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Moonshot Personal Growth Idea
There are a lot of smart, hyper-informed people on here (don't be bashful). Each probably have 1-5 topics they know A LOT about, who could deliver a knowledgable spiel over voice or text without much effort and intelligently field any number of follow-up questions. So it occurs to me there might be a big educational opportunity for me here if I can capture some of this low-hanging fruit.
I don't know much about American politics, health, business, etc., but eagerly want to know more, and I'm happy to talk over discord/phone/voice or text depending on your preferences. Some topics to jog your brain; if it strikes you that "hey, I actually got obsessed with topic 23 one time and learned everything you could possibly know about it over a 6 month period," please consider reaching out to me. I'll adopt a position indicated by either "pro" or "con" provisionally just to inspire engagement (my actual views here are very low-confidence and "pro/con" means something more like "I've heard interesting arguments for this side of the issue that I want an intelligent person who knows more than I do to explain the merits of to me" than "this is what I believe.")
“The current level of military spending is justified.” Pro
“The typical white male is utterly blameless for the circumstances of the African American community” Pro
"The growth of transgender identity and bisexuality have the character of a social contagion" Pro (Is bisexuality created or only revealed by the environment? Is anyone bisexual because of encouragement, or is the absence of discouragement the only environmental factor that does anything to affect rates of ID?) (Caplan)
“Asian romantic preferences are morally permissible.” Pro
“De facto interrogational torture by the US is justified.” Pro
"Extraterrestrial life is the best explanation of some UFO sightings" Con
“Any minimum wage fails a purely utilitarian cost benefit test due to disemployment effects.” Pro
"Joe Biden's Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Would Be Disastrous," (Or: Cost benefit analysis puts several other environmental causes ahead of climate change.)
"Feminism is bad for women." (a la Bryan Caplan)
"Conventional medicine barely makes us healthier" (as seen in Robin Hanson's case for radical medical skepticism, from the RAND Health insurance experiment to the replication crisis http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/feardie.pdf)
"Dietary research is of such poor quality that we know almost nothing about whether any given major diet fad is truly the ideal diet." (Pro) (I would be willing to take the even stronger position that we don't even know ANYTHING about the right diet just to see what a smart, informed person would say in response to better calibrate my reasoning on this issue)
"Most of life is a prestige-signaling game./Social status is the closest thing to a one-variable explanation for everything, and does far better than the traditional rival models like sex or money."
"Diversity is our strength." Pro
"Society does not clearly treat one sex more unfairly than the other." (Pro)
"IQ is real and a major determinant of social outcomes" Pro
"Racial groups differ in socially relevant ways for genetic reasons." Con
“Capitalists deserve their success.” Pro
"Money doesn't really buy happiness." Pro
“The solution to traffic is congestion pricing (tolls)” Pro
"Actions taken by the Biden Admin during the Covid pandemic were generally justified." Not enough info to sway either way
“We should deregulate construction completely.” Pro
“Workers are not underpaid in competitive business environments.” Pro
Question: How do taxes work, and how SHOULD they work?
“Affirmative action is immoral/harmful.” Pro
“State-mandated wealth redistribution is immoral./Wealth inequality is not a serious social problem” Pro
“Abortion is morally permissible.” Pro
“We should put America First” pro
“It is not possible to be a good criminal defense lawyer AND a good person.” Pro
“We should privatize everything.” Pro
“The poor generally deserve to be poor.” “American wealth inequality is generally fair.” (as seen in remarks made by Caplan re: the so-called "success sequence")
“Gender is essentially biological.” Pro (Tomas Bogardus, Alex Byrne)
“We should remove confederate monuments.” Con
“We should not provide trigger warnings/safety culture actually harms mental health.” Pro (Jonathan Haidt)
“We Should Stop Talking about Privilege” pro
“Immigration is Not a Human Right.” Con
“The Death Penalty is Immoral” pro
“The typical meat eater does nothing wrong.” Pro
“Political correctness is just politeness.” Con
“There are no positive rights; There is no right to healthcare or education.” Pro
“Utilitarianism is a bad moral theory.” Pro
“It isn’t morally wrong to misgender a trans person.” Pro
“Artificial intelligence is not an existential risk.” Pro
“We should not have gun control.” Pro
“We should segregate intimate public spaces by biological sex.” Or: “it is not morally wrong to do so.” Pro
“It’s morally wrong for the average voter to vote; we should try to decrease voter turnout.” Pro
“It’s morally permissible to racially profile.” Pro
“Psychological egoism is false.” Pro or con
“Ethical egoism is false.” Pro
“Racial discrimination is not inherently immoral.” Pro
“Businesses may racially select their customers.” Pro
“Equality of opportunity is morally undesirable.” Pro
“Mixed martial arts don’t violate anyone’s rights.” Pro
“We are morally obligated to tip servers.” Pro
“Hazing should be permitted on college campuses.” Pro
“It is just to punish criminals for the sake of causing suffering to people who deserve it.” Pro or con, preferably con
“If we ought to be taxed more, we ought to donate our excess income.” (“Rich socialists/distributive egalitarians are hypocrites.”) pro
“It’s morally permissible to sell oneself into permanent slavery.” Pro
“There is no duty to hire the most qualified applicant.” Pro
“We should completely deregulate the provision of healthcare services.” Pro
“We should not require occupational licensing by law (for doctors, plumbers, or lawyers).” Pro
“Workplace quality and safety regulations are bad for workers.” Pro
“We should not dispense racial reparations to the black community.” Pro
Con “alcoholics (and drug addicts in general) are nonresponsible victims”
Pro: “Race is biologically real”
Pro:“The rich pay their fair share”
“Exploitation isn’t wrong.” Pro
“Free market pricing is a better distributor than queuing” Pro
“Price gouging is fine.” Pro
“The casting couch is just prostitution” Pro
“Affirmative Action is systemically racist” Pro
“Colleges are guilty of negligent advertising” pro
"We should we abolish civil rights law" (Richard Hanania)
“Gender is essentially biological” pro
TL;DR Looking for someone to explain American politics to me, preferably over discord voice. Especially interested in topics like happiness, relationship success, American public policy (esp. healthcare and the budget)
The casting couch is much more immoral than prostitution because the resources that are being traded for sex often do not truly belong to the person trading them. When the director chooses to hire the actress who gives him sexual favors over the actress who refuses but would be better for the role he is essentially defrauding the production company and anyone who has financial interest in the film.
That's an interesting argument but I think it misses. There are two distinct differences, though between the casting couch and prostitution:
Prostitution is explicit. There's no question at all up front what the prostitute has to do to get paid. If casting calls had "Must perform sex acts on producer" along side other requirements, it would be different. But the vast majority of castings, from Hollywood down to commercials and community theater in Idaho, don't require the actors to do anything out of the ordinary. Even when it does happen, there's rarely any explicit demand for sex; the guy usually just hits on the actress and there's an implication that it wouldn't hurt to sleep with him.
On the other side of the coin, what you get out of sleeping with him isn't explicit either. A prostitute knows that she's going to get paid; that's part of the deal. Since the casting couch is by its nature implicit rather than explicit, there's never any guarantee that satisfying the guy's demands will get the desired outcome. He could think you're a terrible actress but worth a roll in the hay and use his power to convince you that sleeping with him will get you the part even though he knows up front there's no chance in hell of that happening. And when it comes to producers like Harvey Weinstein they aren't even the ones necessarily making the final decision. The director and casting agent are the ones who are supposed to come to that conclusion; while producers have considerable influence and can put in a good word (and even possibly demand it), they aren't technically the ones who get to decide, at least not since the end of the studio system.
So if there was some explicit statement up front that sex with the producer, or director, or casting agent, or half the employees of MGM was required for the role, and it would only have to be done at the end after they'd already been picked, then, yeah, I would liken it to prostitution. But the way it is now is way too vague in comparison.
It is common to pay people for attempts rather than for successes, as the former is more under their control. I can't see why it is wrong to pay an agent money to promote your book, even if the agent might not get you a book deal. I don't think you can claim book agents and Harvey Weinstein are wrong for the same reason. The same applies to most agents, sports included.
The requirement is that the actress must be able to plausibly fake being interested in having sex with Weinstein et al. That requires real talent and is an actual test of acting. Allegedly, most Hollywood actresses meet this bar.
Do you know this? My sources claim that people are very explicit about expectations. Actresses have agents who set these meetings up, and they explain in great detail, what is expected. For every John, there is a pimp.
Luckily all this will be made moot by AI. No-one, and I mean no-one, is going to ask the AI developer for sex, (except the sexbot that AI developer him(or her)self made).
Even if this is a real requirement, the producer should hire a professional from the pornographic industry to test the actress out on, at most he should get to watch the act (to judge the merits etc.), not participate in it.
Why is Weinstein not a professional at this? Allegedly he has been doing it for years. He is like the Robert Parker of actresses. Parker's big advantage in wine tasting was that he had tasted all these allegedly fabulous vintages that are no longer available. Who but Weinstein could compare the charms of actresses across the decades.
Because he should only care about how good the scene looks on film, not how good it feels. You don't need to actually have the sex to decide on the merits of what is captured on screen and how it will be seen by viewers (who themselves also won't be having the sex being shown). In fact it is better to not be the person actually having the sex as then you can look at the scene from different perspectives and distances (which you'll have on the final film) that you can't if you're having sex.
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