betascience
6mo ago
I'm pro Israel as a matter of practicality. I don't believe there is some universal obligation of the world at large or of people of the present to somehow make right wrongs of the past. This is a thing that may be worked out between an individual injured party and and their injurer, but Palestinians have a lot of different opinions about what they are owed and the center of mass of those opinions is something like a complete right to return to familial properties and a single state. Israel of course never can grant that.
Palestinians are also completely incapable of governing themselves in a way that makes them an acceptable neighbor. You can argue that Hamas doesn't represent Palestine (despite being elected), and yet if your average 22-40 year old Palestinian wanted to enforce some order other than Hamas, they could band together and govern themselves and do so. They could organize, police, enforce order. Eventually keep things calm until Israeli hearts soften and a two-state solution is back on the table. This would all be achievable were it what they wanted. They do not want it or incapable of achieving.
And so you're left with a Israel having essentially ungoverned barbarians on their border that they have been prevented from dealing with due to intense international pressure for decades. This is not a stable state of affairs. It seems clear to me that the best thing for Israel to due is to scatter them to the wind, and the best thing for the world to do is to force Arab countries to take Palestinians in as refugees, each an accordance to what they can assimilate, and then quickly assimilate them. No ghettos. No extended families kept close together. And no weird second-class citizenships or eternal refugee status. Utter assimilation. End them as a people, as the old testament would command. Dragging this on has been good for no one.
betascience
10mo ago
There's a nigh infinite number of ways to approach this. I would recommend perhaps starting at the beginning of the fabulous Secret History of Western Esotericism podcast (https://shwep.net/). Christianity did not evolve in a vacuum. It's a part of western thought with roots dating back to pre-Socratic philosophy. It may benefit you to have a more complete picture of how it came to be and the issues that early Christian thinkers like Origen and Augustine wrestled with. There are as many different Christianities as there are Christians, and there is almost certainly a Christian path that is true for you.
betascience
10mo ago
I simply believe peoples are allowed to make war. It's the last argument of kings, and when rulers decide to make it, it's their right by God. Palestinians have consented to rule by Hamas, both by in democratic elections and by failing to remove them. Israelis have consented to rule by Likud, both by democratically electing them and failing to remove them. I have no desire to force some sort optimization where people with different religions, values, cultures, languages, and histories from me have to adopt my values and solve problems as I would prefer that they solve them. They have the right to their own way of life and that includes going to war with their neighbors and the resulting devastation that war my cause in the short term and a hopeful peace in the long term when one side extracts the necessary concessions from the other. Forcing people who hate each other to live as peaceful neighbors is cruel, humiliating, and dehumanizing. They will commit escalating aggressions against each that slowly escalate the hate they hold for each other, which is corrosive to their souls. If they have to settle the matter through war, well that may be painful, but at least their grandchildren may grow up in a world where the matter is resolved.
betascience
11mo ago
Everyone dies. Protecting people from having their death pulled forward six months is only mildly socially valuable. If the opportunity costs put on the rest of society are even mildly onerous, it’s almost certainly a net loss.
betascience
11mo ago
I don’t fully understand what you’re proposing here. It doesn’t sound like a better situation for anyone involved. Is this actually two states occupying the same territory with international militaries policing it? How could this possibly be better than the present situation?
betascience
11mo ago
What do you think happens if that state suddenly exists? Is it a democracy? What do you think the Palestians elect to do to the Jews?
betascience
1yr ago
This strikes me as incredibly emotionally stunted. You do know that people occasionally ask their children to make grandbabies? I think the FIL can probably handle drinking a beer and talking about "how bout them Cowboys?" without being driven to distraction that his married daughter is having sex.
betascience
1yr ago
The idea of stealing and the system that disallows it are just social technologies and systems that are agreed upon prior. "Don't steal and that's the law" isn't different in principle from "young people have to support old people and that's the law." In fact, both are pretty straightforwardly Biblical.
Ownership relies on violence which means it's not coercive only by some means of special pleading, which you make pretty explicit by hinting that it's not coercive because you prefer to live in a world that includes it. That's fine for what it's worth, but recognize it more forthrightly. It is coercive, just a type that you specifically prefer.
betascience
1yr ago
If the government ever touches the money allocated for social security.
It's actually mandated by the program that they do. It purchases treasuries. What would you have them do with it?
betascience
1yr ago
Its a generational trap. The system places the burden of funding on kids that are not yet born, and couldn't have possibly voted to not have the system.
Is this not true of any store of value system? Ultimately the question of caring for the old is a question of how the resources of those that are young enough to work will be redistributed to those who are too old to work and what precisely counts as too old to work. If we allowed old people to save thing X in their productive years, protect thing X from being taken with force by those who are young enough and strong enough to do so, and thing X is then used a store of value to pay those who are young and strong for food, services, etc. then we are essentially back in the same place.
This isn't to argue for or against social security, but simply to point out that any system to care for the elderly is going to do so by using some element of coercive redistribution on the young because the scarce element is their productivity.
betascience
1yr ago
he shot at jump kick man, but did not hit him, and jump kick man's identity was not known at the time of the trial.
betascience
1yr ago
I think that all of Godot is ultimately interpreted whether you're using C# or Gscript. So if the thing that I think is correct, then yes. But I'm not certain what's going on under the hood.
betascience
1yr ago
Godot's Gscript is pretty well documented and easy to learn. You'll probably find it preferable as it's what most of the community uses. Also Godot is incredibly lightweight and older machine friendly, so you'll probably find it a very good fit.
betascience
1yr ago
I admire L and his actions, because they demonstrate that he's high agency.
I despise our country's response to his actions, because it means we're not.
betascience
1yr ago
I got a medical exam before 1st grade tee-ball. I don't think anyone was doing bloodwork, but they probably took temperature, bp, and maybe some fellas had to turn their head to the side and cough.
betascience
1yr ago
Are they basing the poverty rates on a national income cutoff rather than a local cost of living standard? I bet dollars to donuts they are, and until that's corrected for, I don't know why I'd waste additional time entertaining the argument.
betascience
1yr ago
Most arguments in the US have some variant of this. The obese mother of 3 who is "choosing between eating and paying the electric bill"... To me she's suffering from hypermacronutrition. To the NYT? Food insecurity.
If the straightforward issue such as hunger or poverty isn't true they make up an alternative, meaningless term.
betascience
1yr ago
In my experience very good student athletics are slightly smarter than the average of their peer group. Most athletic performance benefits from intelligence, whether it's anticipating the path of a ball in flight or predicting an opponents' next move. Being stupid is at the very least limiting, and for some positions and games it's disqualifying.
betascience
1yr ago
It's only strong for certain types of activities. Simple reaction time like someone throwing something at you which you bat away, it's almost nothing. Strategizing or problem solving, it's quite high. Defensive linemen probably have some of both. I'm sure it's way better to be smart than not, but much of it is using techniques and tactics on which you've drilled against techniques and tactics on which you've also drilled.
betascience
1yr ago
Is "should" just a normative statement? Who decides what's fair and modest? Are you in a better decision to decide than the person who wants to purchase the software? Software needs to be cheap enough that the purchaser's are getting marginal value from it and the margin's must be low enough to keep a barrier to other entrants (your margin is my opportunity).
I think you have a moral sense that the cost of software is unfair, and I don't really know what to say about that. I'm not going to tell you that you don't or can't feel that way. But, you asked for some explanations for the cost of software and I provided some considerations as to why the current pricings are stable.
betascience
1yr ago
One thing to consider is the capture caused by network effects and interoperability. You need to use Microsoft PowerPoint because your interns know it, your clients expect it, all your old presentations are in .pptx format, etc. Sure, you may be willing to consider some alternative in theory, but someone would need to produce a competitor that is nearly 100% compatible with all of your other stuff and compete at price point that is incredibly compelling. Are you going to do it?
Another thing to consider is that there is such a thing as "value" to capture and companies are thinking about how to bring their core competencies to market while outsourcing everything else. They need an off-the-shelf product to do something that isn't their core competency and they will take the best one on the market at the time at whatever price they need to pay so long as it doesn't upset their price structure and bring their costs out of line with their strategy. An armchair philosopher can ponder for years where value and cost comes from, but if I can spend one dollar to make ten then I'm going to do it whether the thing I bought for a dollar is theoretically worth it or not.
betascience
1yr ago
Posting the video to the internet is acting maliciously. No reason to do it except to socially attack the victim.
betascience
1yr ago
Well we have no examples state educational interventions correcting IQs and test scores and have numerous examples of at least allowing a certain social contagion to convince (some small number of) people to cut off their genitals. But most trans-trenders don't bother with that.
But what you're saying is over-simplistic. There are plenty of easily conceivable models that could consider things like IQ, ambition, height, disagreeability, openness or a number of other traits including potentially the curiosity to want to toy with the idea of genital mutilation to be highly inherited and yet the expression of those to be highly regulated by environment. If every modern trans would have been trans-curious in other cultural environments but gone on to mostly grow out of it and live happy lives that doesn't mean that the modern environment where they're rushed onto puberty blockers is strictly better. In fact that proclivity may have had some advantage only in environments where it wouldn't be indulged.
Obviously if it is indulged it will likely breed itself out of existence.
betascience
1yr ago
The whole question is pretty philosophically precarious. I don't know how I'd feel about trans people in a world where they were mentally healthy, lived normal life spans, and didn't tend to die young due to overmedicalization and the outcomes of their suicidality and other dangerous mental health issues. I live in the world where most "trans" people who make it to twenty without going on hormonal treatment just return "normalcy". My current biases say that the hypothetical you draw is statistically impossible, and I wouldn't trust the person offering the bargain.
I think the excessive fat storage is because your metabolism has been broken by industrialized food. If you were to repair it, your experience would be different.
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