ethanbond

Okay, well most people who have issues with digital advertising don’t have as much a problem with ads as they have a problem with the negative externalities of how ads are currently implemented on the web. It sounds like you might have a bit of an extreme view.

As evidenced by lack of general public outrage over e.g. advertisements in magazines or newspapers.

You don’t think there’s at least a minor difference between an ad that directly pertains to the content you are directly reading, and is in fact from the same “vendor,” versus an ad piped in from an auction driven by your browsing behavior from all over the internet?

Because it’s a different issue with different principals involved.

Does the federal government set the national number of teachers who can be trained each year?

Oh okay. Guess we’ll just continue to have 1997 level supply of doctors forever.

I don’t even know what argument you’re trying to make here? It’ll take time to solve? Yeah, obviously. That’s why we should start ASAP and given that we don’t have a time machine, that’d mean right now.

What? People benefit from higher land prices?

The opioid issue is absolutely a big degradation in QOL from recent years, but no the current crime rate is still well below decades ago, especially on a per capita basis.

https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_p...

You’re describing problems that are all solved by money.

It’s the land price. Gets baked into every single good and service and goes up in lockstep with productivity gains.

Crime is much much lower than it was decades ago almost everywhere in the US.

Also “run down” in reference to cities is just not true outside of a few failed areas like Detroit. NYC today is dramatically nicer than it was decades ago.

This is easy: how much did an acre of land in Palo Alto cost then, and how much does it cost now? Why? Why does the price of land “need” to go up? It pays no wages, no rent, no suppliers, no anything. It’s just there being land, no matter what price it is. So why has its price gone up and who benefits from that?

You just spend more money to scale the program. Funding for the residency program has been frozen since the late 90s, the demand for doctors has not been.

Vibes > clinical trials

What's there to criticize if it's not bad?

Got it, so post-abolition United States is not “more righteous,” even on the dimension of human rights, than pre-abolition United States. It is, as you say, “impossible” to compare them. You don’t actually explain how you get from this position to the assertion you would be proactive against slavery, but I think the utter nonsense of the first claim reveals sufficient moral confusion by itself. You’re just trapped between “can’t criticize modern slavers” and “can’t say I accept slavers of the past,” which obviously is totally incoherent.

Not clear what point you’re arguing against by saying “HDI says UAE is good yet you don’t agree with it!” Why on earth would I defer full moral judgment to HDI?

I never claimed my moral system is objective, so I’m also not sure what facade you’re referring to.

That is an immense leap from "if we could have machines do it, we wouldn't have slaves do it" to seeing slavery as undesirable. Aristotle was a staunch believer in "natural slaves" who didn't have the faculty of rational deliberation and therefore were (and should be) guided by those who do have that faculty.

This line of thought can be traced all the way through to the modern day, and obviously well up to abolition.

There's really not much evidence at all that slaveholders saw their activities the way you describe ("necessary evil"). There's no evidence that we first had a necessity for slavery and then obviated it through automation. In fact, automation in the Americas increased demand on the labor of enslaved people.

If there was any external triggering event of abolition, it'd have been Darwin's On The Origin of Species and contemporaneous breakthroughs in science that destroyed the philosophical foundations that slavery was built upon (natural god-given supremacy, as Aristotle believed).

The abolitionist movement was an intellectual and moral one, through and through. You can just read the writings of abolitionists to hear what convinced them into their positions.

Obligatory: Tailwind

No, I didn't say that you are indifferent to nor pro-slavery.

I said that you'd land on the conclusion of allowing it, presumably despite your own personal preferences. Many people who opposed abolition also personally opposed slavery, but used arguments identical to yours to oppose action against slavery. The lack of action would've, obviously, allowed slavery to persist indefinitely.

Can you explain how (or if) your moral system would prevent you from landing on that conclusion? It's a simple question that doesn't depend on theatrics to ask nor answer.

Well no, we need billions of human-level AIs who are experiencing a world as rich and various as the world that the billions of humans inhabit.

You are aware that the existence of grey areas does not negate the existence of different ends of the spectrum, right? I’m not arguing the world is simple and entire countries/civilizations can be placed on one end or the other.

I am saying that there are countless dimensions that matter, and there are better and worse locations along those dimensions.

On the dimension of drug addiction rates, Singapore is doing better than the US. On the dimension of personal liberties, Singapore is doing worse than the US.

This observation is not a counter argument to my position, it’s a disproof of yours.

Saying we cannot make value judgments about these things implies we cannot justifiably take action that would nudge us into a different location along any of these different dimensions. How could you possibly decide to change things if there’s no such thing as a better, more preferable possible future state?

Here’s a gut check: are you comfortable with your moral system landing you solidly in the “let’s allow slavery” camp in the 1800s? After all, the disagreement between slave holders and abolitionists was one of culture and opinions, and as we know now there’s no such thing as a better or worse position to hold on such matters. Does that moral system seem like a good one to you?

Where is anyone proposing berating anyone? You can say that a segregated society was less good than a non-segregated one without saying that everyone who lives or lived in a segregated society is worthy of berating/disgust/derision etc. I don't blame individual Iranians for living in a culture that is worse on many important dimensions than western liberal cultures, but that doesn't prevent me from making a fair judgment that (at least on those dimensions) it is actually worse.

Modern thinking: things like pluralism and liberalism. These are actual ideas that emerged in the late 1800s and which are responsible for immense human thriving, immense liberation from suffering all over the world. Upstream of all political and social reform is an intellectual reform, i.e. new "thinking." I am not referring to "maximum individual freedom," and in fact this idea is fundamentally in tension with pluralism and liberalism. Maximum individual freedom at the expense of the whole is a bad idea because it yields bad outcomes, just like various forms of theocracy are bad ideas because they yield bad outcomes.

The ideas that yield expanded suffrage, expanded legal protections, expanded access to prosperity are good ideas because they produce good outcomes. Yes sure, the US/the west broadly isn't perfect, etc, but note that we can discuss all the ways in which it's broken so we can get to work fixing it. That's a good outcome and it's a critical part of the path to more good outcomes on more important dimensions.

You're not arguing that other forms get to better outcomes or whatever, you're just arguing that there's no such thing as good or bad outcomes and therefore no such thing as good or bad ideas.

Try going to Qatar or Iran and asking someone for their opinion on their heads of state. I think you'll find their reaction far more chilling than the fact that our health insurance system is broken.

Sure, I don’t believe cultural relativism is itself in all cases wrong. I think it’s obviously wrong when used to excuse obviously immoral things done in a context where they are in fact obviously immoral (such as much of the Middle East in the modern day).

Those countries can outlaw those conditions whenever they want. When they do, they’ll have achieved some additional moral progress. I’m pretty sure you’d be crying foul if the US decided to go and enforce its laws over there.

No, what we’re finding is actually quite the opposite. High volumes of light weapons is not only enough, but preferable on the modern battlefield even fighting against heavy weapons.

What specific weapon systems would you like to see sent to Ukraine?

And what bearing does this have on where blame should land for the US turning its back on Ukraine?

We did send huge amounts of aid in 2022, including 38 HIMARS, 2,000 Stingers, 100,000 anti-armor systems, 250 artillery guns, 9,000 anti-tank missiles, and 35,000 small arms.

Then Republicans put a hard right Christian theocrat, who’s totally captured by the hard-right wing of the party, in charge of the House and everything has stalled.

Uh no. Republicans control the House which is enough to prevent even $1 from being spent or sent anywhere.

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/What-are-some-yxB.yA2.SzS7M...

There’s not some big mystery here. Democrats are proposing bill after bill after bill, and republicans are loudly and proudly blocking them.

Was slavery-era America worse on the dimension of human rights or just different?

Why does cultural relativism excuse horrors of actual modern people with access to and awareness of all modern thinking, modern technology, and modern examples of societies who achieved moral progress, but we’re perfectly comfortable saying slave owners of the past are responsible for their crimes despite being raised by slave owners in a society of slave owners embedded in a world of slave owners with a history absolutely chalk full of slave owners?

To be clear that’s Republicans. Democrats overwhelmingly support military aid to Ukraine. Republicans are split (at best) on the issue.

Israel-Gaza is a more complicated breakdown for sure, but it’s also a much more complicated conflict.

And as we all know, capable of == actually doing

Primary motivator being insecurity and rapidly deteriorating mental health

The Supernote A5X is the only device that has managed to wiggle its way into my daily life alongside my MBP and iPhone. A big e-reader like the Supernote is amazing not just for reading books but as a searchable journal/planner that you always have with you.