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  1. - Top - End - #31
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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    Quote Originally Posted by SiuiS View Post
    [S]uch basic things as racism and sexism are not better. I do not feel that a higher quality of life means much without a higher quality of person – it is indeed a slight improvement but it's an improvement to potential rather than an actual gain, if you follow.
    I'm not sure what information you're relying on here? As far as I can see (from personal experience as well as reading the news over the past 25+ years) racism and sexism are on the way down, while awareness of the issues is way, way up. Diversity in many walks of life is incomparably higher than it was when I was growing up. This evolution is sometimes frustratingly slow, with some setbacks on the way. But it's there: The very fact that there are opposing reactions to it is proof.

    Caveat: Of course, what I'm saying is a general statement, but it's only valid within the limits of my knowledge. I think it broadly applies to most of the developed, Western world. I don't know enough about the world at large, although there are positive signs out there. I also don't know about conditions in your local area, which may or may not differ from the general trend.

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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    Quote Originally Posted by SiuiS View Post
    [S]uch basic things as racism and sexism are not better. I do not feel that a higher quality of life means much without a higher quality of person – it is indeed a slight improvement but it's an improvement to potential rather than an actual gain, if you follow.
    If they're not then we don't mean the same by "better". Look up the statistics. Rate of nonfatal Domestic Violence dropped sharply in the mid-90's and have, thankfully, remained at a low level. Look at the graph on page 3 - back-of-the-envelope calculations give about 1.5 million fewer cases per year. That's not worth anything?

    Or look ath the Female Victims of Sexual Violence. From 1994 to 2010, total rate dropped by 2/3 - sparing about 700 000 - 800 000 women per year (again, back-of-the-envelope). Is that not worth anything?

    Crime began dropping in the early 90's, and they have not returned to their former levels. I think this is an improvement. Do you?
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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    Quote Originally Posted by Chen View Post
    I have no clue how you could possibly make that statement.
    Current events.

    The number of people who A) know that politics is banned but B) insist that unless provided then there is no information is maddening. If I could avoid being oblique I would.

  4. - Top - End - #34
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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    Trying not to veer into dangerous territory here. I will keep this philosophical. I think what Siuis is alluding to is that you can't legislate people's opinions and feelings. Just because there are laws in place to prevent a person from acting on those opinions does not mean that there are fewer people who hold them. In fact, it could even have the opposite effect.
    Last edited by Crow; 2014-10-15 at 01:41 PM.
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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    Quote Originally Posted by Crow View Post
    Trying not to veer into dangerous territory here. I will keep this philosophical. I think what Siuis is alluding to is that you can't legislate people's opinions and feelings. Just because there are laws in place to prevent a person from acting on those opinions does not mean that there are fewer people who hold them. In fact, it could even have the opposite effect.
    Maybe that's what SiuiS meant, and it's true - you can't legislate feelings. But, by and large, irrespective of legislation, I think people's opinions and feelings on matters of racism and sexism are less bigoted today, than at any point in modern history (let's say the last 100 years). Evidence of that abounds, even without going into banned topics.

    That doesn't mean bigotry is gone, not even close. But that means, per the OP's question, things are better on that front than they were when we were younger.

    EDIT: Look at this, for example. You could say, hey, that's horrible how many people still disapprove of interracial marriage. To which I will respond, yeah, but 20 years ago it was a hell of a lot worse, with a bare majority okay with it. And if you look at the curve in the 60s or 70s, well...
    Last edited by Gwynfrid; 2014-10-15 at 03:36 PM.

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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    Quote Originally Posted by Crow View Post
    Trying not to veer into dangerous territory here. I will keep this philosophical. I think what Siuis is alluding to is that you can't legislate people's opinions and feelings. Just because there are laws in place to prevent a person from acting on those opinions does not mean that there are fewer people who hold them. In fact, it could even have the opposite effect.
    I fully agree that you can't legislate people's opinions and feelings, but what I was referring to within the context of my earlier post was events like this: link.

    What he actually said was fairly mild within the context of internet insults (I've certainly seen worse thrown about during League of Legend games for example), but it's still not acceptable within a real life context and some people apparently have issues recognising this fact since they're so used to the anonymity granted by the internet.

    That said, I do feel things like racism are better, despite current events in the US. You don't get as many lynchings by the KKK for example and on a personal anecdotal level, my children haven't had as many racially motivated incidents as I did when I was their age.
    Last edited by Brother Oni; 2014-10-16 at 06:20 AM. Reason: Missed a word

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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    I think that just shows that the Internet, thanks to a large degree of anonymity and a ready-made audience, is a breeding ground for that sort of comment. If that chap had to send a snail mail letter to the MP in question to say that, would he do it? I suspect not. It doesn't mean this attitude has become more prevalent in the last 20 years, it just means it has become more *visible*, which is a different thing altogether.

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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    It's about context really. Some folks are saying, eg "but your cancer has gone downX you only have a few tumors and they're smaller, so your cancer is better!". It's still cancer. The amount of cancer that is better is zero cancer.

    Visibility just means we see it now, aye. But regardless of the tools that improve finding such things, we've also increased the tools that should help people know better. There's no excuse.

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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    Quote Originally Posted by SiuiS View Post
    It's about context really. Some folks are saying, eg "but your cancer has gone downX you only have a few tumors and they're smaller, so your cancer is better!". It's still cancer. The amount of cancer that is better is zero cancer.

    Visibility just means we see it now, aye. But regardless of the tools that improve finding such things, we've also increased the tools that should help people know better. There's no excuse.
    We all have tumorous cells inside us all the time. Or at least a lot of the time. It is something that can happen quickly and takes a little time for the body to detect and deal with. So... you're just wrong. Should we all enter possibly dangerous cancer therapy treatments? A small amount of cancer is definitely - and I say this as a person who has had personal experience with this - better than a lot of cancer.

    In real life, we have to choose, on many occasions. Should we spend $100 000 on treating a child with a rare genetic disorder or should we improve the administrative routines instead? You say it would be immoral to do the latter? But if we never improve the routines then more children will die than were ever saved. And in a finite universe, we can't always say "let's do both". That's just not always an option.
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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    Quote Originally Posted by Asta Kask View Post
    Why was everything so much better when I was young?
    Congratulations, you've just become your parents.
    And I mean no insult by that; 's merely an observation I've begun to see more as I've grown up.
    I'm young now, so this might all be due to youthful innocence, but I don't look at things in terms of better or worse. Just different. And I'll admit, times are certainly different from the way they were when I was born.

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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    Yeah, I am finding this line of argument spurious. In an applied sense, it's a textbook example of allowing the perfect to become the enemy of the good.

    Like Gwynfrid says, it is possible to acknowledge that things have improved without denying the possibility for further improvement. Saying that things are better in a given respect than they ever have been doesn't mean or even imply we think they're perfect.

    The quantity of cancer that is better than n cancer is n-1 cancer and all quantities below that. Zero is one of those, and, in terms of malignant cancer, the best amount, but it's not the only amount that matters. If one child is saved from death by malnutrition than that's better than no children being saved from death by malnutrition even if thousands are still dying from it. The world isn't usually changed for the better in big gestures and great leaps forward, and those who attempt it often make things worse. Incremental progress is still progress. Suggesting otherwise is just black-and-white binary madness.
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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    An argument could be made that if* we can never eradicate e.g. homophobia, and that all states in which there is homophobia are indistinguishable, we should cease fighting it at all and use the resources where they can be useful. It is not a position I would take, but I can't see why SiuiS would be opposed to it - at least if she wishes to be logically consistent.

    *this is up for debate, but I'm merely talking about the hypothetical. It should be clear enough why this is a bad idea, even if we confine ourselves to that.
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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    Yeah, but show me a single application of that which doesn't result in teams of people sitting on there laurels because things are "already better".

    For example, why immediately jump to multiple hundred thousand dollar dangerous treatments, Anders? Reducing cancer cell count can be as simple as 'eating better', but you went with "it's either blow tons of cash and ruin my life or deal with it, so I'll settle".

    Why jump to cancer cells when the example was tumors and condition, not presence of cells? Because it's a redefinition that makes it more logical to settle. But that's like saying you're constantly dead – I mean, your heart stops every beat!

    Relevancy. The world's ills will not be solved or even acknowledged when they're reduced to sums and statistics. So I argue against reducing them to sums and statistics. n-1 is a pretty useful equation but it's a joke to think applying it to a situation like starving children will get you anything but more feelgoods with no relative change.


    E: ooh, good one.

    Simply put, "indistinguishable states" is a matter of perspective and scale, not absolutes, and I find logical consistency to be a useless tool as a sophont when it comes at the expense of emotional intelligence. Logic is a tool which creates outputs. Those outputs can be wrog if the inputs are flawed. I despise the fetishization of logic.
    Last edited by SiuiS; 2014-10-21 at 02:37 PM.

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    I think a better comparison would be eliminating cancer for it to recur elsewhere or for a different sort of cancer to arrive in its stead. As somethings improve, others get worse; moreover some of the things that "improved" have merely changed themselves into more socially acceptable guises.

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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    Quote Originally Posted by SiuiS View Post
    It's about context really. Some folks are saying, eg "but your cancer has gone downX you only have a few tumors and they're smaller, so your cancer is better!". It's still cancer. The amount of cancer that is better is zero cancer.
    Cancer is an interesting example, because it's precisely one of those areas where things are unequivocally better than when we were young. Both the death rates and the incidence of cancer have greatly improved. If you get cancer today, you have dramatically better odds of surviving it. Does that mean that the medical community are resting on their laurels and claiming victory? Not in the least. The problem is being attacked under every angle with as much energy as ever.

    Now, I see what you mean - from the perspective of a person who's dying from cancer today, it sucks just as bad as it did for someone dying from it 30 years ago. You also should, however, see the viewpoint of the millions of people who are either not getting cancer, or getting effective treatment.

    I think the analogy applies rather well to the issues of racism, homophobia, etc that you were referring to. If you're discriminated because of race today, it's as bad as it was for your granddad back then. However: There are now laws against it, that give you a greater chance of fighting back; there are political and support groups to help you, that didn't exist before; and society at large is increasingly aware and less tolerant of the worst manifestations of bigotry.
    Last edited by Gwynfrid; 2014-10-21 at 02:49 PM.

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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    Quote Originally Posted by SiuiS View Post
    Yeah, but show me a single application of that which doesn't result in teams of people sitting on there laurels because things are "already better".
    Some undoubtedly do. So?

    Quote Originally Posted by SiuiS View Post
    For example, why immediately jump to multiple hundred thousand dollar dangerous treatments, Anders? Reducing cancer cell count can be as simple as 'eating better', but you went with "it's either blow tons of cash and ruin my life or deal with it, so I'll settle".
    For brevity. Brevity is the soul of wit, after all.

    Quote Originally Posted by SiuiS View Post
    Why jump to cancer cells when the example was tumors and condition, not presence of cells? Because it's a redefinition that makes it more logical to settle. But that's like saying you're constantly dead – I mean, your heart stops every beat!
    The situation is exactly anlogous. You can't draw a sharp boundary between cells and tumours, unless it is "more than one cell".

    Quote Originally Posted by SiuiS View Post
    Relevancy. The world's ills will not be solved or even acknowledged when they're reduced to sums and statistics. So I argue against reducing them to sums and statistics. n-1 is a pretty useful equation but it's a joke to think applying it to a situation like starving children will get you anything but more feelgoods with no relative change.
    I don't know if this is a straw man or just lack of understanding. No one wants to reduce the struggle to numbers. I think that numbers can be used to illuminate and to show progress. There's an abundancy of results from psychological research that shows that personal anecdotes are lousy as signifiers of the state of the nation. If you do not wish to accept that, there's very little I can do about it except hope, for your own sake, that you're never in a controlling position. Because your tactics would leave the movement witless, headless, careless and ultimately useless.
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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    In the specific context of ailments, saying that someone "got better" or "is better" can imply that a given problem no longer exists. Conceivably, a statement that a "social ailment" is "better" could be misinterpreted along those lines. Perhaps that possibility is not an entirely unreasonable concern.

    But the appropriate way to express that concern is to explain why you feel that that phrasing is less than ideal, not to actively confuse things yourself by saying that something isn't better. If you're aware that the use of a word is ambiguous, it's better to point that out. Don't just try to illustrate the problem by using the alternate meaning, or at least don't do so in such a way that it's not even obvious that you're doing that, because that's the opposite of a good illustration! I disagree strongly with doing that!

    "Anyone who says that they're great at communicating but 'people are bad at listening' is confused about how communication works." (Also...)

    Quote Originally Posted by SiuiS View Post
    Yeah, but show me a single application of that which doesn't result in teams of people sitting on there laurels because things are "already better".
    Giving What We Can is an international society dedicated to identifying and contributing to the most cost-effective poverty relief charities.

    For example, why immediately jump to multiple hundred thousand dollar dangerous treatments, Anders? Reducing cancer cell count can be as simple as 'eating better', but you went with "it's either blow tons of cash and ruin my life or deal with it, so I'll settle".
    His entire point was that that's a false dichotomy, and low risk is better than high risk even though it still isn't zero risk. He said precisely the opposite of what you're claiming he said!

    At least, that seems perfectly clear to me, but I guess I can't entirely discount the possibility that I'm the crazy one here? Asta Kask, please correct me if I'm wrong.

    The world's ills will not be solved or even acknowledged when they're reduced to sums and statistics. So I argue against reducing them to sums and statistics. n-1 is a pretty useful equation but it's a joke to think applying it to a situation like starving children will get you anything but more feelgoods with no relative change.
    Pain is often acknowledged as useful and valuable because it helps us to avoid harm. Empathy, which makes us feel bad when we're aware that others feel bad, is similarly useful and valuable in that it encourages us to avoid harming others. And it encourages us to help others, too, in no small part because it also makes us feel good when others feel good.

    But at the same time... Well...

    Well-informed individual human beings are equipped to alleviate, at best, a vanishingly small fraction of the suffering of which they are aware. Do everything you can, and, man, there's still gonna be a whole lot of suffering in the world. Which in turn means that an extremely effective strategy for avoiding empathy-induced unhappiness can be to just avoid thinking about just how bad things are for so many, because, wow, that is seriously depressing. Which is bad, because it's fairly hard to address problems without thinking about them. Especially for a pessimist, someone more inclined to dwell on problems yet unsolved rather than how happy one's beneficiaries will be to receive aid, charity can be a thing done despite empathy, if at all.

    Jobs that heavily involve dealing with the unfortunate can burn people out. And even apart from low morale negatively impacting their performance, it totally sucks for altruism to make people unhappy. It really would be better if it didn't. The idea that suffering is a necessary component of helping others is seriously messed up.

    The idea that it would be more productive to treat serious tasks as games where you rack up points might seem counterintuitive at first, but in retrospect it pretty much makes perfect sense. People tend to be a lot more enthusiastic about doing fun things than they are about doing things that are not fun.

    Consider the complicated question of whether foreign aid hurts Africa more than it helps. You might say that this provides a lot of people with a convenient excuse to do jack squat about a bunch of stuff and feel smug about it, because, hey, at least they're not screwing things up even more. And you'd be right! But giving blindly seems, to me, hardly better. That suggests to me that one's primary motivation is to assuage one's own guilt and/or to feel self-righteous, and that one is more concerned with convincing oneself that one is being helpful than with the welfare of others.

    The relevant question is "What does the most good?", not "Which of the two easiest options does the most good?" Is you look at it that way, it becomes obvious that conflating loads of different stuff as "aid to Africa" is a bad thing, and makes for an oversimplified false dichotomy.

    To be entirely blunt about it, "You can't put a price on life" in practice usually seems to be code for "Treating saving lives as an optimization problem bothers me more than people dying does". But of course minimizing death is an optimization problem; you can tell from the word "minimize", you see. So... being "unwilling to put a price on life" means that, while you may want to save people, you don't care how many you save, and in fact adamantly refuse to care how many people you save. Or so it seems.

    But even that on its own wouldn't be so bad. But, really, at the point where someone starts criticizing other people for caring how many lives are saved, I feel pretty comfortable saying "Wow, that is tremendously ****ed up."

    Your entire argument seems to be that regarding helping others as an optimization problem is bad because it leads to people not helping. That is a baffling generalization. Let me try to break down why:

    Wanting to do something means being willing to what it takes to do said thing, barring overriding reason not to. Getting things done frequently involves math, because it turns out that math is an amazingly useful tool for dealing with situations that involve quantities, and it turns out that almost all situations involve quantities. So, wanting to do something frequently means being willing to do math.

    I could have just said "Wanting to help beings frequently means being willing to do math", but it really is far more general than that. It is a general principle that if you're not dealing with an immediate emergency and have sufficient time on your hands, then most likely when things get serious it is time to bust out some calculations.

    I find logical consistency to be a useless tool as a sophont when it comes at the expense of emotional intelligence.
    So, um...

    Are you saying that only when we place our feelings above calm, rational thinking will we know the power of the Dark Side?

    That... kinda seems to be what you're saying.

    Self-consistency may have its price, but you know what, I'm okay with that compared to the alternatives.

    Logic is a tool which creates outputs. Those outputs can be wrog if the inputs are flawed.
    One way to deal with that is to acknowledge your own fallibility and to assign propositions probabilities other than 0% and 100%, rather than simply treating them as "true" or "false".

    After all, the necessity of making assumptions seems to be the problem with classical logic, rather than the rules of inference. So if you can use essentially the same rules of inference without the need to assume things, then, dare I say... problem solved?

    I personally assign a high probability to the proposition that modifying logic in that fashion is a better idea than simply abandoning logic entirely.

    I despise the fetishization of logic.
    Well, I detest the overvaluation of emotion and intuition. Like logic, they can be extremely useful, but they can also be seriously misapplied. And I get the distinct impression that people apply them where logic is more appropriate more often than vice versa.
    Quote Originally Posted by icefractal View Post
    Abstract positioning, either fully "position doesn't matter" or "zones" or whatever, is fine. If the rules reflect that. Exact positioning, with a visual representation, is fine. But "exact positioning theoretically exists, and the rules interact with it, but it only exists in the GM's head and is communicated to the players a bit at a time" sucks for anything even a little complex. And I say this from a GM POV.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Devils_Advocate View Post
    Giving What We Can is an international society dedicated to identifying and contributing to the most cost-effective poverty relief charities.
    Thanks.

    His entire point was that that's a false dichotomy
    His entire point was that because he could say I am wrong in one sense I am wrong in all senses. We both know his answer was poppycock, he and I; I would rather say his answer is poppycock and specifically misleading to boot than accept that his stance can be addressed rhetorically and my own must be taken at literal face value.

    Well, I detest the overvaluation of emotion and intuition. Like logic, they can be extremely useful, but they can also be seriously misapplied. And I get the distinct impression that people apply them where logic is more appropriate more often than vice versa.
    Perhaps. But sticking strictly to logic gets you Utility Monsters, because logically it's most efficient whereas rationally you would budget for everyone to have sufficient n to be happy instead of starving them.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Elemental View Post
    I plan on sowing mine liberally with clover and other low lying flowering plants because I like bees. The bees would also be an added incentive to stay off it because bee stings hurt.
    Extensive empirical evidence I've accumulated over the years suggests that having a lawn full of clover (and creeping charlie and dandelions other such) doesn't do anything cool. If anything, it attracts small furry herbivores that quickly tire of clover and move on to your vegetable garden.

    For me, the past was cooler because my dog was younger and the neighborhood furries were more scared of her.

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    I think a lot of things were better back “before”.
    I was watching someone restore old tools; axe heads, cross cut saws that sort of thing on youtube. These things are magnificent artfully made tools. They’ve also very old (seriously some of them were a hundred years old). Those tools were built to last, they are not disposable. Heck they’ve out lived their creators. It leaves you all nostalgic and stuff.

    But now we live in a disposable world. Everything we own now is not meant to last the ages. Everything from the very house we live in to the cars we drive are built to be replaced. That’s a sad thing

    [political rant]
    Then we ignorantly push for recycling, recycle your trash and save the planet. Well if we built things to last and didn’t use so much disposable crap then we wouldn’t need a big push to recycle; because we wouldn’t be throwing out so much crap.
    [/political rant]

    *breathes deeply*
    Ok now that I got that off my chest, there is a lot of wonders we have currently that make the world an amazing place. The internet allows for greater access to information and the spread there of, it allows us to communicate instantly in real time to other people on the other side of the planet. That’s pretty amazing. The amount of medical knowledge and tools available to us (seriously, medical imaging is a miracle of science).
    Heck we put a person on the moon 45 years ago. That’s an amazing achievement of human endeavor (too bad we haven’t really pushed our space program that much further).
    Last edited by TheThan; 2014-10-31 at 08:22 PM.

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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    Quote Originally Posted by TheThan View Post
    Everything we own now is not meant to last the ages. Everything from the very house we live in to the cars we drive are built to be replaced. That’s a sad thing
    I'd argue it's not really a true thing, at least as far as houses are concerned. Certainly, in the UK, when a house is built it's generally expected to be there for a while. Concrete high-rises maybe not so much, but they were a lot more popular back in the 60s and 70s anyway--they tend not to build them so much now.

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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    Quote Originally Posted by TheThan View Post
    But now we live in a disposable world. Everything we own now is not meant to last the ages. Everything from the very house we live in to the cars we drive are built to be replaced.
    Depends. We do buy tons of crap that's meant to be used once or twice then discarded. On the other hand, cars, for example, are now a lot better built than they used to be; they don't rust nearly as fast, they don't need frequent service anymore, they use a lot less gas per distance traveled, and they break down a lot less (you may argue they don't look as nice, though). When was the last time you had to change a tire on a long trip? If we replace cars often, I suspect it's because we find a new one more attractive, not because the old one isn't working anymore.

    For houses, as an immigrant to America, I noticed new houses over here are not built to last as long as they are in Europe. I don't know why. I'm no expert, though, and it might just be my own perception. If you look at an older house with a stone structure, sure it will last centuries, but there are other costs (such as heating), so it's not necessarily the most efficient choice.

    On the whole, I think the issue is more on the consumption side. We buy a LOT of things, much more than our forebears did. Some of it is crap, some of it is good quality but not really useful, only some of it corresponds to real needs. On top of that, we buy more packaging, since we don't cook the majority of our meals from scratch anymore. As a result, we throw away a lot more than we used to. Since few people are suggesting we should buy or own less things, recycling is the only practical solution.

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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    Quote Originally Posted by Gwynfrid View Post
    For houses, as an immigrant to America, I noticed new houses over here are not built to last as long as they are in Europe. I don't know why. I'm no expert, though, and it might just be my own perception. If you look at an older house with a stone structure, sure it will last centuries, but there are other costs (such as heating), so it's not necessarily the most efficient choice.
    I suspect part of it is land economy. In Europe, particularly northern Europe, population density is relatively high, land is fairly limited, and demand therefore tends to outstrip supply, which means that in any property development the cost of the land is a very high proportion of the overall price and in order to make money from the investment it's desirable or necessary to build a higher-quality, longer-life building (some areas also have restrictive planning laws, but while that might be more of an issue in Europe, it's hardly exclusive to it). In North America, on the other hand, outside cities, supply of land far outstrips demand, so it tends to be much cheaper, and therefore there's less incentive to build to last (or indeed to redevelop, hence why derelict buildings often sit unused for decades).
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    Quote Originally Posted by SiuiS View Post
    Perhaps. But sticking strictly to logic gets you Utility Monsters, because logically it's most efficient whereas rationally you would budget for everyone to have sufficient n to be happy instead of starving them.
    No, you don't. Because the entire idea of a utility monster makes no sense.

    *Takes deep breath*

    A utility monster assumes the value of a resource is constant. Say I have £1000 to split between nine people with no money, but one of them is a utility monster and receives twice as much utility from each pound. First, let us ignore the blatant impossibility of someone receiving twice as much benefit from the same total quantity of money (I might let you off with 102-103% or thereabouts), and instead focus on the fact that money has reduced value the more you have of it.

    If I give £1000 to Bill Gates, he probably won't notice. If I give the equivalent of £1000 to the archetypal starving African, he and his entire family will be eternally grateful. In general, we can get a graph that looks something like the characteristic curve of a lamp, only with money instead of voltage and utility instead of current:

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    With our handy visual representation, we can see that money gets diminishing returns. So in fact, instead of giving our utility monster all of the money, we should probably give them... wait for it... about twice as much money as any one other person. Not all of it. Just more of it.

    (In reality there's the fact that the outrage caused to those who earned less as well as the difficulty in calculating just how utility monster the utility monster is probably isn't worth it anyway.)

    Apply this to effort and the problems that this world faces. Sure, we may not be able to remove prejudice entirely, but by dividing our efforts to ending each type of prejudice, and ending poverty, and making quality of life better, and so on, we can make sure our actions have the best effect.

    The utility monster, like so many criticisms of utilitarian philosophy, are contingent on the covert stupidity of the question so as to produce a more obviously stupid answer.

    Aaaaanyway, the point is that things can be better without being the best. Otherwise the world will not be better than the dark ages until the streets are paved with gold, everyone, everywhere is equal, we've discovered the cure for death, and all of us have absolutely perfect lives.

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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    Quote Originally Posted by Jormengand View Post

    Aaaaanyway, the point is that things can be better without being the best. Otherwise the world will not be better than the dark ages until the streets are paved with gold, everyone, everywhere is equal, we've discovered the cure for death, and all of us have absolutely perfect lives.
    Even in that scenario, the removal of conflict would make life much more boring, and thus worse.
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    Quote Originally Posted by SiuiS View Post
    Perhaps. But sticking strictly to logic gets you Utility Monsters, because logically it's most efficient whereas rationally you would budget for everyone to have sufficient n to be happy instead of starving them.
    You made me learn the term "utility monster". Thanks.

    ... And I don't get how you can make "rationally" the opposite to "logically". While the two aren't the same, this opposition is beyond my ability to figure out. My take: Morally, you would budget for everyone to have sufficient n to be happy instead of starving them. Judging whether we're achieving this requires rational thought, and how we measure n and apportion it fairly is the subject of debates going back all the way to the 18th century at least. Logic is just one tool you can use in such debates, and I don't get how it could lead you to give every n to a Utility Monster. The debate we're having here isn't for or against utilitarianism. It's about what n is, whether its average value improves over time, and whether its distribution becomes more fair over time.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jormengand View Post
    Aaaaanyway, the point is that things can be better without being the best. Otherwise the world will not be better than the dark ages until the streets are paved with gold, everyone, everywhere is equal, we've discovered the cure for death, and all of us have absolutely perfect lives.
    Right. Here's one possible description of such a state.

    Quote Originally Posted by Aedilred View Post
    I suspect part of it is land economy. In Europe, particularly northern Europe, population density is relatively high, land is fairly limited, and demand therefore tends to outstrip supply, which means that in any property development the cost of the land is a very high proportion of the overall price and in order to make money from the investment it's desirable or necessary to build a higher-quality, longer-life building (some areas also have restrictive planning laws, but while that might be more of an issue in Europe, it's hardly exclusive to it). In North America, on the other hand, outside cities, supply of land far outstrips demand, so it tends to be much cheaper, and therefore there's less incentive to build to last (or indeed to redevelop, hence why derelict buildings often sit unused for decades).
    That's a plausible explanation, yes.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gwynfrid View Post
    You made me learn the term "utility monster". Thanks.
    You're welcome!

    ... And I don't get how you can make "rationally" the opposite to "logically".
    Opposite? No, if that's how I'm coming across it's unintentional.

    Logical means 'using logic'. Simply using a good tool does not guarantee perfection, you need to put the right stuff into it. If you put the wrong stuff into it, you get perfectly logical, understandable and valid wrong answers. For example, logic can prove that a person is male or female, despite that person's actual gender – because the information used is incomplete.

    Rational means (of a person) able to think clearly, sensibly and logically. The key there is sensibly – a lot of logical nonsense can happen. Just look at RAW! . But it's also important to note that logic is one component of, not the entirety of, rational thought.

    It's about what n is, whether its average value improves over time, and whether its distribution becomes more fair over time.
    Issue: I don't know whether you mean n as a numeric or abstract variable. Like, I could say the value of n increasing isn't as worthwhile by magnitudes as the quality of n increasing? And I would like an evaluation of the necessity of n and whether better better and more plentiful n even matters or if it's just used out of habit.



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    I dunno about cars:
    I once drove a 1982 Toyota corolla. We didn’t really take that great of care of it, literally rats chewed through the break lines at one point (it was fun discovering that). But it survived for 20 years of near constant use with little maintenance. We got a brand new year 2000 Saturn SL1 , we drove that for 13 years before it broke down, requiring extensive maintenance including two transmission jobs before it finally kicked the bucket.

    Both cars were automatics but the Toyota had significantly more miles since it was driven much longer. So yeah I’m not really buying it. Newer cars may be built with better tolerances, and with a lot more toys but they don’t seem to be able to keep going as long, maybe that’s a drawback of tighter tolerances.

    Old cars didn’t have computers and cameras and fancy electronics so the owner could actually deal with it at home and not need to have go to a school to learn how to take care of their car. now they're so complicated people have to take it to a certified dealer for simple maintenance (spark plugs, oil change etc). this fall, we couldn’t even replace the windshield wipers on our (brand new) Honda without taking it to the dealer.

    As for houses, I think a lot of is profit margins, developers contract the lowest bidder capable of doing work that barely passes governmental inspection. They make the most profit that way. while i don't begrudge a compnay earning a profit, there's a difference between turning a profit and being greedy.

    But seriously, my friend just finished building a brand new house, this building isn’t even 6 months old and when the AC comes on the lights dim. That shouldn’t happen in a brand new house. But the electricity is just barely adequate to handle it the power load. The contractors installed barely adequate (if not shoddy) electrical instead of electrical that can handle the load of the lights + AC. I think that’s the primary problem, people are only doing the adequate, not the exceptional.

    “I can’t see it from my house”, “Good enough for government work” etc

    These saying exist as an excuse to do the adequate. People should strive to do the exceptional, whether that’s pushing papers in an office or building something with tools. The world would be a lot nicer if everyone strived to do their best in all their endeavors.

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    Also only the lasting stuff will last. Any old disposable stuff will have been disposed of in its day and not still around. You're only going to have shoddy new crap. The shoddy old crap is long gone.

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    Default Re: Get off my lawn!

    Quote Originally Posted by TheThan View Post
    I once drove a 1982 Toyota corolla. We didn’t really take that great of care of it, literally rats chewed through the break lines at one point (it was fun discovering that). But it survived for 20 years of near constant use with little maintenance. We got a brand new year 2000 Saturn SL1 , we drove that for 13 years before it broke down, requiring extensive maintenance including two transmission jobs before it finally kicked the bucket.
    You're not comparing like with like there. Even if you ignore the age of the cars, the Toyota comes from a Japanese manufacturer that is reknowned for the reliability of its cars (regularly coming top or near top of the JD Power reliability survey), while the Saturn...isn't. I might as well say that cars built in 1984 were particularly bad: I once owned a Lada Riva made in that year that got scrapped in 1992 due to failing its MoT and not being economically repairable. This would be ignoring the fact that Lada Rivas were famed for their lack of build quality compared to other cars available at the time.

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