distic
10mo ago
There is a problem with your claim. Game-theory was once the best argument in favor of individualism. Game theory predicted that communism would fail because of the incentives. If people had been ready to ignore their own interests for the greater good, then individualism would have had a harder time. And how do you justify the sacrifices for individualism, if you are individualistic? It seems to me it makes no sense.
I think it touches the core of the problem, the heart of the internal contradiction of the american patriotism (or any kind of disinterested attachment to individualism). On one side, there is the individualism that you have learnt to love, and on the other side the attachment that you feel for it; you feel it so strongly that you are ready to sacrifice yourself for it. The problem is that both are contradictory.
Game theory is individualistic (it assumes everyone follows his own interests), yet it predicts that individualism will sometime be sub-optimal. It's like saying that saving America requires more state intervention, but more state intervention will destroy what America stands for. If what I just said is true, then America (or the world individualist party if you prefer) is doomed.
distic
2mo ago
Your core point is not clear because it is an anti-analogy. Analogies are not helpful to begin with, but anti-analogies are even worse. It needs to be clarified, but let me help.
I agree that any citizen committed to democracy should make sure that the electoral process is fair. This means, above all, that the legal procedures in place have been respected, and also that nothing has occurred which cannot be codified but which seriously calls into question the sincerity of the ballot. I think you agree, but contradict me if you don't.
However, here's where it gets complicated: questioning the results (in bad faith) is also a way of trying to cheat. So a citizen committed to democracy should also view any accusations of fraud with circumspection.
He or she should therefore demand that anyone making such accusations provides, perhaps not evidence, but factual elements that lead him or her to believe that irregularities have been committed and that they are of such a nature as to call the results into question. Tell me where I'm wrong.
distic
10mo ago
A random person has not much power. But if the media were all agreeing about war, it's not because they are jewish, but because there was no market fir opposing war. The media could have opposed the war as much as they could, people would have looked at other media. They had as much appetite for anti war media as a AOC supporter for looking Tucker Carlson show. So after that blaming the media and the establishment is ridiculous. Just like it would be ridiculous for Bush to blame it on the people.
distic
5mo ago
A ceasefire would accomplish a lot. For example, you can move a patient from hospital A to hospital B without fearing for his life, and perhaps he needs to be there now. You can leave your house if you feel it is dangerous to stay there, without being shot.
Israel don't want a ceasefire because Israel has an army of reservists. Those reservists can't be used forever, it cannot last more than a few months.
Moreover, I wonder what you think can be achieved without a ceasefire. Assume Israel kills all Hamas members, there are still a huge number of people who have lost someone (a child, a parent, an aunt...) and who will hate Israel forever.
distic
6mo ago
Well, it wasn't clear from my comment but the brutality and the settlements are not necessary for Israel to exist, so they aren't justified at all. I mean, if you are searching for a peaceful solution and not to justify your own crimes.
distic
7mo ago
I'm not sure I understand. First message, you say that negociating power would be better for workers if there were less skilled workers and more factories and you give an example.
Then I proved the negociating power would not be better in this situation. Nothing about what it should or should not be there.
Then, you reply that it's true, but there are better things to do than to protect unions in this situation.
To that I reply that you might be right, but it has nothing to do with my concern that the first message I replied to was based on a false hypothesis.
Now you tell me that it's about the negociating power as it is, and I almost agree: it's about the negociating power as it would be, if we changed the situation. But you still did not answer my concern?
distic
7mo ago
I agree, it would not be an economical problem. However it seems to me it is a problem with your argument: the negociating power of the workers has not increased because there is no need for them.
distic
7mo ago
When did I say I have a better theory? I just said one day it might be replaced by something else.
distic
10mo ago
Then you have to explain why it fails sometimes, eg Vietnam and pentagon papers
distic
10mo ago
Americans were wildly misled about the situation, for example, lots of them thought that Saddam was connected with 9/11. Taking down Iraq was strategic goal of Israel.
It seems to me that people that are so easily mislead should take part in no decision at all. As I said somewhere else, being dumb is no excuse.
distic
10mo ago
It's not a democracy/dictatorship question. It's about imperialistic leaders that only respect strength. They see any concession as a sign of weakness. There are leaders like that in democracies too, even though it's rarer and they are less dangerous because their powers are limited.
distic
10mo ago
US foreign policy is somewhere between loosely controlled by elections (Democrats and Republicans differed in the 2010s over our our approach to Iran, for example.) and not at all.
Sure, because Americans do not care. If it did matter to them, it would be controlled by elections. But in this particular case it somewhat mattered to them, yet they agreed with the government.
distic
1mo ago
I think it goes against the common morality because:
(1) Old people aren't supposed to need as much money as their children, they typically don't need to pay their mortgage anymore and don't have children to take care of. A couple of pensioners with 80k$/year is a lot richer than a couple of middle age parents with the same revenue.
(2) When the parents die their money will typically be split evenly and it means that the richest sibling is paying for the others
(3) It's not easy to know what share of the success of the child is a result of the parents' labor and what is the result of the child's own merit. If the children owe something to their parents, it is probably proportional to their average income (because the parents' labor should have been shared evenly among the children and thus any variation between them is supposed to depend only on the individual labor of each child)
distic
2mo ago
He lived for 41 years and was probably a drug addict for 10 years at least, so the probability that he dies the same week as Navalny is not higher than 1/500. Obviously you would need to count all drug addicts that could have died at the same time and perhaps there are more than 500, but I doubt it.
I admit the elections thing are just a hypothesis. However when three people opposing Putin die the same week, at least one of them is mudered and you can't get the body of the most famous, my basic assumption is that the three of them were actually murdered.
distic
2mo ago
Among those people who are projected to die, how many of them are not even in their fifties? Do you really believe the helicopter pilot wasn't murdered?
I can get that you believe it's independant from navalny's death, even if it seems unlikely to me, but to assume that he is just one of those people who would have died anyway is just ridiculous. If I want to be as sacarastic as you I can ask if you think that Prigozhin was also just some unfortunate accident? I mean there are quite a few plane accidents, so it's that impossible, I suppose
distic
2mo ago
I think we won't be able to agree but it's still quite weird that 3 people opposed to Putin in a way or another die within a week... what's the probability that it happens at random?
Why not them?
I guess he cannot just choose to kill anyone, there are practical limits. They must have searched for the pilot since he defected.
distic
2mo ago
Yes he was a drug addict but he had been for years and he dies the same day as Navalny.
And now a pilot who defected to Ukraine and lived in Spain...
distic
5mo ago
Ok I didn't remember it correctly. I think economical consequences (losing money or things) are a special kind of social consequences, at least in a poll where you can't have infinitely many options
distic
5mo ago
The first example falls in the case of fearing sexually transmitted diseases. I'm not sure Ebola is officially one of them but in practice it is.
Badger games fall in the case of unwanted social consequences.
So it seems to me you don't need another case. But perhaps I'm missing something
distic
6mo ago
I don't know what they planned but remember that Hamas has a lot of hostages. They will probably do something spectacular but useless, unless they want to sacrifice the lives of the hostages which I doubt.
distic
6mo ago
It wasn't really a suicide mission for everyone, as they took so much hostages.
distic
7mo ago
The Musk example is bad, because Musk is more than thousand times richer than a subsaharan african, children cannot choose their parents, and Musk does not have 1000 children so it's particularly meaningless. And no, it's not better to be the billionth child of Musk than the child of an average american.
But anyway that wasn't my point. My point was that you cannot deduce your conclusion from your hypothesis. Maybe your conclusion is still right, but it remains to prove.
You cannot deduce that people are not born equal from the fact their parents are not equal, it's a mistake. There is a missing argument here. Indeed, assume that A is 10 times richer than B, but A has 10 children and B only has 1. Then the children are born equal, aren't they?
And also, the richest are only rich because everyone else is somewhat rich. You can only sell iphones or cars to people that are somewhat rich. Even amazon needs people to have phones or computers. So it regulates itself a little bit. I suspect the richest become relatively richer because the population grows. If you take 0.1 cent by product sold, it helps that there are more people.
But that is precisely why losers should be required to provide proofs when they contest an election! Otherwise no peace is possible because the losers will always contest the results because it will always be in their best interest.
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