I actually am not following what the ambiguity is - stars farther out from the center are younger, no?

The Earth isn't the center of the galaxy, so this feels confusing/confused:

> So, as a general rule, the farther out astronomers look, the younger the stars are.

The father out from the center of the galaxy they look, the younger the stars are.

The location of the Earth is completely irrelevant. "closer" and "farther" refer to the center of the galaxy.

Relative to itself. I.e. the QoL for the upper, middle, and poor are each getting worse.

> Relative to itself

Then it would be an absolute change, not a relative one.

I'm speaking colloquially, not statistically. More literally, I mean "absolutely, but also relative to various things." See the parent's reply to you for concrete examples.

I asked because if a coworker gets a bigger raise than Bob, then Bob is relatively poorer. But Bob isn't actually poorer.

He praises a person for careful, nuanced takes, but then links to their writing where the first paragraph contains the sentence, "the human experience of art appreciation is indifferent to the source."

That's two steps. Government and business only cares about instant results.

This is naive. An American soldier hasn't died for the American way of life in decades.

Why not all three?

Utterly precise.

I absolutely love the idea of me or my children going through a challenging few years as a tool of our society, whether that be military training or something else.

...with the enormous caveat that our society must be cohesive, which it is no longer (culturally, politically - you name it).

Yup. More theft from regular Americans.

Why "gospel"? Why not "at face value"? What is the purpose of portraying a perfectly normal interpretation as irrational? There's nothing wrong with assuming a writeup is factually true until proven otherwise. We couldn't even speak to each other if that weren't the case.

Because the original claim was extraordinary it required extraordinary evidence.

Just FYI, you should have sympathy.

There's an enormous difference between weighing the pros and cons and coming to a different conclusion than somebody else, and having no sympathy for somebody else.

Sympathy doesn't simply mean "understanding"; that's one small aspect of the definition of a more complex word that also denotes emotional reflection.

Having weighed the pros and cons, I have come to the conclusion that the correct amount of (emotional) sympathy for the position of "we should kill all the eagles because farmers deserve only endless profits, never (minor) costs" is infinitesimal.

Just FYI...

There's an enormous difference between having no sympathy for an idea and having no sympathy for a person.