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Plans you're not supposed to talk about

dynomight.net

141–150 of 675 posts

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less about making those people safe and more about making you safe by making those other not spread the disease to you. For example: Go ahead and drive drunk, I don’t care, just do it on your private property so you don’t kill me. Similarly: Go and don’t get vaxed, honestly I don’t care. But viruses don’t respect borders like cars do, so if you are going to do it then make sure you are isolated on a private island wh…

"Our vaccines are working exceptionally well. They continue to work well for Delta with regard to severe illness and death - they prevent it, but what they can't do anymore is prevent transmission," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky

Preventing transmission != reducing transmission rates.

The vaccines absolutely do the later.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#142
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO this is technically true in a totally uninteresting way. People aren't going to stop doing stuff. That's just fairly obviously not really on the table, despite the minority of people who are into ideas of going back to some pre-modern agrarian societal model. So, how do we let people continue to do stuff without totally messing up the planet? That's the crucial question humanity is interested in solving (or, mayb…

This seems to be the standard response, I've certainly heard it before, but all I'm suggesting is doing less. I'm not a luddite, I'm not arguing for a "pre-modern agrarian societal model", I'm arguing for a post-modern agrarian society that balances technology, industry and the ecosystem. We consume enormously more than we need, and far more than the Planet can handle. I feel like the one of the few sane people when…

I don't know how we solve for the people that get a dopamine hit from a sales transaction.

My MIL is a great example of this, she goes shopping just to go shopping and get a deal. She buys more than she could ever want or use. Christmas is especially bad, buying so many presents she has a hard time wrapping them all in time.

Consumerism embedded into the American psyche is no joke and I don't know how we change it given relentless marketing campaigns, habit, etc.

I wish we could pull back but I don't know how we do it at a large scale that people will agree to.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#143

The author presents the idea that "you may be born into a culture with social practices that you don't understand but that work for your benefit; they may work better if you don't understand them!" I find this idea a little repellant, but it's something Friedrich Hayek wrote about too. (In my mind Hayek is the person most associated with distributed knowledge.) ~"You may not understand the forces that have led societ…

This sentiment seems completely useless (actually incredibly dangerous) without at least some attempt at explaining how we might distinguish between aspects of society which seem terrible but are actually secretly good even though no one knows why, and aspects of society which seem terrible because they're terrible.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't even bother to read the citation for that statement? > This has now been true for over a century, and as early as 1855 J. S. Mill could say (see my John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor [London and Chicago, 1951], p. 216) that "almost all the projects of social reformers of these days are really liberticide." > I like the document title, though. "Microsoft Word - Document1". Very classy. Textbook example of an a…

That's pretty loaded language, but it makes sense. When an area is sparsely populated it doesn't matter as much how people behave. They aren't harming other people because there are none around. As the population density increases the same actions like emitting pollution of one kind or another (air, sound, light, etc...) becomes a problem and all of the other people come together to ask you to stop, thus infringing o…

"all of the other people come together to ask you to stop, thus infringing on your liberties."

You've very insight-fully described the policy debate/disagreement between people in pretty much any liberal democracy. Respecting my property rights is actually an infringement on your liberty. Not being able to legally kill me without some just cause is also an infringement on your liberty. What's often lost in the conversation on liberty is that everyone agrees that its a matter of degree. IE -- everyone having absolute liberty isn't viable. Absolute liberty would effectively just be an anarchy. Its just a matter of where the lines are. But somehow the conversation ends up getting reduced absolutes on both sides.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#145
post #7

>Cutting back on CO2 emissions would clearly work, but it’s expensive and painful. This is so painfully backwards. "Saving the Planet" doesn't mean spending tons of money and doing tons of work, quite the opposite. The absolute best thing for the Planet would be for every human being to do nothing at all. Stop driving, stop working, stop eating entirely, and then things will quickly recover. Obviously that's a bit ex…

Are you trying to say that it’s NOT expensive or painful to just lay down and die en masse?

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#147

As an authorial technique starting off with a just so story about how marriage came to be that lasts several paragraphs and is obviously not at all how marriage came to be and doesn't even have the excuse of referencing some sort of supernatural source for being wrong might seem interesting but bored me too much to continue. I'm supposing the rest of it is also wrong and badly argued.

It's written in the same vein as "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" [1]. (Read it. Then read the Wikipedia article.) [1] https://www.sfu.ca/~palys/Miner-1956-BodyRitualAmongTheNacir...

Surprisingly I did not spring fully conscious and new formed onto the internet a few hours ago and have read things in the past.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#148

Neal Stephenson's latest novel Termination Shock , is largely related to point number two -- Geoengineering the atmosphere using sulfur filled bullets fired from really big guns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel)

Does that cause a problem with acid rain?

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#149

The underlying issue, and one that bugs the hell out of me, is Policy vs Truth. You can say true things all day, and convince nobody. You can enact policy based completely on Truth (e.g., Trust the Science), and completely fail. People don't care about Truth, they care about what changes they need to make, and who is asking them to make them. Good policy is only partially based on truth, it's more based on easy imple…

The power and foolishness of democracy lies therein. A good story is more motivating that the complicated truths of life. It is probably better for all of us to link every tornado and hurricane to climate change in a neat little story than refrain from doing so because we cannot link the particular storm on man-made climate change. The story has power to effect positive change.

You don’t think people commonly notice the manner in which they cover this and other stories, and conclude that Teh Liberal Media (tm) is a bunch of liars who have taken them for rubes?

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At a time when most movements that are thought to be progressive advocate further encroachments on individual liberty LOL okay I literally can't go any further than the first sentence. Very good much wow so projection. I like the document title, though. "Microsoft Word - Document1". Very classy.

Didn't even bother to read the citation for that statement? > This has now been true for over a century, and as early as 1855 J. S. Mill could say (see my John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor [London and Chicago, 1951], p. 216) that "almost all the projects of social reformers of these days are really liberticide." > I like the document title, though. "Microsoft Word - Document1". Very classy. Textbook example of an a…

The 1855 date of that quote doesn't give you any pause?

Expanding it out to reveal that JS Mill wrote it in a letter just feels like an appeal to authority (if we are to be so "debate" about it).

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