guajalote
1yr ago
Is this actually true, though? Millennials felt the same way 15 years ago, that's what all the Occupy and "I am the 99%" stuff was about. People understandably feel poor when they're starting their careers. They often have a bunch of debt and relatively little income. But that situation generally corrects itself over the course of a person's working life. Life is a struggle but this stuff is not insurmountable.
Things are, simply, not that bad in the US. Unemployment is close to the lowest it's ever been. Real (i.e. inflation adjusted) wages are close to the highest they've ever been. Cost disease has hit certain sectors like housing and healthcare, but there are still plenty of places where housing is affordable, and young people generally don't need a ton of healthcare. I'm not claiming everything is perfect or couldn't be improved, but I can't see how economic doomerism is warranted under the circumstances.
guajalote
1yr ago
My anecdotal experience as a trial attorney is that it's around 50/50 on average.
guajalote
1yr ago
I think you are incorrectly framing this as though the ability to make inconsistent arguments is a unique power held by prosecutors. Any party in any kind of litigation is always free to make inconsistent or alternative arguments. The catch is that typically the jury gets to hear about your inconsistencies, and can choose to hold this against your credibility if it wants to. I didn't read your links, but from your description of the case it sounds like the jury was told about the inconsistent arguments and ultimately still believed the defendant was guilty.
guajalote
1yr ago
Yes, freer movement of people and goods is highly correlated with greater economic prosperity. Probably the closest thing to an absolute "law of nature" in the field of economics.
guajalote
1yr ago
How is that a "legitimate security interest?" I understand "legitimate security interest" in the above post to mean something like "clear threat to the safety of Russia's citizens." I don't doubt that Russia would like to have a warm water port but I don't see how not having one poses a clear threat to Russia or its citizens.
guajalote
1yr ago
Healthier people tend to receive more medical care throughout their lives because they live into old age, when things start to slowly fail. Fat people, alcoholics, etc., tend to drop dead quickly and receive less medical care during their lifetimes.
guajalote
1yr ago
There is plenty of undeveloped land on the edges of SF and LA. Between SF and Petaluma, for example, there's a ton of empty land. But more importantly "open land" is not a prerequisite for building housing, since you can build vertically. SF would have way more housing if it wasn't preventing people from tearing down "historic laundromats." Housing is affordable even in the densest parts of downtown Houston where there is no "open land" to develop. Conversely, the area of rural Northern California where I grew up has tons of open land, yet housing costs are much higher per square foot than downtown Houston.
guajalote
1yr ago
Houston, TX is about 25% foreign born and has way cheaper housing than any major city in CA. There's plenty of space in CA to house everyone even if the population doubled or tripled. The problem is regulations that restrict supply.
guajalote
1yr ago
Robert Wright is not exactly in the ratsphere and isn't exactly "anti-Israel" per se, but he's the closest one that comes to mind.
guajalote
1yr ago
Lawyers are used in arbitration as well, and unlike a judge you have to pay the arbitrator. I'm not sure why you think that's a cheaper option that litigation.
Courts are mainly avenues of Justice. As in you want the person who screwed you over monetarily not just to pay you back but to suffer.
Where are you getting this idea? Usually courts are limited to awarding actual damages; punitive damages are the exception.
guajalote
1yr ago
In cases of money or social interaction its a bad idea to have courts involved.
How would you have contract disputes resolved? Inheritance disputes?
Liability also doesn't come into play until the suit is underway. It's trivially true that anyone can file suit for anything, but the plaintiff isn't going to recover any money unless they have evidence of causation and damages.
Also, my thought experiment notwithstanding, it's already totally possible to sue self-driving car manufacturers for causing accidents, yet these companies are not only in business but doing better than ever.
guajalote
1yr ago
Anything that expands the scope of things that one individual can sue another for is laundering costs.
This statement is often not true. Lawsuits are often a more efficient and transparent way of allocating costs.
Let's say society is worried about accidents caused by self-driving cars and wants to allocate some amount of resources to fixing the problem. There are two straightforward ways to structure the resource allocation:
-
Pass a law specifying that victims of accidents caused by self-driving cars can sue the manufacturer for damages, or;
-
Pass a set of safety regulations that self driving car companies have to comply with, and if a compliant self-driving car nevertheless causes an accident, the government compensates the victim.
In scenario 1 we are causing the cost of accidents to be carried by the car company, who is in the best position to figure out how to prevent accidents. So we have given them a monetary incentive to devote a rational amount of resources to fixing or improving the problem. This is the opposite of a reverse lottery because the car company is in the best position out of anyone to try to predict and prevent accidents.
Scenario 2 creates a situation where car companies are only encouraged to comply with regulations, rather than try to figure out the best way to prevent accidents. The regulator is in a much worse position to know what regulations will actually be effective at preventing accidents, and the regulator has no direct monetary incentive to care about preventing accidents. Simultaneously, they also have no monetary incentive to care about over-preventing accidents either. So we will almost necessarily get an inefficient set of regulations that devote an incorrect amount of resources to the problem.
guajalote
1yr ago
I've met bears on a number of occasions while hiking, hunting, or berry picking in places like Tahoe, Colorado, and Minnesota. In my mind, meeting bears is a normal thing that happens from time to time, but I suppose that just shows how out of touch I am with normal peoples' lives. I think you're right that the bear is not "real" in the minds of most people answering the question.
guajalote
1yr ago
"If it's black, fight back. If it's brown, lie down. If it's white, good night."
guajalote
1yr ago
It blows my mind how often smart people with STEM backgrounds assume the legal system can be hacked like a computer. Federal judges are smart people who have discretion over how they handle their docket. If the city has 60 similar laws, the judge is going to tell the city to pick the one (or maybe two or three if he's generous) laws that they believe to be on the strongest constitutional footing and treat that law as representative.
guajalote
1yr ago
Biggest piece of advice is to control the dose. It's like alcohol. If I pound six shots in a row I'm probably going to throw up and feel like shit the next day. If I drink two glasses of wine over the course of four hours I'm going to feel great and have no ill effects. Unsurprisingly weed works the same way.
If I overdo it and get anxious then I practice mindfulness. I find it's easier to do this because you know the anxiety isn't "real" so you can sort of go "I know why I'm feeling this way, I'm just going to accept it and observe it instead of fighting it." I feel practicing mindfulness in this way has helped me manage anxiety better when sober as well.
guajalote
1yr ago
I think in the US we've managed to find this balance with cigarettes. Smoking is perfectly legal, but banned in most places where non-smokers would be forced to encounter it and advertising is highly restricted. I am a big fan of weed but I see no reason why anyone would need to consume it publicly nor any reason why we need to tolerate garish advertising for it.
guajalote
1yr ago
I think the left's increasing tendency to exclude contrasting arguments seriously hurts their ability to hold their own on a heterogenous platform, whether or not they are right.
I think this hits the nail square on the head. For example, I think there are some good arguments against strong HBD based on evolutionary biology, but you never hear those kinds of arguments articulated by people on the left because it would require them to actually listen to the pro-HBD arguments and think carefully about them, which most are not willing to do.
guajalote
1yr ago
Another possibility is that "non-restrictive states" have been ahead of the curve on documenting anti-LGBT bullying for many years or decades, whereas the "restrictive states" were behind the curve but recently started catching up due to increased nationwide awareness of the issue. So the sharp rise in reported rates in restrictive states could also be related to a change in reporting.
guajalote
1yr ago
My point is that it's based on one's own situation, not others. You gave an example in your post of a depressed person doing basic tasks. Another example might be someone who had a stroke learning how to move their right index finger, something almost everyone can do. It is worthy of pride because it's an accomplishment for that person. By contrast, doing something that almost no one can do may not be worthy of pride. If Usain Bolt runs a race faster than 99% of the population could, he still may be quite disappointed with his time and feel no pride at all.
guajalote
1yr ago
Pride doesn't, or at least needn't, depend on your position relative to other people. English is a widely spoken language that doesn't require any special intelligence to learn. I learned it effortlessly as a child. But someone who becomes fluent in English as an adult put in a lot of work and has something to be proud of. To someone who is learning to ski, getting down a black diamond run for the first time without falling is a major accomplishment worthy of pride. Someone who skis regularly might do ten black diamond runs in a day and think nothing of it.
guajalote
1yr ago
So the right answer must contain vanilla, because it's the "normal" combo with those topings. We are also told choc chips are "commonly" paired with mint, whereas whipped cream is "sometimes" paired with coffee. I suppose "commonly" is meant to indicate a stronger affinity than "sometimes," so I guess the right answer is vanilla-mint? I'm not sure I'd say this answer is obvious, though, as I'm having a read a lot into your specific choice of words.
Also, this answer may not translate over to whatever [redacted] is, in particular if there's any kind of interaction term between the flavors. For example, if the toppings are meant to be symptoms a patient is exhibiting and flavors are meant to be drugs one might administer for those symptoms, I would imagine the answer might be different because you'd need to take into account drug interactions. Similarly if the toppings are economic indicators and the flavors are government policies, it's the same issue where two policies can interact in non-trivial ways.
guajalote
1yr ago
Varg
Likely a reference to this guy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varg_Vikernes
Blue Pill, Red Pill, Black Pill
I think you're defining these terms too narrowly by tying them to gender and dating discourse. They are broad concepts that can apply to many things.
Blue Pill is idealism; believing the world works the way it's "supposed to." A person who is blue pilled about US politics might say "Politicians make decisions based on what they believe is in the best interest of the nation. Therefore the best way to accomplish our political goals is to explain why those goals are in the nation's best interest."
Red Pill is realism; seeing the way things actually work and trying to exploit those realities to accomplish your goals. A person who is red pilled about US politics might say "Politicians are human beings who make decisions based on self-interest. Therefore the best way to accomplish our political goals is to make sure accomplishing those goals is personally beneficial to the right politicians."
Black Pill is pessimism or nihilism; seeing the way things actually work and realizing that you cannot achieve your goals as long as things continue working that way. A person who is black pilled about US politics might say "Politicians are human beings who make decisions based on self-interest. Many powerful interest groups realize this and accomplish their goals by dumping large amounts of money into politics. Our political project will never be able to match the level of resources that our opposition has, therefore we have no hope of persuading politicians to agree with us and we shouldn't even waste our time trying."
Yeah, even if it were indisputably true that the US economy is in decline, it's declining from the highest heights in human history. Even if Gen Z ends up being a bit worse off than Millennials, they're still better off than the vast majority of people who have ever lived.
More options
Context Copy link