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Plans you're not supposed to talk about

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Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#591

Post by kansface »

calibas wrote: 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…

There is a perverse, stable equilibrium. When traffic becomes better, its much more convenient to drive. When flights are cheaper because demand is lower, more people can and will travel. When the price of beef declines because some people stop consuming, others will buy more. I don't believe there is any way to fix our problems by doing less.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#592

Post by bryanrasmussen »

Apocryphon wrote: post #456
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes I realize it is not literal, but the structure of that part of the text as you progress from two people in love come up with a plan to always stay together ends up a just so story about how marriage was created. Does it work as a list of incentives for how marriage came to be a successful institution? Well since it structures it as an origin story of marriage that you realize is an origin story of marriage at the…

It's a just-so story.

The term comes from Rudyard Kipling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_So_Stories

There is no hyphenation.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#593

Post by jollybean »

DarylZero wrote: post #493
jollybean wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a term for this and it's called 'Public Communications' sometimes into the domain of propaganda. This is not a 'new' concept it's as old as time and 100% of people with real power have an awareness of this, it's almost a defining feature of an elite class. Policy should obviously be guided by 'Truth' and we need transparency, at the same time, irrespective of how smart individuals are, as crowds, we act with…

That's ridiculous. Not only are any such deaths carefully tracked, they are massively publicized in mainstream media. The first reported AZ deaths were on the front pages of every newspaper. Might as well have been a presidential election.

Of course vaccine deaths are tracked, I didn't deny that (FYI it's a very difficult thing to make perfect correlation between a vaccine and death, esp. with so many overlapping conditions).

The media has hugely downplayed the issue. Of course they have to do perfunctory reports on public information if it does happen, but it's not something they talk about otherwise.

Dr. Fauci doesn't come on TV and talk about the materiality of vaccine related death.

CNN is not doing their emotive vignettes on the 'Family destroyed by death due to vaccine' and interviews with sobbing family members.

There's obviously no narrative around that, in fact, the narrative is in the opposite direction, i.e. 'Blood Clots Can Happen but the Vaccine Is Still Safe'.

While there is some information about the AZ vaccine, there's scant info about the others, after doing a perfunctory search all I could find were 'The study showed a total of possible 3 deaths from the vaccine during such and such period' without any qualifying data.

The data is obviously being collected but it's not being fully shared and definitely not being communicated other than in a perfunctory way.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#594

Post by calf »

jlawson wrote: post #520
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does ingrained racism line up with that reasoning? Um, not too good. How about ingrained wealth inequality? Not so great. Or, as I already harped on elsewhere, how about an economic-industrial system structured in such a way that your future is looking quite bleak and the people currently charged with its control have no incentive to change it because they'll be dead when the consequences come to roost? Really no…

Simple example, but racism is simply a form of genetic ingroup preference. Can you imagine, perchance, how groups who practiced ingroup preference would, over time, come to outcompete and ultimately defeat/destroy/dissolve groups that didn't? Does it seem clear to you why all historical societies practiced ingroup preference, and the vast majority still do? Or are you confused on how that works? Our society's concept…

Have you ever experienced racism or do you have friends who have experienced it? Imagine telling your friend what they went through was simply evolution.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#595

Post by lambdatronics »

vmception wrote: post #57
mherdeg wrote: post #54

Reading this gave me a kind of horrifying idea that goes something like: You know about a deadly disease whose most serious outcomes can be avoided by getting a shot. Many members of a group in your society have decided they don't want to get the shot. You are annoyed by the way they talk about a lot of things, including the way they talk about avoiding the shot. They, in turn, call you "smug" for the way your group…

1% decrease doesn't diminish their size and political influence substantially, even of the disproportionate elderly population. Then only a fraction of the remainders that lose a loved one would re-evaluate, a large fraction of them would still be bounced back when they realize the other ideas "your group" inherits is even harder to accept as a personality trait. Most of them will inherit just enough to not think fur…

Elections swing on fairly small margins. Also, the older folks are more likely to vote than young ones, so the fact that the virus is more deadly to the elderly increases the effect.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#596

Post by I-M-S »

adrianN wrote: post #544
imgabe wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t know what happened in the alternate universe where there were no seatbelt laws. Maybe there are people here who died because they stubbornly refused to ever wear a seatbelt because they had taken a public stance against seatbelts and made not wearing a seatbelt into a noble fight against tyranny. Maybe in the other universe they’re still alive because they were able to come around and change their mind witho…

Are you seriously arguing that without seatbelt laws more people would've been saved by seatbelts?

If we count all the lives saved by extra organs donated, maybe?

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#597

Post by awkward »

jvanderbot wrote: post #26

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…

You're stating the overall position of most western public health policy, and the outcome of that thinking hasn't been good.

Manipulating stated goals from real goals and influencing behavior via nudges rather than argument can be effective for small outcomes, but as a whole the practice is antidemocratic. More practically, if the approach is repeated, you begin to poison the well - people learn to work the system they're in, and any kind of split between stated goal and actual goal gives wiggle room to work an angle.

Consider the failures of mask mandates after initial anti mask messaging from the CDC. The CDC's initial goal was to tactically protect the n95 supply for maybe two months.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#598

Post by BurningFrog »

monodeldiablo wrote: post #458
mensetmanusman wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most conservatives I know want to decentralize decision making, lower taxes, and deregulate the economy.

Except as regards gay or abortion rights, military funding, and drug policy. Right? I know that's the case for every conservative I know, at least. They stand for those values in the abstract, as an ostensibly philosophy to undergird their politics... But oppose those values in practice.

Under the current Roe v Wade regime, abortion law is centralized to 9 judges on the Supreme Court.

Republicans want to decentralize this to democratic decisions in each state.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#599

Post by norswap »

raxxorrax wrote: post #584
norswap wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew this was going to turn into a debate on polyamori lol. I'm not going to answer your comments, but it suffices to say you probably don't suffer from your open-mindedness :) (Agreement or disagreement on open relationships being immaterial to open-mindedness. The open-minded attitude is to consider what might make a stance true. Instead, to preserve your priors on open relationships, you're forced to assume a bu…

You described conservatism as moving on and breaking things, that seems to be turned on its head. I would think it is more about gradual changes instead. Open relationships is a fun topic to discuss, especially on the internet. For many such relationships are out of the question, perhaps due to insecurities and not being aware of their self-worth or for other reasons. Personally I don't think I want to be engaged rom…

> You described conservatism as moving on and breaking things, that seems to be turned on its head. I would think it is more about gradual changes instead.

No you've got that backwards. I wrote "conservatism thinks it's easier to break things than to improve them". If you think a change is more likely to break things than to have a positive impact, you don't do the change. Hence, conservatism.

As for the rest, I'm not especially keen on debating or even discussing open relationships. I'll humor you for a sec, but won't reply further:

Of course everyone says it requires maturity, because it does. It's so obvious, I agree it's not a very interesting point to make, but I think the point is to acknowledge that open relationships often fail, and are not for everyone.

> That is interesting because I perceive this as fishing for confirmation for personal choices.

Man I was making an example in answer to a question lmao.

> But where do you think you need maturity? I assume it means to accept compromises? Where is that needed in such a relationship?

Jealousy is a naturally-occuring feeling. And it's quite natural to have some insecurities too. The maturity part is the ability to acknowledge them (first and foremost, to yourself), and to be open and talk about them, in a very open way, i.e. not loaded with assumptions and what the other person thinks/wants/feels.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#600

Post by cik2e »

jhgb wrote: post #576
codeisawesome wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the bad form just normalizes something that is common at the time. Exactly. I think there should be a blanket negative to customs, practices or systems that objectively cause harm. It would be reprehensible to see someone try to defend, say, Female Genital Mutilation… using “Chesterton’s Fence”. Just don’t fucking do it to people; stop doing it right now, the “why” might be for anthropologists to ponder at a later…

Why not just "genital mutilation"? You don't have to be that specific about it as if there were some acceptable cases of it.

Ah yes, the curious culture of circumcision in the United States is a great example of something that could use a bit of reexamination.

Mr. Kellog, the Corn Flakes guy, in the late 1800s led a zealous crusade against masturbation. Eventually, he somehow managed to sell doctors and the public on circumcision as the answer to one of the hot-button social issues of the day: preventing teen boys from having the occasional wank. Freud would have likely deduced that Kellog himself was a hopeless and compulsive fapping addict.

All jokes aside, I have some friends who feel very resentful about not having had a choice in the matter. And other friends who strongly defend the practice, also likely due to not having had a choice in the matter.

My thinking is that American foreskins will remain on the chopping block until a majority of doctors change their views.

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