No, your perspective is how we get climate science denial and vaccine skepticism and removal of fluoride from drinking water.
People with no subject matter experience or practical knowledge of what "Science" actually is.
I said trust scientists. Not a scientist. Scientists. Plural. Trust the literature reviews and meta analyses of multiple studies. Trust the scientists that have amassed DECADES of knowledge of an incredibly small and specialized area of interest.
Instead, we get schmucks all up and down shitting on whatever study they want. The number of times I've seen papers dismissed simply on the population size alone for being "poor statistical power" without any discussion on effective and whether the study was actually appropriately powered or not.
I bet you don't even really know what the drivers are for the reproducibility crisis and where real problems are.
Scientists. Scientists are to say it's not having an impact on selection.
I can guarantee you they've asked that already, and researched the topic extensively.
Look, scientists are (semi) normal people with a wickedly intense interest. If someone is willing to devote 5+ years learning about how to study bird behavior to get their doctorate, do you think they're not going to be concerned about the bird's well being? When the entire point of the research and study of endangered species is conservation?
I'm tired of hearing it's not that simple. No. It is. It's not easy, but it is quite simple.
States should do it. When the legal challenges come, good.
It doesn't fucking matter if it sticks or not.
Maybe it'll slow them down.
Maybe we just need to flood the zone like they do with nonstop, ridiculous, clearly illegal BULLSHIT.
We shouldn't take action because it would invoke a constitutional crisis while recognizing we already have had them (and should have had MORE)?
They're LITERALLY interfering with the machinery of our democracy, and we don't even have enough fucking conviction to TRY FUCKING WITH TAX REVENUE to stop them because 'it's not that simple.'
They TRAFFICK AND RAPE CHILDREN but let's make sure we only do things we know will absolutely work. The kids can wait.
It's honestly a super subtle difference and only structure heads like me care about it. It matters on the edges. My advisor gave sage advice that I think more people should take to heart. To paraphrase: every experiment has limitations and assumptions baked in assumptions. That doesn't mean their results are invalid/irrelevant, but you need to know what they are so you know when they are violated or don't apply.
It's a spin on the "all models are wrong, but not all models are useful
/pedagogical soapbox
It's a great use of AI / machine learning tech. Incredible. Turns out biology reuses structure a LOT. Structure is function in biology, and there are a LOT of shared, essential functions in Biology. Their models are actually incredibly accurate at predicting the individual atom placement for side chains (the bit of an amino acid that makes it unique from other amino acids). Side chains do chemistry for proteins, so this is highly salient for research broadly. It's just far from being a "solved problem" like they would have you believe.
The main thing to keep in mind, is that alphafold is not predicting structures based on first principles (that is to say, based on the underlying physics and laws of nature). It uses sequence similarity between proteins with solved structures to make probable guesses as to the structure and how it folds. Solely based off current experimental data-driven structure models.
This works surprisingly well even for proteins that don't have much actually in common with the amino acid sequence of the protein. But because structure is function, we can still trace and track the divergences in sequence over time while still being confident the overall shape is the same.
But for things that there are not enough sequence diverse examples of, or for things that there are no examples, alphafold regularly just spits them out like a literal ball of spaghetti - because the assumptions it relies on are invalid. There's not enough statistical evidence - for those examples.
I don't have a handy reference offhand, it's been a few years, but there is this image from their blog posts ( ref ) that shows whe I'm talking about. My understanding is that AlphaFold is an incredibly accurate and effective homology modeling strategy (how can we model structures we don't have data for based off similarity to structures we do have).
Disclaimer: I am not an expert in structural prediction, homology models, machine learning, structural determination via crystallography or cryo-EM. I'm more experienced in consuming them for understanding the structure:function relationship.
Not knowing your expertise, I'll risk making a fool of myself.
But first, for everyone's sake: ALPHAFOLD ISNT AN LLM
That isn't what alphafold is. Under no circumstances is it anywhere near close to a "database of every way ... proteins can fold." At all. And to construe it as anything other than an attempt at a way to predict or simulate the potential three dimensional structure a protein can adopt will mislead people.
A protein does not have one shape. It has multiple. They're dynamic. They change shape. It's how proteins represent information. I'd argue that the ability of proteins to change their shape is one of their most important properties. (Analogy: play a song on an instrument with one note. Hard-mode: consider silence a note)
Everything in Alphafold is a GUESSED MODEL and not reality. Crystal structures and cryo-EM structures are also MODELS. But they're based on empirical evidence.
Alphafold is based on statistical evidence. It is evidence, but it is weaker. If we don't have an example of how a protein might fold in the structural database, alphafold will struggle to predict the structure. At least not without it sharing some type of sequence similarity.
I see this in the AI drug companies and how they just treat predictive models the same as 2 angstrom crystal structures and it pisses me off.
By restricting what people can and can't do (by removing features you don't use), they slowly restrict our collective ability to independently verify their claims or to independently serve our own needs - making us more reliant on them.
It's small and minor, but it's just like with the DMCA and the new ID laws. It's about slowly erecting barriers that impede our ability to act collectively or anonymously under the guise of it being "for our own good."
So your answer is "Trust me, bro. We don't need to study this. It's obvious bro everyone knows or. Just don't do it. Don't raise wages bro it's bad. I promise. Everyone already knows this. There's no research for it
But we know it's true. Trust me."
I just want to make sure I understand your logic correctly.
And not one person that has complained about the percentile has asked about what the top bracket would be.
Are you really going to argue that a 95% tax rate on every $1 over $1,000,000 is not comparable to a 95% income tax when fully contextualized to being their one million and first dollar made in a year?
Find me a place where raising the minimum wage devastated a local economy. I legitimately can't find one so I'm hoping you can help me learn.
Here's a write up about how Walmart devastated local economies though.
Honestly? The fact that we can even entertain, in America, that a state would have a median income of 25k shows truly just how fucked we are.
Now I know I hear people in the back "but it was world war time!" True. True.
How long have we been at war? Since Vietnam? How many fucking desert storms have we had? Cold war?
And not one person that has complained about the percentile has asked about what the top bracket would be.
Are you really going to argue that a 95% tax rate on every $1 over $1,000,000 is excessive or "wild"? Or does it actually represent the marginal utility of income?
Because the first 80k someone makes is waayyyyyyyyyyy more impactful than the next 80k. One makes sure you don't die of starvation and exposure. The other is all pleasure.
I like your counterpoint about the wealth tax being more about monopolistic power. Hadn't considered that angle. I do believe that the government must be larger than the entities it governs. If we ever want a smaller, more agile government, we need to shrink what it's supposed to govern.
Here is why I argue for a wealth tax:
Most things in life are not simply exponential. They're logarithmic. At least for biology and natural systems. We need some corrective force that pushes back aggressively against wealth accumulation -regardless of source.
I believe they do think this through. I think your mistake is thinking they want to help the country.
They want to help themselves. They think they'll be just fine no matter the damage, because they have all the power and control so they can pilfer all the resources until they're "secure."
You don't see an exodus of homeowners for their property tax.
Why is that? Hmmm? Is it the case that rich people wanna be where money is? And nice services are? Where the culture is? Where the art is? Where their family is? Their friends? Their children's life?
Show me a study that unequivocally shows that raising taxes leads to mass capital flight. I haven't seen one yet. At best, its mixed.
They say this about minimum wage "you can't raise it to $15 business will leave and go under!"
And every fucking time states or cities increase the minimum wage, that doesn't happen.
We truly are creatures of habit and prefer something known. Also, people just don't have the fucking time to know anything but passively absorbing it. We've collectively gone from requiring 40 hours of work to support a whole family, to now needing 80, as a minimum, for most families.
Who the fuck has time to research candidates policies? Lmao Susie needs to be at soccer practice 5 minutes ago. We've allowed ourselves, bit by bit, to have our time stolen because of all the wage theft we've allowed by not keeping the minimum wage pegged to inflation automatically. Every year they push on 2% inflation target. And every year they didn't raise the minimum wage, they stole 2% from us.
It also makes any progress we make for ourselves, so brittle. Before, you could have two part time jobs help support a family for a bit. Now being out of work could mean homelessness.
I've got the same jade. It's nice to be realistic, but knowing that there might actually be solutions some day keeps it from becoming nihilism.
What would shape your opinion more: being bombarded by ads or the candidate showing up at your school to do a town hall and answer questions?
If we make things small enough, where in a typical campaign a candidate can meet their constituents at least once, does being outspent on ads matter as much? Doesn't it at least make break-through candidates more likely if only because national parties have to spread out their spend?
I mean this honestly, how do we understand what the issues of non voters are? Is there a consistent populace that never votes or is it a variable pool? Has it been shown that non voters care about entirely different issues than voters?
The other commenter is correct, but another way to think or visualize is that any subtraction or division operation can be understood as an addition or multiplication.
X - 5 = X + (-5)
X / 5 = X * (1/5)
You can think of subtraction and division not being distinct or separated from addition and multiplication; instead, they're just a shortcut notation in mathematics because everyone was tired of having to write extra characters.
I can't reconcile the fact that the entire discussion is about how we can control, based on user age settings at the OS level, the content people can access and you asking me what my proof is that the system is being created for control.
I really don't know how to respond because it's self evident, isn't it? It's there in the law? Why else add the tag to the user? Like.. I just...what? Of course it's for fucking control. There's no other reason to have it.
As for a more broad general "the government wants to control"...I just... Look around? DMCA is a prime example.
Or read people that are smarter than me about it.
They even say why I'm the message
Stores the user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws
in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc.
Now I can hear you already. "But EFF says age verification is the real evil and this isn't verification! It's just a text tag any root user can change!"
And that's where I'm saying it isn't. Now. But it will be. Who is pushing for this? Do you think they'll be okay with a giant Linux loophole? Or will they try to close it? Is that not always the typical pattern with laws? Pass it then patch the loopholes.
We've gone from "click to prove you're 18" to "provide a date" to "provide an id" to "make the OS and other apps verify."
Why should I ever assume that it will stop at a simple plain text annotation? The slippery slope is documented. It's real.
It's the context. It's the context. It's the context. It's the context.
Please engage with me and the arguments i am making - not imagined narrow slices. This isn't a high school debate where you get points for speed and word count.
Let me restate:
In the context of governments actively seeking to restrict access to information on the Internet, I think implementing ANY infrastructure that move towards the government's ability to achieve their censorship is bad and shouldn't be done.
I'm not saying there's no benefit to adding a plain text date field to user information. I'm not saying it's the end of the world now. I'm not saying it's verification.
I'm saying use this as a point to stand up and fight and say "NO, You have no authority over the information I can access. And we should not give in because 'for the children is a lie' and they're not actually trying to protect children while our government is RUN BY LITERAL CHILD FUCKERS."
No, your perspective is how we get climate science denial and vaccine skepticism and removal of fluoride from drinking water.
People with no subject matter experience or practical knowledge of what "Science" actually is.
I said trust scientists. Not a scientist. Scientists. Plural. Trust the literature reviews and meta analyses of multiple studies. Trust the scientists that have amassed DECADES of knowledge of an incredibly small and specialized area of interest.
Instead, we get schmucks all up and down shitting on whatever study they want. The number of times I've seen papers dismissed simply on the population size alone for being "poor statistical power" without any discussion on effective and whether the study was actually appropriately powered or not.
I bet you don't even really know what the drivers are for the reproducibility crisis and where real problems are.
Scientists. Scientists are to say it's not having an impact on selection.
I can guarantee you they've asked that already, and researched the topic extensively.
Look, scientists are (semi) normal people with a wickedly intense interest. If someone is willing to devote 5+ years learning about how to study bird behavior to get their doctorate, do you think they're not going to be concerned about the bird's well being? When the entire point of the research and study of endangered species is conservation?
I'm tired of hearing it's not that simple. No. It is. It's not easy, but it is quite simple.
States should do it. When the legal challenges come, good. It doesn't fucking matter if it sticks or not.
Maybe it'll slow them down. Maybe we just need to flood the zone like they do with nonstop, ridiculous, clearly illegal BULLSHIT.
We shouldn't take action because it would invoke a constitutional crisis while recognizing we already have had them (and should have had MORE)?
They're LITERALLY interfering with the machinery of our democracy, and we don't even have enough fucking conviction to TRY FUCKING WITH TAX REVENUE to stop them because 'it's not that simple.'
They TRAFFICK AND RAPE CHILDREN but let's make sure we only do things we know will absolutely work. The kids can wait.
It's honestly a super subtle difference and only structure heads like me care about it. It matters on the edges. My advisor gave sage advice that I think more people should take to heart. To paraphrase: every experiment has limitations and assumptions baked in assumptions. That doesn't mean their results are invalid/irrelevant, but you need to know what they are so you know when they are violated or don't apply.
It's a spin on the "all models are wrong, but not all models are useful
/pedagogical soapbox
It's a great use of AI / machine learning tech. Incredible. Turns out biology reuses structure a LOT. Structure is function in biology, and there are a LOT of shared, essential functions in Biology. Their models are actually incredibly accurate at predicting the individual atom placement for side chains (the bit of an amino acid that makes it unique from other amino acids). Side chains do chemistry for proteins, so this is highly salient for research broadly. It's just far from being a "solved problem" like they would have you believe.
The main thing to keep in mind, is that alphafold is not predicting structures based on first principles (that is to say, based on the underlying physics and laws of nature). It uses sequence similarity between proteins with solved structures to make probable guesses as to the structure and how it folds. Solely based off current experimental data-driven structure models.
This works surprisingly well even for proteins that don't have much actually in common with the amino acid sequence of the protein. But because structure is function, we can still trace and track the divergences in sequence over time while still being confident the overall shape is the same.
But for things that there are not enough sequence diverse examples of, or for things that there are no examples, alphafold regularly just spits them out like a literal ball of spaghetti - because the assumptions it relies on are invalid. There's not enough statistical evidence - for those examples.
I don't have a handy reference offhand, it's been a few years, but there is this image from their blog posts ( ref ) that shows whe I'm talking about. My understanding is that AlphaFold is an incredibly accurate and effective homology modeling strategy (how can we model structures we don't have data for based off similarity to structures we do have).
Disclaimer: I am not an expert in structural prediction, homology models, machine learning, structural determination via crystallography or cryo-EM. I'm more experienced in consuming them for understanding the structure:function relationship.
Not knowing your expertise, I'll risk making a fool of myself.
But first, for everyone's sake: ALPHAFOLD ISNT AN LLM
That isn't what alphafold is. Under no circumstances is it anywhere near close to a "database of every way ... proteins can fold." At all. And to construe it as anything other than an attempt at a way to predict or simulate the potential three dimensional structure a protein can adopt will mislead people.
A protein does not have one shape. It has multiple. They're dynamic. They change shape. It's how proteins represent information. I'd argue that the ability of proteins to change their shape is one of their most important properties. (Analogy: play a song on an instrument with one note. Hard-mode: consider silence a note)
Everything in Alphafold is a GUESSED MODEL and not reality. Crystal structures and cryo-EM structures are also MODELS. But they're based on empirical evidence.
Alphafold is based on statistical evidence. It is evidence, but it is weaker. If we don't have an example of how a protein might fold in the structural database, alphafold will struggle to predict the structure. At least not without it sharing some type of sequence similarity.
I see this in the AI drug companies and how they just treat predictive models the same as 2 angstrom crystal structures and it pisses me off.
Here is how it concerns you:
By restricting what people can and can't do (by removing features you don't use), they slowly restrict our collective ability to independently verify their claims or to independently serve our own needs - making us more reliant on them.
It's small and minor, but it's just like with the DMCA and the new ID laws. It's about slowly erecting barriers that impede our ability to act collectively or anonymously under the guise of it being "for our own good."
So your answer is "Trust me, bro. We don't need to study this. It's obvious bro everyone knows or. Just don't do it. Don't raise wages bro it's bad. I promise. Everyone already knows this. There's no research for it But we know it's true. Trust me."
I just want to make sure I understand your logic correctly.
https://taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates
95 is not that high For 20 years it was over 90
And not one person that has complained about the percentile has asked about what the top bracket would be.
Are you really going to argue that a 95% tax rate on every $1 over $1,000,000 is not comparable to a 95% income tax when fully contextualized to being their one million and first dollar made in a year?
Find me a place where raising the minimum wage devastated a local economy. I legitimately can't find one so I'm hoping you can help me learn. Here's a write up about how Walmart devastated local economies though.
Honestly? The fact that we can even entertain, in America, that a state would have a median income of 25k shows truly just how fucked we are.
https://taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates
95 is not that high For 20 years it was over 90
Now I know I hear people in the back "but it was world war time!" True. True.
How long have we been at war? Since Vietnam? How many fucking desert storms have we had? Cold war?
And not one person that has complained about the percentile has asked about what the top bracket would be.
Are you really going to argue that a 95% tax rate on every $1 over $1,000,000 is excessive or "wild"? Or does it actually represent the marginal utility of income?
Because the first 80k someone makes is waayyyyyyyyyyy more impactful than the next 80k. One makes sure you don't die of starvation and exposure. The other is all pleasure.
I like your counterpoint about the wealth tax being more about monopolistic power. Hadn't considered that angle. I do believe that the government must be larger than the entities it governs. If we ever want a smaller, more agile government, we need to shrink what it's supposed to govern.
Here is why I argue for a wealth tax: Most things in life are not simply exponential. They're logarithmic. At least for biology and natural systems. We need some corrective force that pushes back aggressively against wealth accumulation -regardless of source.
I believe they do think this through. I think your mistake is thinking they want to help the country.
They want to help themselves. They think they'll be just fine no matter the damage, because they have all the power and control so they can pilfer all the resources until they're "secure."
And they're right.
No one is stopping them.
No one.
Don't argue against things I didn't say.
You don't see an exodus of homeowners for their property tax.
Why is that? Hmmm? Is it the case that rich people wanna be where money is? And nice services are? Where the culture is? Where the art is? Where their family is? Their friends? Their children's life?
Show me a study that unequivocally shows that raising taxes leads to mass capital flight. I haven't seen one yet. At best, its mixed.
They say this about minimum wage "you can't raise it to $15 business will leave and go under!"
And every fucking time states or cities increase the minimum wage, that doesn't happen.
Stop fucking carrying water for the rich
They don't leave. At least, not in the scary mass exodus they always try to imply.
So nothing?
We truly are creatures of habit and prefer something known. Also, people just don't have the fucking time to know anything but passively absorbing it. We've collectively gone from requiring 40 hours of work to support a whole family, to now needing 80, as a minimum, for most families.
Who the fuck has time to research candidates policies? Lmao Susie needs to be at soccer practice 5 minutes ago. We've allowed ourselves, bit by bit, to have our time stolen because of all the wage theft we've allowed by not keeping the minimum wage pegged to inflation automatically. Every year they push on 2% inflation target. And every year they didn't raise the minimum wage, they stole 2% from us.
It also makes any progress we make for ourselves, so brittle. Before, you could have two part time jobs help support a family for a bit. Now being out of work could mean homelessness.
I've got the same jade. It's nice to be realistic, but knowing that there might actually be solutions some day keeps it from becoming nihilism.
Every fucking year hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans pay a tax on an illiquid asset: the property tax.
Don't fucking tell me "oh it's too difficult, there's too many effects." Tax. Them.
Progressive tax rate on long term and short term capital gains. 95 % upper limit for income tax. Kneecap their bullshit "buy, borrow, die" cycle.
Get back to the fucking WW2 tax levels, back when we had a middle class, and then we can maybe finally have a balanced budget, at least.
What would shape your opinion more: being bombarded by ads or the candidate showing up at your school to do a town hall and answer questions?
If we make things small enough, where in a typical campaign a candidate can meet their constituents at least once, does being outspent on ads matter as much? Doesn't it at least make break-through candidates more likely if only because national parties have to spread out their spend?
I mean this honestly, how do we understand what the issues of non voters are? Is there a consistent populace that never votes or is it a variable pool? Has it been shown that non voters care about entirely different issues than voters?
The other commenter is correct, but another way to think or visualize is that any subtraction or division operation can be understood as an addition or multiplication.
X - 5 = X + (-5)
X / 5 = X * (1/5)
You can think of subtraction and division not being distinct or separated from addition and multiplication; instead, they're just a shortcut notation in mathematics because everyone was tired of having to write extra characters.
Figuratively, at least.
I can't reconcile the fact that the entire discussion is about how we can control, based on user age settings at the OS level, the content people can access and you asking me what my proof is that the system is being created for control.
I really don't know how to respond because it's self evident, isn't it? It's there in the law? Why else add the tag to the user? Like.. I just...what? Of course it's for fucking control. There's no other reason to have it.
As for a more broad general "the government wants to control"...I just... Look around? DMCA is a prime example. Or read people that are smarter than me about it.
They even say why I'm the message
Now I can hear you already. "But EFF says age verification is the real evil and this isn't verification! It's just a text tag any root user can change!"
And that's where I'm saying it isn't. Now. But it will be. Who is pushing for this? Do you think they'll be okay with a giant Linux loophole? Or will they try to close it? Is that not always the typical pattern with laws? Pass it then patch the loopholes.
We've gone from "click to prove you're 18" to "provide a date" to "provide an id" to "make the OS and other apps verify."
Why should I ever assume that it will stop at a simple plain text annotation? The slippery slope is documented. It's real.
And I never said it was inherently bad.
It's the context. It's the context. It's the context. It's the context.
Please engage with me and the arguments i am making - not imagined narrow slices. This isn't a high school debate where you get points for speed and word count.
Let me restate: In the context of governments actively seeking to restrict access to information on the Internet, I think implementing ANY infrastructure that move towards the government's ability to achieve their censorship is bad and shouldn't be done.
I'm not saying there's no benefit to adding a plain text date field to user information. I'm not saying it's the end of the world now. I'm not saying it's verification.
I'm saying use this as a point to stand up and fight and say "NO, You have no authority over the information I can access. And we should not give in because 'for the children is a lie' and they're not actually trying to protect children while our government is RUN BY LITERAL CHILD FUCKERS."