You really believe that skinny people are just more disciplined than obese? I would highly doubt that most skinny people actively try to keep their weight down, it‘s just how they are.
Gaussian integrals are also pretty much the basis of quantum field theory in the path integral formalism, where Isserlis's theorem is the analog to Wick's theorem in the operator formalism.
Maybe I should just read the wiki you linked, but I guess I'm confused on how this is different than steepest descent? I'm a physicist by training so maybe we just call it something different?
It is Laplace's method of steepest decent. When the same method is used to approximate probability density function, for example the posterior probability density, it's called Laplace's approximation of the density.
The wikipedia link would have made things quite clear :)
They are the same for physicists who analytically continue everything. Steepest descent is technically for integrals in the complex plane, and Laplace's method is for integrating over the real line.
Many people here were so confident a few days ago that the tariffs were just some 4d chess to get interest rates down, despite this not making any sense.
I'm afraid the President's critics aren't always capable of critical reading. Consider:
> Ten-year Treasury yields have risen 39 basis points to 4.38% this week alone as prices tumble.
Ok, but the recent high point for 10-year yields was 4.79% on January 13. Why is this 4.38% alarming? And why is a brief intraday spike above 4.5% (in a foreign market) newsworthy? This reads like someone was looking for bad news to report.
I never even understood what the theory was supposed to be for why it would lower interest rates.
You can only run a trade deficit if the country you are trading with is a net investor. Part of that investment is going to be in the form of bonds. If you force a cut in the trade deficit, you cut the demand for bonds, which lowers their price and raises their interest rate.
It's interesting that conspiracy theorists nowadays are looking for hidden plans for how the government might be working in our best interest, in spite of appearances
The weird thing is how conservatives get to play both the "federal government is inherently evil" and "look at all the stuff we're doing with our power over the federal government" cards at the same time, often for the same events.
Is it weird to be consistent? The "federal government is inherently evil" is a principle that doesn't magically go away when small-government people get in to power.
The argument never was nor will be that [this thing] is bad when [the wrong people] do it; the argument is that [this thing] is bad. There isn't an expectation that a right wing government will somehow transcend the realities of government. The ideal social contract with the politicians - from the liberal part of the right wing - is that they do whatever it is that motivates them to take on the job and that is tolerated to some extent - but in exchange they shrink the size and scope of the government bureaucracy.
Obviously the ideal is a distant dream at this point, but the principle lingers. It is the only realistic option.
> The "federal government is inherently evil" is a principle that doesn't magically go away when small-government people get in to power.
In my experience it’s exactly this. The principle vanishes quickly, because none of those “small government” people were really so. The primary small government faction in the US is conservatives. They’ve been, for a few decades now, VERY large government. Bordering on fascist.
They just lie, because it’s easy and none of their constituents care. You have better odds of hell freezing over than conservative constituencies holding their representatives accountable. When you’re in that situation, you’d be stupid not to lie.
To expand on this, shrinking the bureaucracy isn’t shrinking the government. Because, if you had read the agenda in project 2025, you’d know that the intention is to then concentrate those powers in the president.
That’s not smaller gov, that’s bigger. You’re creating a monarch.
I’m not sure why this comment was killed. Completely accurate assessment. Republicans are only “small government” until states try to do something they don’t like. (Support trans athletes or undocumented immigrants? Have fun getting all your federal funding pulled.) And the monarchy of the executive is something they’ve been eagerly proselytizing for years: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory
It’s unpopular because conservatives hate it when you tell them what their representatives are doing. Again, they’re allergic to accountability!
To this day, millions deny the impact of project 2025. Like it’s some made up liberal strawman.
Guys, half the writers are in his cabinet. He’s following it to a tee. I don’t think we could’ve asked for a more perfect establishment Republican if we tried.
They’re not some little guys dismantling the system. They ARE the system.
Not mutually exclusive. "We're incredibly powerful and government is evil" and "we're absolutely going to use governmental power now we have it to fuck shit up that we don't like", is totally a position those in government can take.
The key is in the idea of governance and who's governing. Any and all governance which has happened by those the people in power don't like (basically the other team) is what is labelled bad.
The only question is, ultimately, is their governance sane and sensible? From the perspective of the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
What a stupid strawman. The claim is "the government is too powerful, that power is easily abused, it wastes your money on pointless 'woke' things, and we are cancelling it all".
Low interest rates isn’t in the common persons interests, it’s in the interests of those who own and those who have relationships with people close to the money faucet
Low rates very much in the interests of people who want to get mortgages.
(Interestingly, because of the very long mortgage duration, US homeowners are very insulated from interest rate shocks. But it will show up in consumer credit, car payments etc.)
Low rates are also expansionary for the economy in general.
Actually I think moderate rates are best for mortgages. Low rates just push prices and thus down payments to sky as have been seen. And that is no good. Moderate rates keep prices at cost of building. In the end monthly payment is what matters.
Most commentary, for and against, has been exclusively on the economics, and from that perspective it makes little to no sense. But I've seen suggestions in a couple of places that there are relevant "national security" motivations, or to put it bluntly, a greater freedom to wage war - or at least to put oneself in a position where the threat of it would be more realistic. Decoupling the US economy from the rest of the world, but especially from China, makes sense if the strategic cost-benefit analysis sees a significant potential for war with that country. It's a commonplace of international relations, and intuitively obvious, that the more integrated are the economies of two countries, the less likely they are to start wars with each other (no doubt there are exceptions, but as a rule...). That doesn't have to mean anything imminent or indicate concrete plans on the part of US, but it's plausibly a factor in the overall calculations.
In fact, the economic interdependence of the US and China had seemed to be a big reason to remain hopeful that there wouldn't be a war between them, among other reasons of course. Reducing this interdependence seems to destabilize this situation. The unfortunate fact is that I can't see the US military establishment just peacefully allowing China to become more militarily powerful than itself. I'd be happy to hear other perspectives on this, I'm far from an expert and haven't seen this angle discussed much.
> It's a commonplace of international relations, and intuitively obvious, that the more integrated are the economies of two countries, the less likely they are to start wars with each other
This is indeed a common way of thinking and intuitively obvious but I think it has also been proven wrong by the war in Ukraine. We sanctioned Russia as hard as we could and it 3 years later they're still there.
Withholding some nebulous service industry from a country that's mostly reliant on primary and/or manufacturing is probably not a strong enough deterrent to a sufficiently motivated political force. It might be that it just puts service industry reliant countries at a disadvantage.
Drone warfare is another piece of the puzzle, both how they are employed in the Ukrainian war as well as in the red sea blockade. The west is also at a disadvantage here compared to, say, China. When was the last time you saw a drone-dragon lightshow outside of Shenzhen?
We thought we had world peace through commerce but it was probably an illusion. I think everyone is rethinking the last 150 years of history right now.
Just as a matter of logic, you can't prove wrong a rule of thumb that admits exceptions by pointing to an exception. There can always be reasons why, despite economic integration, other factors take precedence, e.g. perceived existential risks can push countries into war despite foreseen economic shocks.
In the case of Russia, while there were subtantial sanctions, it was still trading natural gas to the EU, and I believe they still are. China and India also helped Russia (and themselves) tremendously by buying huge quantities of discounted hydrocarbons, and I think it's plausible that there were indications before the war that such deals would be available.
As an aside about drones, a striking number of new companies established over the last handful of years in several European countries are military drone specialists. By now it's quite obvious why. In the future I guess there'll be a new slew of companies specializing in counter-drone tech.
Is there anything pointing to this supposed thorough analysis really being done behind the doors? Genuinely asking, because for now in my opinion from POTUS communications I don’t make me think there is and this comment is another instance of trying to make something irrational rational.
No specific evidence, just that the State department and the analysis branches of various agencies still exist and are staffed by professionals whose job it is to conduct such analyses. It's not out of the question that some of these might have filtered up and in some way influence decisions.
If the tariffs remain in place then one result that is guaranteed is that they will reduce trade between the US and the rest of the world, and reduce the most with the most tariffed countries. Whether that's rational or irrational I guess is the question I'm asking, and I'm looking for reasoned opinions either way
Trump has talked about his tariff idea since the 80s, and talked to Oprah about it way back when we lived in a completely different world. I'm not sure his 80s era plan is based on 2025 dynamics that somehow filtered up to him in his first months of office.
Fair point. It's reasonable to conclude that a lot of the impetus is coming from Trump himself. On the other hand, the Biden admin quietly kept Trump's first-term China tariffs, even though they reversed many other Trump policies. So that suggests some involvement of the wider foreign policy establishment that's continuous over changing administrations
I think the strategic angle is important, but I doubt it's part of a long-term plan to start a war with China. I think the more likely concern is that if the US becomes too dependent on Chinese manufacturing, China could impose sanctions on the US to control US foreign policy.
And a similar concern applies if the US lacks the manufacturing capability to wage wars with its own resources. Something we already saw that when we ran out of ammo because of the war in Ukraine.
Thanks, that's probably a more sober and probable assessment. It could make sense for reducing potential Chinese leverage over US. I think if the point were to shore up defense-critical industries, though, then direct support for those industries would make more sense and be considerably less disruptive than these tariffs.
This is just delusional. Everybody is looking for some reason that makes this less stupid than it looks, but there is none.
Intentionally causing a recession to lower the debt burden makes no sense, neither politically nor economically. Besides that the US is not some third world country that issues debt in a currency they have no sovereignty over.
