Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
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User ID: 863
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
Why wouldn't this be an obvious case of dogwhistling hate speech, like posting "It's OK to be white" posters for example? Surely some people actually just believe it's OK to be white?
I am not sure there's a principled reason they're different. Probably it is down to administrators priors about intention density in those using the phrase.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
I think one confounding factor is what kind of language counts as advocating genocide against Jews. Probably the most prominent example of this recently has been the phrase "from the river to the sea." Some people surely use it with a genocidal intent (there should be no Jews between the "river and the sea") while other use it as an expression of solidarity between the West Bank, Gaza, and non-Jews in Israel more generally. If I use the phrase am I advocating genocide against Jews in Israel? It probably depends on the context! I suspect the presidents here correctly deduced how their answers might be weaponized.
I think the whole discourse has been poisoned by Zionists who regard criticism of Israel as a state as criticism of Jews as a people, which is an absurd notion.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
I think most people take a Person B position towards at least some things. If only for practical reasons. The problem, building on @KnotGodel's post below, is that this is too high a level of abstraction to be useful. Are Person B positions always correct? Plainly not. Are Person B positions never correct? Also no. All the interesting discussion is in the contexts in which we should be more like Person A or more like Person B.
Coming back around to the content warnings discussion I think there are plenty of interesting discussions to have here. Should university professors include content warnings on their syllabi? In their lectures? Should movies have these warnings before they start? Games? If we think in various situations these content warnings should exist then what do we do when people don't provide them? These are all interesting questions. Much more so than trying to reason in the abstract about whether we ever ought to alter our behavior to accommodate others.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
I mean, that's because their ultimate ruling was that Google would win even if the API definitions were copyrightable. That seems quite different to what Unikowksy is proposing here.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
This was my first intuition as well. The video doesn't really show an angle behind the individuals with their hands behind their backs. Handcuffed seemed like an obvious conclusion.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
I liked the post but I think it's unlikely the court does anything like this, for both pragmatic and legitimacy reasons. Unikowsky is basically asking the court to rule "the Moores win this case but the inevitable subchapter F litigants lose thier cases. Not for any reason we can articulate but because we think it's the right outcome." An important part of the law and adjudication is predictability. Scotus doesn't just announce rules for determining outcomes because they love rules. They do it so the government and citizens have some notice about what laws the government may pass or when citizens rights may be violated.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
I do not have much to contribute analytically but this seems tailor made to cater to the kind of financial engineering in ESG investing that I often read about in Money Stuff. Maybe the SEC creating some standards here will cut down on some of the shadiness (heh) in the industry? Also seems like it's of a piece with the trend towards the financialization of everything. On the one hand it's good to be able to have some sense of the value of things for the purpose of analyzing tradeoffs. On the other hand there's a lot of power (and controversy) in doing that valuation.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
Oral argument transcript here if anyone else wants to read it.
After perusing it myself I think the court is likely to rule for the government. Either 5-4 (with Kavanaugh and Barrett joining the liberals) or 6-3 (if Roberts joins as well). I think the holding will be on narrow grounds. Probably taking the governments line that the income was realized by someone (the foreign corporation) and congress is merely attributing that income to the shareholders (as other pass-thru tax code provisions do). This sidesteps the more general hypothetical about taxing unrealized gains and avoids upending confidence in a bunch of existing tax code provisions.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
I might need some more specification on what "identifies as" means but probably yes. I do not conceive of changing ones sex in the relevant way in purely physiological terms, maybe it would have been clearer if I had said gender.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
I think of someone as being trans insofar as they have the requisite desire to change their sex. I'm agnostic on the ultimate source of that desire.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
I do agree that not having gender dysphoria is better than having gender dysphoria but I don't think having gender dysphoria is a prerequisite for being trans. Gender dysphoria is a common reason people are trans but probably not the only one.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
Frankly, I don't put a lot of stock in historical people's moral intuitions given the conclusions those intuitions led to.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
The comparison with the deaf community is interesting because my impression is there are absolutely members who would object to government interventions to reduce the number of deaf people, depending on the means. Maybe I ought to caveat my statement similarly.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
Sure. There is a theoretical worst case where sex work becomes normalized to the extent the government compels it like normal work, in the absence of other reform removing various compulsory labor measures. Practically we are so far from that world I am not sure it's worth worrying about. My expectation is that even if sex work were more normalized various carve outs to these kinds of compulsive programs would become commonplace.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
Fortunately I can care about, and make progress on, multiple political issues at the same time.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
If sex work is Real Work™, then the government can use all of its regular powers to compel you to do it.
What if I reject the premise that government can compel people to work? I think both military conscription and prison slavery are morally unjustifiable.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
Surely there is a potential for burning credibility depending on how directly one tells a lie.
The best kinds of public reasons are ones where you don't lie about factual information but rather construct an argument that follows from your interlocutors or audiences ethical premises to the conclusions you prefer. I think the potential for backlash in this kind of situation is low. You (hopefully) really did convince them their beliefs entailed your preferred outcome, even if it's not the argument that convinces you personally.
Being deceptive about facts is trickier. On the one hand you can blatantly and obviously lie and then you probably do not even succeed at getting them to endorse your preferred conclusion. On the other hand maybe you overstate certainty in some facts you are less certain about. The potential for backlash on credibility depends on how conclusively the falseness of the factual premise can be demonstrated. If I wanted to salvage the argument above, for example, I might argue that one's inability to change one's orientation or gender identity by will is sufficiently similar to race or sex that they ought be treated similarly, even if they are not as literally biologically unchangeable.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
I do not think anyone engaging in adult consensual incest does anything ethically objectionable, if that's what you're asking.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
I think sex work is work but would not have sex with a family member just because they were in the sex work business.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
This relies on an assumption of legitimacy of my intuitions which, in this context, I may reject. Might I intuit that it is gross that someone I know is hiring a family member as a sex worker? Should I feel that way? I may feel a "yes" to the first question and a "no" to the second. There are many things in life I have intuited as bad that I have later changed my mind about due to reason and reflection. Maybe this should be such a case!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
I think there are many industries my family members might engage in where I would not become a client. I don't subscribe to anyone's OnlyFans currently, for example. Am I obliged to subscribe to a family member's OnlyFans so I think it's "real work"? More generally, what if they start a company in an industry I don't ordinarily patronize? We all use bakeries, but we may not all use whatever industry our family members start their own business in.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
I keep meaning to make a post about the dichotomy between what I think of as "private reasons" (the reasons that convince some individual of some position) and "public reasons" (the reasons that might convince some group of some position) but this post will have to do for now.
For my part: I am probably about as SJW/Woke/whatever as they come in regards to LGBT issues in both a public policy and cultural norm sense. Separately I think it is exceedingly unlikely that either gender identity or sexual orientation are fixed from birth and have no connection to cultural factors. For clarity's sake I don't believe LGBT people can will themselves otherwise any more than I think non-LGBT people can will themselves LGBT but I do think there are cultural factors that influence where on that spectrum one ends up. I suspect where I depart from many people who believe the prior statements is that I don't think of people being trans or gay as being strictly worse than cis or straight such that society or government ought to be oriented around the minimization of such people. That is, my "private reasons" for supporting LGBT people legally and socially aren't conditional on the immutability of the traits in question, from a cultural context perspective.
I suspect the reason immutability features so heavily in modern discourse is because it was a rhetorical convenience in the United States. At the time the gay rights movement was gaining steam the United States was in the midst of several other civil rights movements more closely tied to immutable characteristics (black americans and feminism). I believe there was a widespread perception (probably correct) that those traits apparent immutability was key to the eventual success of their movements. Tying LGBT rights to a similar notion of immutability was, therefore, a convenient rhetorical move (a compelling "public reason") to get people on board with LGBT rights in a similar way.
I think this dichotomy between "public" and "private" reasons explains a great deal of perceived motte-and-bailey/hypocrisy in our political discourse.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
"If you wouldn't have sex with a family member you don't think sex work is work" is one hell of a take.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
Lots of people, younger people especially I think, rely on their phones for many things. Navigating unfamiliar areas. Coordinating logistics with others. Phones are powerful tools of convenience. If you're young enough you might just not know another way to do a lot of these things. I had a bit of a shock with this recently when I left my phone in a friend's car on accident and so was without it for a few days.
Leaving your phone off is probably its own signal. If your parents are the type to track you with it what are they going to think when they see your location isn't in the app? Leaving it somewhere that would not arouse suspicion presents its own set of logistical hurdles.
Let me be clear. I am happy to condemn both the atrocity Hamas committed on Oct 7th and the atrocities Israel has committed in response. I have no particular issue with people of Jewish ethnicity nor practitioners of Judaism as a religion. I am opposed to the existence of ethnostates everywhere and all the time. Insofar as the existence of Israel is predicated on the supremacy of Jewish individuals over non-Jewish individuals I am opposed to its continued existence in that form. I think ethnostates are illegitimate everywhere and always.
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