81–90 of 234 posts
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you don't have to ask people for their intentions, you just have to watch what they do. look at how many government organisations that were investigating the Musk empire got Dodged: https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2025.02....
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Ignoring details has been very lucrative for Musk. Remember when he said self driving is coming next year… every year… since 2017
Indeed, Musk is the first and only man to ever do that.
But he is by far the most successful one.
At the very least the loudest successful one.
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"Results may vary" is not an acceptable methodology for the US Government, when millions of lives are potentially at stake. Ed: among the ways millions of lives could be lost: losing control of our nuclear arsenal or nuclear materials due to haphazardly firing people responsible for maintaining them. Bungling the response to the next pandemic, due to haphazardly firing people, cutting science funding and deleting inc…
This seems circular, since your opinion, views, thoughts, etc., are what the opposing factions are rejecting ( or de-legitimizing) in the first place.
The universe seems to have a fractal structure. At every scale we can look there is a huge amount of detail.
The other problem is that all the details matter all the time. Like if you want to mathematically model what happens in a pool table hall when somebody strikes a ball with a great deal of force... by the time you get to the six or seventh bounce you are going to have to start to take into account the position and movement of people standing around the table watching it. The airflow, the vibration of them moving, the…
In the context of policy making (or presidential fiat, as the case may be), there is always the risk of mistaking what people should do with what they will do. A pragmatic strategy for success will include systems that can help to thwart the worst impulses of our flawed reasoning, including things like dispassionate peer reviewed analyses (oops) that is untethered by the ambitions or ideologies of individual people or groups (oops), a diverse array of advisory opinions (oops), functional checks on monolithic authority (oops), and mechanisms for correcting prior mistakes (fingers crossed).
I think this all contributes to the phenomenon that folks have (a bit erroneously) associated with the Dunning-Kruger effect—essentially the idea that people who haven’t learned enough to know how much they don’t know are dangerously overconfident and naive. That said, I think there is a tendency to assume this about others that’s probably fallacious in and of itself. In the case of current events, I don’t believe the individuals involved actually care enough to have even mounted the left peak of the Dunning-Kruger chart, but rather are fully uninformed and unconcerned with much of any implications outside of their own very narrow ideological ends (it’s probably more accurate to apply Dunning-Kruger to the ideology itself, or maybe the broader coalition of partisan cohorts who share it, than it is the people wielding it).
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The question was 28x though. Not just are you getting more value, but is the value 28 times more. This is not clear, and probably answerable. Health care is very different between now and 1800 (in 1800 your lifespan was measurably better if you didn't go to a doctor ever - this was before handwashing and antibiotics). Even if you compare today, France and the US have many differences in the current system and so you…
I think probably the slaves in 1800, whose experience of the government was its violent enforcement of their sub-human status would probably find the protection of their civil rights in 2024 France to be quite a bit more than 28x as valuable, yes. I think the women who couldn't independently own property, had no protections against marital rape, being beat by their husbands, or most any other form of abuse would agre…
The end of slavery was really due to slavery being uneconomic. That's why the Northern states didn't have slavery. It would have ended in the South as well, even without the Civil War (which was a kind of big state thing, of course).
Children forced to labour without pay -- also an economic issue.
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In 1800, the government of the USA spent 2% of GDP. In 2020, the government of the USA spent 30% of GDP. In 2024, the government of France spent 57% of GDP. Are the people of 2024 France really getting 28x the value from their government as 1800 USA? It is not evil to ask these questions or to experiment with government, And more people should consider backing off from political-media consumption as it is clearly tox…
Poverty dropped tremendously in the 20th century, perhaps that has to do with government spending? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare%27s_effect_on_poverty There are diminishing returns, though
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This seems circular, since your opinion, views, thoughts, etc., are what the opposing factions are rejecting ( or de-legitimizing) in the first place.
People disagree with my opinion, therefore it's circular? Interesting logic.
It seems pretty clear to me at least why it would lead to circular arguments.
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"Results may vary" is not an acceptable methodology for the US Government, when millions of lives are potentially at stake. Ed: among the ways millions of lives could be lost: losing control of our nuclear arsenal or nuclear materials due to haphazardly firing people responsible for maintaining them. Bungling the response to the next pandemic, due to haphazardly firing people, cutting science funding and deleting inc…
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Trump’s “cost saving” measures are already actively harming medical treatment in the USA.
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you don't have to ask people for their intentions, you just have to watch what they do. look at how many government organisations that were investigating the Musk empire got Dodged: https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2025.02....
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Maybe its not due to the universe but our perception of it?
That presupposes a distinction between the universe and the observer. The idea that any such distinction is an illusion is both ancient and profound. (Perhaps even obvious, at least in the abstract.)