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James Camacho
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2James Camacho's Shortform
2y
9
What nation did Trump prevent from going to war (Feb. 2025)?
James Camacho19d00

Looking back on this comment, what do you think you can change about how you politick to avoid making the same mistakes?

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What nation did Trump prevent from going to war (Feb. 2025)?
Answer by James CamachoJun 28, 202530

We finally have an answer! In Trump's NATO address, he claims to have "also ended it with Serbia, which was about to start a clash." Both Serbian and Kosovan news agencies seem convinced he is referring to a war between Serbia and Kosovo.

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Childhood and Education #11: The Art of Learning
James Camacho19d10

Were you not allowed to go to the library during lunch?

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Childhood and Education #11: The Art of Learning
James Camacho19d30

The top 0.1% are no longer more competent than they were 10 years ago. Take math. About 1% of high schoolers participate in the American Mathematics Contest, and about 10% of those score >100. Ten years ago, they had a strict "top 5% or those scoring above 100 advance to the next round" rule. Five years ago, the contest got much harder very quickly (the class of 2022 was exceptionally good, and the contest writers probably anticipated that by seeing MATHCOUNTS results), and where the cutoff had been ~105, it dropped down to ~84. Note that I'm talking about the AMC 12 here, and participation had declined at this point, so they took the top 10% instead of the top 5% to keep the same number of contestants in the next round (the AIME). The most recent contests are easier than they were five years ago, but the cutoff has remained in the 80s.

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Association taxes are collusion subsidies
James Camacho2mo1-2

You might as well say, "if everyone could just get along, everyone would be able to get along." Everyone has different preferences, and sometimes they are competing preferences. You can put this all in a big matrix, and compute the eigenvectors to find the cliques. Naturally, if my preference is for you to do well, and your preference is for me to do well, we'll want to collude. Naturally, if everyone preferred for everyone to do well—or at the very least were neutral on others' wellbeing—the eigenvectors would be nonnegative and there would be no reason to collude at the expense of others. But there are negative entries among eigenvectors (e.g. the murderers in prison), so there are groups colluding at the expense of others.

Also, I don't think your social collusion problem is as bad as you might think. If your reputation is negatively affected by association, and you no longer like the association, why have you not broken off from it? People do not punish others for a history of association—especially when done in ignorance—very much, especially if you publicly denounce or expose them.

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The Theory Behind Loss Curves
James Camacho2mo10

I haven't been able to find the spin-1/6 anyon's partition function, so mine could be wrong.

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The Theory Behind Loss Curves
James Camacho2mo10

A couple things to add that don't deserve to be in the main text:

  1. The Taylor series for the Z6 partition function is 1+x−x3−x4+O(x5), which means it actively learns "not this" the second, and third times around. This is why we see a dip (1+x) when x<1, followed by a steep rise in loss (−x2−x3) as x>1, and then a tapering out.

  2. The Z1 and Z2 partition functions correspond to bosons (e.g. photons) and fermions (e.g. electrons) in physics. Perhaps Z6 corresponds to an exotic particle the theorists have yet to classify.

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Don't accuse your interlocutor of being insufficiently truth-seeking
James Camacho3mo10

I've only have it happen with one person... but it happens every time with that particular person. I've mostly stopped debating with them.

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Don't accuse your interlocutor of being insufficiently truth-seeking
James Camacho3mo10

What about when they say, "you're strawmanning me!" and slightly change their argument? You believe their argument from two minutes ago was wrong, and that they are now intentionally misleading you so they can maintain their position and eternally shift the burden of disproof back onto you.

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The Bell Curve of Bad Behavior
James Camacho3mo40

Debbie is actually red-blue colorblind, so she thinks her graph looks normal.

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16The Theory Behind Loss Curves
2mo
3
12How Do We Fix the Education Crisis?
4mo
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3What nation did Trump prevent from going to war (Feb. 2025)?
Q
5mo
Q
5
5Fractals to Quasiparticles
8mo
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6Idea: NV⁻ Centers for Brain Interpretability
1y
1
2James Camacho's Shortform
2y
9
7The Platonist’s Dilemma: A Remix on the Prisoner's.
3y
2