This discussion provides great source material for investigating the things you can't say, and what happens when you say them. You fall down a rabbit hole. Or rather I do, and I get very confused when I am down there.
On the face of it, Israel is a state which controls a group of non-citizens through the use of tanks, walls, and laws (they are non-citizens with the limits on legal rights that go with that).
Yet there is a group, including brilliant people, who label objections to any of these policies as anti-semitic, even when those objections come from Jews, and indeed even when they come from Israeli Jews.
It is hard to believe hearing these responses that they are "honest," because it looks so much like exactly what you would do if you had a plan to shut up your opponents. It is enough to make me question the very nature of rational discourse.
And indeed as I read this, I wonder will this comment be downvoted? And if it is, will that be because it is too political, off-topic somehow? Or will it be because the agreed upon fantasy that dictates what can and cannot be said is on the wrong side of this comment?
I would agree that anti-Israel opinions are not anti-Semitic, I would agree that anti-Pakistan opinions are not anti-Islamic. I would agree that anti-Napoleon comments are not anti-French. I would agree that anti-Nazi comments are not anti-German. I would agree that anti-Bush comments are not anti-American. etc.
Yet there is a group, including brilliant people, who label objections to any of these policies as anti-semitic, even when those objections come from Jews, and indeed even when they come from Israeli Jews.
Brilliant people also have self-interests.
It's my impression that debate about Israel is much more open in Israel itself than it is in the US. Here you can't utter so much as a whisper indicating that you think their current policies may be un-optimal without being slapped with all kinds of labels.
Excellent observation about the larger openness of the debate in Israel. I have seen that as well. Indeed, when in Israel I have talked to people on both sides of the issue and never had it suggested to me THERE that I was anti-semetic for my opinions.
The closedness of national debate may be something which varies across the world, and the U.S. may be on the more-closed-than-you-woulda-thought side of that. As I read some other comments in this thread about not being able to discuss capitalism, I was thinking "they sure can in Europe." I think the Europeans are a little less self-conscious about their kinkinesses :)
I think many European countries have stricter laws against hate speech than the U.S. Which on the face of it may make us U.S.ians think we are doing better at this free speech thing. When in fact it may just be that we do a better job of unofficial suppression of free speech than the foreigners do. It reminds me of Fred's explanation of the high gun-murder rate in the U.S. in the great movie Barcelona. "It is not that Americans are more violent than Europeans, we are just better shots."
Arrested, but not convicted, the only way to talk to my brother in law in jail was to pay a few $ per minute when he called us collect. I have read descriptions of why the jails should limit calls thusly, with contracts to providers that pay a lot of money to the jails to give them the monopoly telephone service, and they are BS!
I'd love to see how much problem jails had with contraband cellphones if they provided monitored telecom to any prisoner on a fairly abundant schedule for free. I bet most of that contraband cell phone is there at all because the "legal" communication is so onerous.
I loved that even in the midst of being hassled by the police, he gives the one policeman incredible credit for his approach to other humans. There is beauty everywhere.
I would consider that this guy, being actually homeless, is at least as valuable a source on homelessness as a woman you knew who worked with them.
I suspect that more generally than being alcoholics, these are people who are mentally ill to some extent. I liked this essay (and others from this writer) because this is a homeless guy I could identify with. I could read his stuff and not think this was some situation which could never come close to happening to me or someone I would care about.
There are hints of it, how to deal with authority, even where to be homeless (CSU campus good). Also, if you are interested you would start to explore the directory tree this doc is in and see even more details.
It seems to me that homelessness IS a hack on the regular system. And the way he writes about what happens is informed by his intelligence and his programmer background. To me, the idea of a homeless guy running sims to develop his solution to efficient routing of a traveling salesman while not having a place to plug in his laptop which is his own is pretty hacky.
Maybe this article isn't EVERYTHING you would want in a clever and enjoyable read from a homeless programmer, but it may be the best out there in this genre. This was not a New York Times reporter playing a homeless person, this is the real thing. BTW, I worked with this guy briefly, so I know he is the real thing.
"Should"? Evolution laughs at should. Lemmings follow each other because 99% or more of the time that is EXACTLY the right thing to do, and 99% is more than enough to win in evolution.
And what we learn from evolution is we should laugh at should too. My theory: should is a gambit to control you on the part of other people trying to win in the game of evolution.
A person's reproductive goal, both in evolutionary times as well as by modern standards, is to raise successful offspring. Parental investment is a strong predictor of this.
Thus, a woman benefits by selecting a loyal man rather than a promiscuous one. For her to marry a loyal man with strong genetics (e.g. an attractive man with a limited sexual history, indicating a low disposition toward promiscuity) is optimal. A woman who disqualifies men because they've had a low number of sexual partners is never going to accomplish this.
Anyway, the obsession over the number of past sexual partners means nothing in an evolutionary context, since the whole concept is a social construct. Pre-numerate cave dwellers would have lost count pretty quickly.
Your post reads like a red herring (in the stock sense). A "story stock" has to have a good story, it doesn't have to have numbers behind it.
Anything's reproductive "goal", in any times, is to show up a lot in later generations. Promiscuity and particularity both show up as strategies in humans and broadly beyond. Anybody studying reporductive strategies many generations later will have a strong survivorship bias in their results.
A woman who selects a man who isn't very promiscuous is unlikely to get her genes spread very far by her son(s). This trades off against the part of the story you tell.
Suggestions of negative interest rates are clever in the same sense that Swift suggesting eating Irish children is clever. Its GLARINGLY wrong, but you might learn something figuring out why. And there isn't just one reason why. There are plenty, so everybody can play.
Here's my reason: A negative interest rate is the fed giving away money. Now the fed rates are not available to everybody, so a negative interest rate is primarily the fed giving away money to banks.
Once you REALIZE it is a subisidy, then you realize the government is just giving money away to some people. You can then get over the stigma of the government giving money away to people since you are doing it anyway, and you can give up on the relatively ineffective plan of giving the money away inefficiently to rich people (banks and bankers), and proceed with a much more efficient giveaway.
The fed could just mail people money. Maybe $1000 each every man woman and child. The poorer amongst us would almost certainly quickly spend it. The richer amongst us wouldn't, but what the hey, when you are giving away money you can't expect perfect efficiency. The advantage here: people spending $1000 bucks they got free and clear is a lot less stupid than going into debt to spend $1000, when they already have too much debt, generally.
On the face of it, Israel is a state which controls a group of non-citizens through the use of tanks, walls, and laws (they are non-citizens with the limits on legal rights that go with that).
Yet there is a group, including brilliant people, who label objections to any of these policies as anti-semitic, even when those objections come from Jews, and indeed even when they come from Israeli Jews.
It is hard to believe hearing these responses that they are "honest," because it looks so much like exactly what you would do if you had a plan to shut up your opponents. It is enough to make me question the very nature of rational discourse.
And indeed as I read this, I wonder will this comment be downvoted? And if it is, will that be because it is too political, off-topic somehow? Or will it be because the agreed upon fantasy that dictates what can and cannot be said is on the wrong side of this comment?
I would agree that anti-Israel opinions are not anti-Semitic, I would agree that anti-Pakistan opinions are not anti-Islamic. I would agree that anti-Napoleon comments are not anti-French. I would agree that anti-Nazi comments are not anti-German. I would agree that anti-Bush comments are not anti-American. etc.