Kill 10,000 people 5-15 years earlier than their otherwise natural trajectory for death by dumping PCBs in the river (ignoring that additional cohorts will have an increased disease burden going forward for....decades? Centuries? Who knows if you can un-shit this bed), no one gives a shit apart from a symbolic fine of 1% of annual revenue 20 years later. Certainly no actual punishment for those involved.
Kill a couple thousand with a plane into a building and the world's most powerful country starts a war.
Some people can more or only feel sorry for small children or animals, because they are obviously innocent, while a grown up could have done something to deserve it. I think that is a failure to the extreme of having a hard time dealing with more abstract (maybe indirect is a better word?) crimes.
Freon and lead were engineering decisions. Both had properties that fixed a burning issue at the time. Unfortunately they also had ... side effects that became apparent later. Neither involved "a guy", they involved entire countries, blocs and multi national enterprises.
Today it's widely known that large doses of solanine (a compound in potatoes and tomatoes) are toxic, but the amount commonly in food is thought to be safe. So we haven't banned potatoes.
But even if some insane or evil scientist invents a harmful compound that becomes widely used, I'd be mainly angry at the US Public Health Services, or the equivalent public health agency in other countries. It's their responsibility to only allow safe products. They conducted a study on leaded gasoline and decided not to ban it. And every other country allowed it as well.
So we have to conclude every country's public health agency was either corrupt or incompetent, or that the harm from leaded gasoline at the dosage used wasn't obvious at the time. (Or both.)
the harm from leaded gasoline at the dosage used wasn't obvious at the time
He was famously warned of leaded gasoline's dangers, had to take a vacation to Miami to recover from lead poisoning. And also was famously a co-inventor of CFCs.
His only saving grace is that his name is also on the list of "inventors killed by their own inventions."
Humans have eat potatoes for about 8000 years. So that seems to be a pretty large scale experiment.
While deciding to put a safe amount of a dangerous material on a product used in large scale is not a good decision.
Not sure how to explain (as I have little time now) but here is a simple way: - both potatoes and led have safe and dangerous levels - one - potato - was used since at least 8000 years ago - the other was not used on such large scale
It seems to me that we need to define safe levels in other way:
- safe levels on small scale and uses rarely
- safe levels on large scale or used constantly
Small amounts of lead don't kill you immediately, they just make you a little dumber, a little more aggressive...
With leaded gas, the problem was also these small, long term effects that had never been established despite lead being used for thousands of years.
Aside from typical drivel, what evidence do you have of lowered quality of life compared to other modes of economic structure? Of all the economic systems in the world, capitalist societies have had life expectancy (from birth, age 10, age 20, etc.) trend upwards. Famously, the Soviet Union dropped life expectancy in a time of peace, as did East Germany.
The US of A is known for its individualism in stark contrast to many other societies, so you're going to have to prove a lot with this statement:
> the profit motive distorts and chews up any moral precepts of any individual
We could literally nuke the entire planet and 30 years later have a generation for which cancer, long winters and ruined before time cities are normal. The species sucks at perceiving reality
If citizens have little or no influence on their government it might be better not to horrify them with... shall we say... reality(?) If all we have is poisonous water for you then you can just drink it without knowing what is in it.
If we are going to do some kind of democracy we need you to have access and/or exposure to the full horror of the situation.
The market machinery needs a good definition of profit. If it must all be measured in one unit we can do that, money, gold, sea shells or quality of life, it doesn't really matter to the game.
We ironically build the proverbial hospital then go look for ways to profit from it. It follows that treatment must be as expensive as possible in order to maximize profit. You could consider the hospital the profit.
If we are going to modify your reality for you then your opinion is anything money can buy and we wont have the advantages of totalitarianism either.
There would be no difference between building or bombing hospitals. It would just be a matter of which is more profitable.
Other models of economic structure is a fun topic but we are not in a position to do it. We might want to rewrite it in Rust but the best we can hope for is some small modifications, close some of the worse bugs. It is hard to let the imagination run wild if it's not going to happen.
One of the alternatives, which we use today is to add ethanol.
Ethanol had the business problem of being an alternative fuel in its own right, which competes with gasoline.
Now that I've had a kid, I understand what it means when people say kinds are innocent. Children are innocent in the way animals are innocent; they don't possess the mental faculties to understand morality. That doesn't means kids are good. They can be cruel, mean, and annoying, and to a very high degree. But, just like we don't consider it a moral failure of a dog when it jumps up and steals a piece of bacon from the table, so too do we not consider the things children do moral failures.
This differs from an adult. Adults understand morality, and thus can never be innocent in the same way, even if they act with the upmost character.
When the subject is children with cancer, cancer is the enemy. A faceless threat that everyone can stand “against” without hesitation. And this completely misses the critical fact that cancer is often a downstream effect.
I think that cancer awareness really needs to expand to include underlying causes. As it stands, the cause and effect are so disconnected that awareness often leads only to sympathy/empathy/compassion instead of driving people to anger and to push for systemic changes.
So I'm not really sure what the answer is. If the individual cases chosen for awareness campaigns could be selected based on their traceability, it might provide a bridge from cause to effect.
Or maybe it really needs to be a multi-pronged effort. Present individual cases to people care. Separately, present aggregate cases so people start linking those individual stories to systemic factors.
Since there isn't any way to use their deaths to further a political agenda no one cares.
Stats and images of sickly children have motivated (and "motivated") donations to countless non-profits and NGOs that lobby for the Democratic party, and religious organizations that lobby for Republicans. This is straight out of Contemporary Politics 101.
But accurate.
>But there is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation. Behind every fact presented to the world—by a teacher, a writer, anyone—is a judgment. The judgment that has been made is that this fact is important, and that other facts, omitted, are not important.
The trouble revolves around how much judgement is required on any given subject. On the right subject people can come perilously close to laying out facts devoid of interpretation; on the wrong subject either no one can or no one believes anyone can - which is pretty much the same thing.
A Nihilist is more stable than you think. A tree doesn’t need purpose to grow, and neither does a human. Instead they follow a process that’s expressed by the body in response to the environment. For humans we not only have physical sensation but also memories, ideas, and thoughts. Without a worldview these all still happen, and your body will still react to your thoughts and sensations without a purpose. A healthy Nihilist would not feel sad about having no meaning, since they never had one anyway; on reflection, they might feel happy that there’s no obligation to respond other than how their situation moves them to. A Nihilist can do what is morally right without the restrictions of a purpose that proscribes them to do otherwise.
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Longer take:
Defining what is morally right requires value judgement, and Nihilism rejects morality. What Is (facts) can't tell us what we ought to do. [1]
To build a moral framework on what one ought to do, you must necessarily ascribe meaning and value judgement otherwise it can't claim to be moral and it would merely be actions you perform devoid of meaning.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
Why do you think meaning is required for making a value judgement? I can very easily claim that killing humans is wrong without relying on any metaphysics, just like I can claim the sky is blue. Both are beliefs based on reasons; meaning can be discarded.
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Morals/meaning have a shaky absolute foundation, in that deep down nothing probably matters and the universe is indifferent.
However I'm a person, born in modern society; everything has relative meaning even if the epistemological foundations are shaky.
I see Nihilism similar the mathematicians trying to prove foundational math [1], and similarly doubting it's actually fundamental.
Yet here we are using math to amazing things! Math doesn't need to be true for it to be useful. I find useful things valuable.
Meaning, in particular shared meaning, is similarly valuable and worth pursuing even if they can't be proven.
I agree but I think the breakdown is even stronger than that: Nihilism gives you no way to decide what is "better" in the first place.
If you've gotten to Nihilism, you have a blank slate to build what you Do believe.
Ascribing meaning to things has value. For example, human life in Nihilism is unimportant, which may or may not be true, but we all benefit from the shared belief in the value of life even if it's technically wrong.
So don't stop at Nihilism as the conclusion but rather use it as a canvas and build up what's meaningful to you. With any luck, others will find the same things as you meaningful.
It was my way out of Nihilism. The pursuit of being good is more important and valuable than us all agreeing on what is good (or even that good exists at all). And given that goal, all you can do is try your best.
Behind every human presentation there is a judgment, sure, but many facts simply exist in nature, ready to be observed and judged without a preexisting agenda.
I'm naturally suspicious of people who put "People's" in front of words where the word should be implied. It's like a People's Republic, you know? What's Zinn's agenda? Perhaps he is telling on himself, in this quote.
We never know any data before interpreting it through theories. All observations are, as Popper put it, theory-laden, and hence fallible, as all our theories are. . . . The growth of knowledge consists of correcting misconceptions in our theiories.
Pi is a great example. Did circles exist before minds existed? Or are circles approximations of the observed world?
In your math example, yes, pi is a constant of nature that simply is. However, in choosing pi over Euler's number or the square root of -1 for your comment, you've made an implicit judgement about their relative importance. That's probably inconsequential for most math facts, but could be a lot more impactful for people presenting history or the news.
There really aren't any circles in the physical universe. There aren't any ellipses either. I'm not sure about lines. You're going to hit Planck's constant and the speed of light in any example you name.
Charge seems quantized, so you can probably have the integers and fractions, but real numbers are right out.
Also why "unbiased" reporting can never truly exist (however wonderful that would be).
The choice to report something is itself a judgment of the topic.
Within that topic, you can present all the facts that you know, or just the ones that support a certain narrative.
Let's say you are reporting on the elevated rate of gun violence in Chicago compared to other US cities.
Which of the following facts do you include in your story? (For sake of argument, assume these are factually accurate statements.)
1. Chicago votes predominately Democrat.
2. Chicago has a higher poverty rate than other cities.
3. Chicago has a large black and Hispanic population.
4. Chicago has more gangs than other cities.
By mentioning certain remotely related facts, it looks as if you're hinting at giving an interpretation of the central facts.
If you want to convey facts about a topic like gun violence in Chicago, then stick to facts closely relevant to it. Like different ways of slicing up the data. You might show a density map of where in Chicago most of it has happened over a certain period, or demographics about gun violence.
Now if you want to explore a link between gun violence and something else like poverty, then you have to get your ducks in a row about that. Such a subject deserves to be treated by a sophisticated researcher with an expert background in statistics. If that researcher postulates some kind of link, they have to look at all the reasons why that might be false, not only true.
If you want to preempt those accusations of bias, then you need to cover your bases and present all the facts that the public may believe to be relevant. Even those facts which you personally believe to be irrelevant distractions from the narrative you prefer.
That's not the same as avoiding biases.
You can't pander to both at the same time. What you can do, and typically is done, is pander to one or the other by conforming to one narrative or the other, choosing or omitting facts according to the needs of one narrative or the other. That is pandering.
there's a lot to discuss on this topic without "contextualizing". you can report on whether gun violence is up or down YoY, whether the percent delta is above the noise floor of the last few years, compare against trends in similar US cities, that sort of thing.
once you start including facts like 1, 2, 3, or 4, you are crafting a narrative, whether it is explicit or not. it's irresponsible to include this stuff unless you are prepared to make a detailed analysis of whether these factors actually predict crime, thorough comparisons against other cities where the same facts are true, possibly some regression analysis. most journalists lack the time and capacity to do this.
That doesn't mean people should disregard journalism done from "journalism hot spots". But it's an important thing to keep in mind, and I think it bears especially on the question of how much emotional valence we should want invested in stories.
“Twenty-five years ago I tried to bring home the same point to a group of physics students in Vienna by beginning a lecture with the following instructions: 'Take pencil and paper; carefully observe, and write down what you have observed!' They asked, of course, what I wanted them to observe. Clearly the instruction, 'Observe!' is absurd. (It is not even idiomatic, unless the object of the transitive verb can be taken as understood.) Observation is always selective. It needs a chosen object, a definite task, an interest, a point of view, a problem. And its description presupposes a descriptive language, with property words; it presupposes similarity and classification, which in their turn presuppose interests, points of view, and problems.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-ladenness
https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=%22theor...
Not always true. The goal of facts is to create trust and order. So when disputing "facts", it will initially cause chaos and disorder. Additionally, challenging a "fact" should come with reasoning (usually through the scientific method), and not an unresearched response. For example, flat-earthers deny a fact, yet offer no research. In such a case, a derogatory label is provided.
When you or I drive/walk, what do we experience: flat earth, of course. In other words, both flat-earthers and spherical-earthers experience the same. Further, flat-earthers reason that if the earth were to be round, one would fall off of the surface of the earth on a sea/land travel. Since such an incident never occured, flat-earthers reason that the earth can't be spherical. Flat-earthers reasoning is not spurious, they are entirely reasonable.
How to help them, you have to make them pilots and fly at 50000 feet, and they can experience the sphericalness of the earth directly. In other words, you can't transfer knowledge via authority. That's why there are disputes about what sciences are? Are sciences reduced to a set of theories, or just experiments, both theories and experiments? What happens when one theory gets supplanted by another, better theory? These are deeper questions about knowledge.
When I am sick, I trust some or doctor about his knowledge to diagnose. In some cases, even patients start doing research on their own (you can find many stories on this forum) to figure out when the doctors are not helpful. No one creates chaos, if one is genuinely seek knowledge. Instead of seeking knowledge, one seeks fame, followers, etc. Or as the other commenter said 'when so much energy is spent trying to undermine one's opponent'. That's a different story.
We have to be careful about psuedo-winning against those who create chaos. Here is an interesting piece by Late Prof. Larry Laudan: "Science at the Bar--Causes for Concern" [1], originally appeared in Science, Technology, and Human Values 7 (41):16-19 (1982)
Yes there is. People who say otherwise just want to push their partizan viewpoint.
You can present non-biased facts, it's just that it's hard and not financially rewarding because when you're non-biased you loose the polarized audience. Sticking to a single world view gives you a loyal audience.
But we need to do it so that we can stop talking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Syrian_civil...
Generally speaking, Israel is part of the West and we expect them to have a higher standard than some dictatorship.
That being said, how many deaths can be attributed to the US in Iraq or Afghanistan? I assume order of magnitude higher than what we're witnessing in Gaza. It seems Israel doesn't get the same free pass for some reason.
https://www.unicef.org/iraq/press-releases/more-9000-childre...
That doesn't make them wrong. There is truth and there is falsity and for every important, complicated truth, there are people who "prefer" the narrative that conveys it. But it's not the body count that establishes the truth, it's the underlying work that went into revealing it.
The truth of the situation you're intent on nudging us about is intensely complicated.
You can't criticize someone for saying something that's true, and people only do so when they are losing the argument. If you're so beaten back that you're resorting to that, I will help you: Hamas killed more Israeli children than Saddam killed American children.
But, more generally, you're just not responding to anything I actually wrote.
"Reality is too complex to understand, therefore the understanding you are offering must be wrong," is also a way to argue against anything, unless it's accompanied by some part of that reality that the other person cannot explain with their theory.
The act of stating facts is criticized as being "intent on nudging us," and rather than challenging those factual claims or contextualizing them, the line suggests epistemic disengagement in the face of a reality that is "intensely complicated."
The same media that's wrong about this is giving other information based on similar assumptions (granted that they were corrected).
And around 33% of that total is from failed rockets in Gaza (based on figures collected in previous wars).
So I don't think it's in the early stages, although this ceasefire is going to restart some elements, which is unfortunate.
Hamas needs to surrender - everything they do makes life worse for Palestinians.
Good discussion at https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/82572/why-are-s... about the issue.
A quick Googling doesn't find me a counter-estimate from Israel. Given the very clear evidence of large scale bombardment of the Gaza Strip (Israel claims 6,000 bombs dropped, and Hamas is known for favoring populated areas; https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-gaza-strip...), counts in the thousands seem very plausible.
I don't doubt they include Hamas fighters, but I do doubt that Israel's targeting has been so effective and precise the deaths are mostly Hamas. US intelligence estimates 20-25k Hamas members (https://www.dni.gov/nctc/ftos/hamas_fto.html); I don't think half of them are likely to have been already taken out.
Also, as a percentage of civilian population Gaza deaths are very close to Iraq deaths, except way less dead children in Gaza vs Iraq.
Afghanistan child deaths: 26,000 vs 5,500 in Gaza (according to Hamas).
At present it's not clear Israel is being held to any standard. What is the lower standard you would like them to be held to?
It would also be worth explaining why you think any country is due "a free pass" when it comes to killing. And what that "free pass" entitles you to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
I'm surprised you're asking for numbers that are so easily accessible. Perhaps you're only thinking of people directly killed by US soldiers while the parent comment was considering all violent deaths caused by the war the US started?
Israel spent $23.4b on it's military vs $3.3b from the US. And the Israeli economy is $522B making the US "funding of Israel" 0.6% of their economy.
That's hardly "funded by the US government". And on top of that the US is "funding" Israel in return for technology, so it's more a purchase by the US than anything else.
So you need to take into account what the US would lose. It's far more complex than your shallow "cry and scream".
>The U.S.-Israel economic and commercial relationship is strong, anchored by an annual bilateral trade of nearly $50 billion in goods and services. Several treaties and agreements, including the 1985 U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement (FTA), solidify bilateral economic relations. Since the FTA’s signing in 1985, the United States has become Israel’s largest trading partner.
I think it's fair to say that the US has strong connections to Israel. I don't know if it's fair to imply it's totally dependent on the US as they implied, but I think it's more complex than the aid being a small percentage of the GDP.
US funding of Israel is at most a few percent of their GDP. Some years it drops to below 1 percent. If the US stopped funding Israel nothing would happen in Israel. Israel is more than capable of looking after themselves. And they have nukes.
The only political repercussions of cutting funding for Israel would be in the US itself. It buys votes. They’re not actually doing it for Israels benefit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_lobby_in_the_United_Sta...
For example AIPAC is pledging $100m to target in primaries progressive democrats who have not supported Israel recently. That is a hell of a lot of money: https://www.bostonherald.com/2023/11/17/powerful-pro-israel-...
It is the largest recipient of American foreign aid since WW2
Remove that and Israelis will be making peace with Palestinians very quickly.
Hey just curious here, mind explaining why/how the US is currently occupying 1/3 of Syria and taking 90% of it’s pre-war oil production?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_dur...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/20/world/middleeast/palestia...
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/30/reuters-al-jazeera...
https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/...
The Palestinian Authority isn't a terrorist organization, but Hamas does maintain an active presence in the West Bank. The government also explicitly encourages terrorist attacks in the region through the Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund.
Doesn't change the consequence, but probably true.
I'll just add that when I say "commercial", I mean exactly that. This is AP's former Bureau Chief in Jerusalem:
Matti [a former AP journo and critic] states that the AP’s Jerusalem bureau – like all other major news operations based in Israel and the Palestinian territories – employs too many reporters because of this hostile obsession with the Jews. The truth is the story of Israel is that of a nation rising from the ashes of the worst genocide in human history, being attacked from all sides upon its inception. Depending on your point of view, it’s also a story about the persecuted becoming the persecutors. All of this, of course, is happening to the people of the Bible, the descendants of the Hebrew slaves who were led out of Egypt by Moses and from whose ranks emerged Jesus Christ. It’s as if a new chapter of the Bible is being written in our times. Whether you think the Bible is mythology or the word of God is beside the point. The point is we are all human beings who love a good story, and this one is particularly good.
I read that a couple days ago and it's been pinging back and forth in my head ever since.
It's debatable who fits in as the slaves in Egypt in the allegory ...
Framing it like this not only evokes guilt in Europeans (in most Caucasians, perhaps?) but also effectively stifles them from voicing any support, let alone criticize Israel; and more importantly, without much consequence or thought, label any pro-Palestine group as pro-Terror. In fact, the Israeli Left themselves, a tiny minority rallying around organizations like Haaretz and B'Tselem, are under constant threat of de-legitimization, because in broader terms, they talk the same talk as pro-Palestine groups.
Other peoples in the region can kill with impunity and no one will report on it at all. Syria, Yemen,Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc... silence is the game
If a Jewish persons defends themselves though, that is front page news.
I agree with you that we need to always provide clear context for what is happening in this specific situation, not rush to judgment and not to be as reactive in general. Israelis are defending themselves, Hamas is clearly using their own people as human shields. Saying that, Israel does have other options in this war, options that would reduce the civilian death count (e.g. allowing women and children leave Gaza for Israel, even at the cost of an increased terrorist activity).
It also helps to understand that the "browner" an Israeli citizen is, the less likely they are to agree with liberals like me in the west about Israel's policies towards Palestinians. Israeli citizens of middle eastern ethnic origin are much more conservative than those of European origin.
Not quite true? From what I read, any solidarity with the Palestinians is considered treacherous.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=JQS-_9K5-Dk&t=592
> ...more conservative than those of European origin
Speak about racism and decolonization, immediately followed by this? The capitalists funding settlements and displacements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, or the Kahanists & JDL aren't necessarily only Mizrahi or only Ashkenazi.
I don't think it's a stretch to consider big parts of Israel as very similar culturally to the US.
> Moreover, there's a particularly disquieting subtext that Jewish people could be expelled from the Levant and a just status quo ante restored to the region; that outcome would probably amount to a genocide of the Mizrahim. See also: "decolonization".
Also a genocide of the Ashkenazim. While certainly some have dual-passports and some legal claim to "go back" to Western countries (but not all by a long shot!), we're talking 2nd/3rd/4th generation people in many cases. Forcing people to go to countries they have no connection to, which people fled in many cases because of the Holocaust, would be itself an act of ethnic cleansing. Which already happened to the grandparents of many of these people.
> It also helps to understand that the "browner" an Israeli citizen is, the less likely they are to agree with liberals like me in the west about Israel's policies towards Palestinians. Israeli citizens of middle eastern ethnic origin are much more conservative than those of European origin.
True. Though right about now, almost everyone in Israel has moved "rightward" in their views, I believe, and unlike the response in the West, the Israeli public is very sure that the only thing to do that makes sense is to destroy Hamas, somehow. (The "somehow" is an important differntiator between different value systems - some people worry more about Palestinian civilians, and some, regrettably in my mind, worry less.)
I suppose it is similar to how educated Ismaili Muslims are viewed as Western-adjacent, because their hereditary spiritual leaders the Aga Khans have been resident in Europe, and intermixed with the European aristocracy, for a very long time now.
It's been a few years, but for MONTHS we saw nothing but news about killings in Syria and Iraq: at the start of the Syrian civil war, and then later during the rise of ISIS. Yemen, Lebanon, and Afghanistan have also been widely covered, albeit less so.
This claim is factually a bullshit conspiracy theory.