You may be surprised to learn that the Koch Bros. and the Saudis do, in fact, receive enormous amounts of criticism for their behavior.
But I think with Musk the answer is that people respond extra harshly to perceive hypocrisy. The Kochs are almost cartoon corporate arch-villains and the Saudis are brutal theocrats. No one has any illusions that they are good people trying to help the world. Musk, however, has been presented as a Good Guy by both himself and a largely fawning press, set up as some kind of technology messiah. I think people therefore react strongly when, of course, this proves not to be true and that he's just another businessman, albeit one who does genuinely seem to want to help people.
The Kochs/Saudi’s actually receive very little criticism in tech circles. In any case, if your point is that they are actually bad, and Musk is good but a hypocrite at times, then are we not agreeing that the level of criticism he receives is unjustified?
> The Kochs/Saudi’s actually receive very little criticism in tech circles
They get very little tech-circle-specific criticism, because that's not where they operate (and because they have little in the way of tech-specific cult of personality, to provoke domain specific response expressing the general criticism.)
But they get a lot of criticism from non-tech-specific groups that themselves substantially overlap tech circles.
>It's really unfortunate that abiding by local laws and regulations is considered unethical.
What a disgusting comment. What is legal and what is ethical are not the same thing at all. I have difficulty believing this was written in good faith.
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How come others have to have "objective" morals, but for you "seems to me" is perfectly fine? Of course it's subjective, that doesn't take away from it at all, since any opinion that it being subjective is a problem is subjective as well.
> Maximizing profits seems pretty ethical to me.
Up to extracting gold teeth from people murdered in concentration camps, or is there a limit for you?
> [Q: Isn't there a certain calculus that someone who is sitting in the shoes of a Condoleezza Rice can make, that they're responsible for the best outcome for American citizens, and there's an upside of going into Iraq which is we get one of the greatest material possessions in world's history, and there're downsides which are: we upset the international community, and maybe there's more terrorism. Couldn't you envision a calculus where they say, sure, that's the reason, and it's a good reason, let's do it. What's the flaw in the calculus?]
> Oh, I think that's exactly their calculus. But then we ought to just be honest and say, "Look, we're a bunch of Nazis." So fine, let's just drop all the discussion, we save a lot of trees, we can throw out the newspapers and most of the scholarly literature, and just come out, state it straight, and tell the truth: we'll do whatever we want because we think we're gonna gain by it. And incidently, it's not American citizens who'll gain. They don't gain by this. It's narrow sectors of domestic power that the administration is serving with quite unusual dedication...
-- Noam Chomsky, Talk titled "Why Iraq?" at Harvard University, November 4, 2002
>The western bias is towards being the first to discover an unknown restaurant with great food that just hasn't had time to build a reputation, but that's not how a typical Chinese person would approach the restaurant problem.
But that's not bias, the Western approach is correct and the Chinese approach is wrong, if the goal is to find good restaurants (with the assumption that "Western" and "Chinese" approaches are as described above).
No it's not. It assumes there's a correlation between quality and customers, or at least that quality is a prime cause of customers. But there's no reason to think that's the case. In fact, it's more likely that location is the prime factor: the restaurants in Times Square in NYC are very busy, but they are by no means the best in the city or even particularly good. They just have great locations in the heart of the tourist zone.
I remember reading something by Tyler Cowen where, with regards to NYC restaurants, he advised trying the ones on the streets and not on the avenues, because the streets get less foot traffic and so have to be better to draw people in. I've found this generally to be true living here.
After location, the second most important element is probably hype/fame. The hot restaurant of the moment isn't the best restaurant of the moment, it's the one that has managed to capture people's attention, which could be for a variety of reasons ranging from a celebrity chef to some new gimmick.
The vast majority of america does not have such a bias toward location. It's makes a good heuristic, in america. It's not surprising when there's exceptions.
But that just begs the question. What’s classified as a “behavioral dysfunction” is going to depend on your culture. If you come from a more “open” culture, a more reserved one will seem repressed and controlling. If you come from a more reserved culture, a more “open” culture might seem childish and unable to handle their own emotions.
No it doesn't: it depends on whether it's dysfunctional or not. Even if the people involved don't see the dysfunction.
Genital mutilation is mentally unhealthy. And yet, many of the people who suffered it insist it's 'their culture' and perform it on their offspring: FGM is a tradition which is passed down and performed by women with FGM.
You may want to argue that that is an extreme example, but there's no big line between this and any other deleterious cultural conscripted conformation - just distance.
I think Sangermaine is right. While the example you gave is certainly, obviously, deleterious, what about countries where the work week is culturally < 40 hours per week? What about those who, on average, work 80+ hours. At what degree is it a "dysfunction". The decision of what is or is not a dysfunction is not as cut and dry as you assume because you are assuming the parameters by which such dysfunctions are determined are as universal as the claims of dysfunction themselves. This cannot be the case, it dismisses too many shades of gray by saying only the colors of black and white are "real" colors.
I never said that differences in effectiveness of societal functions were cut and dry.
I posited that they existed, cultural relativism notwithstanding, and the difference the were being discussed, along with the reactive denials they elicited, were an example of that.
>No it doesn't: it depends on whether it's dysfunctional or not. Even if the people involved don't see the dysfunction.
“It’s dysfunctional because it’s dysfunctional.”
I hope I don’t have to explain why this is, again, begging the question.
What is “dysfunctional”? That’s largely culturally determined, because what’s “functional” is relative to the environmental you’re in.
You seem to conflating morality or human rights with mental dysfunction. I suspect you are doing this because it’s easier than addressing the comment thread I was replying to regarding “open” vs “closed” cultures. What is the objectively correct “functional” mode of human interaction?
> > No it doesn't: it depends on whether it's dysfunctional or not. Even if the people involved don't see the dysfunction.
> “It’s dysfunctional because it’s dysfunctional.”
> I hope I don’t have to explain why this is, again, begging the question.
I think your response also begs the question, assuming an empiricism that should at least be argued. That is, it seems to me that you conflate a non-definition ("there is an absolute notion of dysfunction, although I don't know how to define it") with a circular definition ("dysfunction is the state of being dysfunctional"). These may be equally useful in the present, but the first, which seems to me to be what WalterSear is saying, can be imagined as a spur to useful future discussion (either arguing that there is no such absolute notion, or seeking out the correct absolute notion); whereas the latter is clearly useless and is, I think, an incorrect summary of WalterSear's position.
(Can you really pin down any concept—like morality or human rights, which you mention later—to the degree of specificity that you are requiring of the definition of 'dysfunction'? I know I can't.)
Cultural psychology is the field that investigates this. By investigating phenomenon in multiple cultures, you get a better idea of what the actual phenomenon you are investigating is, and what is a byproduct of culture. It's not a perfect, obviously, since we are all as much a product of our culture as anything else.
In any case, just because we the tools we have are still in their infancy, that doesn't somehow implies that A) they are utterly useless for anything at all, or B) that every culture everywhere is a perfect realization of a human conception of life, each one exactly equal of any other and none of them at all with any growing up to do.
Your response demonstrates your ignorance of psychology if you’re not even aware of how results often vary across cultures. One area to start educating yourself in is looking into the discussion in the last decade or so of how psychological research has been skewed by over-reliance on “WEIRD” (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Democratic) test subjects, and that studies with subjects from places without these attributes often produce different results.
You don’t seem to understand what you’re talking about in the slightest.
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This reply comes across as saying you’re preying on people too desperate or poor to have any choice but to accept your terms, and too inexperienced and naive to be able to evaluate them.
No, the comparison doesn’t work. Gyms count on going to the gym being something people have to force themselves to do, and so often fail to do so. Seeing movies is different: it’s a fun activity people want to do.
Additionally, I assume gyms are still profitable even if all of their members are making regular use of the service. The marginal cost of a single customer use is negligible. MoviePass cannot say the same.
Somehow I doubt that this medical school has already implemented or tried every robust maternity leave, childcare, or other family support policy that would address their concerns about female doctors being forced to choose between quitting or having a family, and so the school simply has no other options left but to secretly deduct points from female applicants.
>They should try to give the books away for free before chucking them out, no?
The local library where I grew up tried this. It also doesn't really solve the problem of too many books. They would first put up surplus/old books for sale for a quarter or less, and twice a year would hold an event where they put the stock outside on tables and people could just take them for free. They were always left with tons of books even after all that.
It's sad to see books destroyed but they literally can't give them all away, and each building only has so much space.
This is quite a complex question, but the basic answer is that under US law native tribes are "domestic dependent nations". This means that they possess sovereignty as any separate nation would (which flows from Constitutional recognition of their pre-existing status), but it is a limited sort of sovereignty. Congress can limit that sovereignty through legislation and the federal government can make treaties with them. However, unless a treaty or federal statute removes a power, the tribe is assumed to possess it.
In practical terms, addressing your question, if tribes keep trying to sell their sovereignty like this Congress can pass a law removing their sovereign immunity with respect to patents. And, in fact, moves have already started in that direction:
The tribes would probably be wise to knock this behavior off as it's almost certainly going to result in pieces of their sovereignty being carved away, because everyone seems to agree that this sort of scheme is an absurd abuse.
But I think with Musk the answer is that people respond extra harshly to perceive hypocrisy. The Kochs are almost cartoon corporate arch-villains and the Saudis are brutal theocrats. No one has any illusions that they are good people trying to help the world. Musk, however, has been presented as a Good Guy by both himself and a largely fawning press, set up as some kind of technology messiah. I think people therefore react strongly when, of course, this proves not to be true and that he's just another businessman, albeit one who does genuinely seem to want to help people.