Mewis
5mo ago
I remember reading some accounts that Bill Clinton had an uncanny level of personal charisma that people who hadn't met him just didn't get. I think it's probably a more general quality of today's rigorously competitive political world. Maybe that's why politicians so often come off as incompetent or fake, that they're selected so strongly for personal charisma it leaves no room for other qualities.
Mewis
4mo ago
Other way around, surely?
The fact is, nobody is actually sitting down and crunching the numbers on utils. When it comes to actually making decisions in the real world and not in thought experiments, everyone resorts to the same expedients and heuristics - usually, some combination of virtue ethics and deontology. Don't commit murders, don't be dishonest.
Mewis
9mo ago
Do you have anything to offer in support of this account of human interaction or did you just imagine it?
Mewis
4mo ago
It's my own impression that the fiercest advocates for generous asylum policies or even open borders aren't deontologists (who generally have a lot of respect for rules around borders and citizenship), but utilitarians (who are willing to compromise because they value the utility of asylum seekers over maintaining strong borders). It's also my own impression that utilitarians are more vulnerable to charisma and arguments - theoretically a utilitarian is capable of endorsing any behavior if they're persuaded of it's utility, whereas it's much harder to argue a deontologist into bending his own rules.
Mewis
1yr ago
If your friends weaponize their own discomfort and suffering to control your behaviour, they are being manipulative. Under any other circumstance, 'you must agree with me or you hate me and want me to die' is emotional manipulation, plain and simple.
Mewis
1yr ago
The massive growth of the state in the 20th century. For someone living in say, 1850s Russia, it's not hard to see the appeal of anarchism. States mostly did not organize or fund day-to-day services that affected the lives of average citizens. Mostly, taxes were spent on war and extravagances for the royal family, and justice mostly served to defend the rents and property of the aristocracy. Only a small proportion went into charitable institutions which concerned themselves with providing healthcare and education. The government payroll was itself, miniscule - world empires were run by small handfuls of disinterested bureaucrats.
In some cases, increased state provision of services (and salaries) was explicitly done in order to counter anarchism. However, in all cases, it soon became unimaginable to do away with the state entirely. In addition, it made a tempting prize. No longer foes of the state, leftists seek to control it and use it to advance their ideology. Of course, some leftists do occasionally succumb and remember that they're not supposed to like the FBI. But basically every structural trend pushes them further into the arms of the state. There is no other path to power, and for leftists in the PMC, it is as difficult as falling out of bed.
Mewis
1yr ago
These rules are loosely enforced today, but that's part of the slippery slope. It always starts with high minded, vague, non-binding commitments. Then you write some rules and some policies, but of course you're not going to be strict about them. Then when those rules actually get enforced, you can't complain - after all that's always been the rule, and nobody is above the rules.
It's worth asking - when is the right time to make a fuss? When the rule is written, or when the rule is enforced?
Mewis
4mo ago
Yes, though many government departments and place names have been translated into Te Reo as well, with often the Te Reo name taking priority over the English one.
It seems like a pretty spectacularly bad policy, one seemly optimized for divisiveness.
Mewis
7mo ago
Elon really can't win, can he? If he geofences off Russian-controlled areas, he's accused of undermining offensive operations. If he doesn't, then he'd be accused of helping the Russian military.
Note the second paragraph appears to be written in a confusing way
Yes, it's on purpose. Likely, details are being left out to support the preferred narrative.
Mewis
10mo ago
This is a ridiculous stance to take, not really that far removed from 'you survived the last round, therefore you should continue to play Russian Roulette'. No less ridiculous because European governments went to unprecedented lengths to shield households from energy price increases, instead choosing to borrow money to subsidize energy imports and, when they weren't enough, putting the squeeze on heavy industry.
Second, renewable energy is beating new records by the day. In Northern Europe, electricity prices are bouncing around zero and occasionally dipping below the line into negative territory.
None of which matters - you need electricity to flow all the time. Of course electricity demand is low right now - it's 20 degrees outside and the sun doesn't set until nine pm. Renewables are nice to have to supplement the grid, but that's all they do. The fact is that the diminishing returns on building additional wind-solar capacity increase the more you have of it, because you're getting more energy on days like today (when you don't need it) and nearly nothing on days when you actually want it.
Mewis
1yr ago
Bugs cannot be engineered to be bigger than they currently are because their internal biology is designed for being small. They don't have lungs, or blood as we think of it, or complex nervous systems, or a hundred other things necessary for larger animals. In addition, part of what makes insects an 'efficient' food source is precisely their small size and short life cycle.
I don't see the bother even to try. When there are countless mammals and birds and fish around which are already delicious and great food, why choose to try and make perfect future food out of bugs? Why not start with something that is already great and just needs some tweaking?
Mewis
11mo ago
As Hoffmeister noted in his post on the topic, if Penny has posts like many on here indicating that he thinks the homeless are subhuman scum that need to be cleared off the streets, we will know soon. This is quite likely where the story will hinge. Prosecution will aim to portray him as "looking for a fight" and looking for an excuse to hurt or kill someone.
Stuff like this generally isn't admissable as evidence (it wasn't in the Rittenhouse case, for instance). The fact is that idle words made weeks or months in advance are not the same as intent or premeditation.
Mewis
1yr ago
If Joe Biden had been in a coma for fourteen years, nothing would be different. He didn't evolve to his current position after reading philosophy for the past fourteen years, his position changed in perfect lockstep with everyone else on the left - one's beliefs are not arrived at through careful thought, but picked up by osmosis from one's peers.
Mewis
3mo ago
Counterpoint: this same economic malaise is very common among developed Western countries. It is the US that is the outlier here in managing to remain economically buoyant over the past 15 years while peer economies like the UK and Canada have muddled through.
Mewis
4mo ago
That's highly dependent on how people interpreted it. A fair few people castrated themselves, and more went into the desert to pursue lives of extreme asceticism. Remember that early Christians were like, a millenarian cult that believed that Jesus would be back in a few decades... Then a few centuries...
Mewis
30d ago
One thing that stuck out to me in Dune was the chasteness. The Harkonnens are sex weirdo pederasts in the books, an element that is totally excised in the movies, even though they're delightfully weird in other ways.
Mewis
4mo ago
That seems like rather a crude reduction. Yes, I would think that young people fighting in war do think about their future... Including the possibility of marriage and family.
Mewis
8mo ago
That's an extremely low bar, because nearly any human activity can be part of a plan to commit a crime. Visit a bank - maybe that's evidence you're casing it and plan to rob it. Go to work - maybe you're planning to sell drugs to someone you know at work. Buy a 2l soda bottle - maybe you're planning to turn it into a illegal silencer. Given the correct context, basically anything can be evidence of acts that haven't occurred yet. Maybe this is by design - certainly it would make the job of police and prosecutors a lot easier if they can convict based on a Minority Report-style supposition about what people 'intended' to do.
Mewis
1mo ago
PEPFAR is estimated to have saved over twenty million lives, if that's worth anything to you.
Mewis
7mo ago
I don't see what kind of mindset this reveals at all. If you were to say, witness a superior abusing their position to sexually exploit others at your workplace, are you supposed to just let it go, and not let it affect any of your beliefs around sexism or corporate culture or power, because to do so would be petty and grudgeful and Not A Good Look, like seriously my dude, Yikes?
Mewis
7mo ago
You should have doubted the original story from the beginning. The fact is that it's easy for trained, intelligent journalists to create 'misunderstandings' without actually lying. Musk was never accused directly of sabotaging the Ukrainians - he was just 'appearing to'. His presumed sympathy to Russia becomes an assumed fact. The actual explanation is omitted.
Journalists are not idiots. They write exactly what they want to. Take the phrase 'Musk seemed to embrace COVID denialism'. Elon Musk is one of the most famous and public figures in the world who makes a habit of running his mouth on Twitter, but this trained journalist apparently can't figure out whether he believes that COVID exists.
Mewis
30d ago
This is what they call 'four quadrant" films, films that penetrate all major demographics. Marvel has it pretty spot on with no sex and minimal romance, and you can't argue with money.
Mewis
4mo ago
Because it's far more appealing to join the western sphere of influence than to remain in Russia's. NATO and the EU offer Ukraine a powerful security guarantee, prosperity and liberty.
Mewis
9mo ago
I mean, that depends on the meaning of 'coming for the children'. Trans activists see themselves as benevolent saviors, swooping in to protect innocent trans children from being tortured into suicide by evil Christians. In that sense, of course they would not be embarrassed about it. But you probably don't mean it in the same way.
If all states adopt values antithetical to your own, I think it's a reasonable response to abandon loyalty to nation-states and instead prioritize other loyalties - and if the Chinese give you enough money to set your family up in comfort and style, you might choose them over the nation that discarded you.
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