FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
but I do think it's the textbook definition of enshittifying.
I guess I'm having trouble distinguishing the two internet memes here: what is enshittifying and how do you distinguish it from the Millenial Lifestyle Subsidy?
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
In the Littlejohn case, I don't think it's obligatory that he be executed, just that there is no miscarriage of justice in doing so. Had the jury gone the other way, I wouldn't have follow-up questions for them, it's fine.
This aligns with my basic intuition, I'd agree that the jury verdict should absolutely be respected absent a near certainty of error.
This, though, strikes me as a little shakier:
I don't think planning on armed robbery where things going as planned results in someone getting a gun pointed at their face is all that similar to the guys that walked into the capital and were technically trespassing.
The armed robbers planned for a gun to be pointed at someone's face. The crowd charging at armed police officers intended for someone to confront the armed police, that it wasn't them personally who ran into that police officer is moral luck.
Though your point about Juries is well taken.
For scale:
1,400 people died in Katrina. 300 some died in Sandy.
As of now the death toll from Helene sits around 100. Is anyone familiar with the rhythm of these, what multiple should we apply to it?
ETA: She's already top 10 since 1950 and probably ends up Top 5, or even with the silver medal.
I'm kinda lost on all these social media comments about where is the news, where is the response. It's front page in all three newspapers I read since it happened, including reporting on federal level responses. The idea that the government isn't doing enough seems based in a combination of there being no news in reporting things that are done every time this happens post-Katrina, and an expectation that somehow Mommy Government will clean everything up so fast you'll never even notice anything went wrong.
Don't get me wrong, I highly doubt that Biden is contributing much of anything to this process, but I also don't think that any president should be interfering in the disaster relief process for what is ultimately fairly routine levels of disruption. If we're counting on some superhero president to be needed to get things going every time we get hit with a hurricane, well, George Washington ain't walkin' through that door. We should be focusing on building institutions that respond to routine disasters on a routine basis. Like FEMA, when it isn't putting everyone in camps or whatever.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
Which is the experience they hand to you. They're still hosting the content on their site, paid for with their money. While it is morally fine to take it on the terms they give it to you, including the potential workarounds they allow to exist, I don't see any logic other than the urge for Gibs to why it is morally wrong for them to alter the terms on which it is handed to you.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
Maybe the scanners used in other countries are different, but here you will not be prevented from scanning the same item twice, provided that an equivalent item is placed on the scale. I often do this with multiple half gallons of milk for convenience reasons. The UPCs are the same.
This ignores Target and Home Depot, which allow you to use the hand scanner and never weigh the items anyway.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
Sure but then they aren't enshittifying your experience, because your experience doesn't exist except in the form they hand it to you.
I don't find it wrong to watch something without paying for it, or even to do so while avoiding the ads. But it's obvious to me that one has no right to complain that one's ability to do so has been unjustly limited, as it had no right in it to start.
If the freemium game were suddenly moved to a pay model, I wouldn't find that a wrong action by the developer.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
Youtube's free to choose a profit model that doesn't enshittify my experience of their service, if they find that adblock is making them struggle.
And my point is what right do you have to any experience of their service without paying for it?
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
I think you're being naive here.
The scale exists, but it doesn't know the difference between a pound of ham and a pound of prosciutto, scan the ham, put the prosciutto on the scale, scan the ham again, put the ham on the scale. And they're not constantly monitoring the tape for minor irregularities in movement.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
At this point, the medical establishment and government don’t (or at least, I really, really hope they don’t) have enough credibility left to enforce anti-pandemic measures.
I'd like to note that it isn't just the medical establishment or the government (in the USA) that has lost credibility: the public has as well. Going into Covid lockdowns in March 2020, I might have thought that everyone would play along, now I know that there is no chance everyone will play along.
Even if you assume Lockdownism is ultimately correct on the facts, it is a classic prisoner's dilemma: my sacrifice of locking down and not going out is only worth anything if everyone else does as well. If I know in advance that everyone else is not going to lockdown, there is no societal value in my locking down.
And there is no way that anyone will convince me that the American public is gonna do shit-all about it.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
My experience with 12 gauge shotgun shells - probably not, but don't do experiments on the topic, unless it is remotely operated and you are behind bullet proof glass.
Munitions are generally designed to be able to withstand some rough handling and you have to have some stars aligned to explode - hitting it hard enough, having irregularities in the surface to damage the primer, but stars do align and people win the lottery.
This. It shouldn't happen, but I'd be really mad if I watched someone whack the back of a shell in front of me.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
What’s more interesting is that a substantial part of the rest of modern Scottish identity stems from the 1995 movie Braveheart, and the more distantly from Victorian English romanticization of the highlands.
Mel Gibson was on such a fuckin' tear before he got into the Jews.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
(Compare and contrast with media, where several game developers famously endorsed piracy, presumably due to the additional popularity being worth more than the loss on the unsold copies. And music gets uploaded to Youtube by the artists themselves.)
But here the transaction isn't between the developer or the musician, it's between you and the host who builds the platform and pays for it so that you can view the video. Why is youtube obligated not to turn a profit on you?
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
I'm biased here in that I find lethal injection disgusting for humanist reasons, I think it is below the dignity of a murderer to be put down like a dog, that it is more dignified to be hung or shot, to be blamed. The hanged man is a moral actor whose actions we deemed worthy of death, the lethally injectee strapped to a gurney is reduced to an object to be disposed of with minimal fuss.
I imagine I would feel disgusted with myself for contributing to the lowtrustification of my society for the sake of a few dollars of groceries.
How would you be contributing?
To be clear, I don't steal from self checkout, and doubt I will begin to. But it grates on me, as a citizen, that I know that I am paying Home Depot, and they have decided to allow dishonest people to steal from them rather than pay an honest cashier, counting on me to not steal from them.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
Sure, but that's just a percentage thing, easily disposed of. Rawls would tell you that some degree of redistribution is optimal, but it can still justify Capitalism on a "more goods produced" logic, and set the level of redistribution to maximize everyone's happiness. That's a logic that holds from behind a veil of ignorance. What one shouldn't do within Rawls' paradigm is undertake policies that are not overall utility-maximizing.
Nor is mere quantity of poor and rich people enough to make anything justifiable. Neutral between whether I am the one or the other, I can still feel that there is some level of "fans harassing famous person" that isn't morally correct, for example.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
I'm not sure it's ever rational to choose which values you will be inculcated in and then forget all about the choice. Ie if you take the course on Marxism, you should later realize that fact and keep it in mind when making value judgments.
Nor am I sure such a thing is entirely possible. I know I spent years of my life trying to shop for a religion that would inculcate values that I liked, only to realize that it was impossible to really believe in a religion learned under those circumstances.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
I can't think of a single country where the national dress is worn as everyday clothing. We all wear blue jeans and business suits as part of global culture.
Well, right there is one: the United States. Jeans and a t shirt are, in a very real sense, my national costume. Of course, if I put on cowboy boots and a stetson with the jeans, that would be a change again towards a national costume, and I'd be conscious that I'm dressing differently from the default of "clothing." Or, moreso for me, if I put on a pastel polo shirt and pop the collar, with Nantucket red chinos, pull on a navy blazer and a pair of sperries, I'm at some level putting on the ritz to dress most like myself, and I'm conscious when doing so of being different from other people in the street.
Which is where my question is coming from. I wake up in the morning and I put on pants and a shirt and a jacket. I'm self conscious of variety of pants-shirt-jacket I'm putting on, when I put on chinos and a polo I'm aware that I'm dressing differently than when I wear joggers and a wifebeater and differently again than a suit and a dress shirt. But the core paradigm of pants-shirt-jacket remains the same. Stepping outside of that paradigm is stepping outside of default "clothing" and into a national costume.
The kilt is the most obvious step completely outside of that paradigm of men's dressing. And I'm wondering when the last scotsmen lived who just woke up in the morning and put on a kilt because that's "clothing" to him, rather than putting on a kilt as a national costume. Maybe, as @2rafa points out, that never really happened. But the Japanese example fits in there as well: at some point in the 20th century putting on a kimono became a differently understood act when the default of "clothing" became pants-shirt-jacket in the western paradigm. When was the last Japaner born who woke up and put on a kimono without any intent of being traditional?
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
To Lyft's credit, they basically said this is a rounding error and they don't care, but I think that has more to do with the pragmatism of any reasonable algorithm being exploitable in some way. How do you stop this without punishing poorly paid volunteers who are already a huge step up over contractors? Not easily, and solving problems for the 1% of troublemakers is often a road to hell.
I think what you're getting out of this is less, they don't care, and more that they make more money off of honest people than they would spend on labor to fix the problem and so they pursue a profitable path. They have no problem paying dishonest people, as long as they keep making money they don't care who is getting paid.
I'm of the schizo opinion that things like self-checkout are a form of psychological warfare against trust in society. Every time I self-checkout, I scan everything correctly, but I'm aware of how easy it would be not to. To tuck a couple small items in the corner of my tote bag and never scan them, to scan the $2 switch five times instead of scanning the four $10 switches, to ring up the organic carrots as ordinary carrots. And in my head I'm aware there is nothing the store will do to stop me, and that their profit margin is such to account out of the money they make on me for the person who doesn't scan it all. And that sense of being a chump grates on me over time, until eventually I start stealing things.
We've already seen this happen with "free" media, where internet commenters will act as if it is a personal affront that Youtube has advertisements, while ignoring that they can pay a pittance each month to remove all ads. Once people get used to free stuff, they can't stand the idea of paying for it.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
So why does that not extend to the accomplice, rather than the triggerman, in a felony murder case? What if witnesses testify that the triggerman was at the counter alone while his accomplice was in another room, but cannot identify which was which? It seems odd to say, well we wouldn't kill both of them if we knew which one was which, but since we don't know which one was which we'll kill them both.
Though I'll note that capital Felony Murder seems like a fine rule to me in that a felony is a sufficient predicate for an execution, but we can draw ever more outre cases. How many Jan-6th type "felony trespassers" can you charge with the murder of Ashli Babbitt? Felony murder has been used to charge felons for the deaths of their accomplices, on the theory that violence was a predictable result of their felonies on the day, and so the deaths of their accomplices were a predictable result of the violence they invited. We're only looking for a sufficiently tyrannical prosecutor.
Drunk driving is the clearest example of this for me, where there is obviously no literal intent to kill anyone, but we punish those who do kill someone much more harshly than those that are merely negligent.
Let's set up a hypothetical: five guys are at a party, all drinking, assume the same amount and tolerance for the sake of the hypo, all clearly plan to drive home. Four of them are caught at a highway checkpoint and arrested, the last is not so "lucky" he took backroads and crashed into oncoming traffic and killed another driver. Should the four men who did not kill anyone be charged just as harshly?
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
What are you talking about?
Multicultural America is the only majority white country left that has the death penalty.
When England permanently put a moratorium on executions, it was 90% white British.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
Are you careful to align the painfulness of any proposed execution with the amount of pain that was originally inflicted by the murderer on his victims? Or do we just have open license to abuse convicted murderers however we want, for as long as we want? If it's the latter, is that really justice? Or is your motivation something else?
It's important to note here that Nitrogen gas is now being used, because anti-death penalty ideologues have lobbied chemical and drug companies to stop supplying the materials for the prior method (lethal injection). So for anti-death penalty advocates to point to nitrogen asphyxiation as cruel is to decry the results of one's own side.
Cruel and unusual punishments were banned at the founding to move past the medieval drawing and quartering, but definition creep has reached the point where it is used to ban the death penalty by the back door. We must settle on some standard of pain that is necessary and work from there.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
That said, it’s quite puzzling to me from a rationality and decision-theoretic framework to incorporate these kinds of predicted value-shifts into your views. For example, imagine I anticipate becoming significantly wealthier next year, and I observe that previously when I’ve become wealthier my views on tax policy have become more libertarian. What’s the rational move here? Should I try to fight against this anticipated value shift? Should I begin incorporating it now? Should I say what will be will be, and just wait for it to happen? Should I actively try to avoid becoming wealthier because that will predictably compromise my values?
Isn't this the problem that Rawls' Veil of Ignorance is designed to solve?
Given, that is normally offered to justify a socialist solution to problems. The Veil of Ignorance is offered to the rich man to say, imagine if you were poor, wouldn't you prefer a socialist system?
But there's nothing in the mechanics of the Veil of Ignorance that prevents it from being used the opposite way: imagine you were rich, would you dislike any of the redistributive policies you currently advocate for?
Given, it suffers from the flaw of many philosophical tools, in that it relies on "then think really hard about it" as the final step. But it's the clear solution to the value shifts: try to imagine a system of values that would appeal to you regardless of your position.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
See to me all those cases, dress codes and nationalists, are self consciously wearing it, in direct opposition to the normal clothes they typically wear or understand as normal clothing. It seems to me like it's been a while since a scotsman put on a kilt without thinking about the English he was unlike by doing so.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
1mo ago
Yes, you're right, but I find that depressing, that we aren't beyond the use-mention distinction, or that we (collectively) have not done enough to convince you that we are.
It's amazing to me the way that being offended by words, by profanity, was understood broadly as a sign of small-mindedness when I was growing up among the right-thinking progressives, who have no turned around and imposed a new sense of closed mindedness on us, a confusing and race-caste based system to close thought.
I mean there's definitely not an estimate for how many would die without ordinary emergency response efforts. We're talking about basic food-clean water-medicine issues for a very large group of people, there will be many deaths if responses are too delayed among the elderly or otherwise frail.
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