daseiner1

i don't dispute that the "War on Drugs" was (is?) pretty much just a glorified jobs program for law enforcement but nevertheless some drugs are very bad. ironically enough alcohol, despite being the most readily available drug after caffeine, is probably the worst drug of all in terms of societal destruction.

i've been hearing this critique of new apple products for about two decades now and inevitably: - apple's product "does the same thing" as [device sold at 25% of the cost] AND - apple's product "does the thing" at a level of polish that's in an entirely different league from every competitor.

siri is the great exception here. jesus christ what a piece of shit

*Xiaomi

apple is always "late to the party" and regularly takes existing tech, polishes it to a high standard of UX, and introduces a new paradigm for consumer tech products. if xiaomi has ever done that please let me know.

not to mention that chinese consumer goods companies are largely siloed to the east anyways

apple has been quite good at treating their "economy" products with the same level of respect as their premium ones, as far as I've experienced. the Neo is significantly more powerful than the Pro I bought four years ago and $100 cheaper, pre-inflation accounting. A brand like Apple introducing a highly-capable "discount" product goes against all common sensibilities for a company whose branding is anchored on prestige. Plus the extended support window for older devices vs. their competitors in the smartphone space.

holy hell I enjoy an acerbic takedown as much as the next guy but this is beyond the pale.

given that we do now live in a society with a universal right to vote the need for an educated populace esp. regarding matters of civil society is more important than ever.

You've also misinterpreted the parent comment as they wrote nothing about contemporary intelligence. They're instead referring to structural forces that negatively impact critical thinking. See: the glut of commentary from otherwise highly intelligent and accomplished people reporting their own ability to focus being negatively impacted by social media and short-form content.

Furthermore, this is why the old school shared media outlets (the whole "back when everybody watched Walter Cronkite every night" thing) was so valuable. Few of us have the time to consider the issues with any degree of nuance or accuracy. So it's a real problem when the collective "source of truth" is poisoned by a horde of uncertified, often anonymous, charlatans spewing outright lies and incendiary half-truths, distributed at scale via algorithms designed to divide and inflame.

disclaimer: i'm fiercely anti-democracy, esp. with universal suffrage, for the exact reasons you cited.

just raise interest rates to counteract, then

perhaps you meant inflammation

resistance training doesn't cause cancer though

walking, walking, walking, walking

having a well-rounded diet and getting an hour of walking in daily is like 90% of the way there for good health.

(actually, proper sleep is the #1 most important thing)

famously friendly business environments europe & canada

lol

corporate pursuit of monopoly is as sure a phenomenon as gravity

phil mickelson, easily the most famous left handed golfer, is right-handed but plays lefty because he would stand across from his dad and mirror his swing as a kid

fun fact: vs the US, golf stores in Canada carry more left-handed clubs because a right handed hockey player has their right hand higher on the stick which is the same orientation as the grip for left-handed golfers.

or the imprisonment of Galileo or the persecution of Socrates or the crucifixion of Christ or the legal charges against James Comey or even interpersonal dynamics in the corporate world. politically powerful insecure people swinging a stick at those who challenge them.

i’m convinced a significant number of that majority just thought it’d be cool as hell if lightning was in fact gods fighting, which i can respect. at that time: what’re they supposed to do with knowledge of lightning and electricity? might as well prefer the better story.

identical critique of democracy, just sub in “manipulation of voters“ for choice of readers”

(my comment is admittedly in poor form since I’m just redirecting to a hobby horse of mine)

at the risk of jumping the shark into full-on “woo woo”: what does it mean to “create ideas”? are ideas created or revealed? if ideas are created where do they come from? if ideas are revealed, then does that necessarily imply a determinism? if the robot devises a novel solution to a technical problem, isn’t that an idea? or is the robot’s solution actually the unavoidable result of the entire history of analytical thought? if the novel solution isn’t the creation of an idea, then what makes an idea an idea? if Michelangelo’s David was sculpted by an automaton, is it less beautiful? If so, why? If not, why not?

nicely done and well put. one of the better intros to the “hard problem” i’ve read, truly

even saying that our senses are "tied" together with/into our memory and emotions is expressing a dualism. that's the challenge and that's the gap to leap.

bingo

I don't have the energy at present to fully develop my thoughts but one thing I'll say is that in my view they did *not* see the same cat. It was the same collection of flesh & bone on four legs, certainly. But it is not the same cat.

Heidegger best revealed to me the limitations of supposedly "objective" thinking.

Heraclitus: "No man steps in the same river twice"

Isn't what makes the experience of love special the experience of love? a robot can hold hands and kiss and bring flowers home far more efficiently than i can. is that what love is? A robot CAN write a poem about how the redness of a flower reminds them of their mother’s funeral. But the outward signal of grief is not evidence of an internal experience of it.

the quote from the article is just a contrived tautology that misunderstands the nature of the problem. the dualism problem is not about finding an explanation for why what we call a cat is what we call a cat. it's that you can measure anything you want but nevertheless despite confidently establishing the size of a cat, the appearance of a cat, the behavior of cats, a sophisticated taxonomy of related species labeled "felines", surveying people to find out what cats are to them, what a cat is to me is not what a cat is to you

> a religious or spiritualist meaning to it, which is far from the truth. It's a question that arises from scientific curiosity that we hope to answer one day.

a) it is wrong to say definitively that it is untrue. there is no acid test for the existence of God nor of spirit.

b) religious and spiritual traditions have wrangled with this very question for at least 3000 years. it is not a 'scientific curiosity'. It is one of the most fundamental questions of human experience.

not sure exactly what that’s supposed to mean

I personally loathe the kind of shithead bullies highlighted in the article. It's not a crowd I like and it's not the kind of crowd I associate with and in fact they're the kind of dickheads that I have a rather consistent streak of dismissing and actively degrading. In that, I am the majority. These shitheels have little genuine clout or influence in broader communities. The wheat tends to separate itself from the chaff. Isolating a few social media examples of pig-headedness ought not be used as a broader indictment. If some fellas wanna start a discord called "real gamers no wannabes no sluts" then, well, I hope they find some sort of satisfaction there.

Virtually every community excludes people in one form or another. Describing this as a fault of “socially excluded nerds” is a weak ad hominem. Subcultures have a right to be monocultures if they like.

The Boy Scouts of America, for instance, were weak & foolish to allow girls to join. Men’s clubs exist for a reason, just as women’s clubs do. Sanctimoniously valorizing “everyone is welcome” as an unqualified good is foolhardy.

And thereby it is necessarily impossible for Costco to be available to everyone. The spending dynamic you've described is Costco.

> The concept of the 'blindness' of justice is antithetical to blind patriotism.

exactly. i mean only to point out that the Banksy work intentionally invokes the figure of Blind Justice to inform the work, however you may interpret it.

seems missed in the general commentary that there is also an inherent commentary on the western tradition of “blind justice” https://i.etsystatic.com/13403651/r/il/40b0bf/6851322246/il_...

it's "written well" but not at all a smart piece of writing. leading with a photo of a cute baby before engaging in an extended defense of one's own integrity is so obvious as to be insulting

"I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool."

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Emotive_conjugation