domain:web.law.duke.edu
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
13hr ago
Wherefore do you need a corpse to present publicly at all? You presumably have been telling everyone for years that he suffered from a disfiguring illness which lead to his reclusiveness, he sure as hell wouldn't want an open-casket. Unfortunately in his disfiguring illness he turned to a lot of weird woo-woo spirit healing, and there are no medical records for several years because he refused to see a doctor. We're talking about billionaire local feudal lords here, the death certificate comes from the [Family Name] Building at the local hospital, paying off a mortician is the least of the concerns.
Keep in mind that the only cheated party is the government. All members of the family are presumably on-side, the hospital suffers no harm (in fact, under the new will, they're getting a new surgery wing!), the mortician suffers no harm. Even the local government suffers no harm. Only the Federal Government is concerned, and there's not actually much nexus for them to check if someone is alive.
Bonus Question: A 3 year old corpse of a 40 year old man. This is obvious if you think about the corpse of a young woman from the perspective of a necrophiliac.
Tree
13hr ago
I know you’re not a mod, but the law casts a long shadow. Yeah, I agree with you, it is not ‘obvious’, only likely . It was a stylistic flourish, to accentuate the whiplash, scooby doo effect of that comment. At the time, it seemed like a good idea.
Corvos
13hr ago
one could reasonably hold out for another five to eight years
I’m no doctor but you’re going to need a really oblivious mortician to present an eight year old corpse as fresh :P
Bonus question: if a man dies at 40 and gets WfB’d for another 3 years, is he:
- a 3 year old corpse
- a 40 year old corpse
- a 43 year old corpse
Genuinely not sure.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
13hr ago
Something I feel has been under-discussed so far:
Estate planning, and assisted suicide as a tax avoidance tool.
Estate tax rates have been a classic political football for decades, with policy shifting radically between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans want higher exemptions, so that the tax starts at a bigger estate, and lower rates; Democrats want lower exemptions and higher rates. Republicans cry crocodile tears about family farms forced to sell; Democrats whinge about billionaire feudal dynasties. Each administration has made moves towards eliminating, or raising, the estate tax; often unsuccessfully but always attempted. It's reasonable for any wealthy American to be concerned about major changes in the estate tax system, they come around every decade or so, following party politics.
I've often joked that a particularly wealthy family I know would Weekend at Bernie's their patriarch if he died during a bad (Democrat) period for the estate tax, as one could reasonably hold out for another five to eight years and expect a better (Republican) estate tax law to pass. They could drive him around to various places where he could be "seen" in the window of the family Escalade with heavily tinted windows, and just keep it in the family until it was time to "declare" his death publicly and pay the taxes.
But with assisted suicide, new options open up.
It's November 2032. JD Vance has lost in a landslide to AOC, the Republican party having been crippled by a "True MAGA" independent run by Donald Trump Jr who claimed that Vance's administration had betrayed his father's legacy. AOC and her fillibuster-proof Democratic majority plan to increase the estate tax to a punitive 95% on all estates over $50mm. Does a 95 year old multi-billionaire decide to take a one-way vacation to Switzerland to avoid the tax? Do his children pressure him to take the trip? It's Succession supercharged. When death is a taxable event, you choose death at a convenient time for taxes.
But, for that matter, if suicide vacations become routine, then that makes for quite an opportunity for fraud, right? Ok, I don't want to get hit with the AOC taxes when I die, but I'm only 80 I've got years left to live, what to do? Well, Switzerland might be out, but Columbia allows MAID. ((I'll note I'm probably engaging in gross American racist stereotyping here)) I travel to Columbia, pay to obtain a death certificate from a MAID clinic to send back to the USA with the kids, and then I start a new life in Costa Rica, where my kids will send me cash to support my Jimmy Buffet lifestyle.
stuckinbathroom
13hr ago
Fair points, but verification is usually way cheaper than generation.
Not if P = NP
ControlsFreak
13hr ago
Fair enough on the positive claim concerning meta-ethics. If you'd prefer to leave that one in incoherence, you can leave that one in incoherence.
Would you like to take a shot at your negative claim with analogy to philosophy of mathematics? Any sort of clarity or argument there?
Corvos
13hr ago
I’m quite happy to take the actual point of the copypasta and accept that the wrapping is for dramatic effect.
Mostly I’m responding to the idea that the prior posts weren’t downvoted for being on the wrong side of the debate but for being rude.
It seems to me there’s a charitable and an uncharitable way to read any of these posts and that the ‘wrong’ side gets less charity by and large. IMO the same copypasta would be downvoted to hell if it was an anti gun message in the same format.
Don’t have any actual action items I’m pushing for here, I just think the phenomenon is obvious and worth noting.
SnapDragon
14hr ago
That's a good question. I'm not sure of the exact reason quaternions were invented - you can indeed stumble on them just by trying to extend the complex numbers in an abstract way - but the Wikipedia article suggests they were already being used for 3D mechanics within a couple of years of invention. (BTW, "number theory" involves integers, primes, that kind of thing, not quaternions. Complex numbers do show up though.)
You could ask the same question about complex numbers too, but they originally arose from the search for an algorithm to solve cubic equations, which is a fairly practical question. That they later turned out to be essential for electronics and quantum mechanics is a case of some new applications of an already useful math concept.
ChickenOverlord
14hr ago
"Are the children wrong?" is not on par with "Listen up, you dumb motherfucker" in terms of rudeness.
Sure, but I was quoting a well-known 4chan copypasta, not actually calling the poster I was replying to that.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
14hr ago
If you see Israel for what it is, a society that aims to be racially pure
I do not see Israel as a society that aims to be racially pure, because Jews pretty transparently aren't of one race.
What about things like quaternions, which suddenly became relevant when we needed to interpolate 3D transforms and do rotations without Gimbal lock? The current best process for calibrating cameras is to use dual quats, which also means needing dual number theory. Were those areas originally expected to be useful for engineering? My understanding is no, but I'm not a mathematician.
No, I'm sorry, but you really don't know what you're talking about here. The field of pure mathematics is much larger and stranger than you know, and it takes years of intensive study to even reach the frontier, let alone contribute to it. Conic sections and integral transforms are high-school or early university math, and knowing them makes you as much of a pure mathematician as knowing how to change your car's oil filter makes you a CERN engineer. (And, for the record, conic sections were certainly never useless - even other people in that thread you linked called out that ridiculous claim. And non-Euclidean geometry is useful in many other realms than special relativity, like, oh, say, navigating the Earth!)
While there is zero chance of any of the math I linked above being useful, I admit that cryptography isn't the only example of surprising post-hoc utility showing up. As theoretical physics has gotten more abstract (way way beyond relativity), some previously existing high-powered math has become relevant to it. (The Yang-Mills problem, another Millennium Problem, unites some advanced math and physics.) But I absolutely defy the claim that there is a "tendency" for practical applications to show up. Another way to frame the fact that 0.01% of pure math has surprised us by being useful over the last 2,000 years is... that we're right that it's useless 99.99% of the time. I wish I had that much certainty about the other topics we discuss here!
BTW, did you not realize that @walruz was joking? What he linked is a fun Magic: The Gathering construction. If the Twin Primes conjecture is true, then the loop never ends. If it's not true, it does end, after 10^10^10^10^whatever years. It may be slightly optimistic to describe that as "paying dividends"... (Also, the construction only exists because of a card that specifically refers to primes in its rules. You can't claim that math has practical application because it's used to answer trivia questions involving that same math!)
John_Doe_Fletcher
anarcho-heretic, Quokkit guy
14hr ago
How about revealed (or implicit) tolerances? Downgrades the intentionality of wanting implied by "preferences" to simply "acceptable results" .
Corvos
14hr ago
when someone posts some shit implying me and anyone who shares my views is as out-of-touch as Principal Skinner from the Simpsons
The 'children' in this case are all the other countries in the First World. The point is that American disputes tend to act as if the rest of the world doesn't exist, hence cject's OP implying that nobody anywhere has any trust in their fellow citizens except in certain parts of the US and in the Third World, which I find frankly ridiculous.
And this is in fact my point. People, not just you but in general, immediately leap from 'I don't like this opinion' to forming the worst possible interpretation of the post and then downvote. Meanwhile they apply much more generous standards to people who agree with them. This is Confirmation Bias 101, everyone knows humans do this. These are such sensitive issues and the resultant standards are so strict that, in practice, (and, yes, in my opinion since as you point out I am not Tzar of internet points) there is no meaningful gap between "a complaint about different standards" and "downvoted for merely making an argument".
Aapje58
14hr ago
It would have to start the same way Dresden's and Tokyo's and Hiroshima's economic recovery did: by surrendering to the vastly militarily superior opponent.
And then what? Do you believe that Israel would then come in with a Marshall Plan, like the US did after WW 2? The big issue for decades has been that Israel does not trust the Palestinians to build up an economy and not use those resources to attack Israel. Israel's policy has always been to attack innocent Palestinians and destroy their property, when even relatively minor attacks happened. That is not how you get peace, but rather, how you get a forever war, where each new generation learns that there is no hope of a good life by doing the regular things to achieve that (getting an education and investing in companies).
The childish fantasy that each and every Palestinian would magically and suddenly stop believing in violence as a solution is not a way out of the conflict. It is as realistic as thinking that Israeli settlers would suddenly stop using violence against Palestinians, which Israel also has never been able to stop (but refuses to admit to that, because then it would expose their hypocrisy). So a total surrender, whatever that even means in the chaos that is Gaza, where central control surely doesn't exist anymore, will just lead to new forms of oppression of the Palestinians, that will inevitably cause people to rebel against that oppression with violence.
Fact is that the PA has been collaborating with Israel for a very long time, and Israel had (and still has) a perfect opportunity to gradually reduce restrictions on the West Bank, to actually give Palestinians a way out, by showing that there is an opportunity to build up a prosperous Palestinian state. However, instead, Israel is treating the PA like the Judenrat where the PA is supposed to keep the Palestinians compliant, while their land is getting taken from them, and they are being kept in a closed off ghetto with no prospect of building up anything.
The fact that Israel even threats Palestinian Israeli's as second-class citizens and that Israel is explicitly society that is only supposed to serve one race shows that there is inherently no desire to allow Palestinians to co-exist on an equal level. If you see Israel for what it is, a society that aims to be racially pure, then it is absolutely no surprise that the only solutions that it is willing to accept are permanent ghetto's, ethnic cleansing and solutions of that kind, and not a reasonable solution for the Palestinians (whether that is their own state, equal rights within Israel, or whatever).
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
14hr ago
The commenters below aren't wrong, but they are applying very different standards to those for the pro-gun arguments.
And there go the goalposts. First the objection was that the comment was downvoted for "merely making an argument". Then, when it's pointed out the comment actually was doing something other than that, it's a complaint about different standards.
You're not the moderator of internet points. And the moderators here, so far as I know, don't moderate internet points. Further, they do moderate responses, so when someone posts some shit implying me and anyone who shares my views is as out-of-touch as Principal Skinner from the Simpsons, I can't just respond with "fuck off, you supercilious asshole" because that will get me modded; internet points are all I got.
SSCReader
15hr ago
And they're likely the ones who'll end up walking into a house to find the body unexpectedly if they do just commit suicide.
Thats a problem with suicide generally, not the Swiss system specifically. The Swiss system at least means some kids will be informed in advance who wouldn't otherwise be.
You have to compare it with "standard" suicide and in almost all of those relatives are going to have to unexpectedly deal with remains. Excepting those where the suicidal person tries to disappear themselves. But that of course leaves family members with other issues instead.
yofuckreddit
15hr ago
I've fantasized about the GDMBR myself, and met people training for it out in Pisgah NF. I think what I've learned about myself is that my limit for routes like this is probably 7-8 days. Perhaps with friends it would be longer, but they do slow you down. Would you race?
yofuckreddit
15hr ago
I believe a head unit is necessary for smooth travel on a bike (stopping to unsheathe your phone and find out where you are is a massive momentum killer) and I hate mounting my phone. Network connectivity was good most of the time, but not everywhere. The route contained useful POI notes as well for food, hotels, and shops.
I couldn’t go without music
My performance measurably dropped without it. I regret not loading my Zune or something, though a bluetooth adapter to the Shokz would have been a dongle nightmare. I won't make the sacrifice again, I'll figure some other methodology out if it's stopping more, a bigger power bank, or a dynamo.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
15hr ago
· Edited 15hr ago
Hmm.. It seems that my wording was imprecise. Reflecting on it, I guess the best explanation is that I think that frameworks, specifically in moral philosophy are unfalsifiable. There is nothing intrinsically superior about being Kantian or Utilitarian, to entities that aren't swayed by practical considerations.
In other cases, I think it is eminently possible to say that certain "philosophical" claims are, in fact false, because they don't hold up in the face of empirical scrutiny or are based off faulty premises.
In those scenarios: I've made factual claims about these topics. I believe Searle is wrong about the Chinese Room, that illusionists are wrong about consciousness, and that moral realists are wrong about the nature of morality. I believe they are wrong not because they have a different "perspective," but because their models of reality are, in my estimation, incorrect. They make claims that are either inconsistent with a physicalist worldview or are simply less parsimonious than the alternative.
Let's take the Chinese Room. My claim that the system as a whole understands Chinese is a functionalist hypothesis. It is a claim about what "understanding" is at a physical level. I posit that understanding is not a magical, indivisible essence, but a complex process of information manipulation.
Searle's argument is pure sleight-of-hand that works by focusing our attention on a single component: the man who cannot understand Chinese, while glossing over the fact that the man is merely the CPU. The system's "understanding" resides in the total architecture. To say the system doesn't understand because the man doesn't is like saying a computer can't calculate a sum because a single transistor has no concept of arithmetic (or my usual go-to, that no individual neuron in a human brain speaks English). Searle's argument only works if you presuppose that understanding must be a property of a single, irreducible component, which is precisely the non-physicalist assumption I reject. My position is a testable model of cognition, his relies on an appeal to "intrinsic intentionality," a property he never defines in a falsifiable way.
The same logic applies to my rejection of p-zombies. The concept of a philosophical zombie is, in my view, physically incoherent. It presumes that consciousness (or "qualia") is an optional extra, a layer of paint that can be applied or withheld from a physically identical object. This is closet dualism. At least real dualists are honest about their kooky beliefs.
My hypothesis is that consciousness is (likely) what a certain kind of complex information processing feels like from the inside. It's an emergent property of the physical system, not a separate substance or field that interacts with it. You cannot have a physically identical replica of a conscious human, down to the last quantum state, that lacks consciousness, for the same reason you cannot have a physically identical replica of a fire that lacks heat. The heat is a macro-level property of the underlying molecular motion.
Likewise, consciousness is a macro-level property of the underlying neural computation. To claim otherwise is to make a claim that violates what we know about physical cause and effect. Again, this is not a "perspective"; it is a hypothesis about the identity of mind and specific physical processes.
Finally, coming to "objective" morality. My claim that it does not exist is an empirical one, based on the lack of evidence. It is a claim about the contents of the universe. If moral realism is true, then moral facts must exist somewhere. Are they physical laws? Are they non-physical entities that somehow interact with our brains? The burden of proof is on the realist to show me the data, to point to the objective moral truth in a way that is distinguishable from a deeply felt human preference. Absent that evidence, the most parsimonious explanation is that "morality" is a complex set of evolved behaviors, game-theoretic strategies, and cultural constructs. It is real in the same way that "money" or "governments" are real, as a shared social reality, but not in the way that "gravity" is real.
So yes, I engage in philosophy. But I do so with the conviction that these are not merely questions for eternal debate. They are unsolved scientific problems. (In some cases, they might not even be solvable, such as the issue of infinite regress)
My positions are hypotheses about the nature of reality, and I hold them because I believe they are the most physically plausible and parsimonious explanations available.
I believe that this position is tantamount to philosophical naturalism, but correct me if I'm wrong.
SSCReader
15hr ago
Oh i'm not a mod ao I'm commenting on its truth/probability vis a vis the sources you quoted only. Personally i wouldn't consider you've done enough to show female answers would be obviously more incorrect.
You perhaps need to hedge a little more. Obviously is a very certain and consensus building word so your evidence should be equally convincing, i think. Probably or likely would give you more leeway.
yofuckreddit
15hr ago
Did you exclusively go to the cheapest hole-in-the-wall farmer's pubs?
Yes, the vast majority of my route passed exclusively through these and mountaintop restaurants. I saw zero risotto for 8 days, and was unbelievably happy with one of the higher-end meals I had that incorporated pasta. I passed through larger towns like Grindewald and things expanded dramatically for the back quarter of the route.
I did not visit a butcher shop either. My cooking utensils were limited to a camping stove. To put it bluntly: I know this method of travel did not give Switzerland the chance to flex its culinary muscles for me, and that I missed out on a lot.
yofuckreddit
15hr ago
You can't realistically tackle this route any time other than the dead of summer; the official race is in June. The weather was fantastic and analogous to an American spring. I had rain for the first few days, and then afterwards I was able to set up the tent without the rainfly almost every night.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
16hr ago
Well, duh. SSRIs work even if the original hypothesis was proven flawed. Hand washing worked, even before we had the germ theory of disease.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9632745/
If it works, it works, and knowing why it works is always nice.
I recall that you, in your Deiseach avatar, were noted to be the most prolific commenter of all time on both of Scott's blogs (in that recent guest post). In that case, you shouldn't be surprised at all to learn that Scott has written multiple posts about the topic:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/05/chemical-imbalance/
To this day, I don't know why people float it as such a gotcha. Psychiatrists have known better for a long time now, and the critique makes us groan in the same manner that economists are tired of claims that they only study perfectly spherical/rational humans in a vacuum.
It wasn't you who posted it, unless you're a corvid as well as a corvos. But the offending bit is:
The straightforward interpretation is that either you accept the insulting characterization in the first part, or you're completely out of touch (note the URL). This absolutely deserves a downvote.
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