171–179 of 179 posts
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Yes and no. I mean, a "regular" pizza is understood to be a cheese pizza, the default or base pizza. I think vanilla ice-cream is the regular pizza of the ice-cream world.
Wtf, no Finn would agree on a "regular" pizza existing.
Checkmate, Finn.
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GDP growth as a measure of economic health of a society is a bad rule. Here's a better rule: Completely disregard any claim about economic health, sustainability, well-being etc. if it's based on GDP. GDP is a measure that deserves no respect and the mere use of it has caused a lot of harm to the world.
Analysis with numbers is only an oppinion. Sure, GDP isn't a perfect measure, but if grows odds it's a good thing.
GDP growing is NOT a good thing per se. It does a mix of capturing how much productivity is being commercialized (if we all paid our neighbors to do our household chores, GDP would double or something instantly with zero productivity gain), how much pay is going to non-productive or even counterproductive work (see the phenomenon of bullshit jobs^1) and ignoring externalities (growth in fossil fuel extraction and consumption, for example is overall negative for society).
It's not useful to even assume that GDP growth correlates with positive economic status in measures we actually want (i.e. measurements of overall long-term prosperity)
^1: https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
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FWIW, I think it's fair to push back on bad use of language even as I'm not prescriptive in general. Using "vanilla" to mean "plain" is just wrong and bad. It's possible to make plain, unflavored ice-cream. Vanilla is obviously a real flavor.
Yes and no. I mean, a "regular" pizza is understood to be a cheese pizza, the default or base pizza. I think vanilla ice-cream is the regular pizza of the ice-cream world.
A plain donut or plain bagel are the things without any extras.
A plain cake is rare but is a cake without extra flavors or frosting or whatever. When it just has chocolate even, people still call it a "chocolate cake" and maybe "plain chocolate cake" but rarely or never simply "plain cake". And because the default for cake is to be chocolate, nobody would be crazy enough to say "vanilla cake" to refer to unadorned chocolate cake. So the use of vanilla to mean regular/plain isn't a lost cause! It's worth criticizing to not lose its real meaning.
The pizza analogy really would work like this: say that pepperoni pizza was so common, everyone had that or more complex things and nobody ever had a simple cheese pizza. Then imagine people start using "pepperoni" to mean plain/regular. Metaphorically, they'd start saying "eh, that one night stand — the sex was just pepperoni".
Okay, so, upon reconsideration, it's not "plain" or "regular" or "popular" that vanilla refers to. It's original, as in the first thing that seems default and was around before other stuff. These metaphors are complex.
But I happen to think we should notice when we use metaphors and consider their meaning, question them, use them thoughtfully…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW, I think it's fair to push back on bad use of language even as I'm not prescriptive in general. Using "vanilla" to mean "plain" is just wrong and bad. It's possible to make plain, unflavored ice-cream. Vanilla is obviously a real flavor.
I think that ship has sailed, since the meaning has been in use for almost 50 years now. As someone who can't stand the use of "they" as a singular pronoun, I also understand fights against the evolution of language are battles that I won't win.
Vanilla = plain is a metaphor.
Singular they is a syntax issue.
These are processed totally differently in our minds/brains. Both we come to accept with enough usage and good attitude, but they have very different significance in language.
Most people who don't start knowing singular they find it a true syntax error, the sort like a P600 response in an EEG test. It's deeply irksome. But then with familiarity, it goes away.
Metaphors don't have such a deep language processing issue, they just have semantic meaning that we accept or not and our objections live at a far more intellectual level.
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Analysis with numbers is only an oppinion. Sure, GDP isn't a perfect measure, but if grows odds it's a good thing.
Numbers aren't the inherent problem, the problem is which numbers you use. GDP is among the worst choices for which numbers to evaluate. GDP growing is NOT a good thing per se. It does a mix of capturing how much productivity is being commercialized (if we all paid our neighbors to do our household chores, GDP would double or something instantly with zero productivity gain), how much pay is going to non-productive or…
But at a macro level those seem unlikely to dominate the development.
If GDP is increased by disposing nuclear waste in international waters that's obviously bad. But generally speaking degenerate trends like that don't dominate economic development. I hope :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Numbers aren't the inherent problem, the problem is which numbers you use. GDP is among the worst choices for which numbers to evaluate. GDP growing is NOT a good thing per se. It does a mix of capturing how much productivity is being commercialized (if we all paid our neighbors to do our household chores, GDP would double or something instantly with zero productivity gain), how much pay is going to non-productive or…
Sure there are degenerate aspects captured by GDP. But at a macro level those seem unlikely to dominate the development. If GDP is increased by disposing nuclear waste in international waters that's obviously bad. But generally speaking degenerate trends like that don't dominate economic development. I hope :)
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/five-measures-of-grow... (note that World Economic Forum is far from some radical hippy organization)
Another perspective: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/12/doughn...
There are simple places where growth necessarily means we're beyond some limit and causing more problems the more we grow. Growth is not the goal, the goal is well-being and health. Growth is only the goal when we're under the level that maximizes well-being and have room to grow before problems start getting exacerbated.
> it's one of the few regions with the right climate that is also poor enough to make laborious hand-pollination affordable It's not like I didn't know that this is how the world works, but this specific case is even more of a slap in the face. It's kinda fucked up to think that in the local specialty store merely a couple pods of vanilla (a few grams each) go for 6-7 dollars, but these folks live in poverty. But mor…
There was no such implication. Besides, we can reasonable expect that if (when!) labor costs go up enough I think we're likely to see automation solutions to the labor intensive portions of growing vanilla. Your buying artificial vanilla instead of real vanulla will NOT help make people in Madagascar less poor! Indeed, it will only help make them poorer (by reducing demand for their labor). If you want to help them,…
or you can pass laws to bring in temporary migrants from African countries to do the extra work and still keep wages down.
And it's even grown only in 2 very specific regions in the north of the island (where most of the cocoa production also come from). There's still huge opportunities if you have enough money and appetite for adventure to start a trading or setting up a plantation. 1ha yields on average 300-400 kg of dried vanilla, a process that takes on average 6-8 months from manual pollination to end of drying. Madagascar is quite…