401–410 of 428 posts
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I think that proves he really believed what he was saying!
Or that he was willing to risk his health for wealth at everyone's expense.
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Yeah, the analogy between toxic media and toxic chemicals is pretty good. However, I'd put they blame for that somewhere you might find surprising: influencers. Everybody likes to hate on "big tech" these days, but if there's anyone that knows the dangers and all the ill effects but ignores them to make a profit, it's content creators. They are hyper-attuned to the way people respond to their content, and they'll do…
> Everybody likes to hate on "big tech" these days, but if there's anyone that knows the dangers and all the ill effects but ignores them to make a profit, it's content creators. This is like blaming smokers instead of Philip Morris.
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> You were focused on what people say [...] People lie Not true. You're strawmanning again. I already addressed this distinction between "say" versus "think" in the sibling comment, which I'm sure you've read. To refresh your memory, I said: "That's not how people think, at all. People who do horrible things are very good at rationalizing that they are actually the good guys. This is a well studied phenomenon." > I h…
I am not straw manning. I have read oceans of anti-masker afguments. Some claim they don't believe they are harming people, and some of those may actually believe it. But the question is whether they have a justified, true belief. They don't. They are all clearly aware of the potential of harm, and the science is pretty clear. Even for the ones who truly believe it, they have to admit that they could be wrong and are…
I agree that slavery, drunk driving and secondhand smoke are very bad. I agree that people who've committed such acts likely have less empathy towards other people.
I disagree with the sentiment you expressed about "mask freedom" and "vaccination freedom". I think vaccinations are great and masks are somewhat useful, but I think the tradeoff of sacrificing freedoms is not worth it to force this stuff on people by government mandate. So I guess I fall in the category that you defined as "aware of the possibility of death and perfectly fine with it". Be that as it may, I certainly don't have the mindset that anything goes, regardless of harm to others. I think there's tradeoffs to be made and I think reasonable people can disagree about those tradeoffs. I'm sure if we went through a variety of different topics (like personal cars) we would find several topics where you're also willing to make tradeoffs "aware of the possibility of death and perfectly fine with it".
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> The act of smoking is the statement. And so is your insistence on pretending not to understand that. Not a pretty one. You're the one pretending. There's a difference between these 2 things: 1) Taking actions (like smoking) that put others at some level of risk 2) Thinking that placing any level of harm onto others is justifiable as long as it's profitable You know very well there's a difference between those thing…
> Doesn't mean that smokers or drivers will do literally any level of harm to humans in order to gain the tiniest of profit to themselves. For a guy who is very eager to accuse others of straw manning, you seem to be working very hard to invent things so that you can dismiss them.
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> The act of smoking is the statement. And so is your insistence on pretending not to understand that. Not a pretty one. You're the one pretending. There's a difference between these 2 things: 1) Taking actions (like smoking) that put others at some level of risk 2) Thinking that placing any level of harm onto others is justifiable as long as it's profitable You know very well there's a difference between those thing…
I really don’t understand your insistence here. Firstly the original claim isn’t “regardless of any level of harm”, and I’ve already given examples of profiting despite harm to others. Secondly even if you insist on an extreme level of harm there are still examples. We can use any of a number of dictators that are literally willing to kill millions to stay in power. Do they actually say out loud “I am willing to prof…
Yes it is. Here is the full statement copypasted without modifications:
> America has two radically different concepts of freedom that travel under the same name. Both start with "I should be free to do as I want". One ends with "as long as I don't harm others". The other ends with "regardless of harm to others". You were dealing with the latter.
According to the original claim, there are two groups in America. One group (hint: democrats) can not justify any level of harm in exchange for their freedoms, while another group (hint: republicans) will justify any level of harm in exchange for their freedoms. The original claim paints these 2 groups as polar opposites, while in reality both groups are willing to accept various levels of harm in exchange for various levels of freedom. They merely disagree about some tradeoffs.
> Secondly even if you insist on an extreme level of harm there are still examples. We can use any of a number of dictators that are literally willing to kill millions to stay in power.
Sure, I accept this example. Yes, there are some rare individuals who truely are monsters and are willing to cause extreme levels of harm in exchange for their own personal benefit. I don't think half of America is like that, though.
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> it should continue to be protected while copyright is removed. It would not be hard for new laws to enshrine + protect OSS licenses Those things are logical opposites. If someone has a right to place any conditions at all on the way people copy their software, that is a copyright. Maybe they meant to suggest copyright reform. I make this point because people often like that GPL forces republishing of derivative wor…
They're only opposite goals in as much as you see copyright and open source licenses as synonymous. I'm not a lawyer, but there are other forms of IP protections that are not copyright (patents, trademarks, etc). Seems like a new form of IP protection could be created to protect open source - i.e. "if someone says you can only modify this code if you re-share it, it is illegal to modify the code without re-sharing".
I guess we live on the shoulders of nastiness and things get better. So TEL was part of our boot sequence. What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? BTW: The guy that invented TEL also invented CFCs! See Thomas Midgley Jr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr . This guy who invents awesome working chemicals that are tragically bad for people on a worldwide scale manages to exit life dues to his…
> What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? People have already listed a lot of true answers and a number of speculative answers (also likely mostly true, imo), but I'll toss in that we use two-stroke engine leaf blowers and lawn mowers everywhere—mostly right outside our homes—and it's absolutely bonkers. Massive amounts of NOx, PM2.5, etc. We spent all this time and money cleaning up our cars (which are…
I guess we live on the shoulders of nastiness and things get better. So TEL was part of our boot sequence. What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? BTW: The guy that invented TEL also invented CFCs! See Thomas Midgley Jr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr . This guy who invents awesome working chemicals that are tragically bad for people on a worldwide scale manages to exit life dues to his…
> What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? Maybe an overwrought comparison but I genuinely do feel like we’ll look back on this age of social media and disinformation in the same way we did leaded gas. The people making money knew exactly how dangerous it was and the problems it caused but they did everything in their power to cover it up in the name of profit. Originally it felt like a social annoyance a…
Wow it didn't take long for evidence of that to surface:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-tox...
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That would be a generous interpretation.
Overly generous. Much if not most of the damage of lead was done to unrelated third parties who did not necessarily have any relationship with those responsible for the use of lead. The person who makes that argument is telling those unrelated people, "wear hazmat gear 24/7 because somebody, somewhere may be killing you." The remainder of the damage from lead was done to employees, where the advice boils down to "don…
Let's take someone with anarcho-capitalism views - the typical answer by an ancap to the lead poisoning problem will be - suing for damages. It is not that ancaps want everyone to get poisoned, they simply do not want to give so much power to a single entity to decide for them. In their opinion, the danger of tyranny is a greater threat to the people than lead poisoning.
Or someone who is not necessary a proponent of free-market and such, but still sees a great danger to all the people of letting one entity to define rules. Not because they see that one particular entity as an evil (although trump's election could be such an example), but rather because that single entity is a single point of failure and when it fail - the whole nation fails. And in that mental model the danger of existence of such single point of failure is greater than danger of lead pollution.
(Similarly, someone who is in favor of regulations is doing so not necessarily because they are trying to build some type of bad `X-ism`, but because they see a great danger if lead poisoning not stopped right away. And that danger in their opinion is greater than the danger of whatever that may come with regulations).
I still believe that the majority of human beings are not evil and most of them would rather not harm someone. But I also realize that most humans will have slightly different priorities. When arguing, I think it is very important to argue about the same thing, otherwise agreement can not be achieved ever.