niknoble
1d ago
I'm very doubtful that a natural superiority argument can justify the status of children in our culture.
Pick a quantifiable intellectual ability, and ask who scores higher...
- The median 15-year-old or the median 70-year-old?
- The median 15-year-old or the median adult woman?
- The median 15-year-old or the median adult black person?
Maybe the adult scores higher, but is it obvious? Can you tell without looking it up? It should be obvious, given that the difference in treatment between the adult and the kid is so extreme. The adults in these examples are full citizens and the 15-year-old has the legal status of a toddler.
niknoble
1mo ago
One question I've had throughout the ICE saga is why arresting illegals is even necessary. It seems like it would be easier to just cut off their access to American resources. For example, require employers, landlords, DMV, doctors, insurance providers, etc. to verify immigration status, and make a strong example of the first ones that don't. Then the country becomes like a desert to illegals and they just go home on their own. This would also hugely reduce the need for border security.
I guess part of the reason this isn't being done is that some of it would require changes to the law, which Trump can't implement on his own. But at least with employers, they're already legally obligated to check work authorization, so why isn't Trump just aggressively enforcing that law?
Is there a reason I'm missing why this kind of approach wouldn't work? Or, does Trump not really want to deport all illegals?
niknoble
3yr ago
"Literally" has never been used to mean "figuratively." This is a misunderstanding of hyperbole.
I agree with you about "fascist," though.
niknoble
3yr ago
I don't think this is the best objection because smart people are far more likely to care about money.
If you were to exactly follow the cultural pressures, taking all the cliches to heart, then you would place a low value on money but a very high value on things that money can buy. This describes most people who say they are not motivated by money. However, since smart people have consistent preferences, they don't fall into this trap.
niknoble
3yr ago
It's wrong because there are so many other things that can sabotage wealth. Energy levels, social anxiety, obsession with something unproductive.
Conversely, there are ways to become rich without using intelligence. A person who is extremely energetic and wants to be rich will eventually hit the jackpot by immersing himself in opportunities and following up on them.
niknoble
3yr ago
Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. The setting is depressing, but the writing has been top-tier so far.
niknoble
3yr ago
My theory is that the recent deepening of the left-right divide is partly because people have different responses to peer pressure. Some people prefer to fit in and others prefer to stand out. As the pressure to adopt left-wing ideology increases, the fit-in types are pushed further to the left, and the stand-out types are pushed further to the right. When I introspect, I can see that this is the primary force driving my own move rightward over the last 2 years. I have also observed this motive throughout the right-wing spaces that I frequent online.
Of course, this explanation works best for my narrow demographic: upper-middle class young people who are plugged into the internet. I doubt this explains why steelworkers in the rust belt voted for Trump. It also doesn't explain how the left-right divide came to exist in the first place.
I know you're talking about specific people who've inherited their money, so I'm not calling your post wrong, but I've noticed that rich people very often have this kind of breezy, spontaneous, ultra-low-anxiety personality even before they get rich, or during periods of time when they're poor.
This attitude seeps through Musk's biography in a way that's impossible to miss. You see it in him at all stages of his life, like when he is couch surfing after arriving in the U.S. with very little money and a strained relationship with his family back home. You see it in his ancestors, his college roommates, and his early business partners, many of whom were undistinguished at first but slowly rose to eminence.
In my own life, I've found that you eventually get to a level in the startup scene where you're surrounded by these kinds of elites at company events, and everyone's backstory is like they studied Korean language in college, circumnavigated the globe on a cheap boat, and then started a rodeo business before discovering a passion for databases--and you feel distinctly out of place if your reaction to "spend a year in a foreign country with no money" is an anxious, "well obviously I can't do that."
Of course, it's also true that one strengthens this "everything will work out" attitude through collecting repeated evidence that it actually does, and that requires high and consistent competence. So I remain a bit torn on whether success or confidence comes first.
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