token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
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User ID: 1737
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
9mo ago
That isn't quite what I meant. Sure I believe an LLM-based agent may be able to accomplish that task. But if the intention were to make the task automatable, then you wouldn't need one. Since the point is to make the task not automatable, this is just a step in an arms race of making the task more frustrating.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
9mo ago
Not to pick on you since this seems like a common category of problem... but the task is entirely artificial. There's no technical reason renewing a prescription requires you to do anything more than log into your pharmacy somehow and click a "renew" button. Any further complexity is because the pharmacy decided to waste your time.
I feel like I often hear people suggest using AI to navigate some unnecessary complexity like that, when what you actually need is systems that don't suck. Or at least being allowed to have third-party systems exist that work around them sucking. AI doesn't really have anything to do with it. If someone comes up with an AI bot that works around the poor design, people will come up with even worse designs to counter that.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
9mo ago
Sure, that's the way they act for the middle class when who are just buying enough stock to fill out a retirement account. But for the wealthy making investments large enough, they are buying power.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
9mo ago
The FairTax would make it so the truly rich couldn’t spend money without the government getting a quarter of it.
The FairTax proposal does not tax anything rich people spend a lot of money on.
The section of Wikipedia page on FairTax titled "Taxable items and exemptions" says:
Also excluded are investments, such as purchases of stock, corporate mergers and acquisitions and capital investments. Savings and education tuition expenses would be exempt as they would be considered an investment (rather than final consumption).
It also says that rent would be taxed. It's not specified there, but reading into the sources, I see buying a house would not be except for new construction (unclear exactly what that means if most of the price of the house is the land it is on? Is that amount re-taxed every time a new building is built on it?).
Sure, rich people spend more on food and other everyday expenses than poor people, but not a lot more. Many more expensive purchases (housing, education, companies) are exempt from the tax or could easily just be made in a different country (yachts, private planes) and carefully never "imported". Those purchases are currently made with money that's at least theoretically taxed as income.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
9mo ago
China wants the "lab leak or not" debate because it draws attention away from the post-SARS rules that China instituted on wet markets that would have prevented a spillover at the market if China had continued to enforce them.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
9mo ago
I thought the general consensus was that it was a lab leak
The overwhelming scientific consensus is that SARS-CoV-2 spilled over at the market (twice), but that determining that with certainty is impossible without more evidence that likely can never be collected (i.e., too much time has passed and SARS-CoV-2 is everywhere).
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
9mo ago
That argument is equivalent to noticing that airplane crashes almost always happen near air traffic control towers and considering eliminating the air traffic control towers as a possible solution.
Of course, a lab for studying zoonotic coronaviruses is located near where zoonotic coronavirus spillovers tend to happen. You'd need a really good reason to put it somewhere else. You should be slightly surprised if a spillover happens far away from such a lab, not the other way around.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
10mo ago
it really does seem like ardent lefties have to discard a lot of fundamental fairly obvious facts about baseline reality to maintain their ideological commitments.
This is a common assertion for people to make about their ideological opponents. People on the left constantly make the same claim about people on the right. And the intellectuals on the left and right both do so with detailed receipts about why their own side is working with facts and their ideological opponents are basing their ideology on lies.
Why is it so important to you that middle and high schoolers do not learn about gender and sexuality? Understanding those things is important for children and adolescents to understand what abuse looks like and how to avoid it and report it. And for them to know what a healthy understanding of themselves looks like and what healthy relationships look like, which is important for any person's happiness and wellbeing.
I believe that you honestly want what's best for your children and somehow think keeping them away from such information is better for them, but I read your posts and just hope your children against the odds manage to become well-adjusted adults despite your efforts.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
11mo ago
Depends on exactly what you mean by "no sexuality". Age-appropriate sex ed is important for children to know how to report sexual abuse (and to know that they should). Here's one organization's "Sexuality Concepts for Children (Ages 4-8)" (just what I found on a quick web search, the group's Wikipedia page doesn't even have a "controversies" section; exactly what should be on that list is not something I'm an expert on).
My understanding is that the traditional way is that it's fairly common to just accept that if you get pregnant from pre-maritial sex, you get married and everyone agrees to not do the math on the wedding date compared to your first child's birthday. While there's certainly been a change in the past few decades of whether it's acceptable to not get married in that situation, I'm not sure there's any real reason to believe the prevalence of unmarried people having sex has gone up.
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