domain:city-journal.org
Pinging @Stellula, as it may be relevant to their interests.
I said that it was transactional. I didn't say it was purely transactional. There's a difference.
Can you name a type of human interaction that is not "transactional" in some way? If I talk to a stranger, is that not in some sense transactional? When I catch some random family's baby staring at me in the grocery store and begin making silly faces to try to get them to laugh, is that not clearly "transactional"? When I have lunch together with a friend, is that not transactional in some sense?
You seem to be claiming that there's the set of human interactions, and then a subset of transactional human interactions, and then a sub-subset of purely transactional human interactions. But if in fact all human interaction is transactional, and then a subset is purely transactional, then the "transactional" label adds nothing meaningful to the term "interaction", and the joint in reality is the "purely", the compartmentalization and formalization of an interaction, and with it the exclusion and severing of other possible connections and relations and interactions. We "transact" because we wish for more interaction with someone, and the "more" is open-ended. We "purely transact" with someone because we want a specific interaction and no more. These two modes of transaction are notably distinct.
If your love for your beloved is contingent on them possessing some particular quality, then you are liable to the charge that you don't really love the person: what you really love is that quality. You are a lover of intelligence, or humor, or beauty, but not of that particular person.
Perhaps, if we confine ourselves to abstractions, though I'm skeptical that this is actually an accurate description at the object level.
But if you say that you would continue to love the person regardless of any qualities they possess whatsoever, even if they were stripped of all qualities and left only as a "bare particular", then it would seem that your choice is entirely arbitrary and without justification; for what could be motivating your choice if it is made in the absence of all qualities? And a baseless arbitrary choice cannot constitute love either.
I would not agree with this formulation, so far as I understand the argument; it seems to be a false dichotomy emerging excessive abstraction. The dichotomy is drawn between the instrumental "I love them for the characteristics they possess" and the arbitrary "I love them for for some ineffable, arbitrary themness", but there is a third option: "I love them because I have loved them." In this, the instrumental emerges from and utterly overtakes the arbitrary, while being inextricable from it.
Put a grain of sand into an oyster and wait, and the result often enough is a pearl. Pearls do not form without the grain of sand, but pearls are not themselves reducible to grains of sand. They are an accretion, a composite, of which the sand is a foundation but of which the foundation is far, far less than what is built upon it, like an inverted pyramid. One might describe them better as an investment.
My relationship with my wife began in a quite arbitrary fashion; having been acquaintances for a few years, we spent some time together at a church event and hit it off over a common love for movies, books and video games. On the other hand, this arbitrariness was only possible from an explicitly-instrumental foundation: we found each other because we were both actively looking for a sane, stable, committed Christian of the opposite sex to build a family with, and also there was some amount of behind-the-scenes matchmaking from mutual friends nudging things along.
The love we share now does not rest significantly on our common love for movies, books and video games. Nor is it based solely the instrumental desire for marriage and a family; we no longer want marriage in the abstract, we want this marriage, and our love were persist even if we were unable to have children. What it rests on is nearly a decade of choices made and actions taken out of love for one another: in-jokes, acts of kindness, acts of service, shared hardship, shared joy, shared knowledge, and so on and on. Further, these have accrued because neither of us acted as though these were "purely transactional", nor did transactionality enter the calculus in any significant way; we do the things we do because each of us perceive that such acts will please and support the other. I want my wife to be happy and to have a good life, and she wants the same for me, and the longer these objectives guide our actions the more solid and substantial our love grows, and the less we recognize a good apart from the good found in each other.
The conclusion we draw is that, if there is such a thing as "love" at all, it belongs to the domain of the unsayable.
This appears to me to be sophistry through a retreat to arbitrary abstraction.
And yet I will show you the most excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
What does that definition mistakenly contain that we might better remove? What does that definition lack that we might wish to add? It tells us that love is a terminal value, and it defines that love is and is not. In what way is any of this "unsayable"?
I occasionally become impatient with people who glibly assert that they are "in love" without realizing that they are uttering an absurdity (or without realizing that, statistically speaking, their relationship probably won't last the year).
I share this impatience, because such people are generally not describing Love but infatuation.
To assume that we know love when we feel it is presumptuous. We can always interrogate whether any emotion, action, or other particular entity is an instantiation of the general concept of love, whether the conditions of instantiation of love can ever be met at all, etc.
Just so. But equally, to claim that we do not know love when we have practiced it as an intentional way of life is sophistry. Certainly not all questions have answers, but just as certainly some questions do have answers, and this is one of them. Why ask questions if you don't want answers?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
18hr ago
I don't think you should implement bike lanes without stiff penalties for not using them (or for cars, stealing the space).
Tentatively down, although faith in western police to do a good job is low.
For now I see bike lanes as a waste of space that bicycles don't use.
It's tricky, adoption in the west is slow but growing. Very slow though, biking as a mode of transportation is climbing YoY in Toronto's core, but it's lower than I'd expect it to be given the massive utility (and traffic).
However, another reason they seem empty is because they are significantly more efficient. Bike lanes have wayyyyy higher throughput than car lanes, so you also don't see as many bikes because they're not stuck in traffic like you are (you're only seeing the same ~12 cars in your proximity), they're already gone.
If you live in the suburbs they probably are underused though. I don't have a dog in the fight of suburban living, if suburban residents want to have 4 lane each way mega roads (and the perpetual trickle of kids and old people being killed crossing them) that is their prerogative.
kky
18hr ago
You mean traditional bike lanes, next to the parked cars? Sure, it helps a lot with the standard problems. When I’ve cycled in the past, I prefer routes with bike lanes. Where I live, they’ve extended them such that, at traffic lights, there’s a “bike box” ahead of the stop line that left-turning cyclists can use. So you don’t have to merge with traffic, you just get over when the light is red and mosey ahead in full view of the cars before getting back in your lane. It certainly helps that the vast majority of cyclists are commuters running predictable routes, so you can get away with skipping infrastructure on most streets.
Unfortunately, they’ve also pioneered a new kind of lane that goes behind the parked cars. This is supposed to protect you from getting doored, which I admit is scary. A lady almost managed to get me when I was around 20; turns out my reflexes work just fine. But they introduce two new problems: first, traffic from side streets has to cross over the bike lane in order to merge; second, turning traffic and cyclists are obscured from one another by a screen of parked cars. This is part of what actually stopped my work commutes. The added tension of having to slow at every intersection to figure out what cars were doing was unpleasant enough to make me just give up and find other means.
Can’t imagine it’s fun to be a responsible driver in that part of town either, which is why I avoid going there by car too.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
18hr ago
Do you live in LA/surrounding area?
The culture of "we don't let people in, so if you want to change lanes don't signal so you can swerve in an take them by suprise so they don't defend their lane" is one of the most ridiculous cultural own-goals this side of sub-saharan Africa.
Only Americans could design their society around cars and then get mad at each other for having the audacity to... drive cars nearby.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
18hr ago
My parents visited China where stop lights are all yields. They were happy to return to Albuquerque driving.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
18hr ago
No only to 3, it’s safest to flow with traffic and not be a rock in the stream, 5, I can always brake, and 6, I expect the rules I live by to be an agreement with other drivers, not a tool for me policing them.
As for additional driving scissor statements, I prefer to back into a parking spot, or pull through a double spot to be facing out. Some people call it “getaway parking,” others deride it as “ghetto.”
First, because my brain has been fully engaged in estimating my car’s size and position relative to other vehicles and the stationary world for at least five minutes, and I’m less likely to be in an accident in that altered state.
Second, because when I depart that spot, I can see somewhere between 3 and pi radians without obstruction, and can easily see pedestrians, shopping carts, and other vehicles.
Throwaway05
18hr ago
I don't think you should implement bike lanes without stiff penalties for not using them (or for cars, stealing the space).
For now I see bike lanes as a waste of space that bicycles don't use.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
18hr ago
Even if we gave everyone citizenship, there would still be downward pressure from wages.
Leaving aside the issues with this argument*, then why bring up the humanitarian concern if it's not a serious priority?
This is in addition to the cultural concerns of having 16% of people in America "foreign born" and the increased difficulty of passing along US values to immigrants as the proportion of native-born Americans goes down.
This is not a novel problem, nor much evidence that it's actually a problem in itself (as opposed to generating backlash from nativists). The US has a history of absorbing staggeringly large waves of immigration, and we've gone through this song and dance before with the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the Poles... Somehow none of these
In particular, it's remarkable how anti-Hispanic sentiments echo anti-Irish sentiments: they're lazy and parasitic (but also too willing to work long hours at hard labor for low wages), they're criminals, they're undemocratic, they'll overwhelm us with their numbers and fecundity, they're not assimilating, etc. About the only prominent difference I observe is that there isn't very much overt anti-Catholicism nowadays.
Of course, nowadays, the Irish are at least as American as the English.
It created the prosperity and freedom that Americans enjoy
Do you not think the tens of millions of immigrants who helped build America (somehow without destroying society) had anything to do with it? Xenophobia in the US is generally correlated with the least free and least prosperous parts of the country.
*it's pretty questionable that reducing the labor supply is generally welfare enhancing.
Lizzardspawn
18hr ago
these exist to regulate traffic and force you to look at potentially dangerous intersections, so lean on stopping unless you have good reason not to.
The thing is that yield sign exists. It is pointless to have both stop and yield in the same logical system. Heavy traffic and yield will force you to stop. With light traffic stop is pointless.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
18hr ago
Few things scare me more than a bike whizzing out of my blindspot and across (or near) the path of my vehicle
Do we think bike lanes may help with lane interactions by giving them a separated containment zone?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
18hr ago
Do we think bike lanes may help with predictability by giving them a separated containment zone?
Joyful
18hr ago
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
18hr ago
Sorry I should have been more clear. I think that having things like "Bayesian reasoning" and "try to seek the truth, if you're wrong, adjust your understanding of the world" and "attempt to anchor your thoughts and arguments in real and truthful facts" are all great things to do. I think they make people make smarter decisions and be correct more often.
I don't think they're a silver bullet, and none of them will make you right when you're wrong. You can also justify stupid shit by dressing it up in smart language.
But I think people who incorporate such ideals/heuristics into their life critically think more, and thus it is useful. It's just that rationalists seem to lean into it a bit much (not "pay lip service but don't do it"). They, like most people, still overvalue their beliefs, see: the perpetual meltdown over p(doom).
Why not? People are not that bad at coming up with heuristics that work for them. They have their limit's, of course, and offer no way of resolving disagreements, but it's really not a bad way of looking for the truth.
I don't think you're trolling me (although if you are, bravo) but are you serious? You will struggle to be right about anything if all your evidence is just you noticing things that confirm your biases and ignoring things that show you may be wrong (or at least not right).
This is a first for me though. I've never seen someone say out loud "anecdotes and confirmation bias is fine, actually"
PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
18hr ago
The "You also value my property more than your life" meme but its Israel aiming a missile reading "You also value my citizens more than your own"
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
18hr ago
Example laws in this vein:
NJ Statutes tit. 39 ch. 4 § 97.1
No person shall drive a
motorvehicle at such a slow speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic except when reduced speed is necessary for safe operation or in compliance with law.
PA Consolidated Statutes tit. 75 ch. 33 § 64
Except when reduced speed is necessary for safe operation or in compliance with law, no person shall drive a
motorvehicle at such a slow speed as to impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic.Except when reduced speed is necessary for safe operation or in compliance with law, whenever any person drives a vehicle upon a roadway having width for not more than one lane of traffic in each direction at less than the maximum posted speed and at such a slow speed as to impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic, the driver shall, at the first opportunity when and where it is reasonable and safe to do so and after giving appropriate signal, drive completely off the roadway and onto the berm or shoulder of the highway. The driver may return to the roadway after giving appropriate signal only when the movement can be made in safety and so as not to impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic.
A pedalcycle may be operated at a safe and reasonable speed appropriate for the pedalcycle. A pedalcycle operator shall use reasonable efforts so as not to impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic.
IN Code tit. 9 art. 21 ch. 5 § 7
A person may not drive a
motorvehicle at a slow speed that impedes or blocks the normal and reasonable movement of traffic, except when reduced speed is necessary for safe operation or in compliance with the law. A person who is driving:
on a roadway that has not more than one (1) lane of traffic in each direction; and
at a slow speed so that three (3) or more other vehicles are blocked and cannot pass on the left around the vehicle;
shall give right-of-way to the other vehicles by pulling off to the right of the right lane at the earliest reasonable opportunity and allowing the blocked vehicles to pass.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
18hr ago
A serious answer? Far too much effort for a throw-away joke, but I appreciate it haha. Maybe I will watch a football match, then I can stop getting shit for wearing football shoes out and about.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
18hr ago
I feel like if it was kept constant momentum it would just lead to a dystopia of motorcycles zooming through lumbering cybertrucks.
Ah! Bangkok!
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
18hr ago
When I look up this case by its two docket numbers in the Pennsylvania court system, the appellate docket sheet includes an order sealing the record, and the trial docket sheet doesn't show up at all. So this juvenile proceeding presumably is closed to the public.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
19hr ago
You should turn on your turn signal every time you switch lanes or otherwise would be expected to use it, even if nobody is around.
The point of the turn signal is to signal, it's pointless to do when nobody's around so if you're completely certain, there is no need. It's hard to be completely certain however, so lean on doing it all the time to build habit.
Stop signs and red lights need to be fully stopped at, even if nobody is around and you know there isn't a red light camera.
Same here, unless you're truly in the middle of the desert, these exist to regulate traffic and force you to look at potentially dangerous intersections, so lean on stopping unless you have good reason not to.
Speed limits should be followed to the letter when possible.
Speed limits are one of the stupidest conventions we have when it comes to traffic. Everyone seems to agree that it's better and safer to drive at the speed of the traffic, and nobody actually drives at a comfortable margin away from the speed limit so following the letter of the law actually puts you in danger.
Given this arised somewhat naturally out of the speed limit setup, I'm not sure if there's a better way to deal with this than what everyone's doing: driving safely most of the time and trying to abide by the law whenever cops or radars are around.
No limit autobahns and cops that stop you when you're truly being reckless doing 300+ and treating the road like a racetrack would probably be better, but those require a level of trust most non-germans can't afford.
The left lane is for passing only, and also, if you are in that lane and not passing and someone cuts you off or rides your bumper, that is fine.
If you're on the left lane and not passing you're an asshole. But just because people are assholes don't mean you should endanger your life to teach them a lesson. Never pass from the right unless that's the most safe thing you can do in that situation.
If someone does not make room for you and you need to come over (and properly signaled) you can cut them off guilt free.
If you're not in the right lane and you need to cut off people, you're just not driving properly. Don't be an asshole, don't endanger people, wait for the next exit.
I can break some of these rules (or others) but other drivers should not.
Kant is unimpeachably right about traffic laws. All driver ethics must be universalizable insofar as it applies to public roads. I would accept people breaking the laws only in a true emergency (life and death sort of deal), so I would only do so in such.
Mantergeistmann
19hr ago
10 million people, 7 million of them Jews, cannot sustain significant long-term military capacity against even low-medium strength foes if they lose the support of the US
Given that most of their neighbors want them dead and gone, and not due to generic geopolitical tensions, that just sounds like withdrawing US support will put them in a position where their only hope for survival is to establish regional supremacy as quickly and forcefully as possible, since they really can't sustain a long-term war against a coalition. Very unstable, certainly, but better than slowly and inevitably being ground into the ocean.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
19hr ago
No one could ever comprehend the struggles of the American life
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
19hr ago
I remember a state where I lived had a law that on a two lane road having more than X cars following you, while travelling below the speed limit required you to pull off the road and let cars pass. That would be a good principle for bike car road sharing.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
19hr ago
- Yes, except if you are in a turn only lane, it should not be necessary.
- Stop lights stop, 4 way stops with clearly no one else approaching slow to under 5.
- No drive at the speed of traffic the one exception is school zones where you should drive at the slow speed when the lights flash (even if it's summer and someone forgot to flip the switch off). The government broke the trust in the law by mandating an efficiency speed.
- The left lane is a commons and you should not squander it. That means both move over as someone approaches you and don't tailgate someone who is going slower than your desired speed. It's not a place for you to expect to never touch your cruise control speed in both directions.
- You have no right to anything but the lane you're in. No cutting off because of your poor planning. Go to the next exit or around the block.
- The zeroth rule is everyone should operate in the most predictable way to other drivers.
- Licensing should be much harder to obtain in the US.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
19hr ago
We may be having some of the highest quality political discourse on the internet right here, but in the grand scheme of things we're relatively inconsequential.
I strongly feel the latter is causing the former too. The day you become consequential is the day the spambots and cyber warriors come for you.
Truth only ever seems to get its day in the halls of nerds who argue for sport. May we never be cursed with influence.
New Jersey. We don't get mad, we get even.
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