JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
It's not about lying. People routinely interpret events the way that fits their convictions, and routinely dismiss things that may disagree with those convictions, often even without realizing it. That's why, for example, peer review in science exist. If somebody does some research which they believe is true, but then some reviewers point out the original researcher omitted or misinterpreted some facts and the conclusions are unwarranted, would it be correct to call the original researcher a "devious liar"? I don't think so.
I think we can safely assume Saul genuinely believed all he was preaching, and was convinced his Christianity is exactly what Jesus would want to happen. I can not know that for a fact, but I have no objection to assuming it. That does not contradict the fact that what we know as "Christianity" has been largely built by him and the veracity of all the claims ultimately goes back to him.
As a martial arts practitioner, I often encounter people claiming that they continue certain traditions - often claiming the same tradition coming from the same sources. Nevertheless, many of those people adopt radically different approaches and practices. How can that be? Are some of them - or all of them - liars to claim the traditional roots? I do not think so. Traditions are complex and changing with time, and different people take different things and develop them in different directions. Some directions flourish, some wither. Same tradition can be developed and embodied in many different ways.
Saul created his own embodiment of what he saw as a (quite young by then) Christian tradition, and that's largely what we know as "Christianity" now. For better or worse, there's no other. Even if there were, I think it'd be quite hard to claim one of them is more "true" than the other. But having none - at least none that is not traced back to Saul - what do we have to stand on comparing to Saul's Christianity?
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
What do you think the early Christians were even doing, if they didn't think there was a resurrection?
The same thing other Jewish sects were doing, following their Rabbi. Surely, the earliest Christians - who probably haven't called themselves "Christians" yet - couldn't think there was a resurrection since Jesus was alive then. After his execution, the narrative of Jesus' resurrection (which is completely different from Jesus being Jewish Messiah who is not supposed to neither die - either for anybody's sins or at all - nor be resurrected) appeared and Saul of Tarsus was one of the people who endorsed and promoted it. Before those events, there could be early followers of Jesus, but there couldn't really be "Christianity" as we understand it now.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
Do you really think that those three figures were gathering knowledge in the same way?
No, probably not - each religion's foundation it a rare and complex event which surely has its own peculiarities. My point is rather that the founding of the religion traceable to a person is not some exceptional event - it happens and it's possible. My other point is that foundational concepts of Christianity - such as the sacrifice and the resurrection of Jesus - originated with Saul and thus essentially he couldn't "corrupt" the "true" Christianity any more than Homer could "corrupt" the "true" Iliad.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
Interestingly, Southwest has the best default service package now - free checked bags, no change fees, etc.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
Where Muhammad got Islam from? Where Siddhartha Gautama got Buddhism from?
Saul confirmed with them that what he was saying was accurate
I'm sure he did, otherwise we'd know nothing about him but instead would know about some other guy that did.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
I literally saw people argue in 2024 that since Republicans in 2020 didn't have "convincing evidence" of Biden's senility, the current revelations is just a blind luck and not because of Republicans possessing any kind of insight. Of course, by "convincing evidence" they mean the evidence that would convince them, which was impossible. These people are not going to admit they were wrong (or lying).
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
From what I understand, Christianity - at least what we understand now by it - more or less is what Saul created. It's like saying Homer has "cucked" the Iliad - if there were some version of Iliad that is so much better than Homer's and more "true", we certainly don't have it, so what choice is there?
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
Yeah, I don't think US has a lot of those nickel-and-dime airlines - United has some attempt at it with "Basic" but that has many exceptions.
JarJarJedi
7mo ago
Other travelers fussing with their ridiculous oversized carry-on is one of the most infuriating parts of air travel.
While the size of the allowed carry-on is officially limited (and, to be fun, different for different airlines, in theory), in all my years of travel I have never seen anybody actually check that. If it fits the compartment (however much force and effort and time it'd require to make it), it's ok. Yes, delaying boarding to stuff your oversized luggage into the undersized storage compartment is an asshole move, but I have never seen anybody deboarded or even forced to check in the bag (unless it completely failed to fit) for that.
The whole concept of carry-on should be abolished.
With properly run airports, I'd go for it. In some airports, my bag got to the baggage claim the same minute I got there, so why would I object to that? My only reservations are: some airports are shit at this (among other things) and you have to wait for like 20 minutes for your bag, and b) United breaks guitars. And suitcases - it broke one of mine, and managed to put a huge dent of the size of my fist in the corner of the other (which is supposed to be the most resilient place of the whole structure, so maybe they were just flexing). But my local airport is small, so I can check in the bag literally in minutes. In some mega-airport it can turn into a hour-long adventure, so I can get why people don't want to deal with it.
Also, you are not allowed to put laptops there, but that's no big deal since I have a separate under-the-seat backpack for that.
JarJarJedi
7mo ago
Typical mistake. To show the correlation, you would have to demonstrate that accidents do not happen when US is not involved in a battle.
JarJarJedi
7mo ago
As I understand, shooting F-18 out of the sky requires either unbelievably good luck, or advanced anti-air equipment which if Houthis had it should be the first thing that gets destroyed (actually months ago when the whole thing started). And it should be quite hard to shoot down something like F-18 with lighter systems or MANPADs. So I'd rather believe somebody screwed up and accidentally turned their air defenses on a departing aircraft, which would be extremely vulnerable in such scenario.
JarJarJedi
7mo ago
Training/deployment accidents happen absolutely regularly. Especially in any active army - US, Israel, etc. If you pay attention to it, there are a lot of them. Attributing them to "casualty laundering" would require some very strong proof - or at least evidence of a large statistical anomaly. Otherwise it just pointless posturing pretending to know more than the rubes, while not actually knowing anything.
JarJarJedi
7mo ago
I've been told some home improvements require permits, and you must pass the inspection when it's done, and I suspect the inspector would probably be inclined to double and triple check stuff if they learn that the project is DYI and no licensed professional has been involved. So unless the matter is trivial, you'd still have to learn the codes and the regulations to the point that passing the exam may not be that big of a deal.
JarJarJedi
7mo ago
is “global GDP” a useful measure of human productivity, or of anything at all for that matter?
Productivity probably not, it can be useful as very rought measure of how much economic activity is going on. Within understanding that "very rough" means if I sell you a pumpkin for $2M and you sell it to me back for the same, we generate $4M of "economic activity" without actually doing anything useful. But since most people actually do not carry about messing with econometrists, the measurement still somehow may reflect the roughly correct picture. Of course, other people - like national-level politicians - may engage on purpose in messing with the measurements, e.g. to make themselves look good for the elections, and then national-level measurements become much less useful. But since they probably won't do it everywhere all at once, there still some value remaining.
What I am trying to say is that your critique looks correct and appropriate, so one probably shouldn't put too much value into those but still there may be some value there - i.e. if there's 10x "GDP" stuff happening at time T1 compared to point of time T0, then without going too much into detail, we could claim there's significantly more economic activity at T1 than at T0, though we should be very carefully about taking "10" as an actual mathematic number and not a somewhat symbolic expression of "more things".
JarJarJedi
7mo ago
When I am flying, if I check in the bag, they weigh it and if it's over some specific number (50lbs? Don't remember, but it doesn't matter) they demand I pay ridiculous money for it being overly massive. Unless I, right in front on them, take some stuff out of the checked bag and put it into my carry-on bag, which they know I will be taking with me onboard. Last time we did this dance over 2 pounds. How does it make any sense? I understand carrying more mass takes more fuel, but putting it into my carry-on does not change the mass, and I could be traveling with a box full of lead bricks and nobody would tell me a word if it fits the carry-on size. One could suppose maybe the handlers are not allowed to lift over 50lbs - but if I pay the ridiculous payment, they suddenly become allowed?
I'm not even saying they charge the same for 2 yo kid and for 400lbs landwhale, so clearly the mass is not that important here. Why are they doing it? Just to piss me off because airlines secretly agreed their goal must be to maximize the amount of frustration in the Universe? Or there's some logical reason for it?
I was going to present some evidence about AP, but sadly I instead saw this:
https://apnews.com/article/germany-magdeburg-christmas-market-6b2bcf305eb9f60f8d7273949dbba4c8
Just in case it changes later, the headline says: "At least 2 dead and 60 hurt after a car drives into a German Christmas market in a suspected attack". Yes, "a car drives". I think we can close the case about "little to no spin" now.
P.S. before you say "maybe they didn't know who was driving it", a) that's not a good excuse and b) they did - it's a 50 year old man from Saudi Arabia. He's in police custody.
JarJarJedi
7mo ago
These publications are generally reliable.
I do not know about rest of the world, but as it concerns Middle East, and especially Israel, BBC and Aljazeera is about as reliable as Keith Olbermann is reliable when talking about Trump.
Same goes for Reuters and AP for anything that relates in any way to US partisan politics or culture wars topics. Maybe they are super-reliable in other dimensions, but I suspect Gell-Mann amnesia may be playing a role there.
JarJarJedi
7mo ago
Uzbek man kills
I would like to urge a healthy dose of skepticism towards taking the claims of Russian security services about who did it at face value. While it is very highly likely that Ukrainians organized the hit, and they may have used a local or hired asset to do it, Russian security services are known for a habit of rounding up a closest plausibly looking target (preferably somebody from migrant population having no support system to intervene on their behalf, like an Uzbek) and beating them up until they confess everything. The goal there is to "solve" the case as fast as possible, not to find a real culprit, and in general nobody cares too much whether this particular guy actually did it or not.
JarJarJedi
7mo ago
Was normal for me so far. I did get some light cold, but that often happens to me when I travel, and I have been traveling more than usual for the last couple of months. If anything, the last cold was lighter than I usually get. Haven't noticed also any inordinate amount of people being sick at work (I'm working in highly remote company so a person taking sick time off usually publishes a note on the common slack channel) though with a lot of people being out for holidays anyway it may be harder to notice. So another data point here towards null.
JarJarJedi
7mo ago
So what? What would it accomplish?
Hopefully, reframing the conversation from "greedy capitalists kill grandmas" to "healthcare policy matters and we must pay a lot of attention to it and demand much better from The Experts (TM) and relentlessly shame those who dared to lie to us and lead us to the mess we have, and demand from the future ones to be candid with us and provide solutions that look better".
that would still be true
I hope that if by some miracle we found in ourselves, as a society, a way to move conversation from murdering CEOs to discussing policies, then we could also find a way to improve those policies or at least have people en masse understand what those policies are and what are their consequences, so it won't be as easy for the next Gruber to deceive people. I don't exactly expect it, but I hope.
And Congress, like most institutions these days, cannot be fixed, only replaced.
Replaced with what? How? The founders of the current government have done a lot of work to lay the philosophical and practical foundations of the system now in place. It is true that it has diverged from the original intent significantly, but at least if we proclaim as a goal to return to that, we may rely on that work to understand what has to be done and why. What is your foundations and where you want to move, beyond destroying the US government?
JarJarJedi
7mo ago
There's a way to do it, it's the sausage principle - don't look how the sausage is made. You redefine "cheap" as "no payment at the point of consumption" (or a nominal payment) and you hide the real costs. The best way to do it is through taxation since nobody reads the budgets and nobody is able to figure out how much exactly money is spent on what, and even if somebody does that, it's no longer your money, it's some abstract tax money and you can always demand that the billionaires pay more - it has nothing to do with you. If for some reason the obvious way is not available, you can at least separate payment and consumption by calling a pre-paid subscription scheme "insurance" and by deducting the payments in a way that you never get to touch the money before payment (e.g. payroll deductions) so you don't feel it's your money - it's just your employer provides you the service for free, how generous of them.
You can redefine "fast" as "you can talk very fast to somebody who is in no position to help you". Many healthcare organizations do that - e.g. to get an appointment to a specialist, you need a "referral" from your primary care doctor, and maybe the primary doctor will see you next week, and then the appointment to the real specialist will be in another couple of weeks, and so you waited almost a month or so without even noticing it. And there's no guarantee that specialist can do anything for you either - maybe they will refer you to some tests, then to another one and so on - and you can spend many months in this without even getting as much as initial diagnosis. Of course, added value of this is each interaction must be paid for (sometimes several times over - you can't just put lab technician pay, lab materials pay and visit pay on the same bill, we're not some kind of savages!) but "insurance" covers it so you never actually know how much does it cost, not that it'd help you since you can't elect to use another lab technician anyway if you thought this one charges too much, and in fact nobody is going to tell you how much it costs anyway - because that's exactly what was asked for from the start.
And there's no "rationing" - it's just the doctors are very busy. And for some reason there's never enough of them. As for the quality, if you have to wait several months to see a specialist, and there's no other one in 500-mile radius of you, how much are you in the mood to refuse to visit one because you think they're not world-class enough? How do you even know what's world-class - how many ENT specialists or podiatrists have you seen in other countries to be able to know the difference? It certainly costs a lot, and it seems to be a lot of demand, so it must be very good, right?
So the system is actually going out of it's way to provide exactly what is being asked for. It's just since, as you noted, it's not possible to actually provide it, it works very hard at making it appear as if it's doing it. Because that's exactly what we're pushing it to do. And it is delivering that to us as much as it can. People think it's a hostile system - but very often it's not, it's just reacts to our demands of it within the limitations placed on t and tries to deliver what it can.
JarJarJedi
7mo ago
The problem with green investment seems to me to be that is it is so polluted with political money that you can't use market as a signal for anything. I.e. everybody invests in, I don't know, solar panels (just random example) and then it turns out the model is not viable, and all the political money is burned, which nobody (among politicians) cares about, and your money is burned with them. Sure, if US were a dictatorship like China, you could follow the political money just relying on inertia, but in the US the agenda could change every 4 years, and some investments may be so stupid that they don't survive even if the government wants them to. There will be viable projects too, the question is how you separate viable from unviable ones in a distorted market?
JarJarJedi
7mo ago
when fighting pollution is more doable, easier to gather support for, actually fosters innovation and chances of reducing it
Real pollution-fighting activists exist. But they are usually much less visible than the climate gasbags. And, gives as fighting pollution is pretty much normalized now, it doesn't gain more attention than any other case of malfeasance like fraud or theft. I mean, you need to do a real lot of it to be noticed, and usually it will be dealt with before it becomes big.
There also could be a possibility that having a big problem which is somebody else's fault but you can protest it and whine about it as much as you want, and blame literally everything on it - is actually much more attractive than solving small-scale, practical and solve-able problems? I mean, if you can just fix the emission of a local factory by upgrading its air filters and that's it - where's the moral superiority in that? Where's the damnation of soul-less capitalism? Where's the potential for annual lavish festivals where you can shmooze with Hollywood celebrities and vane billionaires? Most people want to be Warriors of Light, not utility inspectors.
JarJarJedi
7mo ago
I think it's hair-splitting. Yes, the empires evolved, but they always evolve. USA of 1776 is not the same as USA of 2024, and USA in 100 years will probably be different still (if it survives). But late empire Romans considered themselves the continuation of the tradition and culture and the nation of the early Romans (even though their politics was probably very different than one 500 years ago). I would grant Byzantium it probably different empire from Rome (even though it kinda spinned off it) but I think splitting the Roman or Bizantine history further does not make too much sense when we talk about "how long the empire survives before it falls". Sure, moving from democracy to the emperors' monarchy was a fall of democracy in Rome - but I don't think it was a fall of Rome as the empire. Otherwise we'd have to say things like "Rome fell and became Rome" which IMHO is just weird.
Yes, they have been denied emergency landing in every Russian airport.
The reason why it has been shot is likely that when it was about to land in Grozny, there was an attack by Ukrainian drones (not on the civilian airport itself, AFAIK, and Ukrainians probably had no idea what if anything was flying there). Since the previous drone attack on Grozny, which infuriated Russians and Chechens beyond description, they installed a number of air-defense systems, and they were running them in the "shoot everything in sight" mode once they learned about the new attack. Of course, they neglected to warn the civilian dispatchers in advance, because nobody bothered to think about it, so when the plane has been about to land, there was a kind of "oh shit!" moment, and they denied landing to it at the last moment, but it was too late, the plane already have been hit. Since it was an anti-drone missile, it did not destroy the plane, so if they shot the system down and allowed it to land right there it likely would have survived. But they did not, since nobody ordered that. And then they switched into the common Russian coverup mode, in which dropping the plane into the sea and claiming it probably hit some birds or Ukrainian drone destroyed it would be the best solution. Unfortunately, the pilots managed to land it - so there's an proof it has been hit by a Russian missile.
I wonder what Azerbaijanis are going to do about it? Are they going to just say "shit happens" and let it go, or there would be some consequences to their relations with Russia?
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