ApplesauceIrishCream
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User ID: 882
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
I defy you to describe an actual philosophical issue raised by science or the modern world generally.
"Is the scientific method a useful tool for uncovering reliable knowledge about the physical world?"
Religions generally make claims about moral truths and historical truths, and the scientific method isn't competent at measuring either. But philosophy covers all types of knowledge and claims to truth, and both science and religion fall under its broad sweep, if in significantly different sub-areas.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
I don't dispute that decluttering is deeply psychicly painful for a hoarder--that is certainly true. The thrust of my point was aimed somewhat differently, however: has @f3zinker's relative accepted that he has a serious problem, and it's not the mess itself? Assuming that Clutterers Anonymous follows the usual 12-step pattern, the first step is acknowledging that you have a problem, and it's not clear to me that the hoarder in question has reached that point.
"I need to touch everything before it leaves" strikes me as a reasonable desire under the circumstances, though it may or may not be practical. "I need a tracking document in Excel for every physical object, and that will solve matters" is a take that I find very suspect, though--it seems much more like heel-dragging obstructionism, not just coping.
I don't know the person in question, so perhaps my impression is unduly pessimistic. Based on the description, though, I think it's worth asking whether the hoarder is onboard with the necessity of change even on an intellectual level, or not. If he's just being compelled, that mess is coming back.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Bluntly, hoarding is a person-problem, not a thing-problem. The piles of crap that get in the way of living are a symptom, not the problem itself. With time and effort, you can clean up the space--though as you've already experienced, even negotiating that is exhausting, much less doing--but the piles of crap will return unless your family member takes serious steps towards finding a management strategy to address the underlying issues that push him into hoarding.
I'm emphasizing this aspect rather than the practical/mechanical side that others have covered, because this
He is ironically ultra adamant on knowing exactly where each thing goes and wants to inspect everything carefully before I can trash it. He also want's the location of everything in an excel sheet so that this will prevent this problem from occurring in the future again.
is a giant red flag that he's not cooperating in good faith; those stipulations are absurd. I believe you've made the point that getting rid of some stuff is inevitable and something he can't control, but he can make the cleanup process painful enough for you that less will be thrown away, and it will be longer before you try again when the mess comes back. On some level, I think you know this, and that's why you're dreading the process.
I wish you and yours the best in solving this situation.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
@sliders1234 has something of a point, but this is a solved problem. There is a class of government-imposed limits on speech that is held to be entirely consistent with the First Amendment--the set of time/place/manner restrictions. Critically, these regulations must be content- and viewpoint-neutral; noise regulations in residential areas after a given hour of the evening would be a common example.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
I suppose it's possible I was an extra in a porn movie and that this lady really was a raging nymphomaniac
I was going to ask if you were paid as such, but then I remembered that extras in porn movies are compensated via exposure.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
I think the American Revolutionary War was more precisely a war of secession rather than a revolution. A "Declaration of Independence" is synonymous with a statement justifying secession, and IMO the American document is an excellent basis for analyzing other secessionary movements. Arguably, the Constitutional Convention resulted in an actual revolution--in that it replaced the government under the Articles with the Constitutional system, and not via a means permitted under the Articles--though an effectively bloodless one.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
I'd say the bump stock bans are also a bad example, but headed in a very different direction--it's almost impossible to define them in a way that isn't an open invitation to...well, I was about to say "definition creep," except that it's more "definition sprint, fueled by intravenous Red Bull."
I'm not saying that bump stocks are good; as far as I can tell, they don't have much in the way of legitimate use cases. But when you can literally (and famously) duplicate the functionality with a shoelace, and the bans were written to apply functionally, you get an open invitation to arbitrary enforcement. I don't like bump stocks, but I consider giving a blank check to law enforcement to be much much worse.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
When was the last time you heard a gun owner say "oh yeah, the suppressor tax stamp is perfectly reasonable"?
This is a really bad example to use in support of your thesis. Suppressor tax stamps are a central example of gun control regulation as tribal bullying; there's no rational reason to make safety equipment both more expensive and harder to acquire.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Your intuition is wrong from a legal perspective. The first case is textbook insanity defense; the second is involuntary intoxication. Both are complete defenses--in neither case is the accused considered at fault. The first case may result in involuntary commitment to a mental hospital while the second would not, but that's a separate issue from legal responsibility for the homicides.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
While this is an excellent rationale for the criminal justice system generally, retribution and deterrence are distinct. Deterrence justifications are consequentialist--they are focused on reducing future bad events. Retribution justifications are deontological--a criminal deserves punishment for his crime, and the purpose of the justice system is to make a best effort towards matching punishment to crime. A particular policy or type of punishment could be supported by either or both justifications, but they are fundamentally different rationales.
That said, you're correct that the point of the criminal justice system is to replace ad hoc vigilante justice with an orderly system run by disinterested parties.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Veritasium investigated this in the context of salt lamps back in 2019. IIRC, it's a combination of woo and placebo effect.
That said, it's certainly possible to have a local build-up of negatively charged particles--lightning, static shocks, and other forms of electrical discharges are the sudden neutralization of a pre-existing separation of charge.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
This is correct, and in fact, black community leaders lobbied for the increased crack penalties, because the black crack users were primarily a menace to their own communities.
From WNYC:
What's less well-known is that early on, many African-American leaders championed those mandatory minimum sentences and other tough-on-crime policies. These efforts could be seen at the federal and state levels, as well as across black communities such as Harlem.
...
Barker and others argue that in the 1960s, residents of black neighborhoods felt constantly under threat from addicts and others associated with the drug trade, and their calls for increased safety measures resonated at community meetings, in the pages of black newspapers like 'The Amsterdam News,' and in churches.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
This is something of a predictable failure mode of progressivism. The essence of Truth and Reconciliation programs isn't a complete dead-end; there are legitimate use cases. Unfortunately, those legal academics pointed to those particular cases and then proceeded to overapply the approach wildly, to disastrous effect.
In the wake of a horrific civil war, where atrocity has been piled on top of atrocity, and--crucially--the overwhelming majority of evidence is absent, there simply isn't much you can do to appease the demands of justice while picking up the pieces. Sure, some or even many of the survivors may have committed horrible acts, but what do you do if you can't prove it? Some may confess, others may not; how much weight can a simple accusation bear? Do you punish the minor evils that you can prove, and let the major evils pass unaddressed? This is a wicked problem.
The Truth and Reconciliation solution more or less acknowledges that achieving even a semblance of justice is impossible in these circumstances, and appeals to truth instead. In exchange for amnesty, the commissions should seek to gather and record as much evidence as can be found as an offering to history. This isn't a good solution, but in extraordinarily bad circumstances, it might be the best on offer. In less bad situations, it's just an excuse to avoid justice, because justice is hard.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Deterrence is one philosophical justification of punishment (i.e. we are causing harm--punishment--in order to achieve a benefit; how do we describe that benefit? Deterrence answers "by making future harmful acts less likely."). It comes in two flavors: general and specific. General deterrence might be thought of punishment as an example to others: "do this bad act, and this is what you'll get." Specific deterrence is the effect of that message on the person punished.
Incapacitation is another philosophical justification, though it answers the same question above with "make it impossible for the punished person to repeat his bad act." Incapacitation can be temporary (imprisonment is the most common example) or permanent (execution, similarly).
Putting a bullet in the back of someone's head certainly meets the terms of permanent incapacitation and specific deterrence. It may also produce general deterrence, though the best evidence in this area tends to suggest that higher certainty of punishment is more effective than higher severity.
Recidivism is a measure of the failure rate of specific deterrence. If that failure rate is unacceptably high, then changes should be made (and will be made, extra-judicially if necessary in the long run). The famous "three strikes" laws were demanded and enacted by the public in response to an earlier era's judgment that prisons were functioning as revolving doors, and criminals were neither deterred nor incapacitated from committing rather a lot of crime, even after being caught and prosecuted.
(Other justifications not mentioned above include retribution and rehabilitation. Even though a particular type of punishment might fit a justification, there is still the weighing of the costs of punishment vs. the benefit produced. Executing jaywalkers is certainly one form of incapacitation, but the benefit is slight and the cost very large.)
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Oh, that's a classic. For my sins, I managed to make it all the way through Ghost, but regretted it. That was before reading OH JOHN RINGO NO; I would have skipped the book had I read the blog post first. I have heard that the rest of the series (...because of course there's a rest of the series...) is worth reading if you match the target audience, however.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
The rumor is that Fleming based Bond in large part on his friend and step-cousin, Sir Christopher Lee.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Uranium is definitely not a fossil fuel. Uranium is a base element--a heavy metal, specifically--with radioactive and (close to) non-radioactive isotopes. To generate nuclear energy, you purify the radioactive isotope, and then generate a nuclear chain reaction, accelerating the decay of the isotope and trapping the released energy as heat, usually by converting water to steam, which drives turbines that produce electricity.
Fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) are made of hydrocarbons, which are more or less chains of carbon atoms coated with a layer of hydrogen atoms. Sometimes other stuff gets mixed in, most often atoms of oxygen, nitrogen, or sulfur, but nearly all of the atomic content is hydrogen and carbon. These hydrocarbons are burned to release heat, etc. etc. as above. One way to look at the process of "burning" on a chemical level is "combining with oxygen." The hydrogen atoms are stripped off and stuck on oxygen atoms to produce water (H2O) and the carbon chains are broken up and the individual atoms hook up with oxygen to form carbon dioxide (CO2). This process releases a lot of energy, which is why fire is hot.
So while both processes produce heat, which is then converted through a couple of intermediate steps into electricity, the sources of the heat are very different. Nuclear power plants rely on the radioactive decay of uranium, while fossil fuel plants rely on burning hydrocarbons.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
It can be fun to insert up to the minute slang into a longer expression. The key is to use it correctly, but carefully enunciated as though gently placing the phrase into your statement with verbal tongs, and without breaking your normal flow. Appending "as the kids say" is just gilding the lily, however.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Know Your Meme suggests a different etymology, dating from as far back as the 80s in a rap context, and much more recently popularized via the Atlanta hip-hop scene. Wiktionary points specifically to the 2017 rap track "No Cap" by Future and Young Thug.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
I can empathize with large chunks of what you've written here from my own experiences--among other things, I'm looking at walking away from theater-adjacent hobbies because Republican is the New Gay and the closet fucking sucks when you're in an environment that sincerely hates the real you.
I'm also losing the last shreds of my patience with "my non-binary offspring is a they/them, and I expect you to use the right pronouns." This is not a hypothetical case. I've dodged the issue so far, but another person I know was swifty corrected when he referred to the teenage boy as "he." Apologies for misgendering ensued, and I've discovered this is a red line for me. I will not cater to the whims of a teenager in my word choices, and exerting social pressure on me to do so violates my expectations of friendly behavior.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
I think your phrasing may come across as unduly harsh, but I'd agree with an amplified version. Society doesn't owe comfort to anyone. Comfort is something to seek and give on an individual basis, and generally isn't owed, with some exceptions, as within a family context.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
There may be genetic traits that make one a better singer, dancer, or comedian, but I am skeptical that blacks are unusually gifted, or whites unusually disadvantaged, in these areas.
Those seem like cases where thriving on attention, or extroversion, would provide an advantage. A dancer that was extremely physically gifted but also shy would be less successful, on average. Black people are stereotypically seen as having more than average swagger; this plausibly has a genetic component; and they may benefit on the margin as a result.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
It's two sexual encounters with a novel partner per week. Some straight guys at the peak of their game who travel a lot could manage that, but distributionally, we're probably talking fairly out there in the long tail (e.g. wealthy airline pilot with a taste for prostitution). For gay guys, traveling a lot would also help, unless you live in NYC, Miami, SF, etc., but it's not nearly as extreme an outlier. There's also some difference between 100/year at a person's promiscuous peak, and 100/year averaged over a period of years, which is why frequent travel is a relevant variable--past a certain point, you need to go farther afield to find the low-hanging fruit, which is almost certainly more time/resource efficient than investing in a metaphorical ladder to pick the less accessible partners.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Yeah, I accidentally crossed up the ICJ and the ICC, though as it happens, the US has some issues with both. One of the difficulties with the ICJ is that it can't really bind permanent members of the UNSC, since they can just veto enforcement of its rulings.
"Carving out exceptions" isn't exactly what's going on, though the difference may seem pedantic outside philosophy-of-law discussions. The idea is that the original philosophical concept of free speech at the time it was instantiated into the First Amendment wasn't a complete blanket protection of all communication, from which exceptions were carved for practical reasons--it was that several types of communication did not fall under free speech at all, and never did. So categories like slander, perjury, or obscenity occupy their own metaphorical territory beyond the borders of free speech.
You still have the same debate as to where the correct line is between protected speech, and say, slander, though the philosophical grounding may affect aspects of the debate like burdens of proof and so forth. Copyright is an interesting example, because there's a longstanding debate over whether "intellectual property" is a philosophically-grounded right prior to its legal protection--that is, is IP created by or recognized by the laws protecting it. (The various items in the Bill of Rights fall into the "recognized by" category, incidentally.)
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