This is very odd... All concepts have to ultimately grounded in perception of material objects. Why is direction special?

New tumblr feature: Robot that takes your throat, and rips out your spine and skull, and attaches them to a beehive, and forces you to live like this for 24 hours

@staff if you’re hiring I think OP is on the job market

I'd prefer to identify as instrumentally online

Terminal/instrumental is a false dichotomy, the right overall perspective on goal pursuit is a progressive cycle where what is means from one standpoint is end from another and the whole process as a certain kind of process is an end in itself... I am constitutively online

The 44 countries with more press freedom than the United States

Britin has an Official Secrets Act. This map is nonsense.

UK libel laws are horseshit, too

>Australia

“Even in fucking show trials they have two parties present!”

I think someone could in fact come up with an objective determination of relative press freedom, but I love the implication of the OP that this is a completely uncontroversial metric we just need to collate and put on a map.

Incidentally, a friend just shared this article about Canada’s CRTC. Because nothing says “press freedom” like a prominent news channel being forbidden from being sold, am I right?

Every time there's a big writer's strike or whatnot it becomes starkly clear how many self-proclaimed leftists think that only people who perform manual labour which results in a physical product that you can hold in your hands count as workers and everybody else is a parasite of some description.

Now do corporate managers and owners

who does this make sense to? Who hears about a power plant shutdown, and then hope for an energy-intensive process like hydrogen production, and finds this at all coherent? People who don't know where hydrogen comes from maybe?

Doesn’t matter if you know where hydrogen comes from! You just have to see that the article mentions a hydrogen future and that they want to get into hydrogen to see that there’s a problem with the nuclear plants going away now

Annoyed because “someone will be dumb enough to give the AI access to eval() without the AI even asking” was never the point of the AI boxing arguments but now we’ll never be able to point out that the LW types literally thought (think?) anyone can be hijacked to any purpose if you say the right magic words.

See also: “someone will be dumb enough to give an AI agent framework the goal to destroy the world”

TIL a common myth (among gentiles) in early modern Europe was that all Jews menstruate, regardless of sex. [x]

(among gentiles)

what's the deal with tax prep lobbyists? like, what are they telling the politicians? i have to assume they have arguments, and those are persuasive somehow, for reasons that aren't just pure bribery- the politicians, at least, need something to tell themselves so they can sleep at night. given the dysfunction of government bureaucracy, it's not unthinkable to me that there could be some complicated good reason it makes sense to not just have the IRS send you a bill. i just haven't heard hide nor hair of it- what's the case they're making?

I'm suspicious of the narrative "this thing could be solved by the government because they're in the pocket of Big Thingy" any time it comes up because it usually doesn't work like that and that doesn't make any sense (see also: every bill that supposedly favors one corporation's interest over the little guy, when actually it shits on a bunch more corporations' interests too and yet they can't use their dark money influence to stop it).

I try to look for actual reasons why this happens and all I get is this story about wicked corporate agency with support that doesn't even make sense. "H&R Block has spent 3.4 million dollars lobbying the current Congress!" motherfucker that is a fart in the wind when you actually divide it up, stop acting like any number is a shocking number that proves everything. if money did buy loyalty, 3.4 million dollars split up over however many congressmen wouldn't buy shit. "it's because the Republicans are all so evil!" except for how ronald reagan wanted pre-made tax returns and how these evil bills that stop the IRS from giving free tax prep services pass unanimously so I think there has to be something you're leaving out. "it's to keep the people too exhausted to do anything about capitalism!" shut up oh my God shut up.

I can't find actual information on this, just people telling flattering stories about themselves. The idea that H&R Block and Intuit are so rich and powerful they've bought off all of Congress on less than 4 million dollars a year and that's why no Democrats or Republicans oppose their wicked ends doesn't pass the laugh test.

it's not the tax prep lobbyists responsible for this, they cannot possibly be responsible for this, there is something else that these people believe without being paid for it and nobody is even slightly interested in what it is

yeah, i mean- that's kind of the thing. i also have my doubts about this narrative, because it's wrong every other time. it's just kind of weird that we have this bipartisan issue, where everyone hates how a thing currently works, and the supposedly-representative body of legislators unanimously votes to uphold it time after time after time.

like- does everyone hate it? people look at (0): tax prep lobbyists because they're the most visible group of people who are happy about the fact that tax preparation is complicated and laborious- they have a direct financial stake in it. but like you say, 3.4 million dollars is a fart in the wind- on paper, they shouldn't have the power to force it through despite everybody else being against them. so what gives?

(1): one possibility is that we're all living in a bubble where it only seems like everyone hates manual tax preparation, and there's actually a huge mainstream population of voters that love manual tax preparation and would get mad about receiving a bill from the IRS, and legislators are accurately representing this population. that would be kind of weird, but i can kind of imagine a world in which, like, the small-government right-wing sees manual tax preparation as a last line of defense against getting robbed by the feds. sure, it doesn't work- if you try to wriggle out of it the IRS knows and gets you in trouble- but maybe they like it as a fig leaf preserving their dignity.

point against this: that doesn't... sound right, does it? i've never met any of those people. hard to tell when you're in a bubble, though.

(2): another possibility is that it's not the tax prep companies- it's the Vague Indirect Specter of Capitalism that apparently controls government policy. sure, the little guy can't save much money cleverly filing their taxes in a weird way, but maybe big corporations and rich people with lawyers can save a huge amount of money with the wiggle room afforded to them by manual tax preparation. things that save rich people a huge amount of money have a weird way of just... happening, despite a lack of observable mechanism by which they're using their money and power to influence policy.

point against this: like all the best conspiracy theories, there is no established mechanism of action. also, i'm not sure exactly how much money people actually save through tax fraud.

(3): the comparatively small amount of money tax prep companies spend on lobbying is disproportionately effective at achieving its stated aims. there is some reason- complicated, arcane, and unintuitive- why it would actually be a disaster if the IRS just sent people bills and they didn't have to self-report. ostensibly. maybe true, maybe not, but whatever it is, it's convincing enough that when you pay someone to tell it to a senator, the senator goes "oh! i never thought about it like that! good point." and goes and votes in favor of the bill.

point against this: why would it be a big secret, then? is it just so complicated that no policy wonk ever bothered to write an explainer on the internet? is it my bubble at work, and the explainer exists but i just can't find it? and, like- there are a lot of legislators who are morons elected by morons and don't give a damn about the implementation and consequences of policy, as long as they look good to voters. those seem harder to convince, but they vote for this crap too!

in conclusion, i am a confused.

To understand why tax filing is complicated, you have to ask why the tax code is so complicated: why are there so many factors which go into determining how much tax you owe? Because the fact is, while a large portion of people could get by with pre-filled tax forms in principle, the IRS actually can’t determine your situation well enough to reliably apply that complexity to your situation and there are some people (e.g. me, with me working as an independent consultant for a foreign company and Alyssa working as an independent wedding photographer) for whom they could do basically nothing.

And my sense for why the tax code is complicated is that tax law is a policy mechanism. Want more homeowners? Add a mortgage interest deduction. Want everyone to have healthcare? Add a tax for the uninsured. Not only does this mean there are hundreds of factors the IRS simply does not know about that in principle could be relevant to your tax burden, it also means that anything that makes you less likely to think about the details of your taxes will ipso facto make you less likely to be subject to the desired influence by legislators.

A lot of people seem to implicitly believe (or desperately want to believe) something to the effect of "the facts of the world make my value system convenient."

For example, anarchists tend to have a value system which says that hierarchies and systems of domination are inherently unethical. This is something I agree with very strongly, and is why I often describe myself as an anarchist. A common question then posed to anarchists is how, without hierarchy, bureaucracy, or other such systems of social control/management, it would be possible to achieve the large-scale coordination needed to accomplish certain tasks that are considered necessary for human flourishing: industrial-scale production of antibiotics and vaccines, management of carbon emissions, maintenance of a power grid, and basically anything else that requires a sustained, large-scale and legible set of social processes. Rather than addressing these (in my view) very valid concerns, most anarchists respond by dismissing the question. They claim, for example, that without capitalism we would have no need to manage carbon emissions, because the market incentives to emit would be gone. Or that industrial production of medical supplies isn't really necessary, because sufficient quantities could easily be made by small-scale local producers, etc.

And I'm always tempted to say "wow, how incredibly convenient". We don't even have enough understanding of human psychology to successfully model human behavior in our own society, and yet you're absolutely sure that in your hypothetical future society, humanity would just... no longer have any desire to engage in high-emission activities? You're absolutely sure that the physics and biology and chemistry and engineering involved in medical production all just happen to work out to make small-scale manufacture consistently doable? You're absolutely sure that all these problems people are posing just happen to be non-problems?

You may be right, certainly. It would be lovely if these things all worked out to be non-problems. But that's not something that can be determined through political theory. It's something that can only be determined through rigorous empirical study and technical work, and the conclusions that work comes to might just not turn out to be very convenient ones. This is why I sometimes don't call myself an anarchist.

But either way, my values stay unchanged. No matter what the answers to these technical questions are, I remain absolutely steadfast in my belief that systems of hierarchy and control are deeply unjust things. Either way, I will continue (as much as I can) to work towards a society in which these things can be done away with to the greatest degree possible, and their deleterious effects can be mitigated wherever they remain. And I think that I'm far more able to actually do that for being honest with myself about what the challenges of this project really are.

I want to be clear, this is not just a tendency I find with anarchists. I've encountered people of basically every political ideology engaging in this sort of dismissive optimism, insisting that the questions raised by their value system in fact demand no answers. But ultimately, it's not intellectually honest to insist that the universe has conspired to make your value system an easy one to hold. And that kind of intellectual dishonesty actually gets in the way of successfully working towards realization of the values you have.

Which is why, in my view, the most effective way to approach your social values is not as positions to be defended but as goals to be achieved. Inconvenient facts are not points against you, they are obstacles in your way. Perhaps they're insurmountable obstacles (that really would be, I think, a point against you), but perhaps they're not. The only way to find out is to acknowledge them as genuine obstacles and to try to find solutions. The inability to acknowledge the challenges in front of oneself has been the downfall of many, many movements, and the solution is as simple as having a little intellectual humility. And personally, I'd rather not let my ego get in the way of building a better world.

The error underlying this framing, shared by “both sides”, is the idea that one’s values are necessarily formed independently of facts. Given that, what difference does it make if you pretend that the facts will magically turn out to conform to your arbitrary wishes (how “convenient”) or if you lament the facts of reality as “obstacles” in your way?

Is it “convenient” that a rocket designed in accordance with scientific principles of gravitation, combustion, mechanics, etc. “just so happened” to be able to take men to the moon? No, of course not; those principles were induced from the facts in a way that ensured their adherence to the facts and use by man, and the very act of grasping the principle shows why the rockets had to work.

The same is possible in ethics; one can develop one’s values as scientific principles (not arbitrary rules, not context-free desires, but principles) and exhibit no surprise when they conform to and allow successful action in reality.

Take “justice”. I can study the nature of the human mind, the value men provide to each other, the fact that the primary causal factor in dealing with men is their (self-made) character, etc. and conclude that a principled approach to evaluating others and acting accordingly, identifying who is good and seeking/rewarding them and identifying who is bad and avoiding/punishing them, will be in my interests, and that the same will hold for all men, and call that principle “justice”. If properly formed, it will become perfectly clear not only that but why the unjust will, despite whatever apparent short-term gains, ultimately suffer from their injustice; what else could result from elevating the incompetent above the competent?

Of course, on this view of justice, the idea that hierarchy per se is unjust is ridiculous; if regardless of the facts you “remain absolutely steadfast in [your] belief that systems of hierarchy and control are deeply unjust things“ then you are in fact doomed to frustration. But holding on to your feelings above reality is your own choice, not an inherent fact of ethics.

a hayman: when you restate your opponents position, but focus on the unsavoury bits and use words which make it sound foolish or evil. Wither or not this counts as a strawman is debatable. It tastes good though. Example: the opponent's position: "We must not let them escape justice!" The hayman: "Our vengeance is not yet satisfied!" the opponent's position: "There should be a minimum wage!" The hayman: "It should be illegal to sell your labour for too low a price!"

The hayman to minimum wage is "Undesirables should be priced out of the labor market and starve to death” and also that’s, like, the actual real argument they actually really used in the US originally when they created the minimum wage, they were just openly evil eugenicists.

“hayman” is a bad concept. It equivocates between identifying the essence of someone’s position and not letting him get away with superficial niceties to evade its consequences on the one hand and seizing upon some incidental detail or superficial similarity on the other.

The so-called “hayman” for minimum wage is exactly what minimum wage means. There are two sides to every trade.

stuff to prevent homeless from sleeping somewhere is ayn rand villainy. (ozy's phrase for what ayn rand referred to as "hating the good for being the good"). End up against places providing comfort and shelter, not incidentally but precisely because these are good and therefore people (incl homeless) seek them out

Violently disagree.

Stuff to prevent “homeless” from sleeping somewhere is a minimal defense left to people when the government falls down on its job of protecting their property. Ideally you’d keep things comfortable and shelter-providing for the people you actually want to trade and interact with, but if that means you also have to put up with dangerous and unpleasant vagrants occupying your space then why would that be worth it?

Was I the one scrolling this post like "surely this is going to be the last one"

Is it so hard to post a link to the thread on posts like this? https://twitter.com/UndeniablyAlex/status/1468555202986917892

I was hoping I'd leave this shit behind after I left Boone

...snow?

Nah Boone is infamous for its wildly tilted landscape

Xi

Xi++

TIL it's Mormon folklore that Bigfoot is Cain.

Link???