Even most flat-earthers acknowledge that the 24-hour sun in the Arctic is real, denying only the 24-hour sun in the Antarctic. Will Duffy, who led the Final Experiment, made one or two videos debunking the Inverse AE map.

There are several other even more fringe flat-earth maps as well. While the Gleason AE map and the Inverted AE map are both mono-pole maps (denying the existence of one geographic pole or the other), a few other flat-earth maps are “bi-polar.” Elizabeth Blount was a flat-earther who proposed a bi-polar model in the early 1900s. Even earlier, before Rowbotham, the anonymous author of “The Anti-Newtonian” also proposed a bi-polar model. A bi-polar model was also revived by a single fringe flat-earther several years ago, Colin Sweeney, who specifically aimed to account for the 24-hour sun in the Antarctic. However, these models never caught on among most flat-earthers, for whatever reason. (I’m not sure precisely how to refute Sweeney’s model, but I’m pretty sure his main arguments badly mangle how celestial geometry works.)

Finally, there are a few other flat-earthers who propose models that either require, or flat-out insist on the existence of, portals from west to east. These are also quite fringe, even by flat-earth standards, and are rejected or ignored by nearly all flat-earthers.

All these alternative flat-earth maps do generally preserve the parallels and meridians, but at the cost of egregious distortions of the shapes of known geographic regions (which, to be clear, is already a serious cost of the Gleason AE map, especially in the southern hemisphere [‘hemiplane’]).

So, the Final Experiment is still a rebuttal to the map that is most widely accepted by flat-earthers (the Gleason AE map), even if it does not address a few even more fringe flat-earth maps.

Oh, another caveat. I’ve said the Antarctic 24-hour sun is not possible on a flat-earth model. This is true only if we ignore the fact that the flat-earth model actually requires a 24-hour sun in all parts of the world at all times of the year. It has been demonstrated that flat-earthers’ own models entail that the sun should be at least 10 or so degrees above the horizon at all times, no matter where you are or what time of year it is. Flat-earthism makes sunsets impossible altogether. I’m ignoring this problem for the purpose of discussing the Antarctica phenomenon in particular.

Moreover, Antarctica poses a problem also because the sun is often visible to the south, which should not be possible on a flat-earth model, since most flat-earthers think the sun never goes farther south than the Tropic of Capricorn. During about half the year, someone in Antarctica will see the sun encircle them overhead, going 360 degrees from right to left over the course of 24 hours. So the problem is not precisely that a 24-hour sun is visible, but where the sun appears in the sky.

In late December, the sun never fully sets when you view it from Antarctica—a 24-hour sun. This only makes sense on the globe earth model, and is precluded by all flat earth models. All flat earth maps depict Antarctica as a massive ring around the rest of the world (pictured below). All the high-profile modern flat earthers, until recently, have had a consensus that the sun surely DOES set in Antarctica—and that every single one of the existing 24-hour Antarctic sun videos are fake.

However, in recent months, a globe earth model advocate (i.e. normal person) has announced and confirmed a plan to fund an expedition for some flat earthers to visit Antarctica and record their observations under rigorous and mutually agreed-on conditions. This is Will Duffy’s project of “The Final Experiment.”

Since then, many flat earthers have begun hedging. Now some flat earthers acknowledge it may be possible that the sun sometimes *doesn’t* set in Antarctica—and insist that this possibility *is* (somehow) consistent with the flat earth model after all.

For instance, Eric Dubay always consistently said the sun DOES set in Antarctica—but recently he started saying that it doesn’t matter whether the sun sets in Antarctica or not. Now he says that what you see in the sky obviously has nothing to do with the shape of the earth.

As far as I can tell, no flat earther has explained *how* a 24-hour Antarctic sun is possible on a flat earth model. Flat earthers believe the sun travels in a circle above the earth, and that the sun sets when it is sufficiently far away (contrary to the laws of optics). *Where* exactly does the sun travel, in order to sometimes be visible from Antarctica but simultaneously invisible from most other areas?

I’m not aware of any flat earthers positing a model where Antarctica isn't a ring around the known world, as is required for a flat earth map that maintains the standard latitude and longitude. Any other model would probably require saying the parallels and meridians are all wrong, which would make it extremely hard to explain how basic navigation works. Even flat earthers have seemingly been reluctant to say everything we know about navigation is wrong, or that every captain and pilot ever has been in on the conspiracy.

Some other flat earthers are saying that the one or two flat earthers who travel to Antarctica may be shills, so it won’t matter even if they say the sun didn’t set. And some are saying there could be a “sun simulator” to project a fake sun into the sky to fool people into thinking the sun didn’t set.

One of the few flat earthers who seems intellectually honest is a guy called Jeranism, who has accepted the offer to travel to Antarctica. He has clearly stated that all the flat earth models render a 24-hour sun impossible, so if there’s a 24-hour sun in Antarctica at any time, that shows the earth isn't flat. He’s been consistent on this and has called out other flat earthers for being cowards. Of course, other flat earthers are now accusing him of being a shill.

I also note that until recently, many flat earthers have habitually claimed that nobody is ever allowed to travel to Antarctica—in total ignorance of the fact that there is Antarctica tourism, and thousands of people travel there every year. Flat earthers have long said they wish they could travel to Antarctica to prove the flat earth. Now that they have a chance, they say accepting the offer means you’re a shill. (Arguably, Antarctica tourism *should* be banned for environmental reasons. But the fact remains that it isn’t banned, but is merely expensive.)

[onecornerface]

Trump complains that it's logistically impossible to do a fair trial for millions of undocumented immigrants. And I agree. This is one of many reasons why we should not attempt to do a mass deportation.

[onecornerface]

I think there should be a place for people to argue, in good faith, positions like “The empirical evidence for the benefits of medical transition (e.g. HRT) for minors doesn’t look like it’s all it’s cracked up to be.” If and insofar as there has been exaggeration of the suicide-reduction evidence or overplaying the state of the “expert consensus,” these problems are worth critically hashing out properly. But this should be importantly different from supporting the Trumpists and other Republicans of the US, and the hardline trans-exclusionists of the UK. These are uncontrollable extremist movements who broadly hate trans people and want to hurt them, whether for its own sake or for political gain or both. Everyone should be extremely wary of having anything to do with these people.

And yet, the most avid critics of medical transition for minors generally DO team up with these people, and don’t seem much interested in taking a stand against them. That doesn’t speak well of their motives or their basic moral decency. This is clearly a wedge issue for some vicious far-right political movements. Reasonable critics of youth transition should take a much stronger and more vocal interest in quality-control within their own movements and alliances than they currently do. While I don’t think they are all bigots, I think it is pretty understandable for observers to infer that they–at least the vocal and avid ones–are all bigots.

(I don’t know enough about the Alex Byrne situation to say for sure whether or how much this applies to him, but it very well might.)

(I would also distinguish the benefits-based argument from a consent-based argument. If youth can give adequately competent and informed consent to a treatment, this may be sufficient to justify allowing the treatment, even if the evidence for the benefit-risk ratio is less strong than some critics would prefer.)

Moreover, even if the empirical evidence for youth transition’s benefits is exaggerated, there are also a lot of anti-transition arguments that obviously are empirically and/or conceptually bogus–like “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” (the few studies on which are blatantly terrible; I maintain that ROGD is probably either fake or rare), and widespread conflation of distinct phenomena (e.g. conflating [1] transition-regret, [2] detransition for gender-based motives, [3] detransition for escaping-transphobia motives, and [4] counterfactual desistance-without-transition–which are four different phenomena).

Additionally, pretty much none of the objections to medical transition apply to social transition, yet many critics of medical transition smuggle in opposition to social transition on top of it all. This further indicates how the criticisms of the medical evidence bleed into a more thoroughgoing anti-trans agenda.

[onecornerface]

Acephobia and Asexuality-Denialism

JK Rowling thinks acephobia doesn’t exist. I think it is easy to show that at least one kind of acephobia probably exists. My argument:

1. Asexuality exists. 2. Many people think asexuality doesn’t exist. 3. If a sexual orientation X (asexuality) exists, but many people think it doesn’t exist, then such denial is probably a form of X-phobia (acephobia). – C. Therefore, acephobia probably exists.

We can distinguish two kinds of acephobia-denialism. (By "acephobia" I mean, roughly, oppression or unjust marginalization distinctively affecting aces.)

Type 1: Asexuality exists, but there is no such thing as acephobia (acephobia-denialism without asexuality-denialism).

Type 2: Asexuality does not exist, and therefore there is no acephobia (acephobia-denialism based on asexuality-denialism).

Rowling does not seem to clarify which of these two views she holds. From her wording, I’m guessing she holds the latter view, that asexuality does not exist. But I’m not sure. I think these are significantly different grounds for acephobia-denialism (which can both be refuted, but in different ways), and I think it's a significant error that so many acephobia-denialists do not see this distinction as worth making explicit.

In any case, the “asexuality doesn’t exist” view is wildly unlikely to be true– at least if we assume the existence of other sexual orientations. If heterosexuality and homosexuality exist, and especially if bisexuality also exists, then it would be shocking if asexuality did not exist.

– Some further caveats–

Some theorists deny the existence of all sexual orientations, or consider “sexual orientation” a bogus category. Some queer theorists, some social constructivists, and some philosophers of sex/gender hold sophisticated views along these lines. While I'm not taking a stance on the plausibility of such views, I do NOT consider these views to be acephobic or a form of asexuality-denialism (in the loaded sense that I mean this term). They are general and principled views, they also imply there is no such thing as heterosexuality, and they do not arbitrarily single out asexuality. So, while some of them may technically imply something like "asexuality doesn't exist," it is from an unorthodox perspective that I don't consider necessarily objectionable.

However, if someone thinks heterosexuality and homosexuality exist, but that asexuality does not exist, then I consider this view to be asexuality-denialist and thus acephobic. (Similarly, if someone thinks heterosexuality and homosexuality exist, but that bisexuality does not exist, then I consider such a view bisexuality-denialist and thus biphobic.)

One could challenge my claim that the mistaken denial of a sexual orientation’s existence is necessarily a form of X-phobia in a morally loaded sense. This is probably my weakest premise. Failing to recognize some traits of a person is not necessarily bigoted or oppressive. Here my argument risks piggybacking implicitly on the contention that there also exist forms of acephobia other than asexuality-denialism, and that these other forms of acephobia are what make asexuality-denialism oppressive. I don’t want to rely on the existence of other forms of acephobia to support my minimal claim.

Nevertheless, in light of the widespread confidence that asexuality does not exist, and the obvious weakness of the arguments for asexuality-denialism, and finally asexuality-denialism’s clear similarity to bisexuality-denialism (which has been widely recognized as oppressive), I think our default view should be that if asexuality exists then asexuality-denialism is a form of acephobia.

Asexuality-denialism also indicates that other forms of acephobia are likely to exist. If lots of people wrongly deny the existence of asexuality, then they are likely to hold prior false beliefs, bad heuristics, or bad values, that have screwed up their reasoning about asexuality, making other forms of acephobia more likely.

Additionally, I have not argued that all asexuals are oppressed, and I have not argued that everyone who considers themselves asexual is asexual. If Rowling can show that some people mistakenly consider themselves asexual, this does not vindicate asexuality-denialism. And if Rowling can show that some asexuals mistakenly consider themselves oppressed, this does not vindicate acephobia-denialism.

I have not argued that the prevalence of acephobia-denialism proves the existence of acephobia. That argument would be problematically circular. Rather, I have argued that the prevalence of asexuality-denialism (in light of asexuality’s obvious existence) is a form of, and thus proves the existence of, acephobia.

This argument is not enough to show that other forms of acephobia exist. But it disproves basic acephobia-denialism so readily that it should be meta-level evidence that other forms of acephobia-denialism are likely to be unwarranted as well.

[onecornerface]

The most famous documentary about the flat earth movement is "Behind the Curve" (2018). Three of the major figures in that film are (1) Patricia Steere (host of one of the most popular flat earth podcasts), (2) Jeran Campanella (host of another of the most popular flat earth podcasts), and (3) Robbie Davidson (host of the most popular flat earth conference).

In early 2025, all three of them renounced flat earth theory, in direct response to the observations of the "Final Experiment" Antarctica expedition (which Jeran went on).

[onecornerface]

I think there is a stark difference in the epistemic-justification status of minimal theism* vs. specific doctrinal religious belief-systems being uniquely true**.

The arguments for (the doctrines of) Christianity or Islam being uniquely true are much, much worse than the arguments for the mere existence of (something like) a personal or quasi-personal creator of the universe. In light of this, it's weird that Christians and Muslims vastly outnumber minimal theists.

For instance, some versions of the fine-tuning argument for theism, and the argument from consciousness, are at least superficially impressive, and do not require committing egregious errors of reasoning or misrepresenting well-established science. I think their errors are more arcane and harder to pin down, and that the proper rebuttals are closely related to sets of philosophical theories (in philosophy of mind, and philosophy of explanation, etc.) that are in turn nonobvious and contestable.

By contrast, all the historical-evidential arguments for Jesus' Resurrection require badly misrepresenting the state of the extant historical evidence and severely distorting historical methodology. And all the arguments for Muhammad or other contemporary humans being unable to write or recite the Quran without divine inspiration rest on wildly overstating the precision and certainty of what can be known about early Islam on the basis of dubious analysis of sources written long afterwards.

I consider many of these arguments to be flat-out pseudohistory, a form of pseudoscience, somewhat akin to Ancient Aliens.

*I mean "minimal theism" to refer to the existence of a God who is either personal or 'quasi-personal' (which is similar to being personal, but different in some unspecified or mysterious way).

What about deism? Deism used to be popular by name, and some forms of deism (in all but name) might still be popular e.g. among non-atheist nonreligious people. Deism overlaps significantly with minimal theism. However, deism sometimes allows for an "impersonal" God, which seems unclear in its meaning, potentially very different from being personal, and may thus more resemble what I'd consider atheism.

**Some forms of liberal Christianity and (less frequently) liberal Islam are attenuated to the point of giving up claims to being the uniquely true religion. Some of these more resemble minimal theism, and so may not be epistemically much worse. Moreover, there is a huge variety of religions in the world, and some religions tend not to make claims to being uniquely true in the first place, so my claim does not necessarily apply to them either.

[onecornerface]

Shooting ICE agents doesn't violate their rights at all in many cases, particularly in recent cases. The main moral/strategic reason to not shoot ICE agents is that it would risk escalation. But if ICE is escalating anyway, then past a certain point, this reason goes out the window. It might well be good if more people shot back.

ICE agents often act in ways that make them look like random thugs anyway, and it is often okay or good to shoot random thugs in self-defense and in defense of others. On a personal emotional level, morals aside, I want ICE agents to be afraid they might get shot, and I want them sometimes to get shot. I think this is sometimes morally good as well, though I leave it an open question how often.

I'm saying this on Tumblr and not on Facebook, because I think I'm entitled to say it, and I am less afraid of getting in trouble on Tumblr than on Facebook.

[onecornerface]

The Second Amendment fanatics had one job, but they were mostly on the side of the far-right authoritarians the whole time anyway.

[onecornerface]

How to make the electoral college worse

I asked ChatGPT to make the Electoral College even more complicated. The result:

-- 🔁 1. Elector Chains (Recursive Delegation) Instead of voters choosing electors directly, they vote for Primary Elector Selectors (PES).

Each PES chooses a Secondary Elector Selector (SES).

The SES then nominates a Tertiary Elector, who finally casts a presidential vote.

Each state decides how many layers deep this goes. For instance:

California: 5 levels.

Delaware: 2 levels.

Texas: An Electoral Commission of 40, who form subcommittees to select SESs based on regional political quotas.

-- 🏛️ 2. State Legislature Integration (Inconsistently Applied) Some states amend their constitutions so that:

Upper houses nominate PES candidates.

Lower houses approve SESs.

In Nebraska and Maine, the Governor has veto power over Tertiary Electors, unless the veto is overturned by a unanimous school board vote.

-- 🕰️ 3. Temporal Layering Electors from different layers are selected at different times:

PESs elected during midterms.

SESs selected in off-years.

Tertiary Electors must be confirmed no sooner than 90 days before and no later than 5 days after the general election. If missed, electors are chosen by lottery from DMV records.

-- 📜 4. State-By-State Voting Method Divergence Each state adopts its own logic for how votes count toward electors:

New York: Proportional popular vote → PESs chosen by ranked choice.

Florida: Popular vote determines the political balance of a PES panel, which then selects electors by deliberative council.

Utah: State Senate alone appoints electors, unless overruled by a petition signed by 50% of active LDS members.

-- 🔄 5. Electoral Review Tribunals After electors vote, their choices are reviewed by:

A State Electoral Tribunal, composed of retired judges, university deans, and randomly selected mayors.

If the Tribunal rejects the vote (on procedural or aesthetic grounds), the elector is replaced by the runner-up SES's second choice.

-- 🏴‍☠️ 6. Contingency Elections within States In the event of a tie or disqualification at any level:

The State Board of Historical Preservation hosts a tiebreaker vote.

Must be held in a historically significant building.

Votes counted using pre-Civil War ballot boxes.

Results announced via town crier or semaphore.

-- 🧩 7. Interstate Electoral Trading States may trade electors with one another, subject to:

Approval by both state legislatures.

An intergovernmental negotiation period (minimum 30 days).

Oversight by a Joint Electoral Compact Commission, whose members are appointed via an elaborate rotation system involving lottery winners, high school civics teachers, and former electors.

-- 🛑 8. Elector Eligibility Restrictions To be a Tertiary Elector:

Must not have been a member of any political party in the last 20 years.

Must pass a citizenship quiz, ethics course, and psychological evaluation.

Must not have been employed by or related to any previous elector.

Bonus: Vermont requires all Tertiary Electors to have milked a cow within the past 6 months.

-- 🗳️9. Final Certification Ceremony Votes are cast by Tertiary Electors, then:

Delivered by hand to Washington, D.C., via state-chosen couriers (horseback recommended).

Opened only during the Grand Electoral Convocation, held every four years at sunrise in a rotating location, chosen by drawing marbles from a velvet sack.