Plans you're not supposed to talk about • Hacker News Board

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#601

Post by jfrunyon » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

generalizations wrote: post #96

jfrunyon wrote: post #86

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…

What citation? LOL There wasn't one (just a footnote, and not even on the proper page) but I'm not sure why you think a citation would make a blatant falsehood any more true.

This sentence is an ad hominim: I don't think you know what "ad homenim" [sic] means.

Saying something about the way someone presented their argument? That's not an ad hominim.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#602

Post by nickpp » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

DSMan195276 wrote: post #589

nickpp wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopolies (including the so-called "natural monopolies") are not a problem for the free market, but rather opportunities - bounded only by human ingenuity, imagination and capacity to innovate. In reality most monopolies we encountered were actually created or sustained by governments, through their dear friends patents and regulations which raise the barrier of entry and compliance costs, create unintended second-o…

"Guy's you're just not doing it right " or "there would be more competition if we would just remove those pesky regulations on the meat packing industry". It's very convenient that the answer is always just "remove regulations" as though most of them weren't put in place to solve existing problems that otherwise weren't getting solved by the market itself. I'll give you a different suggestion - what you're saying may…

> may work fine on a small scale, but not on a scale where [...]

"Evolution may work fine for a small organism like bacteria, but it would never evolve something as complex as the human eye"

> consumers can no longer realistically [...] Consumers can't select

Your lack of trust in consumers is only surpassed by your lack of imagination. Repeat after me: "If consumers actually need something, a free market will provide".

Too much choice and quality too hard to check? Consumer Reports, Wirecutter, Trip Advisor and any other aggregator with reviews like Booking.com or even Amazon will help. Food not killing me instantly (thanks, regulation!) but sickening me slowly with production-boosting chemicals (for nothing...)? We now have organically grown, local co-ops and various near-sourced grass-fed ethically slaughtered meats.

No regulation to thank to, just the good old free markets.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#603

Post by jfrunyon » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

fancifalmanima wrote: post #144

jandrese wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conver…

> Respecting my property rights is actually an infringement on your liberty

No, disrespecting other people's property rights is an infringement on their liberty. You being told not to disrespect other people's rights is NOT an infringement on your liberty.

> Not being able to legally kill me without some just cause is also an infringement on your liberty

WTF?

> everyone agrees that its a matter of degree

Oh how I wish that were true. Not even most people can agree on that.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#604

Post by TimTheTinker » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

vineyardmike wrote: post #572

TimTheTinker wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting sick sucks though. Yeah, but that's really up to me, isn't it? There's a reason I choose not to live in China, Laos, or Vietnam. Now that the vaccine is so widely available: (a) health officials should drop all orders and regulations, and (b) hospitals ought to say "look, here's our COVID capacity; if we're full we can't serve you, sorry" -- with that capacity set at a reasonable, sustainable number for the…

> Yeah, but that's really up to me, isn't it? No. You can still get breakthrough cases with the vaccine. Your chance is higher the more un-vaxxed people around you. You can't control that number easily. People who work in service industry really cant control that. Additionally, the more the virus spreads the more it'll mutate to avoid the vaccine, so the more likely that you lose that control. > There's a reason I ch…

> Your chance is higher the more un-vaxxed people around you.

People keep repeating that line, as if unvaccinated folks who have survived Covid present the same risk as those who have had neither. In fact, surviving Covid is more protective than the vaccine (studies have shown this).

Conflating unvaccinated Covid survivors with those who actually put the population at risk is at best disingenuous.

Classical epidemiology teaches us that everyone will eventually get Covid, just like everyone will eventually get influenza. Treating it like the plague (which it isn't) is creating a concentration of power among certain elites, which is never good for society.

> Vaccine mandates and masks aren't an infringement on your freedoms.

Masks aren't, but vaccine mandates and other regulations certainly can be, depending on how they are enforced. For example, restrictions on freedom of assembly (which is articulated in the bill of rights), including churches (who did sue in California and win on constitutional grounds).

> But we don't do that here, in the civilized world. We don't turn people away. Its inhumane to not help people and turn them away. Doctors take an oath to help all in need.

> It would solve the hospital problem to say "tough s*t if you get sick, did you try the vax?" but thats not a practical response. No politician or organization wants to take responsibility for that measure, and no doctor would turn away someone sick.

> I would MUCH rather wear a mask than have hospitals turn people away.

Great points, I appreciate your thoughts.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#605

Post by DarylZero » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 7:08 PM UTC

golden_feather wrote: post #590

DarylZero wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not supposed to explain the _origin_ of marriage, it's supposed to explain the _incentive structure_ of marriage. It's phrased as an origin story purely for narrative purpose.

Still, the incentive structure of marriage until basically yesterday was "hey, I am publicly announcing this woman is mine and I will brutally kill anybody who tries to seduce or rape her, because that would put me at risk of spending lot of resources on an offspring that's not mine. You can't say you have not been warned. Also, my family of origin and her family of origin now have a shared interest (namely, making t…

I agree with your substantive criticism of the article.

> The only thing you can get out of this story is a huge warning about the implicit modus operandi of rationalism: the dangerous idea that you can deduct reality, from first principles summarily chosen from what seems common sense in XXI century America, and that the result of building a huge tower of these frail bases can somehow be substantial.

+1

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#606

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 7:10 PM UTC

golden_feather wrote: post #590

DarylZero wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not supposed to explain the _origin_ of marriage, it's supposed to explain the _incentive structure_ of marriage. It's phrased as an origin story purely for narrative purpose.

Still, the incentive structure of marriage until basically yesterday was "hey, I am publicly announcing this woman is mine and I will brutally kill anybody who tries to seduce or rape her, because that would put me at risk of spending lot of resources on an offspring that's not mine. You can't say you have not been warned. Also, my family of origin and her family of origin now have a shared interest (namely, making t…

[deleted]

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#607

Post by mst » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 8:11 PM UTC

calf wrote: post #594

jlawson wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Murdering all of the men of the losing side of a war and taking their women as slaves to bear more of your children is evolutionarily adaptive - and I would presume that as a result I'm descended from at least one person who did so, and so would be the person I was talking to in your scenario.

"Adaptive" and "morally horrifying" can both be true of the same behaviour.

I hope that the things I consider moral win in the long run, but that's unfortunately not guaranteed.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#608

Post by mst » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 8:17 PM UTC

axby wrote: post #408

zwkrt wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the Wallfacers in the Three Body Problem, the (totally contrived) leaders of humanity that for plot reasons must plan to save humanity from the aliens without ever elucidating what the plan is so the aliens can’t figure it out.

To give a bit of credit to the book (hints of a spoiler ahead), the aliens were different from humans in a few ways, so it made a little more sense than what someone might think from your description. But yes, "contrived" is a great term for a lot of it. I loved the descriptions of how humans would react to aliens and in the future, the build up was amazing (or maybe I hyped it up in my head), but I felt like some of…

The book contains a lot of fantastic thought experiments, and the contrived-ness of certain things required to set up those thought experiments was a price I was happy to pay.

I suspect whether the books are something a given person would enjoy are significantly down to said person's comfort with that in their taste in fiction.

(though also I suspect my father would've hated them because he wouldn't've found the characters sympathetic, and if you need to actively like the protagonists of something to enjoy it that's probably also a good reason to spend your reading time on something else)

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#609

Post by mst » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 8:22 PM UTC

ralfd wrote: post #522

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #242

This reminds me of CEO-speak. A CEO cannot speak their true mind or their true assessment of a situation. They can't say "wow we're in trouble here" because then people will jump ship and then the company will be even more in trouble (and the CEO would get sued for breaching Fiduciary Duty) What a CEO says is merely wishful thinking for a goal they want people to follow. They can never speak their true plan. (And of…

Which is one of the reasons I took a double take when Elon Musk cancelled the thanksgiving weekend for SpaceX and said the company has "quite frankly, a disaster" and a "a genuine risk of bankruptcy": https://spaceexplored.com/2021/11/29/spacex-raptor-crisis/ Of course the funny thing was that most shrugged it off as just "Elon being Elon" and discounted his statement as hyperbole.

Musk's raising of capital - and hiring of staff - depends pretty much entirely on people who're at least one of 'comfortable with extremely high risk' and 'think the goals are really really cool'.

So in his specific case leaning in to his public persona is probably a net win. How much of it is deliberate versus him just actually being that much of a lunatic is of course very debatable, and my opinion is mostly "no idea, but I hope we get cool spaceships out of it anyway".

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#610

Post by mst » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 8:30 PM UTC

guidoism wrote: post #62

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…

Yikes don’t say that out loud! But seriously, the left needs to think more like this. The right plays dirty and if the left plays like this they get the same outcomes of playing dirty but is not saying anything bad or wrong.

Breitbart actually published an article making exactly this argument, with an in-built implication in the way it was argued that that meant getting vaccinated was a way to 'own the libs'.

I hope it caused a few more people to get vaccinated.