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Portugal. The Man – Official Website Is a Google Sheets Document

portugaltheman.com

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Re: Portugal. The Man – Official Website Is a Google Sheets Document

#161

Post by ivalm »

lovasoa wrote: post #158
ivalm wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all lives have the same subjective utility to the donor. When pressed into making a choice I think most would rather save their own child’s life than a million random children in Africa. If someone likes the band I imagine the donor would feel more utility in helping them than saving a greater amount of people they have no connection to.

> most would rather save their own child’s life than a million random children The idea of effective altruism is that this is immoral, and that our instinctive behavior of being so indifferent to the sufferings of those we don't feel "close" to should be fought against.

Sure, but there is no reason to think that universal utilitarianism is the correct moral philosophy. I think lots of people get trapped into thinking from these universal principles in the abstract and it’s important to remind that that’s an absolutely arbitrary, and not-natural-to-humans, way of thinking about ethics. Our view of other humans absolutely doesn’t, and shouldn’t, start from an uninformed prior.

Re: Portugal. The Man – Official Website Is a Google Sheets Document

#163

Post by raybb »

lovasoa wrote: post #97
raybb wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea of this a lot, but does it provide any way to edit the data?

You write the SQL yourself, so you can do anything you want, including UPDATE parties SET name=:name, date=:date WHERE id=:id;

Thanks for the response, I was looking at your site from mobile earlier and it didn't jump out at me that it could also be used to edit data (tho I now see it mentioned clearly). Might be worth calling it out in a section as easy editing.

Btw how would you compare this to https://datasette.io/ which is the first thing that came to mind? Is yours a bit more developer oriented?

Re: Portugal. The Man – Official Website Is a Google Sheets Document

#164

Post by dhruvarora013 »

alin23 wrote: post #64

I also have an iOS published app that has a Google Sheets “backend”: https://subsol.one It’s an app for finding parties and festivals in Romania, and the sheets choice makes it super easy for my brother and his friends to add parties to the app. I thought about adding a “real” database and tried some apps/frontends for them, but nothing made it easy enough to update and insert rows for non technical people. I figured…

I made something very similar for our company's internal directory. HR is used to maintaining Google Sheets and fit really well into their workflow

Re: Portugal. The Man – Official Website Is a Google Sheets Document

#165

Post by seattle_spring »

lovasoa wrote: post #130
JoshGG wrote: post #126

If you click on the Tab 'FRANCES CHANGED MY LIFE' it shows that band members John and Zoe have a daughter Frances. They're raising money to fund research into Frances' rare neurological disease: "Frances has a rare genetic mutation that causes a degenerative disease called DHDDS. In the last few years, breakthroughs in medical science have made it possible to develop a treatment. Unfortunately, it's extremely expensi…

These things always make me uneasy. On the one hand, I understand they are in a very hard situation. On the other hand, donating to research into rare neurological diseases will literally save hundreds of times fewer lives than donating to "effective" charities ( https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ )

Sam Bankman-Fried did a pretty great job proving how awful "effective altruism" can end up.

Believe in something? Donate your time. Donate your money.

Re: Portugal. The Man – Official Website Is a Google Sheets Document

#166

Post by seattle_spring »

lovasoa wrote: post #156
rafram wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effective altruism has worked out pretty well, hasn’t it?

Is this a reference to Sam Bankman-Fried ? He was a promoter of effective altruism and also a fraudster. But I'm not sure why that should prevent non-fraudsters to also promote effective altruism.

His perspective was literally that being a fraudster is OK if it nets you billions of dollars that can go toward significant causes. It's at the core of "effective altruism": the ends justify the means.

So yes, he was a shining example of why "effective altruism" is just an excuse to do terrible things / make small improvements in the world.

Re: Portugal. The Man – Official Website Is a Google Sheets Document

#167

Post by seattle_spring »

lagt_t wrote: post #62
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most ways of putting up a conventional website don't make updates easy, unless you buy into some whole system, or pay someone. If Sheets is familiar and works, why not? Arguably the fact that the website is more likely to be accurate and up to date this way makes it more user friendly.

My 75 year old mother who struggles with the remote still can update her church wordpress.

Funny related story: I have nearly 2 decades professional webdev experience, including a cumulative decade at a FAANG and a "decacorn". My HOA was looking for someone to take over maintenance of their website for events and photos and other super basic stuff. I volunteered along with some other lady who only had experience maintaining her church website in WordPress.

The board chose the other lady without even talking to me "because she had deeper WordPress experience."

The site still looks and functions like it's 1998 /shrug

Re: Portugal. The Man – Official Website Is a Google Sheets Document

#169

Post by jaw »

lovasoa wrote: post #130
JoshGG wrote: post #126

If you click on the Tab 'FRANCES CHANGED MY LIFE' it shows that band members John and Zoe have a daughter Frances. They're raising money to fund research into Frances' rare neurological disease: "Frances has a rare genetic mutation that causes a degenerative disease called DHDDS. In the last few years, breakthroughs in medical science have made it possible to develop a treatment. Unfortunately, it's extremely expensi…

These things always make me uneasy. On the one hand, I understand they are in a very hard situation. On the other hand, donating to research into rare neurological diseases will literally save hundreds of times fewer lives than donating to "effective" charities ( https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ )

As a fellow fan of effective altruism, I really don't want people to think of it as the group that shows up whenever someone is asking for help and says "Don't help them! You should be helping these other people instead!"

Empathy is crucial for motivating people to give to any cause, and it's a crucial part of why I'm involved in EA. If someone's first/main exposure to EA is along the lines of "you should ignore this cause which touched your heart, because numbers", it's not going to resonate. I want people to be excited about the good they could accomplish by donating to EA-aligned charities, not feel like I'm trying to press some distasteful obligation onto them.

Also, it's not a zero-sum game in practice. People can be inspired to increase the total amount they give (so giving more to effective charities doesn't necessarily mean giving less to other charities they care about).

Re: Portugal. The Man – Official Website Is a Google Sheets Document

#170

Post by saulpw »

lovasoa wrote: post #158
ivalm wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all lives have the same subjective utility to the donor. When pressed into making a choice I think most would rather save their own child’s life than a million random children in Africa. If someone likes the band I imagine the donor would feel more utility in helping them than saving a greater amount of people they have no connection to.

> most would rather save their own child’s life than a million random children The idea of effective altruism is that this is immoral, and that our instinctive behavior of being so indifferent to the sufferings of those we don't feel "close" to should be fought against.

Charity begins at home. It's immoral in my -ism to send money halfway around the world, while ignoring the growing misery in your own city. Similarly it would be immoral to sacrifice your own child to save the lives of two strangers. If EA'ers really acted according to their ethos, they would be harvesting and donating their own children's organs. Two kidneys, two lungs, a pancreas, a liver, and a heart could help a lot more people than the one underdeveloped being they're currently hosted in!
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