THREAD One of the weirder statistical consequences of the riot.

You can only be denied a security clearance (or have a current one revoked) if the allegations made against you fit within one of 13 adjudicative guidelines, numbered A-M.

Despite being ostensibly narrow, these guidelines are actually pretty broad in scope, & it can be argued that there's not really much of anything that a savvy adjudicator can't fit under their umbrella. But we're not going to talk about that today.
When the government denies or revokes a clearance, it has to issue you what is called a "Statement of Reasons" which sets forth the allegations made against you & explains which of the 13 guidelines they fit under. The most common ones tend to be B (foreign influence), C ...
(foreign preference), E (personal conduct), and F (financial issues). By far the least common one, at least in my experience, is Guidelines A: Allegiance to the United States.

That's because to fall under Guideline A, you can't just prefer another country over the US or be ...
subject to that country's influence, you have to actually do something hostile to the United States, like try to overthrow it by violence or advocate violence against it. I've never personally seen a Guideline A case & most clearance lawyers have probably only seen 1-2 max ...
in their careers; they're that rare.

Remember how broad I said the guidelines are? You can conceivably be thrown under A by being a member of a group that has participated in such activities.

The 1/6 riot featured pretty much every major alt-right group in existence. Which ...
means that it would be entirely reasonable for anyone belonging to such a group to be denied a clearance under Guideline A, whether they were in DC or not, simply because the group they're a member of was a part of it.

There's a recognized problem with members of the law ...
enforcement, military, & intelligence communities being affiliated with such groups. Until then, this was tolerated, likely because at least they hadn't tried to overthrow the government.
My prediction is, we're going to see a lot more Guideline A cases in the next couple of years. Probably more cases in 2021-22 than in the previous 20 years put together.

I'm actually ok with that.
Corollary: People with clearances have reporting requirements for when they do something which would raise an issue OR SEE SOMEONE ELSE WITH A CLEARANCE DOING SO. Not reporting can cost you your clearance.

In other words, if you know someone is one of these folks & you don't ...
tell Security, you might lose your clearance as a result of your silence. Snitches might get stitches, but confidantes don't get clearances.
Want a taste of how agencies view reporting requirements? Watch this epic tour de force of counterintelligence panic propaganda. https://t.co/Toutwg9UFq

I have numerous concerns with this & make my students watch it for discussion purposes, but the bottom line today is, ...
this is how the folks in the Security Office expect you to behave if you have a clearance.

More from For later read

Nice to discover Judea Pearl ask a fundamental question. What's an 'inductive bias'?


I crucial step on the road towards AGI is a richer vocabulary for reasoning about inductive biases.

explores the apparent impedance mismatch between inductive biases and causal reasoning. But isn't the logical thinking required for good causal reasoning also not an inductive bias?

An inductive bias is what C.S. Peirce would call a habit. It is a habit of reasoning. Logical thinking is like a Platonic solid of the many kinds of heuristics that are discovered.

The kind of black and white logic that is found in digital computers is critical to the emergence of today's information economy. This of course is not the same logic that drives the general intelligence that lives in the same economy.

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The chorus of this song uses the shlokas taken from Sundarkand of Ramayana.

It is a series of Sanskrit shlokas recited by Jambavant to Hanuman to remind Him of his true potential.

1. धीवर प्रसार शौर्य भरा: The brave persevering one, your bravery is taking you forward.


2. उतसारा स्थिरा घम्भीरा: The one who is leaping higher and higher, who is firm and stable and seriously determined.

3. ुग्रामा असामा शौर्या भावा: He is strong, and without an equal in the ability/mentality to fight

4. रौद्रमा नवा भीतिर्मा: His anger will cause new fears in his foes.

5.विजिटरीपुरु धीरधारा, कलोथरा शिखरा कठोरा: This is a complex expression seen only in Indic language poetry. The poet is stating that Shivudu is experiencing the intensity of climbing a tough peak, and likening

it to the feeling in a hard battle, when you see your enemy defeated, and blood flowing like a rivulet. This is classical Veera rasa.

6.कुलकु थारथिलीथा गम्भीरा, जाया विराट वीरा: His rough body itself is like a sharp weapon (because he is determined to win). Hail this complete

hero of the world.

7.विलयगागनथाला भिकारा, गरज्जद्धरा गारा: The hero is destructive in the air/sky as well (because he can leap at an enemy from a great height). He can defeat the enemy (simply) with his fearsome roar of war.