I second that. Hearing in the VASAviation video (linked by someone else in a nearby thread) the robotic voice announcing what it's doing, while it does a completely autonomous landing in an airport it autonomously decided on, with no possibility of fallback to or help from a human pilot, is one of these moments when we feel like we're living in the future promised by the so many sci-fi stories we've read as children.
I suspect cloning tech is out there and Dang(s) are one of the first successful iterations. I just dont get how there is seemingly no time off, no vacations, sick days etc. Talk about passion.
Other alternative is the image of pale guy with laptop on some beautiful beach or climbing some crazy peak. Same passion, just concentrated in 1 body.
I have just recently discovered Watts, but I think he may have agreed.
“Watts left formal Zen training in New York because the method of the teacher did not suit him. He was not ordained as a Zen monk, but he felt a need to find a vocational outlet for his philosophical inclinations. He entered Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, an Episcopal (Anglican) school in Evanston, Illinois, where he studied Christian scriptures, theology, and church history. He attempted to work out a blend of contemporary Christian worship, mystical Christianity, and Asian philosophy. Watts was awarded a master's degree in theology in response to his thesis, which he published as a popular edition under the title Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion.
He later published Myth & Ritual in Christianity (1953), an eisegesis of traditional Roman Catholic doctrine and ritual in Buddhist terms. However, the pattern was set, in that Watts did not hide his dislike for religious outlooks that he decided were dour, guilt-ridden, or militantly proselytizing—no matter if they were found within Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism.”
Thank you for the added context about his beliefs, as I am not too familiar with his works and was going off of what I read in the article.
I do not share his disdain though for the "dour, guilt-ridden, or militantly proselytizing" aspects of Christianity. This isn't really as much of an argument as it is a personal outlook: those attributes are what makes Christianity compelling to me, and why some eastern or agnostic forms of spiritualism feel hollow.
The "dour, guilt-ridden, or militantly proselytizing" are what make Christianity compelling for you? The first 2 I could see as personal choice but isn't "militantly" anything sorta anti-christian? (I'm an agnostic, so what do I know...)
Proselytizing, which is to say converting, in Christianity is seen as a positive, and to be “militantly proselytizing” is not meant as a literal “militant” but as “vigorous and active”. Christianity believes very much in exposing (and thus saving) as many souls to God as possible in a (naturally) non-violent way.
And the main way to proselytize in modern churches is via helping the less fortunate in local communities and with mission trips to third-world countries, which is certainly compelling.
I would appreciate you expounding on how those traits generate interest on your part. I think many people might find those rather off-putting - whether in an institution, a group, or a person.
I understand his critique of the stats, but I wonder if Mr. Bruenig disagrees with the author’s points of view.
In particular I wonder what he thinks would be best for his own kids. He seems to be, per wikipedia, married to a high-school friend (sweetheart?) for almost a decade with two kids.
While I do not think his personal actions have any bearing on the accuracy of his statistical critiques of the author, it does seem like his revealed preferences support the author’s points of view. I would be shocked if he believes the health of his marriage has no bearing on the overall wellbeing of his kids.
Regardless, I wish him and his wife a long and happy marriage, because I believe that would be the best outcome for both of them and their kids.
Causality, in all my experience of human relationships in real life, in books, even in movies, is rarely single factor, and often goes in both directions :)
A marriage certificate is not a 100% vaccine against what imho are the shared root causes of divorce and unhealthy home environments - like mutually incompatible or self-centered human beings (absence of love as a noun), lack of commitment (absence of love as a verb).
With or without marriage - partners with a shared world view do well if (a) both partners want happiness for the other as much as they want it for themselves and (b) both openly expect to be a good partners to each other for life, even as both partners inevitably change, grow, fall short, succeed, fail etc.
We don’t have to call (a) “love” and (b) “marriage”, but these remain the most common shared names for these concepts in many societies.*
IMHO though, since we are very much imperfect animals and social animals, society having a shared expectation that couples strive for (a) and (b) matters - and I would be willing to consider all the ways in which this can be done.
* - We also face the separate and important problem that we have harmful definitions of these words in some sub-sections of human society -
Like Matt, I am a supporter of the state providing a solid safety net on basic needs (food, health care, self-improvement, safety) to ALL its and pay for it by taxing the well-off citizens more than the average although unlike him, I would not describe myself as a socialist.
Marriage is many things, but amongst them, it is also a safety net for the children of that marriage. At its best, it brings the resources of two extended families and friend networks together to support the couple and the children. I wonder if Matt would agree with the view that Marriage is the most “atomic” form of socialism (which he seems to support)
> Marriage is many things, but amongst them, it is also a safety net for the children of that marriage. At its best, it brings the resources of two extended families and friend networks together to support the couple and the children
At its best, it is exactly the same in that regard as coparenting without marriage is at its best. Having had both married and unmarried parents in committed (also, in other cases, failed—both married and unmarried) relationships in my extended friends and family network, the degree of support I’ve seen them get doesn’t seem to be very different.
I would agree that it is the commitment that matters.
Where we may agree:
Social norms really do impact human behavior. Marriage is a social norm supporting long term commitment. In communities where it has been replaced with another social norm supporting commitment (eg my well-off friends in Europe), it has become less relevant.
I also posit that adults in committed coparenting relationships constitute a small minority of unmarried adults in America (vs. France for example where a majority of my friends with kids match your description).
Where we probably disagree:
In my observations of close friends in loving relationships with children, previously in loving marriages, are now divorced and in respectful and functional coparenting but not cohabitating relationships.
For a considerable amount of time, they are functionally single parents. In most cases parents and siblings of one ex-spouse are unlikely to want to support the other ex-spouse with in-person child support.
The bright exception to this rule seems to be divorced co-parents who live in close proximity or in one instance in the same duplex and are good friends.
Working hard to ensure you don’t repeat the mistakes of your parents already makes you a good parent - one who cares and strives.
I worry too, especially about the weaknesses I share with one of my parents. Occasionally though, I find that my inward focus on my concern about a mistake I might make causes me to focus less on my kid or his concerns in an important moment. Since I learned this, I try to be present enough to react to life while it’s happening, instead of ricocheting painful memories while life is happening!
The good news is that loving parents who strive to continuously do better serve as a good example for their kids, even when they fail. Life is hard and full of failures. Even when you fail, and even if you fail frequently, showing your kid that you’ll keep striving to do better - now that may be the most valuable lesson of them all.
Sincere question: my relatively non-aggressive-at-sales vet, whose office has beocome a bit more aggressive recently, said this month that my nearly 12 year old dog has had a tooth fracture for over a year - and it needs a $X,000 removal relatively soon, for which he would have to go under anaesthesia and stay the day.
Pup has been eating fine, and continues to eat fine, including relatively hard stuff (no bones or bully sticks but softer dental chews). He does have an accumulation of plaque on said tooth which indicates he favors the other side, and despite the hard pitch, I doubt the vet is lying about a fracture.
The literature online is very equivocal about whether tooth removal is needed and says some fractured teeth are fine and don't cause pain.
Any advice / information sources you trust on how to triage this situation?
I would consult with a few additional vets, perhaps some further out in the countryside and/or older.
You need to balance the quality of life of your dog, the cost, the change of death or other complications, along with alternative options (such as switching food when it gets worse).
Thanks. While steep, I’ll happily pay for the procedure if the risks are minimal and the impact on his quality of life is likely to be meaningfully positive.
Yeah, I'd be less inquisitive about price and more asking the other vets to "level with you on the risks".
And the risks may be acceptable, especially if it comes down to "dog continues to live with ever increasing pain" vs "99% chance of pain free vs 1% chance of peacefully passes away on the operating table".
My vet told me a lot of dogs have high pain thresholds and/or will hide their injuries, so they won't necessarily stop eating from mouth pain. He wasn't trying to upsell me, I was asking why my dog was avoiding food and wondering whether it could be a tooth problem (so unlikely to be the case).
That doesn't help much I know, just make sure you get advice from people you trust have a care about dog's quality of life.
In my experience not wanting to mask unless there is a meaningful sense of risk is a phenomenon equally strong in India (for example) and so I do not believe it has to do with the western propaganda.
If you visited India after the first wave, most people masked, enforced by the police - as they should have. Soon after the 2nd wave (which was bad but resulted in near-endemicity(?)) - after vaccines where widely available and well accepted in India -and to this day, you will see a vast vast majority in India don't mask. A visible minority mask everywhere and are not looked down upon or derided because of it. There is no meaningful propaganda either way right now.
> There is no meaningful propaganda either way right now.
In Europe, in some places, there is and it's sometimes more or less subtle. Local supermarket I go to has a sign "masking is no longer mandatory but it's okay to wear a mask if it makes you feel safer". Which is not how masks are supposed to work (we were told to mask to protect others) and it shouldn't be about feelings.
Meanwhile the cleaning cart station (that sprinkles cart bars with soap/disinfectant) is collecting dust in a corner. I think it would have been nice to keep that from the covid period. But no, we have to erase memories of it.
I think the "mask to protect others" message was a mistake. If you mask to protect yourself you can use a mask with an exhalation value, which is more comfortable. I suspect a lot of opposition to masks is from people who only tried valveless masks. And protecting yourself still indirectly protects others, because you can't infect others unless you are infected.
> Which is not how masks are supposed to work (we were told to mask to protect others)
A well fitting N95 / FFP2, or better, respirator mask protects the wearer to a large extent, even if others don't mask. The "protect the others" message was in 2020, when mostly only surgical masks were available.
I know. But we are talking about mandatory masks here and it only ever was about surgical masks in my country and bordering countries (except Hamburg at some point apparently). The sign is referring to those masks as well, which were the most common ones in circulation. The people who wrote the sign didn't have N95/FFP2 in mind when they wrote it.
I'm an educator, and a social democrat (approximately) so "yes"?
What saddens me is that grand (and simple) plan "free education for all" gets watered down and chipped away to "free education for those who have money or connections" and later attempts to shore it up offten amount to "free education for $special_group". While I don't deny $special_group should get free education, what gets me is all the special-pleading going on.
In OOM programming terms, it's like we had a universal principle which was easy to implement, and this has now been replaced by a bunch of switch/case statements...
I understand and empathize, but you also realize that college in the 60's and in the 2020's are completely different beasts no, right? The genie is out of the lamp, but we literally don't have the room to stuff it back in. CA's population has tripled in 60 years, and high school graduation rates have risen signifigantly (which is of course good). There are more students competing for university today than there were people in 60's california.
Thankfully not all of them are trying to apply specifically to UCLA or even in state, but the numbers are staggering.
Even if teachers have (which I'm not convinced of to begin with), Universities and land haven't. Its no secret that we've had an overpopulation crisis for the past few decades as is, so We haven't fully solved that issue as of now.
And I'm equally unsure if taxes have tripled, between increasing poverty on the bottom and more and more tax evasion on top.
I'm sure if we built new universities, there would be plenty of applicants to teach it in, given how fierce the competition for academic positions already is.
If capacity at existing colleges is the problem, we could start new ones.
Where exactly would you propose building them? A competitive university is going to require around 2,000 acres of land. Where are you going to find that in today's California? No doubt there is plenty of open space left, but it's not in very desirable areas.
Assuming you’re using “overpopulation” to refer to California’s housing shortage, this is not a “too many people” issue or a “not enough land issue”, but rather a “land isn’t being used efficiently” issue. Efficiently housing and moving large numbers of people is by and large a solved problem, with plenty of examples to learn from (see: any megacity in Asia).
California hasn’t solved the issue because some percentage of residents or other interest groups don’t want to solve the issue and have had the political means to block attempts at resolution.
> and so has the tax base and # of teachers. This is a non-issue. Society scales.
The tax base and the number of higher education instructors may indeed have tripled. I'd have to check. But that would only be enough if you were going to teach the same fraction as went to college in 1960. What was that, 10 or 15%?
So we'd need something like a x30 increase in teachers. And even more in tax base (since we're building more campuses or enlarging the existing, not merely funding the existing ones).
Somewhat unrelated, but several states have seen unexpected growth since that time period
Kind of hard to believe, but in 1950 Florida and Kentucky had about the same population. Since then Florida has 8x'ed (I think because of modern AC). Other states (especially in the south and southwest) have seen similar levels of growth to CA. I don't see how the problem you mentioned is specific to California
A few loosely coupled thoughts on the subject - mostly to flesh out my own thinking
(tldr - in which I conclude that we agree on the goal but disagree on “which was easy to implement”, after thinking through my own educational / economical history at some length ;))
I benefited from:
* a nearly free and (luckily) high quality school education from kindergarten through 12th grade - most schools were not that great in my time, I lucked out (with parents who strived / persisted until they got me into the right one)
* a nearly free but terrible education for my bachelors in engineering in India
* a largely discounted and excellent post-graduate education in the US, paid for by my work as a research assistant, which I had to compete for, and that paid the equivalent of $375/month after taxes for working 20 hours a week with a full course load from which I paid my living expenses (in the early oughts - so i was poor :)), but came with a tuition waiver.
Here’s how it has led me to approach this subject:
* I definitely agree that the ideal of nearly free education for everyone that wants it is the right one for a richer society like America to strive for, but subject to some basic rules(eg maintain non-abysmal grades that reflect at least basic effort)
* Free just means someone else is paying for it - and that has its limits. In a free / subsidized college world, major states in India had (have?) so few engineering colleges that if you got less than 99%, you couldn’t study technology - at all! Barring a stroke of luck (family moving to another state where I at least got into a pretty bad engineering college) , I would have had to study economics instead of engineering.
* Around the time of the article above (maybe a few years before) India started allowing private colleges to charge more. This has made education a lot more expensive in India on average, although I believe a similar number of “free seats” still exist, but the number of “seats” to study popular fields has gone up by on order of magnitude, and that has enabled a LOT more people to study what they want, but incomes have grown a lot too for white collar workers. For many (not all) fields, folks are able to take a loan and pay it back.
* If, for instance, the US government paid for just “degree granting post-secondary institutions” expenses, it would instantly become the #2 budget category just below social security and above health, medicare, “income security” and defense.
* It seems that 65% of US adults over 25 do not have a bachelors degree. It seems likely many of them will not support using their tax dollars to create a new #2 budget liability - despite the “chicken-or-egg” dynamic - that if the education was free, many of them would have a degree, and might support it.
I'm approximately a social democrat too, but I'm also a pragmatist. Asking for "free education" is like a child asking for a pony. Education, like everything, costs money, and we can't just wave a magic wand and change that. The only question is who pays for it: the student, or someone else. "Free education" really means education paid for by society at large rather than students. I'm not saying that's a bad idea. It isn't. In fact, it's a really good idea. But I really wish we'd stop calling it something that it's not.
"social democrat" - are you sure? the point remains: some services are social goods and should be treated as such, so that "nobody lacks for inability to pay". That's not literally "free" but has the same meaning in practice.
> some services are social goods and should be treated as such
I'm not disputing that. I'm just taking issue with the marketing strategy. I don't like selling it as "free education" because that's a lie, and I don't like lying because it catches up with you eventually. I think it should be called what it is: government-subsidized education. (I also think it should be means-tested. I see no reason for society to pick up the tab for rich people's kids.)
Should we call all grocery stores 'government subsidized food stores' since American AG receives a huge amount of government subsidies? Gas stations 'government subsidized gas stations' or maybe 'government owned' since a large amount of US oilfields are on US government owned land via leases? Should anything that is government subsidized should have some pejorative prefix added to it or just free education?
>"Free education" really means education paid for by society at large rather than students. I'm not saying that's a bad idea. It isn't. In fact, it's a really good idea.
Like, he's no longer allowed to be a social democrat if he understands bsaic economics? Why am I not surprised?
> some services are social goods and should be treated as such,
Perhaps. But how is higher education that? It's true that not as many people as you would like have 4 year degrees, but many do, and those people serve me overpriced coffees while whining about unionization.
Where is the social good in their degrees? Like, even if they had gotten those for free and there was no student debt, how did their degrees help either society at large, or them personally?
It is apparently very easy for this to not be a social good.
That's not how the language works. We have long ago decided that "free", when used in the context of social services, is correct enough to be understood.
Do you think that definition is bad? If so, maybe you'll catch more nibbles by trying to engage in a dialog?
That is incorrect. Social services are “free”, adhering to the legal and traditional definitions in that the entity offering the service is indeed not charging for the service. That is well understood.
It is also understood that the source of funding for institutions which offer free services is taxes, fees, and levies from the general population. Regardless of what MMT proponents imagine, costs will eventually be repaid by resources, labor, or war.
I find it intellectually dishonest to advocate for “free” services without acknowledging how those services are funded. It does seem more of the population is interested in immediate gratification regardless of long term costs (see deficit spending, consumer debt, etc.), but that doesn’t make the cost disappear because it is ignored. It’s no different than suggesting because birds fly, they must not be affected by gravity.
I've seen a lot of terms used for social services: subsidized, covered, available by grant, available to those who qualify.
But I don't always see those social services tossing around the word "free".
Sure, sometimes there are "free haircuts for the homeless" or "free medical services for the needy", or "free help to apply for benefits", but generally in the context of entitlements, we're not freely bandying this word around.
Well of course voters accept this vernacular, slang usage! It works great! March into the principal's office, slam your fist down on the desk, and demand your free public schools for your kid. Stagger into the E.R., slam your fist down on the triage nurse's desk, and demand your free health care!
It works great at the ballot box too! "Vote now for your free stuff! Everybody gets more free stuff when they vote for me! Support the bill for free stuff!" Because if you called it "using other people's money", then the Ghost of Margaret Thatcher would arise and invade Puerto Rico.
While you're voting, consider whether you're in that hacker demographic that gets a chuckle out of the meme that says "The Cloud Is Just Someone Else's Computer."
"Taxpayer funded" is a gross oversimplification, for any sort of government entitlement and college funding alike.
But anyway, I have seen students in college who were sent there by their employer. They work full-time, have families with young children, and they were expected to pick up several credit-hours to upskill. You've never seen a bunch of sleepier guys. A lot of people, sent by their employer picking up the tab, don't wanna be there, and it shows. They're really disengaged with the class, and that frustrates classmates and professor alike.
Then there's students whose parents paid for it, and family expectations on them finishing college so they get a "real job", or even support the parents and buy them a nice house soon.
Students who work their way through school adopt another distinct attitude. They will get tired too, but they make every credit-hour count. It's their own money and their own blood, sweat, and tears that bring them to the finish line.
There are students who apply for scholarships and get through college that way. There's all sorts of funding for scholarships: corporate sponsors, non-profits, churches, community-based organizations, philanthropic foundations. Someone came to speak at the fraternity meeting and she said she'd been awarded six million dollars in scholarships. I was unsure how you'd spend all that at a community college, but hey?
People who are spending, or supported by, other people's money spend it differently than if it were their own money in their own bank account with them watching the bills and transactions. The incentives are different. The risk/reward calculation is different. That's how it goes.
I’m really not trying to argue in bad faith. Many conversations about “free” social services ignore real capital and human cost of the proposal as if it doesn’t exist. Why stop at education when basic needs like food, water, and shelter could all be “free”? The cost of residential water in CA, for example, is about an ⅛th of the education budget.
In the case of covered education for foster kids, I’m conflicted. I’m in favor of providing anyone placed in the foster care system resources to offset their hardship. I would support non-profits that showed they could efficiently direct funding to programs to help foster kids go to college. I would wager there is research that shows positive economic and social impact by sending foster kids to college that outweighs the cost and significantly reduces the risk of foster to prison. But that’s my choice and don’t think everyone else should be forced to have the same convictions.
While not perfect, Arizona exposes this somewhat by offering tax credits for contributions to non-profits in certain categories (aid for working poor, tuition assistance, foster/adoption, public schools). I’m still forced to cover the cost of social programs, but minimally I get have some agency in choosing organizations that align with my philosophy in those domains and aren’t kicking back a slice of that money to politicians.
> Many conversations about “free” social services ignore real capital and human cost of the proposal
Many compalins ignore the costs of missing these services.
We have 'free' firefighters because entire cities used to burn to the ground. That's very expensive to rebuild.
We have 'free' sanitation becauae The Black Death did more economic damage than both world wars combined.
We have free school education because having a population that can't read and write is economically ruinous. And politically ruinous - illiterate people can vote, join cults, maybe they support the inquisition and burning witches at the stake. We've been thought that.
No-one i ever met believes we should go back to the times where majority couldn't read and write becauae parents could not afford school. Some just believe that education stops at an arbitrary age.
Education is a prime target for government subsidies because, as a market, it yields positive externalities. This means when a person receives an education, the net benefit is felt by society at large. It's a well-established economic principle.
So if we're going to discuss the economic realities of government subsidies, we should go a bit further than "things cost money," because that's obvious and simplistic.
*Edit: Just want to add that the tax debate is indeed worth having. My point is only that the justification for subsidies is grounded in econ principles, not just the whims of the public.
I'm a leftist, left of democratic socialist and definitely left of social democrat. But can we please not point fingers and question people's motives? If someone says they are X, then we should believe them until there's a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.
Of course! Basically everything is paid by somebody (TANSTAAFL). Nobody thinks that free education is magically free, everybody understands that it's paid by taxes/government/society.
OTOH, it is a much cooler slogan than 'education paid by society at large :)
> Nobody thinks that free education is magically free, everybody understands that it's paid by taxes/government/society.
That is far from clear. There are crazy people on the left just like there are crazy people on the right, and I think some of them really don't understand how the world actually works, and that you really can somehow magically make education "free for everyone".
Even if it's not true, it provides ammunition for the opposition to say that it's true. One way or another, I think using misleading terminology is generally not a net win.
Oh come on. Literally no one believes that teacher salaries are going to pay for themselves.
When leftists say that something like public healthcare would be literally free what they mean is that the net cost compared to the alternative is null or negative, not literally that nothing is being spent.
If you want to give me a link of someone who literally thinks that free college means that no one has to pay anything for the college itself or it's staff, I'm willing to take a look. Otherwise, it's just an argument that the net cost to society is negligible or negative, which is a valid use of the word too.
I don't think they think that no one will pay. I think they don't think about it at all, or they think that government somehow has unlimited resources at its disposal.
It's actually that "billionaires" will somehow produce a whole lot more things and pay for it all for everybody else, absolving themselves of any further rational thought or moral responsibility to those with less than themselves.
Many young people have no concept of money. It's not their fault, their parents paid for everything and it's not really taught. My first car loan out of college floored me at how much the monthly payment was at 60 months and it was a reasonably priced demo (cheaper than new).
Of course, not many people have the concept of money at the government scale either. What does $75B to Ukraine really mean?
