Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
How does a social progressive respond to the Amish Question, namely that the Amish have a better quality of life according to nearly all objective indicators? (Including but not limited to: lower suicide risk, greater longevity, lower female depression risk, greater sense of purpose, greater community, lower cancer and diabetes risk, negligible drug and alcohol use, lower carbon footprint, and lower income inequality)
I think I am a social progressive by virtue of being a libertarian? In that I know X,Y,Z is good for the individual and society and yada yada, but the state shouldn't stop you from doing !X,!Y,!Z either. Or do I actually have to believe X,Y,Z is bad and actively oppose them?
Anyways, because I am not average. Whats good for the 100 IQ bugman isn't good for me. I can handle more freedoms. You can make cheating on your partner the most socially acceptable thing in the world, and I still wouldn't do it. You can hand out heroin like candy at the grocery store, I won' t take it.
I greatly enjoy large cities with cuisines from all over the world, with things to do, and places to be. I enjoy my career in Machine Learning and not buggy making or quilting or marmalade making. You get the point.
Why do you expect people to hold policy positions they themselves as individuals don't want?
I know this doesn't answer your question, but there is no "minimize all types of errors and maximize all the metrics" ideology out there. You actually have to pick and choose your metrics, and choose the distributions. Its all aesthetics anyways.
I wonder what % happiness increase is due to eating ethnic food. I can’t imagine it ever being a prescription for depression (“patient is to the one plate of Chinese, two plates Indian, and one Cambodian weekly”). If ethnic food and the big city were instrumental to happiness we should see young urban white collar people in cities happier. My intuition is they are not, at least not in such a way that is expected given their social status. There’s probably a study on that but I’m too lazy to look right now.
Does the patient want to swallow the bitter medicine because he enjoys the taste or because he knows the results are superior? So it would be for the Amish. Consider: by raising your kids Amish you are vastly decreasing their risk of depression, suicide, drug use, and violence.
No, I'm not. My life expectancy, suicide likelihood, and propensity for violence are all far, far below both the general population and the Amish. I'm also much richer and simply prefer my lifestyle to either the general population or the Amish. Shifting from being an addled junkie or criminal lowlife to being Amish would be an improvement on these metrics, moving from my own life to Amish would not be.
This is the same kind of silly stuff that makes people say that owning a firearm makes you more likely to commit suicide. No, I actually know myself, and I simply won't kill myself. I understand the objections to this and they are simply wrong in my individual case.
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