iustificandus
No bio...
User ID: 2151
iustificandus
1yr ago
Honestly, the all-to-all-people approach worked for Brexit. But in this case, one side (Remain) had a coherent, positive vision of what would be won, while the Voice referendum has inconsistency and emptiness on both sides. This is probably naturally conducive to the status quo.
iustificandus
1yr ago
Self-proclaimed calorie intake is generally unbelievable. People either lie quite deliberately, they are so confused that they might as well lie (1,000 calorie Starbucks coffees don’t count because they’re drinking, not food) or aren’t exactly measuring portions (eyeballs are much less precise than kitchen scales).
The idea of “slow metabolism” is evolutionarily improbable: consuming less energy, and thus less food is needed to do the same thing without any downsides would be a huge benefit for fitness. It is possible that they will make some compromises (e.g. perhaps less performance in normal times means survival in hunger). But there is a narrow window, because the famine disaster driving the adaptation can not occur too often (or everyone will have the same “slow metabolism” that will prove optimal), but not too rarely (or owners of “slow metabolism” are overtaken in good times). In addition, metabolism is very basic and crucial for life; as in reproduction, we should expect that the metabolism will be one of the most preserved parts of human biology and that there is limited functional variability. What we see in practice: with accurate calorie tracking and body composition estimates, BMR estimates are accurate within 10%.
iustificandus
1yr ago
However terrible this crime is, I'm not sure she should be imprisoned.
Consider the multiple punishment purposes: (1) incapacitation, (2) deterrence, (3) restitution, (4) rehabilitation and (5) vengeance.
Incapacitation seems insignificant. Family annihilators do not necessarily kill people outside the family, especially not for a time after the event. It is very unlikely that social care will allow her to start a new family with children. Can such a crazy criminal commit other crimes because of their insanity or lack of impulse control? Again, I will say that this is unlikely, from the stories of other family annihilators who were often completely normal until they were suddenly not.
Deterrence is unlikely. Would any punishment stop someone from doing something so crazy? I would emphasize that she was crazy when she murdered her children and was immune to reason or consequences. Deterrence works against rational actors, not literal crazy dogs. There is even a case for wandering towards the penalty side to prevent feigned unreason, but she literally murdered her children. It's as crazy and irrational as possible.
Restitution is irrelevant without significant advances in biotechnology.
Rehabilitation is similar to incapacitation: she will not have a similar opportunity, so rehabilitation (even if it works, which can not be slightly assumed) does not matter.
I see vengeance as a subtype of deterrence that our evolutionary environment has integrated deep into our minds. There may be a pro-social reason to punish criminals even if it does not serve any of the above rational purposes. It can bind the public and signal a commitment to deterrence. But I do not believe that we are already in our evolutionary environment, and its adaptations are no longer necessarily adaptation to civilized people. When there is a conflict between deeply illegible emotions and reasonable thought, we should pay respect to our emotions but not allow them to govern us entirely.
It sounds cold, but one of the people the most damaged by it is herself. No one feels the loss of a child more than his parent. And her genes will not pass on to the next generation, which is a double incapacitating and deterrent effect. I won’t get as far as TikTokkers and say she deserves compassion—she is a terrible, bad being. But I will say that I am not at all sure what purpose a further punishment is for.
iustificandus
1yr ago
I can only talk about Europe, but this may explain some of what was also seen in the US.
The collapse of the USSR was a major thing for many of the extreme left, even if they were not tankies. There was no anti-capitalist superpower that would indicate “to see that it is possible, even if we disagree with the Soviets, it is not the US.” But when the USSR collapsed and Anglo-Saxon liberal capitalism seemed victorious forever - it was the age when it was possible to write books titled "The End of History" not ironically - the extreme left had a little crisis.
Tankies, of course, had the worst problem, because their ideological northern star, which financed not a few groups, just imploded. They scattered themselves into the wind and washed out in all sorts of strange places. But even non-tankies had to reassess and find out if their ideologies were blindfolds in the post-historical era, and if they hadn’t better switch away from the prole revolution for something they could really work on. (Whether it was a tactical regression with the intention of continuing to start a revolution in a more appropriate time, or a wholesale change of ambition and reconciliation with broad capitalism, varied.) In addition, when literally Moscow-guided and funded parties disappeared, the Overton window shrank and suddenly being a Social Democrat with some strange ideas about gender would be enough to put you in the vanguard and get a radical chic.
Some of this was the reinforcement and continuation of existing trends. Eurocommunism and the Third Way began in the 1970s, which moved the left wing from the Soviets and orthodox Marxism. The New Left basically dates back to the 1960s. But I am quite convinced that the collapse of the USSR opened ideological-ecological niches on the extreme left, which were quickly filled with identity politics. No collapse of the USSR and identity politics probably still plays the second violin for the old class struggle analysis.
(I am not sure why there was not much to be attached to Maoism and the PRC. Higher cultural barriers? The CCP has always been less interested in exporting the revolution than the Bolsheviks, and China had a much smaller presence on the world stage before Xi took the helm. Or perhaps it was expected that the PRC would either fall similarly - on 4 June 1989, it was also just a few years before the 1990s - or it would open up and reform when it joined the WTO.)
Perhaps the difference is that Stalin acted in a technological society (in relation to the 18th century), in which much was invested in the capital and human development, because they are the main determinants of economic fortune; wars are destructive in this environment, even for the winner. Moulay Ismail, on the other hand, acted in pre-modern agarian society, where the land is a key economic contribution, and the war of conquest is quickly profitable, even if the peasants are killed - it has not undergone a demographic transformation, so the population is quickly recovering.
More options
Context Copy link