domain:aporiamagazine.com
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
2hr ago
· Edited 1hr ago
So... what, you're saying that people have a responsibility to prove to you that they're not secretly cackling demons?
Do you realise that universalising this attitude results in civil war?
Is anyone looking at making a Chat GPT5 analysis? I don't want to preempt anything, but the results seem underwhelming.
Some people seem to put a premium on its usability though ('it does what you tell it to do').
Edit: All sorts of memes and squabbling going on over at /r/singularity
P-Necromancer
2hr ago
The common European value system says that basically to a first approximation there should not be a legal way to kill people (and to more detailed approximations we can begrudgingly haggle over exceptions like self-defence against someone who tries to kill you first)
And defensive war, right? The vast majority of Europe maintains a military and they don't arm them with tasers. Indeed, if you listen to their rhetoric regarding, say, a Russian invasion, it doesn't seem like that willingness to kill is 'begrudging' in the slightest. If it's truly a matter of value systems rather than practicality (war, you might argue, is more dangerous than random attacks perpetrated by individuals, but that's not an argument from values), what set of values afford nations the right to preemptively arm themselves to facilitate lethal self defense, but deny that right to individuals?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2hr ago
You should provide evidence for your claims. I'll start.
In 2023, 15,343 people received MAID in Canada, with 95.9% (14,721) falling under Track 1 (those whose natural death was reasonably foreseeable) and 4.1% (622) under Track 2 (those whose death was not reasonably foreseeable).
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2hr ago
Canada's MAID is the usual poster child for assisted suicide abuse, having been accused of suggesting it for people who are unhappy with the conventional medical care provided, or for political reasons, or for people who cost the system too much.
(and just because you filtered out the em-dashes doesn't mean I don't see what you did there)
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
2hr ago
Consider the counterfactual, or inverse case:
If you were offered the opportunity to remove 40 IQ points and half your lifespan, would that help in any way? Is there a particular reason the status-quo is privileged?
How does that change any of the ethical questions? What ethical difference does it make whether we're talking about playing Crusader Kings or an arbitrarily more complex super Crusader Kings? What is the relevant ethical difference between regular tennis and nuclear tennis? It seems like zero to me.
To the extent that you ask me to involve ethics in the question, my thrust is that most ethical theories tend towards eudaimonia, and some people really enjoy games. The same principle applies to enjoyment of just about anything really, though I suspect Marvel movies are best enjoyed while severely concussed.
In other words, most moral theories kinda like it when people have fun, all else being equal.
You can, as you do at the end of your post, just dismiss the question and assert an answer. But why should that answer be compelling? If your position is that there are no external criteria for a good life and the only thing that matters is self-approval, I think it's reasonable to reflect a bit on why you feel that's the case.
There are no universally compelling arguments. If it doesn't compel you, I genuinely can't do better than sigh/shrug. In this case, I have interrogated a rather related question, namely the concept of universal morality. My genuine takeaway from doing that is to come to the conclusion that there's no reason to believe such a thing exists, and even if it did, no plausible way to know that we've found it. The same applies to questions of objective/universal criteria for leading a fulfilling life.
Eventually, most of the "real" challenges that humanity faces will be, at least in my opinion, rendered obsolete. That leaves just about only games to pass the time. They can be complicated games, they might be of relevance to the real world (status games, proof of work or competence), but they're still games we play because we've run out of options. I think this isn't a thing to complain about, once we get there. Our ancestors struggled to survive so that we wouldn't have to.
Jiro
2hr ago
People get upset about restricting voting rights because in the real world, doing so has a really bad record.
pointing out that "voting is just pointing guns at people with more steps."
Voting is also used to keep other people from doing things to you. I suppose you could say that is still pointing guns, but it's the self-defense style of pointing guns. Everyone who wants to restrict the franchise on this basis talks about using the vote to take from others. Using the vote to keep bad things from being done to you usually gets handwaved away.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2hr ago
Are you proposing letting someone buy the gun, and then doing the check?
No, I'm proposing someone buys the gun, and if the police happen to find out the person was prohibited, they can prosecute then. No special police-state powers related to guns, any more than they get every utterance referred to them for possible prosecution (yes, the NSA wants almost that, but that's generally considered a bad thing).
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
2hr ago
You should really feel bad about nerd-sniping me at such a vulnerable time. Btw, essay's out.
P-Necromancer
2hr ago
Guns and other lethal weapons are a unique confluence of incredibly dangerous and almost completely unnecessary.
It strikes me that there's some tension in this notion. To the extent that guns are incredibly dangerous, it's because others might deliberately use them on you, right? Not that accidents don't happen, but we rarely describe cars as 'incredibly dangerous,' and they're much more dangerous than guns on that score. Cars are certainly more useful, but that doesn't make them any less dangerous. If you mean they're 'inherently' more dangerous... I don't think that's true? A speeding car carries vastly more energy than any bullet, and, if used carelessly, is certain to cause injury while guns are only moderately likely to do so. They're designed to kill while cars are not... But so what? Imagine a dud artillery shell which, through some manufacturing failure, doesn't actually contain any explosive. This object was certainly designed to kill, and in fact to be far more deadly than a normal firearm, but if someone called it 'incredibly dangerous' I'd expect them to be roundly mocked.
If it is about crime: to the extent that it's reasonable to fear others might attack you with lethal weapons, aren't means of self defense necessary? It can't really be both.
Banning guns entirely in a highly criminal society might reduce the level of danger you're subjected to, but not because they're unnecessary -- in fact, you'd be much safer if you acquired a gun illegally and kept it carefully concealed -- but because being denied that necessity is balanced out by degrading the capacity of the others to hurt you. In a minimally criminal society, guns might be almost completely unnecessary, but they're also not all that dangerous.
The Youth in Asia Aren't Sliding: An Empirical Look at Slippery Slopes
In the thread fathered by Cjet, @EverythingIsFine raised the classic concern about assisted suicide: sure, it sounds compassionate in principle, but won't we inevitably slide from "dignified death for the terminally ill" to "economic pressure on grandma to stop being a burden"? This is the kind of argument that is very hard to adjudicate one way or the other without, in the end, appealing to observed reality.
After all, some slopes are slippery. Some slopes are sticky. Some are icy for five feet then turn into sand. The real question isn’t “is there a slope?” but “what kind of slope is this, and can we put friction on it?”
Fortunately, in 2025, which is well past its best-by, we can look at said reality in the many countries where a form of euthanasia is legal, and see how that's panned out. I think that settles the question far better than arguing over philosophy (I started the argument by arguing about philosophy). The best way to overcome Xeno’s paradox is to show that yet, things move.
The Welfare State Reality Check
Let's start with a basic empirical observation: the countries that have legalized assisted dying are not, generally speaking, ruthless capitalist hellscapes where human life is valued purely in economic terms.
The UK, where I currently work in healthcare, is hemorrhaging money on welfare policies that would make American progressives weep with joy. I can personally attest that a substantial number of people drawing unemployment or disability benefits aren't, if we're being honest, actually incapable of productive work. We have an influx of immigrants who aren't economically productive but receive extensive support anyway. As the public (or at least British Twitter) has realized, we spend gobs of money on Motability cars for people who look suspiciously able to jog for the bus (I can't make a strong claim on how widespread said fraud is, but several instances seemed highly questionable to me).
This is not a society poised to start pressuring vulnerable people into death chambers to save a few pounds. Our doctors are, if anything, a meek and bullied bunch who err on the side of aggressive treatment even when it's clearly futile. I regularly see resources poured into advanced dementia patients who have no quality of life and no prospect of improvement. The NHS is many things, but “relentlessly utilitarian” is not one of them.
If I had a dollar for every dementia patient who has straight up asked me to kill the, well, I wouldn't quite retire (and I'd ask why I'm being given dollars), but it would be enough for a decent meal. Enough for a fancy French dinner, were I to include family pleading on their behalf. And I think those people have a point. Most of these claims arise in the rare periods of lucidity that bless/curse the severely demented. You get a few good minutes or hours to realize how your brain is rotting, often before your body has, and you realize how awful things have become. Then you slide back into the vague half-life of semi-consciousness, and I hope your mind is choosing to devote its last dregs of cognition to happier memories, instead of the living hell you currently dwell in. Meanwhile, your loved ones have no such recourse. All the memories of good times are unavoidably tarnished by seeing the people you love shit themselves and not even care.
Even the supposedly heartless United States has far more social safety nets than people give it credit for. Reddit memes about medical bankruptcy notwithstanding, it still spends around 6-8% of GDP on public healthcare and another roughly 5% on Social Security. I'm not sure how to tease apart Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security Disability, food stamps, housing assistance. That doesn't exactly look like a Darwinian free-for-all.
In other words, both countries already have welfare states that leak money in every direction except the one we’re worried about. So the empirical track record is: we’re bad at saying no. If we legalised assisted suicide tomorrow, I expect the dominant failure mode would still be “keep Grandma alive at enormous cost,” not “shove Grandma off the cliff.”
The Empirical Record
But let's not rely on anecdotes or gut feelings. We have actual data from places that have implemented assisted dying:
The Netherlands legalized euthanasia in 2002. Belgium in 2002. Switzerland has allowed assisted suicide since 1941. Canada introduced Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in 2016. If the slippery slope argument were correct, we should see clear evidence of these societies pressuring vulnerable populations into premature death.
Instead, what we see is:
- Rigorous oversight systems
- Multiple safeguards and waiting periods
- Low absolute numbers (typically 1.5% to 5% of total deaths, the Netherlands, after 23 years, finally broke through to 5.4% in 2024 and to 5.8% in 2025. That is less than the proportion of Americans who die as a consequence of smoking)
- Decent evidence of better outcomes for the family of the deceased (I've heard they tried to interview MAID participants post-procedure, but had truly abysmal response rates for reasons I can't quite fathom). For example, a statistically significant reduction in grief reactions or PTSD in the family of cancer patients who had opted for euthanasia as opposed to dying the old-fashioned way. In Canada: “The majority of family interview participants expressed high satisfaction with the quality of MAiD care their loved one received”. However, explicit single-item “approval rate” percentages among bereaved relatives are scarce.
- Very low rates of non-compliance with oversight or protocol. An example is this Dutch report, which found only six cases that the physician had not fulfilled the due care criteria in performing euthanasia.
- No significant evidence of systematic coercion. Every system has its failures, with anecdotes and horror stories to match, and the question is how often it fails.
In the Netherlands, for example, support for euthanasia remains at ~90% in both 1997 and 2017 in the general populace. I lifted said figure from this study
I would consider it rather suspicious if it was 95% in a country where 5% of people get offed annually by MAID. Fortunately, that's not the case.
(Yes, I know that it's 5% of all deaths, not 5% of the total population. I couldn't resist the joke, sue me)
The most common criticisms of these systems aren't "too many people are being pressured to die" but rather "the bureaucratic requirements are too onerous" and "some people who clearly qualify are being denied."
Designing Better Incentives
That said, EverythingIsFine's concerns aren't completely unfounded. Any system can be corrupted by perverse incentives. The question is whether we can design safeguards that are robust enough to prevent abuse while still allowing genuinely autonomous choice. I spend an ungodly amount of time juggling hypotheticals, so I have Opinions™.
Here are some mechanisms that could work:
Competing Advocates System
Structure the tribunals with explicitly competing incentive structures. Pay psychiatrists or social workers bonuses for every person they successfully talk out of euthanasia after demonstrating that their suffering can be meaningfully ameliorated. Simultaneously, have patient advocates who are rewarded for ensuring that people with genuinely hopeless situations aren't forced to endure unnecessary suffering.
This creates a natural tension where both sides have skin in the game, but in opposite directions. The "life preservation" team has incentives to find creative solutions, provide better pain management, connect people with resources they didn't know existed. The "autonomy" team ensures that paternalistic gatekeeping doesn't trap people in unbearable situations.
Red Team Testing
Implement systematic "penetration testing" for the oversight system. Create fictional cases of people who clearly should not qualify for assisted dying - someone with treatable depression, a person under subtle family pressure, an elderly individual who just needs better social support. Have trained actors present these cases to euthanasia panels. (E.g., 25-year-old grieving a break-up, fully treatable depression, no physical illness)
A modest proposal for the composition of such a panel:
7 people, randomly selected for each case):
-
2 psychiatrists, paid only if the panel declines the request.
-
2 social-workers/advocates, paid only if the group approves the request.
-
1 “neutral” physician (salary fixed).
-
2 lay jurors, paid a flat fee.
The psychiatrists and advocates must publish a short written justification (≤500 words). The neutral physician and lay jurors read both sides and vote. Majority rules. The adversarial structure means the psychiatrists have skin in the game if they rubber-stamp a case that later looks fishy, and the advocates have skin in the game if they brow-beat a clearly salvageable patient. The lay jurors are there to keep the professionals honest.
(Alternative models might be splitting the psychiatrists and advocates across both teams)
Any panel that approves inappropriate cases faces serious consequences. This creates strong incentives for rigorous evaluation while identifying systemic weaknesses before they cause real harm.
We already use similar approaches in other domains. Government agencies test whether stores are properly checking ID for alcohol sales. Tax authorities use mystery shoppers to verify compliance. Financial regulators use stress tests to identify institutional weaknesses.
Temporal Safeguards
Build in meaningful waiting periods with multiple check-ins. Not the perfunctory "wait two weeks" that can be gamed, but structured reassessment over months. Require people to demonstrate that their decision remains stable across different contexts - good days and bad days, when surrounded by family and when alone, after various treatment interventions have been attempted. At any time the patient can unilaterally revoke the request (one phone call suffices), at which point the whole timeline resets. Finally, lethal medication is dispensed only on the day of the procedure, and only if the patient re-asserts consent on camera, without the advocate or psychiatrist in the room.
This serves multiple purposes: it prevents impulsive decisions, allows time for circumstances to change, and creates multiple opportunities to identify and address external pressures.
More Watching of the Watchers
All decisions (with names redacted) are published in a searchable database. Independent academics can run regressions on approval rates vs. patient age, diagnosis, postcode, etc. Outlier panels get flagged automatically. (If Panel #7 approves 90% of 25-year-olds with psoriasis, maybe look into that). The tribunal system becomes a public good: researchers learn what actually predicts irrevocable suffering, and policy can adjust.
Economic Firewalls
Perhaps most importantly, create strong institutional barriers between economic interests and euthanasia decisions. Healthcare systems, insurance companies, and family members should have no financial incentive for someone to choose death over continued treatment.
This might mean that euthanasia decisions are handled by completely separate institutions from those bearing the costs of care. Or it might mean generous death benefits that make someone more economically valuable alive than dead. Or mandatory cooling-off periods after any discussion of treatment costs.
EverythingIsFine’s deepest worry is emotional pressure: Grandma feels like a burden even if no one explicitly says so. The adversarial tribunal can’t eliminate that feeling, but it can reduce the plausibility of the belief. If Grandma knows that two professionals will lose money unless they are convinced she is beyond help, the thought “my family would be better off without me” loses some of its sting. The process itself becomes a costly signal that society is not eager to see her go.
The Comparative Harm Analysis
But here's what I think clinches the argument: we need to compare the risks of legalized assisted dying against the status quo.
Right now, people who want to end unbearable suffering have several options, all of them worse:
- Violent suicide methods that traumatize families and first responders. Even ODing on pills usually isn't easy, and some, like paracetamol overdoses are a terrible way to go. I saw a doctor do that once, and it worked (they died of liver failure in the ICU) but it wasn't any fun. Wouldn't recommend. As a physician, I can certainly think of better ways, but Google or most chatbots aren't nearly as obliging for lay users.
- Traveling to jurisdictions where assisted dying is legal (expensive, logistically complex, forcing people to die far from home)
- Gradually reducing food and water intake (slow, uncertain, medically problematic)
- Overdosing on accumulated medications (uncertain success rate, potential for brain damage if unsuccessful)
- Convincing doctors to provide unofficially lethal doses of pain medication (creates legal liability for physicians, inconsistent availability)
Each of these approaches involves more suffering, more uncertainty, and more potential for things to go wrong than a well-designed assisted dying system.
Meanwhile, the people we're supposedly protecting by prohibiting euthanasia - those who might be pressured into unwanted death - are already vulnerable to abuse in countless other ways. Family members can pressure elderly relatives to sign over property, refuse beneficial medical treatment, or accept substandard care. Healthcare systems already make implicit rationing decisions based on cost considerations (but this is a necessary tradeoff for any system that doesn't have literally infinite amounts of money. The Pope doesn't spend all of the Church’s budget on a single drowning orphan)
Creating a transparent, regulated system for end-of-life decisions doesn't create these pressures - it makes them visible and addressable.
The Autonomy Principle
Ultimately, this comes back to the fundamental question of autonomy that cjet79 raised in the original post. If we don't trust competent adults to make informed decisions about their own deaths, even with appropriate safeguards and cooling-off periods, then we don't really trust them to be autonomous agents at all.
We let people make all sorts of life-altering decisions with far less oversight: whom to marry, whether to have children, what career to pursue, whether to undergo risky medical procedures, whether to engage in dangerous recreational activities. Many of these decisions are statistically more likely to cause regret than a carefully considered choice to end unbearable suffering.
The paternalistic argument essentially says: "We know better than you do whether your life is worth living." That's a pretty extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary justification.
Conclusion
Legalising assisted suicide beyond the “imminent death” cases does open a channel for pressure and abuse. But the same could be said of every other high-stakes civil right: police shootings, child custody, involuntary commitment, even driving licences. The solution has never been “ban the activity”; it has been “create adversarial oversight with transparent metrics and random audits.”
If we can audit restaurants for rat droppings and banks for money-laundering, we can audit tribunals for premature death. The price of liberty is eternal paperwork (woe is me, I do more than my fair share already) but at least the paperwork can be designed by people who actually want the patient to live if there’s any reasonable chance of recovery.
I'm not arguing for euthanasia-on-demand or a system with minimal safeguards. I'm arguing for thoughtfully designed institutions that balance individual autonomy against the genuine risks of coercion and abuse.
(To put an unavoidable personal spin on it, I've been severely depressed, I've had suicidal ideation. I would have a very easy time indulging in that feeling, and I refrained not just from thanatophobia, but from a genuine understanding that my brain is/was broken. My advocacy for the right for people to make this choice is informed by a deeply personal understanding of what being there is like. Don't worry, I'm mostly better.)
The slippery slope argument assumes that any movement toward assisted dying will inevitably lead to systematic devaluation of vulnerable lives. But this treats policy design as if it's governed by some inexorable natural law rather than conscious human choices about how to structure institutions.
We can choose to create robust safeguards. We can choose to separate economic interests from end-of-life decisions. We can choose to err on the side of caution while still respecting individual autonomy.
The question isn't whether a poorly designed system could be abused - of course it could. The question is whether we're capable of designing better systems than the brutal status quo of forcing people to suffer without recourse or resort to violent, traumatic methods of ending their lives.
I think we are. And I think the evidence from jurisdictions that have tried suggests that the slippery slope, while worth watching for, isn't nearly as slippery as critics claim.
Browser
2hr ago
Yeah but you and the guy writing the above aren't the mujahideen you're Americans who enjoy creature comforts. It'd be three days of chicken tender embargos and you'd be giving your guns up
anti_dan
2hr ago
What actually gets me is a different question: Why the hell is the US attorney even making calls like that? My general takeaway is that the US Government would greatly benefit by following the process most local prosecutors offices have: Police investigate crimes, sometimes they come to the prosecutors for things like subpoenas, search warrants, and legal advice, but largely they investigate cases on their own. THEN they present findings to the prosecutors who decide which charges best apply to the case. The prosecutor then files those charges and gets a grand jury to indict it (or very rarely they will deliver a no true bill, at which point the case is dead). This whole situation of prosecutors actively participating in the investigation of crimes and negotiating with defense counsel before investigations are concluded and charges are filed is just begging for corruption to enter into the process.
No, that is bad and stupid. They should not be meeting with defense until after charges are filed. If defense convinces you that the most serious charges are legally insufficient, you can move to have them dismissed and proceed on the lesser charges instead. This happens as a matter of course in state trials. A defendant may be charged with First Degree Murder, and then plead to 2nd Degree, or Manslaughter in exchange for dismissal of the higher charges. The US Attorneys seem to have tied themselves into knots with odd self-imposed regulations that seem to only serve two purposes: 1) Enable corruption; and 2) Keep their caseloads low by refusing to prosecute cases they might lose.
anti_dan
3hr ago
Even if they are, Red Tribe Americans are smarter and better trained than those two groups plus one would need to account for military defections. Like I said, they'd have to glass everyone. You can't hold a mid sized suburb with drones and a few tanks. You need to be able to go door to door.
anti_dan
3hr ago
It is certainly true in almost all major blue states. It is also true in many purple states like Ohio, PA, Virginia, and more. Your admission that people can't take their gun into the post office anywhere is also telling. What that means is you can't GO to the post office if you have a gun on you while you are walking around, or if you are in your car, you need a safe in which to store your gun lest it get stolen when you go into the post office. Even many red states have municipalities that ban firearm possession on public transit, meaning many people are effectively disarmed during work hours.
DLs, OTOH are basically universal and trivially easy to obtain. No one actually fails the driving test anymore, I doubt they ever did. And you get multiple screw ups before privileges are revoked. Indeed they can be re-obtained even after DUIs. OTOH, 1 fuck up with a gun typically means permanent deprivation of your gun rights, subject to rapidly ratcheting prison sentences.
So actually, open carry is legal in my blue state but I specifically went out and got a CHL because I didn't want to wear it openly in the off-chance other hikers might see it since I'm sure they would think they almost died.
Of course given my luck I'd get prosecuted for concealing a handgun if I didn't bother to get the CHL, so here we are.
The real salt of the Earth guy teaching the CHL licensing class thought this was kind of gay.
anti_dan
3hr ago
Gazan's are such an incompetent set of people that when given almost 2 decades of self rule they did absolutely no economic development, no infrastructure construction, etc etc. Instead they dedicated all that time towards scheming up new terrorist attacks.
If Red America was given a similar gift they would be on the moon and the US gov would be afraid to attack the free enclave because they might lose.
Yes Gaza sucks to live in, because it is full of Gazans.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
3hr ago
What's specifically stressful about it? Aren't you just, like, talking to people and billing hours?
I could imagine being forced to care about people you don't care about can wear on you. But make you an alcoholic? Isn't the point of training and experience so you can autopilot most of the time?
Are you talking about being a corporate attorney?
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3hr ago
But doesn’t that require that the population be willing to actually fire back? That might be easier with guns, but modern suburban Americans are not the same stock as Muslims in MENA. Insurgency works if you have a population willing to fight. Arabs in the Middle East sure, they’re raised to fight, to wish for tge deaths of their enemies. White suburban Americans are not made of that stuff. They’ve been tamed from birth, raised to be nice, to prize comfort and safety and peaceful living. I just find it hilarious that people expect suburban professionals who meekly obey every dictate from corporate America and schedule their two week vacations during which they do work emails are suddenly going to rebel and shoot government workers. It’s not going to happen because most of us would be under the bed afraid of the cops.
The whole point of an index fund is that it's basically always better than guessing which companies are "solid and growing" and this advantage is only more obvious, not less, as time goes on (in part because index funds inherently re-weight on a mechanical basis as companies enter and exist whatever toplist they track, though minor differences especially within index ETFs exist in implementation). Turns out that judgement is way more subjective than often appreciated, according to the data.
There exist some speculative, theoretical reasons why index funds especially in their modern iterations might backfire in the future, but these remain wholly speculative, would mostly affect all investors roughly in aggregate together, and are not worth the time of day for most investors.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3hr ago
Red tribe defection doesn't look like random acts of terror.
It demonstrably can: look at Oklahoma City. But I think you're right in the general case.
I feel like that article's example is chosen more for shock value than truth, though. Practically, they only invest a single time for almost 15 years, even though it's a big amount, does that really reflect true investor behavior (saving in the meantime)? Not only staying put for a while, but your income won't stay the same over time, so even though they inflation-adjusted the core stock market measure, it's not going to be anything remotely like "I have 40k right now or I could strategically invest it over time in equal lumps on the dips" since that 40k is already inflation-corrected, you'd never have that to start with, so to me something feels a bit wrong in the setup. At any rate most people aren't debating between saving until a major dip and investing each month. Most people are debating between investing a lump sum all at once, or doing a structured investment. That is, I have 10k in savings, do I buy now or do I split it up into some number of equal parts over days/weeks/months? Notably both this more limited entry strategy and investing your extra every month ad infinitum are both sometimes referred to as dollar cost averaging, confusingly, since they represent two quite fundamentally different use-cases and setups.
Although a similar logic applies in the structured investment case, where the lump sum technically wins out mathematically, and the longer the time horizon the more this is true (somewhat counterintuitively), it's still worth noting that a structured deposit does offer both a decrease in risk as well as some emotional benefits (provided you actually stick to the structured deposit schedule without overthinking, which is a major doubt considering they're more also probably more risk-averse and overthinking in the first place). Overall I think the math says the risk decrease is overstated, so really it just comes down to emotions. Consider the worst-case scenario and if your precise entry strategy would have made an emotional difference or not, and then consider the best-case scenario and if you'd feel substantial regret not earning more. Only the investor themselves can say, but e.g. this Vanguard paper makes the claim that assuming you don't have loss aversion (which is to some extent irrational for most investors) only "very conservative" risk tolerance people should bother to DCA and also puts some numbers to it (see page 6 for some sexy money curves).
ninja edit: fixed objection about inflation
Gaashk
3hr ago
Thanks! That is pretty interesting. I did like the few Lovecraft stories I read more than I had expected as well.
anti_dan
3hr ago
Many people get very uncomfortable with frank and honest discussions about voting and voting rights (one may hearken back to SSC's Civil Rites post for more elaboration). My con law professor had a Roko's basilisk-esque response to our 1L Federalist society secretary (or maybe it was treasurer) pointing out that "voting is just pointing guns at people with more steps." I don't find something along that line uncommon.
The only meaningful difference in a protracted civil conflict is mountains.
America has a ton of motivated political irregulars of many political stripes, and loads of impractical terrain not far from farmland.
You could run a guerilla for a very long time if you wanted to and had enough civilian support. And that has actually happened many times in American history. With extremely bloody outcomes.
You are a fool to think Americans can't be driven crazy enough to be the men in black pyjamas when that shit happened many times in a small scale up and including within living memory.
More options
Context Copy link