1999

Congrats to Lambda School on finding a way to get companies to pay for employee training.

I haven't read the paper and I probably won't, but it seems suspicious to me that the 1940 to 1970 timeframe mentioned just happens to coincide with WW2 and the aftermath and recovery. If you aren't prepared to systematically destroy foreign cities and industry I don't think you can recreate those conditions.

I think this was intended to be a customer support channel and they had to be able to delete the messages containing bank info after a certain amount of time. I had read something about it, I don't think carte blanche access to users' messages was sought or given, it was just support conversations. I didn't use it so this is like my memory of 2nd hand info.

I chose the 50-year interval to make it difficult since the last 50 years have been pretty stable and comfortable in anglo countries, relatively speaking.

Here is something ethicists could analyze that would really help convince me that they are taking it seriously: given the cost, the years from your life, the job prospects, and the success percentage, is it ethical to accept someone as a doctoral student specializing in ethics? Maybe they could study different universities and see which make the cut and which don't.

I agree that skeptics are persecuted so if I see group that ought to be skeptics but no one is trying to persecute them, I wonder.

In order to precisely define the term useful I'd have to wade into the murky depths of philosophy, which I don't want to do.

I was suggesting that philosophers would like to reason about my scenario because it would be a lot more interesting than imagining you could build a car that would somehow be forced to choose between running over i.e. ten elderly people or two children, and speculating about who you would program the car to kill. I know my scenario leads to a lot of interesting questions -- unlike the scenarios proposed by the website.

But I reject the claim that any reasoning about the scenario is necessarily philosophy. That's just what philosophers want you to think. For example, imagine if philosophers studied the behaviour of ducks and called it duckosophy. When a duck observes another duck, is that duckosophy? I would say no. The duck would do that even if humans never existed. The relationship is asserted purely on the side of the philosophers. So, I am a non-philosopher, and I reason about things based on knowledge due to lots of other non-philosophers, I'm not engaging in philosophy, even if a bunch of uninvolved people want to assert so.

I guess if you count logicians as philosophers then philosophy is useful. It is probably just "ethics" that deserves my scorn. If ethicysts were really out there studying good and evil in the world, one of them would get murdered every once in a while, like policians, journalists or police.

2018 - 1935 = 83

Also, in particular, see the segment from 0:45 to 1:30: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbzWYjVrvpI

These scenarios are idiotic. If you want to wank off about self driving car ethics, here is a much more realistic scenario: should all self-driving cars report their location to 911 dispatch to allow any vehicle to be re-purposed as an emergency vehicle at any time? That might actually save someone.

Also, can anyone identify a useful idea that philosophers have come up with in the last 50 years?

Never explain never apologise.

My advice to anyone would be don't make even the slightest effort to please people who hate you.

It's the french system:

10M, ten thousand

10MM, ten million

10MMM, ten billion

here in sec. 3: https://www.druide.com/fr/enquetes/abréviation-de-million-et...

Also as a white guy, my ancestors have been in North America for quite a while, are mixed between and culturally disconnected from European identities since before the current NA countries were created, also since before some of the current European countries were created, and the ones that did exist back then have probably attacked us at one point or another. Even though I like them, adopting an European cultural identity would be fake and I absolutely hate fakeness. It is true that there are still lots of interesting groups to join, but none based on culture.

I don't think pro-gun vs anti-gun groups are even having the same discussion.

Anti-gun is safety/medical arguments: Guns are a clear hazard to personal safety, and removing them from circulation will reduce the number of gunshot wounds and associated deaths, etc. This position is based on the ongoing massive human carnage committed with guns which has been going on for hundreds of years and is creating fresh corpses daily.

Pro-gun is political/self defense arguments: hundreds of years of European history where the rulers could carry weapons and the ruled could not, disarmament as a prelude to oppression/massacre in 20thC, distant or incompetent law enforcement meaning safety can only be provided by the individual.

I'm not sure if there is a way to bridge the gap between different value systems. For me personally I'm not going to buy firearms illegally, but I will never be happy about being a 2nd class citizen in my own country.

At least on the point of pity of the rich versus government organized relief, I'd definitely support closing the charity and religion loopholes that let the rich escape huge taxes. Another measure I'd support is removing all distinctions between types of income and spending so labor isn't punished relative to capital. It will be difficult because the rich are the most resistant to being taxed, and if they aren't their wealth is temporary. But I think the political will is there and I think it can be done.

Here is a chart of 2015 government spending vs GDP: https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-spending.htm

So the US is on the low end of things with the government spending 37.6% of GDP ... looking at the current level of service provided by the all levels of government, that is based on an almost 40% share of the output of the wealthiest country to ever exist. I think that is a pathetic result. Given 40% of the output of the US economy, I think the government should be able to provide all necessities to all citizens at a high level of service: food, shelter, transportation, medicine, education, law enforcement, military defence.

So based on their huge GDP share and horrible performance, I'm against allocating them a higher share. I think the most promising approach would be pure redistribution since it would sidestep the issue of the government's inefficiency. Just take the money from the rich and literally give it to the poor but I don't think it is politically feasible.

I'm not really considering incentives. I think most people will basically spend their whole lives working, even if you take half their money and throw it down a hole -- maybe especially even if you do that.

To increase wealth the lower tax will have to mean more money under the control of the individual. It doesn't guarantee savings and investment but it makes it possible. For the portion that is taxed, you don't control consumption versus savings, you're locked into the same outcome as everyone else.

One project I think is interesting is LeBron James' school. When I looked at what the biggest changes are between his school and a normal school, it all looks to me like surrogate parenting -- like he is moving elements from the parenting column into the school column: meals, clothing, transportation, scholarships, literally helping the parents find jobs. My vision for what creates academic and financial success is similar to LeBron James, but I don't support expanding the education system to include more daycare and parenting elements, and I think the government is uniquely horrible at delivering those elements at scale.

In my view the educational component is fine, access to information is better than ever, the major difference is the negative effects of the poverty environment, which can't be resolved through the education system.

Another thing that has to be identified is the components that are zero-sum versus non-zero-sum. In a zero-sum competitive process if educational attainment is based on resource consumption, the wealthy will always win.

I think we basically have an opposite view of the causal relationship. I think education is a product of prosperity, and I think you view prosperity as a product of education. It could be resolved by a randomized controlled trial like drugs are tested, but unfortunately it would be unethical since we'd have to randomly deny people education, or destroy their prosperity.

I think this article sets up the paper against two incorrect worldviews:

1. America is a genetic meritocracy -- you achievement is based on your potential. My interpretation of "traditional" American values is more focused around hard work, toughness, and foresight ... this sort of thing: https://www.trumanlibrary.org/lifetimes/farm.htm . I'm pretty sure the idea that your academic performance determines your place in society is the tradition of somewhere but I don't think it is America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination .

2. That going to college is not a direct product of wealth. Spending 4 years of adulthood doing something other than work could itself be used as a measurement of wealth. It feels to me like they are comparing two slightly different measurements of wealth and acting like it is something else.

Almost everyone in the study population would have gone to college before 1990, so their choices aren't based on the current situation, they are based on the situation 30 years ago as well.

The one thing I am positive about is that is provides evidence that wealth is actually a positive influence on education ... maybe it will help people who value education above all support pro-wealth policies like lower tax.

Can anyone recommend a good book on the period before the American Civil War? Not the war itself, just the wind up. I'd also be interested in something similar but for the Yugoslav wars.

Thanks, that is close to what I had.

I had a bookmarklet that did this that I've lost ... I'm interested in it if anyone here has it.

I think the phrasing of the line you quoted is too strong, but the same effect can be created without any kind of ringleader or secret cabal arrangement. You only need the right preconditions:

1. Incentive (i.e. Intel tech is cheaper than Qualcomm, but worse).

2. Pressure (i.e. lower the BOM because we're selling 10 million of these a month)

3. Lack of effective oversight.

FWIW I also differ on the statement "deceit is rare". I think ~10% of people will lie if it makes them look better short term, and ~1% will lie aggressively i.e. fraud or relationship aggression. When there is a job with a big incentive for deceit and inadequate oversight it will filter in favor of the liars.

Of course this particular case could be flimsy, all these companies are suing each other all the time, it is impossible to tell what is actually going on.