domain:imgur.com
TIRM
11hr ago
My insurance charges all policyholders enough to pay on average $2000 for this procedure, or a copay of $2000 if we are imagining patient out of pocket. I’d say that’s rather the point of insurance. There’s some tiny chance of true financial disaster and they charge all of us a bearable portion of that small chance.
Tenaz
12hr ago
I mean, "work harder and smarter" is good "advice" in this sense for at least 95% of people. Heck, "Make all the right decisions and don't make mistakes" is even better; 100% of people would benefit from that.
Advice is more than just [things it would be good if people do]; there's a sense in which it actually has to be useful, insightful information. In this much more relevant sense, most advice is bad, because it's not useful or insightful.
It essentially implies the difference between the right wing and left wing argument about things are about morals and not about the effectiveness of policy or economic ideas for the good of our country and our citizens.
I have seen this argument before, where literally in the same sentence somebody can say that other people argue about morals, while he just wants what is good for people. You do realize, that moral philosophy on basic level talks about distinction between what is good and what is bad? As soon as you use the word good or bad, you are making a moral argument.
There seems to be certain myopia for many people, where they hold some moral positions without acknowledging them as such. They pretend that their morality is objective and rational, not even warranting defending it - as if they read it from facts of the universe, they gleaned it from the proton number of atom of carbon, or from trajectory of Jupiter or something like that. It is similar trick adjacent to Russel's conjugation in much of leftist thinking - our moral philosophy is true and fair and outside of critique, while your moral philosophy is just a hideous ideology.
georgioz
12hr ago
Sure, there can be a weird twist when in let's say 50 years what constitutes an undesirable group can change quite radically. The unpredictability of lebanonization of a country.
I disagree with WITS as measure: it doesn't matter if dates and feta cheese are duty-free if it's averaged out with protectionist tariffs for trucks and other heavy industry. Tariffs aren't even the whole story when it comes to protectionism. There are subsidies, designated country of origin, etc...
But that's beside the point. There are many Americans who, have, in fact not benefitted from free trade, from the free movement of peoples. I have this bloody shirt of three innocent people killed by a trucker u-turning on the highway with his truck. The countless dead of working-class communities who were eaten alive by fentanyl and despair. The general collapse of the affordability of housing. I could go on and on.
The old social contract is already dead. Why cling to an order that gives nothing for my compliance and has no resistance to offer for my defiance?
I expect the business owners and manufacturers to be unhappy about the tariffs: their profits are made at the expense of the people and communities they live in. Skin in the game is a good model of demonstrating sincerity, provided that access to the table is possible. It hasn't been for a very long time. Well, now our problem is your problem. The red-browns, one way or another, will come for the little urban enclaves eventually. Whether it be putting soldiers in your streets or giving you bloody shaves by taxation, the end result is the same. Pay up, liberal. What are you going to do, write an angry letter to your congressman?
It didn't work for us: why would it work for you?
It's not so fun when you're the number on the spreadsheet, is it?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
12hr ago
No argument here: lots of MAGA types really are calling for their opponents' heads.
I do have an argument - that's what "dispassionately weighing up their options and reluctantly opting for tit-for-tat as the best of a bad bunch" looks like.
When Russia invaded and Ukrainians started referring to them as "orcs", that does not detract from their defense being a reluctant tit-for-tat. That sort of language is what you need to hype up a collective, and coordinate actual defense.
To steelman the political revenge framework, consider it from a game-theoretic perspective. Alice and Bob are playing iterated prisoner's dilemma and raking in money by cooperating with each other. One turn, Alice hits the defect button and makes more money than Bob. Bob says "what the hell" and Alice says "sorry, my finger slipped". Even if she's (probably) lying, Alice likely isn't stupid enough to pull the same trick on the next turn, so in the short-term, Bob's best bet is to hit cooperate on the next turn too. But if he does this, Alice will realise that she can occasionally hit the defect button and face no repercussions for it. So in the long term, it might make more sense for Bob to hit the defect button in the next turn in order to send a credible signal that defection will be punished: if he doesn't, he's incentivising Alice to repeatedly defect in future. Thus, the tit-for-tat strategy which (as I understand it) outperforms all others in iterated prisoner's dilemma.
A member of the Red Tribe may not think it's in the best interests of the country if Blue Tribers get fired from their jobs for opinions they expressed privately, a fate which befell many Red Tribers (or even insufficiently ideologically pure Blue Tribers) between 2009-16. But they may also be aware that, if the Blue Tribe faces no repercussions for the cancellation campaigns they wrought in the period, then they're bound to give it another try as soon as the boot is back on the other foot (as it inevitably will be sooner or later). From a game-theoretic perspective, the best solution might well be sending a credible message that "if you do this to us, we WILL do it back to you, so don't do it to us in the first place and we'll all get along just fine".
The obvious rebuttal is that there's a missing mood and the Red Tribe aren't dispassionately weighing up their options and reluctantly opting for tit-for-tat as the best of a bad bunch: they're baying for blood. No argument here: lots of MAGA types really are calling for their opponents' heads. But I refer you to The Whole City is Centre. Evolution gave us a set of instincts which approximate the game-theoretic-optimal choice that a learning algorithm would naturally arrive at by trial and error. The fact that two people learned how to play iterated prisoner's dilemma using different algorithms doesn't necessarily mean there's any difference in the course of action they would opt for at any point in the decision tree.
My point is just that the only difference between you and the pro-punishment faction is that you are following an explicitly-calculated version of the principled consequentialist defense of punishment, and they are following a heuristic approximating the principled consequentialist defense of punishment, and their heuristic might actually be more accurate than your explicit calculation.
When Alice hits defect and Bob hits defect in retaliation, his blood is pumping and his face is bright red. If Alice was playing against ChatGPT and hit defect, ChatGPT would weigh up its options and calmly, dispassionately hit defect in retaliation. But both Bob and ChatGPT hit defect in retaliation.
Listening
12hr ago
they're at least faster than the other guys.
More "less stridently involved in politics" I think. Lackey always liked to talk more than her skill could support.
I doubt they'd have to refuse nominations today.
(I've heard rather pointed "heteronormative" puns. I'd not trust to good will if it came to that.)
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
12hr ago
and it looks like Gavin fucking Newsom will probably run for president in 2028 on a platform of owning the right and probably win and continue the escalating clownworld cycle.
And my point is: corporate needs you to find the difference between these pictures.
What's supposed to be happen in an alternative universe where Trump is not trying to top them? Newsom was discussed as the heir apparent to the Democratic throne before Kamala was even done losing. Is it "the platform of owning the right"? For one, are you sure they wouldn't be running on it anyway? Secondly, what is the difference between them running on that platform and not running on it? Biden was running as "le reasonable moderate", and look how that turned out.
comfortable
12hr ago
Currently playing (among other things) Etrian Odyssey HD. I'm considering making a longer recommendation post about it, maybe in the next fun thread.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
13hr ago
· Edited 13hr ago
Tariffs are fairly standard policy when it comes to import-substitution industrial development. If they're so bad, then why does the rest of the world have them? Are they stupid?
The rest of the world doesn't do it, with the exceptions of India and Brazil. In those two cases, yes, they're being stupid. Here is the latest official WTO stats for effectively applied trade-weighted tariff (WITS) for the top 10 countries by GDP - most data seems to be sourced from 2022 reports as far as I can tell:
| Country | WITS % |
|---|---|
| United States | 2.2% |
| China | 3.3% |
| Germany | 2.8% |
| India | 12.0% |
| Japan | 1.9% |
| United Kingdom | 3.6% |
| France | 2.8% |
| Italy | 2.8% |
| Canada | 3.4% |
| Brazil | 8.0% |
As of now, the average trade-weighted tariff for the US is sitting at about 16%.
So no, this is very much not a standard policy, which is why I'd be interested to see someone sincerely defend it as a good policy rather than as a way to own the mean libs by burning down the house we all live in.
Without going into a Putin-esque diatribe about the history of the United States, free trade was the bribe that Americans gave to the defeated Axis and their European partners to be anti-Soviet and anti-Communist. Now that Americans no longer benefit from this arrangement, they are free to end it as they please. Economically? Not very good. As a scheme to destroy the liberal, atlanticist order? Very good.
... but Americans do benefit from free trade? Can you find me some examples of business owners or manufacturers in the United States who are happy about the tariffs? Because as far as I can tell nobody with skin in the game is very happy. Happy to be proven wrong here.
What if I see destroying the old order as a good thing?
Then you can join the tankies over in the "deeply unserious people" corner. "Destroy the current order, I'm sure somebody has a better plan" has not historically been a successful strategy.
If my ends are the fundamental destruction of your world order, we can't chalk it up to democratic plurality. There really are positions of which are irreconcilable to the liberal worldview. What are you going to do about it? Honorably lose to me? Have many moral victories to your name as I take power?
Realistically? Make sure I have non-dollar-denominated assets, stay within my decidedly not destroyed blue enclave, and be sad as I stop being able to take pride in my country. As they say, there's a lot of ruin in a nation.
For a lot of political principles, you'll have a coalition made up of people who sincerely endorse that principle, and people who contingently endorse it so long as it's convenient for them and will abandon it at the drop of a hat when it no longer is. Annoyingly, the members of the latter group often masquerade as members of the former and even do such a good job that members of the former group are taken in by them.
I'm a principled free speech absolutist, as a consequence of which I sincerely believe that Mahmoud Khalil should be able to disseminate Hamas propaganda on college campuses without the federal government weighing down on him (or Kneecap waving Hezbollah flags, for that matter). During the period 2009-16 (and to a lesser extent 2021-24) I was under no illusions about the conservatives railing against "cancel culture": I knew full well that a significant proportion (perhaps even an absolute majority) had no interest in free speech as a general principle and just wanted to be the ones doing the cancelling. I'm old enough to remember when the boot was on the other foot and the Red Tribe held enough institutional power that the Dixie Chicks could face lost earnings owing to their criticisms of George Bush. It's a lonely life being a principled supporter of free speech: there aren't enough of us to be a real political movement on our own, so until a political leader comes along who shares our values, we're forced into alliances of convenience with whichever group isn't currently holding the whip: Democrats when Trump is in the White House, Republicans when Newsom is; Tories when Labour are in power, Labour when the Tories are. It's all the harder to be a free speech absolutist when prominent organisations which used to share our values (e.g. the ACLU) faced a choice between sticking to their guns and going under, or staying alive by skin-suiting themselves, and opted for the latter.
(I will cop to a bit of Schadenfreude about how short-sighted many of the arguments progressives were making in defense of censorship between 2009-16 were. I routinely pointed out that the "it's a private company, they can do what they want" argument was bound to come back to bite them in the ass sooner or later - this was several years before Musk's Twitter buyout. A lot of self-identified Marxists really do not seem to grasp the concept of the veil of ignorance.)
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
13hr ago
The Blues, even in Europe, were much more bloodthirsty when they thought the original loss to Trump was just a fluke.
I'm not necessarily talking about bloodthirstiness. I think there were some lines in terms of policies that sound good but are in fact disastrous that nobody crossed prior to 2020, and then the left went performatively insane during covid, and then the Trump admin is trying to top them in performative insanity and succeeding, and it looks like Gavin fucking Newsom will probably run for president in 2028 on a platform of owning the right and probably win and continue the escalating clownworld cycle.
Maybe you're right and that won't happen though. I hope you're right.
The previous bargain was "we'll be mostly very polite as we render everyone who dares disagree permanently unemployable and watch them die alone under a bridge."
As far as I can tell "Dark Woke" means "we'll do the same thing, but while shouting 'retard!' and making generated pictures of Trump as a fat man with lots of Stars of David."
So absolutely much safer.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
13hr ago
Wow. First of all that’s mighty quick to jump to “sides”.
Eh, maybe. But like I said, this pricked a bugbear that I've been on about on numerous occasions before.
Second, I think you’re misrepresenting the game theory. It’s been a while, but I’m pretty sure that “generous tit for tat” usually wins in the situation most like US politics (you copy the last move of the other side, but occasionally show forgiveness - note that tit for tat also allows chained cooperation, so it’s not infinite revenge).
No, you're correct on the theoretical game theory. I just can't think of a time in American politics in the last few decades when someone has shown forgiveness and it worked.
Third, you’re misrepresenting Democrats. “When they go low we go high” was the motto for quite a while. You can make a good case it was never this rosy but many felt that way.
Yes, that was a line in a speech. What tangible example would you point to when the Democrats ever went "high"?
In that respect Newsom’s actions are a half anomaly and not universally supported to boot (though anti-gerrymandering is not a partisan issue; even my home state of Utah passed a ballot measure for independent redistricting, though the legislature has tried to nuke it).
I actually don't think Newsom's actions on that account are particularly egregious. His own state isn't maximally gerrymandered (only down to 9/50 Republicans compared to 45% voting) and he only has to spit on his state constitution to force an out of cycle redistricting. It's at least cleaner than the solid month of "finding more votes" California had to flip 5ish seats last election.
A better model of Democrats - at least as far as you can consider them united, as disclaimed - is that they are pro-rule of law or “norms”, but frequently break those norms just a little bit (eg federal judges without 60) and then go all surprised face when Republicans decide it’s open season and blow by whatever excuse/reasoning they gave (eg SC without 60). That is, Democrats are broadly reasonable but also guilty of first small steps, but Republicans are guilty of escalation. Which is worse? Eh. Depends on what you view as the normal population of game theory players! Which is debatable, not fact. Though I’d be interested to hear you actually put some reasoning to your claim.
That is the sane-washed story they tell themselves. In practice, Democrats only hold to norms to the extent that they are winning. Consider the Supreme Court. When the SC was delivering progressive wins, it was an unimpeachable source of restraint and goodness and laws and norms. And then when Trump gave us a conservative majority, they immediately switched to "This SC is illegitimate and it's rulings are illegitimate. We should pack the court when we get back in power."
There was a fun bit of needling a few weeks ago, when conservative shit-stirrers were tossing progressives their own tweets about court packing (because now Trump would be the one appointing them).
That’s a little depressing until you recall that this isn’t too uncommon when an abstract principle collides with a concrete example.
Thus always. Except not always. As a pro-choice atheist myself, I was rather impressed with how many conservatives took the double-barrel blast of "demographic implications of abortion restrictions" and just went YesChad.jpg.
And to be fair, there's points on the left where they'll go down with the ship. Importing infinity wife-beating criminals and child rapists. Hating men. Sterilizing and mutilating children.
And all of this is besides the point that these "Don't you know fighting is bad?!" posts always get directed towards the right and never towards the left. It's not a quick jump to sides when every example is one-sided.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
13hr ago
I think megalomaniacal projects are inherently collectivist, a National Pride thing. You can do that when you have some particular mixes of populism and optimistic technocracy, perhaps; or when you're an authoritarian quasi-fascist (by modern standards) state that doesn't feel the need to pander to felt mundane needs of the electorate and is able to sell random infrastructure as a cause for celebration. Britain these days sounds more like it might do a mega-housing project for immigrants, or a renovation of state surveillance grid. That can be sold as visionary, too.
So speaking of China, yeah they've got that in droves. What @roystgnr said about rocketry (I am more optimistic, their currently tested designs are innately better than Falcon 9 and may allow rapid scaling beyond Starships, though this might take 5+ years). They have started to assemble a distributed orbital supercomputer (again, bottlenecked by lift capacity). There's preliminary research into using Lunar lava tubes for habitats, with the goal of eventual settlement of the Moon once they have the means to deliver nontrivial mass. What @RandomRanger said about the big dam; for datacenters, I like that they have a project of national «public compute» grid to basically commoditize GPU cycles like electricity and tap water . They have this Great Green Wall project, planting a Germany-sized forest to arrest the spread of Gobi desert. They've done another one in Xinjiang already. Mostly it's trivial things at vast scale – like installing thousands of high-current EV chargers, solar everywhere etc. There's a lot going on.
I think Britain would be very much improved by something mundane like that instead of flashy awe-inspiring megaprojects. It impressed me today to find that this July, China has increased residential power consumption by 18% versus July of previous year. «Between 2019 and 2025, residential power consumption in the month of July rose by 138%». I can't readily find the equivalent stats for Britain, but energy use per capita has declined by 14% in the same period; incidentally China has overtaken the UK on per capita total energy use in 2019-2020 (you can click your way to apples-to-apples comparison). The decline in energy use is a very clear sign of British involution, and it wouldn't take that much, logistically speaking, to reverse – Brits are still rich enough, and they're small enough, to procure gas (Trump rejoices), and maybe some Rolls-Royce reactors, and reduce costs and raise quality of life. AC in the summer and ample heating in the winter would do wonders to make the island less dreadful.
jkf
14hr ago
If there was a concerted effort at any point in time, it would have to have been a pan-national cover up of frankly astonishing proportions.
What do you think the consequences would be, if the populations of the countries that were forced to take this stuff (and strongly encouraged to give it to their children) were to find out that it was even somewhat harmful?
Rivers of blood my man -- this is not a game.
And if that is not worth covering up (on an individual prospiracy type basis; not overarching organization is needed because the incentives are the same everywhere), I don't know what would be.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
14hr ago
This is politics. Principles are objectively for suckers.
You even evidence why: there are vast quantities of people who will defect, which makes being a cooperate-bot a terrible strategy.
If you don't tit for tat you just end up in the grave with Thomas More, Pompey and Alexander Kerensky. Though what an honorable grave it is. The best.
How does "spend political capital to achieve left-wing policy goals (and take the blame when they fail)" accomplish any of what you're saying?
I think it's an ideological move that doesn't help Trump's position, so I don't think it's good politics. It's spending political capital on something that could be better allocated, on my opinion, but far from me to tell Americans how to spend their infinite debt. Exchanging worthless paper for Intel stock might well be a good deal.
I'm commenting on the general idea that ideological principles should guide politics instead of pragmatic coalition building, which is a loser's position by any objective metric. And thus undesirable even to the ideologue, insofar as he's sincere.
people are so eager to throw away principles for the sake of spite that they aren't stopping to ask questions like "Is this just helping the people I'm trying to be spiteful towards at my own expense?"
People are just growing up from the follies of the 1990s now that the chickens have come home to roost. Awaking from a slumber, if you will.
You'll notice I don't advocare pettiness or impotent spite here. Only total annihilation. Anything less is actually a waste of good lives.
If you don't have principles besides "oppose the enemy", and also you don't understand what your enemy believes, it's pretty easy to end up supporting the enemy against your own side
Of course, and the lesson here is that you need to know your enemy and know yourself. Not that principles should get in the way of doing what is right.
Ideological purity is a broken compass that doesn't provide a substitute for true knowledge of one's own tendencies and that of one's enemies. It's not the loss you think it is.
Observe everything, admire nothing.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
14hr ago
"Look what you made me do" - man doing what he was going to do anyway. The thing about unprincipled people is that they think everyone else is just like them and that principles are for suckers. There are enough other unprincipled people that it's extremely easy to sustain this belief even in the face of clear evidence that you're well below average in terms of behavior simply by telling yourself others would do it if they could.
Why political revenge narratives don't make sense to me.
Political revenge narratives make more sense if you consider them as a gloss on crude dominance seeking. You can't just come out and say "I enjoy having power over my enemies" because you'll scare your less dominance-oriented political allies (who may start to wonder when the jackboot is coming down on their face). Framing it as revenge lets you justify it as a balancing of the scales - both punishment for misbehavior and a necessary reminder of why you shouldn't be fucked with. Actual misbehavior or unbalanced scales somewhere between optional and a negative.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
14hr ago
Definitely more. The Blues, even in Europe, were much more bloodthirsty when they thought the original loss to Trump was just a fluke.
There's been this hilarious attempt to make the poibt you're hinting at: "Oooh! You're really going to get it now!". They're going to become "Dark Woke" now! And I'm sitting here waiting for someone to point out the difference, if anything they're significantly more mild.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
14hr ago
Maybe it shouldn't be called "mental health", but what would you prefer for such a reasonable ask?
Not who you're talking to, but I believe a good word for this is "stress", which most people recognise as something that can play a part in adverse health outcomes. The possibility that the medical system might just saddle you with a gigantic, life-ruining debt by surprise and with no recourse would make absolutely be a significant source of stress.
sodiummuffin
14hr ago
The specific context which inspired his post is Trump doing stuff like buying the government a 10% share in Intel and some people justifying this with "your rules, fairly > your rules, unfairly". I'm pretty sure this isn't even Trump trying to "use left-wing tactics against them" or anything, it doesn't accomplish anything partisan. Trump just genuinely believes in a bunch of left-wing policy positions like opposition to free trade and government ownership of companies. How does "spend political capital to achieve left-wing policy goals (and take the blame when they fail)" accomplish any of what you're saying?
Principled agents are bad politicians: they will sacrifice what is necessary on the altar of their principle, and thus be outmaneuvered by less scrupulous agents. Their principles will be subverted by their enemies and become the instrument of their demise.
I've been noticing the exact opposite problem on the internet lately, where people are so eager to throw away principles for the sake of spite that they aren't stopping to ask questions like "Is this just helping the people I'm trying to be spiteful towards at my own expense?". For instance I've seen several cases where SJWs censored something and there were comments kneejerk supporting it as "what goes around comes around" because they somehow misinterpreted which side the censorship was coming from. If you don't have principles besides "oppose the enemy", and also you don't understand what your enemy believes, it's pretty easy to end up supporting the enemy against your own side. After all, people understand their own positions better, so if you treat "this violates our principles" as a sign of insufficient commitment against the enemy you've given up your main indicator and all that's left is understanding your enemy so well that you hopefully notice before you end up accidentally supporting them.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
15hr ago
Third, you’re misrepresenting Democrats. “When they go low we go high” was the motto for quite a while.
Did they actually go high?
Also, how doesn't everything you said apply to OP's point to begin with?
What metric do you prefer?
This has to do with tariffs how? Would the truck have had better sightlines if it were American-made?
This does not seem like a problem tariffs solve.
This does not seem like a problem tariffs solve.
Because the rumors of the death of the old social contract are exaggerated, and because you want to build a world that is better rather than worse for your children. If you do want to build a better world for your children, but just disagree what "better" looks like, then sure, let us discuss specifics. Particularly the specifics around tariffs, which I note you have still not given a concrete defense of. But if you are so far gone that you care only for the suffering of your opponents, if you have no positive vision for the world, then I agree that there is no value in talking to you. It's not like either of us is particularly influential.
You're glowing. Might want to get that checked out.
I mean, I'm already a number on the spreadsheet. So are you. Such is life in the modern analyzed world. I don't think there is any time or country in history I would prefer to live in than current America, even given the problems we have now. I expect, absent a civilization-ending catastrophe, this will remain true. I am worried that something precious is being lost, but the "something precious" is "the crown jewel of the world" and not "a serviceable nation" - I expect the decline to look like what Britain has gone through.
Anyway, are you planning to defend the tariffs as being good at accomplishing some specific concrete policy goal that you care about accomplishing or no?
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