kelseyfrog
> Income and wealth distribution is extremely important to 44% of voters, the highest reading across the three midterm elections in which Gallup has measured it and well above the 32% in 2018 and 31% in 2014.[1]
I don't have to think that income and wealth distribution is important. I can just look at the fact that it is.
1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/716333/issues-voters-say-matter...
This is not a reality that myself or anyone I know has ever experienced for as long as we can remember. Is it something you've lived through? When and where did this time exist?
There will always be a tension between the accumulation of wealth and the popular demand to tax it. That doesn't mean that swinging to one extreme is an answer, nor is treating them as exactly equal. You can lower the bar for completion as much as you want, but if it results in disproportionate accumulation of wealth, the masses will revolt and blaming them for their dissatisfaction will never resolve the tension. Instead it will inflamed it. Police state, address wealth inequality, revolt. Choose one.
Assigning neutrality or bias without viewer of interaction is a category error. It is not an intrinsic property of the graph despite our wanting to simplify the world this way. It's like saying chocolate is intrinsically the best candy when what's being said is 'my relationship to chocolate is that it's my favorite.'
Because corporations are not moral agents; they're economic agents. This arrangement would be great for shareholder, nothing more.
Showing a nice animal or a 'you're welcome' message achieves the goal of removing the ad, but falls short of fixing the root of the problem: the billboard existing. As long as it exists, the temptation and incentive to put ads on it also exists.
Likewise, at what threshold do neurons become a brain capable of supporting a conscious mind? There is no threshold, thus there is no difference between the two; therefore we are not conscious.
Obviously not, because the label follows the relationship and nearly all labeling of AI justifies an existing relationship rather than determining it.
What these folks want to do is apply a label, convince themselves their relation to the object is a product of that label and not the other way around. The normative commitments come first and the taxonomy follows. Somehow they've smuggled in this weird behavior and tried to bring other people into this delusion without ever getting called out on it.
2. It will create an incentive structure that will reflect the goals of political parties.
Transparency brings the office into the political sphere. Nothing in the political sphere escapes partisanship. It's pretty clear that no one knew this office existed before I brought it up and folks thought that lawmakers drafted their own bills. The fact that we're even now talking about it in terms of politics is evidence that it will devolve into partisan politics.
I get your instinct - transparency is in general a net good. But the more public an office is, the more it is drawn into partisanship.
Politics is especially prone to engineers disease and this is a great example of it. It assumes a technical solution in the spirit of transparency applies to complex human, social, and political domains where those frameworks do not neatly fit. When someone points out engineers disease, have some introspection before questioning their motives.
The House Office of the Legislative Counsel is non-partisan, impartial, and confidential. Whether transparency has merit or not, tracking provenance would make the office partisan. Is more partisanship in government not a concern?
The second issue with transparency is that communication between legislators and legislative counsel member is subject to the attorney-client relationship. Breaking attorney-client privilege is a serious decision. Knowing how such a change would affect the organization and its members is not something to be taken lightly.
A more convincing argument for transparency would address impartiality and confidentiality. This is pretty clearly a Chesterton's fence type situation where advocating to change a system should anticipate criticisms. Addressing opposition preemptively is an implicit demonstration of knowing why the system exists which is table stakes for changing it.
If they had pushed that argument, would it have changed how useful electricity is?
Why not? It looks like many people heard "vote with your wallet," and took it seriously. For better or worse, purchasing a Tesla, or not, has become a referendum on Musk himself.