(Part 2) Top products from r/changemyview

> What you are trying to do is impose a moral scale, a ranking, on life that says that taking this life is moral but taking this one is not.

So, I'll try to get this straight. Please set me straight if I have any of this wrong.

You're asserting that in moral terms, ALL LIFE is equal, completely regardless of its nervous system, capacity to perceive the world, form social connections, experience emotion, or suffer. For example, a herd of cows should be given exactly the same ethical consideration as a leaf of spinach: none whatsoever. Right? Because humans have a moral mandate to kill. And since all nonhuman life is equally worthless in these ethical terms, according to our moral mandate, we are allowed to destroy as much life as we please in order to eat what we'd like. Deciding if I want to be responsible for the "death" of a few beans or some spinach, or be responsible for a lifetime of captivity ended by a violent death of a cow (not to mention all the "plant death" that was necessary to make it grow in the first place).

Except humans. We can't kill each other, because we can acknowledge rights for each other.

What would you say about very young children and or mentally handicapped humans who don't have the mental capacity to "respect and protect the rights of others?" If this is where rights come from, then obviously not all humans have rights. Or is there more to it than just that?

> The arbitrary categorization of one life as more valuable than another is not made for moral reasons. It cannot be because morality is binary. A choice is either moral or immoral.

Please cite any theory of morality or ethics at all that says that there is no gradient of morality. While you're at it, please cite any theory of morality or ethics at all that says that if you must kill something, then you're justified in killing anything you want.

Actually, if you could cite anything to support your position, instead of just asserting things, that would be great! In particular, I'd love to see any credible ethical argument that all nonhuman life should be treated exactly equally in ethical terms.

> If this theory is true then the pure herbivores of our species did not survive natural selection - the omnivores proved better adapted for survival.

So, we should take our ethical cues from natural selection, then? I thought you said earlier that we shouldn't.

Regarding "human efficiency," what do you think of the environmental destruction caused by animal agriculture? Or, if human efficiency is only measured on an individual scale, how is it affected by the mounting evidence that eating animals isn't so great? (each word is a distinct link.) What about the antibiotics issue? Please address this.

> Yes - if both animals and plants suffer and several lives have been given already to create the animal then the animal causes the least loss of life and the least suffering. How many plants do you have to slaughter and digest screaming to equal one animal?

You said earlier that plants can't scream. And can't suffer. And the answer, once more with feeling, is: about a 10:1 ratio! Remember? I linked those wikipedia articles for you! Did you read them?

Which reminds me, I've been careful to only cite things that are reasonably "impartial": news articles, PubMed, wikipedia, that sort of thing. Nothing from the Humane Society or anything like that, since I imagine that you'll probably just dismiss it. If you'd be willing to read those things seriously, then by all means let me know and I'll share a few. And if you wouldn't mind addressing some of the things that those linked articles address, I'd appreciate it.

I'll go back a couple posts of yours, if you don't mind, because I forgot to address this point:

> The animal would have eaten the plants regardless of your decision. By eating the animal you are not participating in the death or the potential suffering of the plants.

Yes you are! You've paid for the animal to be bred, raised, fed, and slaughtered. You are contributing to the demand for this process. Are you claiming that by supporting something financially is completely divorced from all ethical responsibility? Please explain this, since I don't understand this view.

> Farming an animal for food is not torture. Torturing an animal for the sake of seeing it suffer is morally wrong.

Well, if you're in America, more than 99% of the time it is. Is it permissible to torture an animal to eat it more cheaply?

Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals, by the way, is an excellent and very honest investigation of the ethics of eating meat. It's written from the perspective of someone who's oscillated between eating meat and not eating it for his life so far, and I hope you'll believe me when I say that it is absolutely not judgmental of those who do. There's no way around the fact that it's been a human tradition for a very long time, and there's a great deal of sentimentality around it, and this book approaches the subject with great intellectual and moral honesty. I hope you'll at least consider reading it, if you would like to, I'd even be happy to send you my copy in the mail (although I'd probably be unwilling to give out my address over the internet), and you can keep it after that. And if you're right about the ethics of it, you'll blast through it in a few days and come away completely unchanged, since your position is totally bulletproof. If there's no threat, all you have to lose is a few hours of reading time. And, if you don't want to read anything, he's given a couple brief interviews 1, 2, 3, 4 that you can watch in a few minutes (the longest is an hour).

And of course, since I'm suggesting some reading material for you (I hope you're actually reading those articles by the way... it's hard to tell, since you haven't address any of them except the ADA abstract, which you dismissed with an appeal to nature), it's only fair that if you recommend any books or articles or films to me at all, I solemnly swear to read (or watch) them with an open mind. I'll even get back to you about what I think!

I think it's extremely telling that the industry has fought so hard to pass laws against documenting abuse in their operations. Would you agree that given a choice between cheap meat that has been raised in torturous conditions, and expensive meat that was raised in a way to give the animal a good life while it was alive, one has a moral obligation to choose the one that caused less suffering? This, I expect, is in line with your moral mandate to kill. After all:

> Certainly limiting the amount of pain inflicted is a desirable choice.

Try this: go to your refrigerator, and look at the label for the animal flesh you already have in there. See what farm it's from, and look up a phone number. Give them a call, and pretend that you're interested in taking a tour of their facilities to see the conditions. Then, when you're at the farmer's market, find someone selling meat and ask if it would be possible to go see the farm sometime.

Look, I don't want to be hostile. Clearly we disagree on some very fundamental things (like the notion that suffering has anything at all to do with ethical decisions) but I want to be very clear that I'm not trying to pick a fight or belittle you in any way. I just find some (most, frankly) of your views baffling, heartless, and honestly, pretty terrifying. But honest discussion is the whole point of CMV, right? And, I'd like to encourage you again to cite anything to justify your assertion that plants and animals should be given exactly the same ethical consideration (none). And again, please cite anything at all to support the notion that the capacity to suffer is of no moral consequence.

Thanks! I'm looking forward to your reply. I've tried to be very clear about the points I'd like you to address, and hopefully I succeeded.

I tried to track down the "women control X% of spending" stat in another post about it, and was unable to find it. Here is an edited version of my post detailing the digging (the post I was responding to claimed 60% of spending):

>Not really. Saying "control" 60% of the wealth does not appear to have an actual source anywhere.

> First, "women control 60% of the wealth" does not have an obvious meaning; "control" is not the same as "own", and without a clear definition it is hard to know what "control" means in the context of married couples. And I dug and dug but couldn't find a primary source for that claim. A business news article discussing the 60% figure cites "Virginia Tech" as a source, but it doesn't link to a research paper; it links to a nonfunctional landing page for a "Women in Leadership and Philanthropy" council. This council does not do research and none of the links on their landing page have any citations to any research. They link out to another dead link that is intended to go to The Woman's Philanthropy Institute at Indiana University.

> This group does appear to do research, but primarily on philanthropy and charitable giving; I can find nothing that is direct research showing how "women control 60% of the wealth" is defined.

> Searching elsewhere, I find a similar-ish 50% stat that cites the BMO Wealth Institute, which links to this white paper.. This paper is a summary of various stats and achievements of women, and does mention the "controls 50% of the wealth" statistic alongside noting many of the concerns typically brought up in these discussions, like women's relatively lower income, or lack of advancement etc. The citation for women controlling 50% of the wealth is yet another dead link to the Family Wealth Advisors Council. Searching the article title, though, I found the actual link to Women of Wealth, which uses the same stat for women's control of wealth and cites Power of the Purse by Fara Warner, a book from 2005.

> Now, I don't have access to the book in full and have to rely on Amazon's preview feature, but from that preview the only mentions of women controlling wealth are in the foreward, which the statistics appear pulled from, and early in Chapter one, which predicts women will gain 85% of the wealth generated between 1995 and 2010. This statistic is said to come from Conde Nast, but is not cited; the statement before and after from different sources are. I cannot access the full set of citations for Chapter One, but nothing else in the book I can find mentions Conde Nast so it doesn't seem likely it was cited prior to page four. Further googling for Conde Nast claiming such a figure was not fruitful, although to be fair a prediction of growth between 1995 and 2010 would have been made prior to 1995 and is unlikely to show up on the internet. And it is important to note that Conde Nast is a media company, and as such their useful definition of "control wealth" would skew towards, say, who makes spending decisions in married couples even if that wealth is dependent on the other partner.

> So what's the point of all this, exactly? Well, it's to say that the 60% figure, in addition to being extremely unclear, doesn't appear to have any obvious primary source; the closest thing I can find is a 2005 book that mentions the wealth control stat and a wealth control projection without clear citation. I did find plenty of examples of people citing the BMO report, which was ultimately sourced from Power of the Purse through the forward of a more respectable sounding report.

> I suspect, but cannot ultimately confirm, that the 60% control statistic ultimately exists either due to marketing projections from the early 90s (which would explain how, with no sources earlier than 2005, it has updated from 50% control to 60% control), or that its based partially on marketing projections and partially on ????? from the foreward of Power of the Purse. This stat does not appear to have been actually confirmed independently, but it has been given more and more legitimacy as it jumped from a book to a (relatively) smaller wealth group to a major bank to being mentioned on a landing page for a university group to being represented (falsely) as research from a major university.

So what's the point of all this, then? Well, it's to point out that your article citing female spending power is also unsourced and claims even higher numbers for female spending, and falls into the same trap about not actually defining what spending power means. There's simply no good reason to believe such a huge claim without any real citations. E: Additionally, as noted in the WSJ article linked in another post, most every source or potential source for this statistic appears to originate within marketing groups trying to push marketing aimed at women. That casts some doubt on how meaningful these terms are, given it may simply be marketing groups realizing that you can't market primarily to men for household products both genders use.

I put very little stock in the concept of gender, but I'll use whatever pronouns a person asks me to. Let's call it the "Don't Be An Asshole Principle" -- if something is important to someone else but not to you, respect the fact that they care about it, instead of treating everyone as if they share your values.

I find myself influenced by the book "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?", by Beverly Daniel Tatum. It's been more than a few years since I've read it, but the message I took away was about how much youth and teenage years are about finding our place in the world, how we fit into the fabric of society. To a degree this happens throughout life, though the most intense searching happens in those transition years, where we're becoming an adult.

I personally find the entire concept of gender about as useless as you find additional genders beyond male and female. The whole social construct seems pretty specious to me. But I recognize that it's a way of processing and making sense of the world, a way of finding our place and making peace with society; the concept is intended to reconcile the social baggage that comes with being "male" and "female" by creating a separate division from anatomical sex, so that they become separate axes, permitting people to find a description that seems to fit them more easily.

But again, I find it pretty empty. In my mind, gender is sort of like defining geeks vs goths vs jocks as a central and important part of a person's self-image. It's not a "real" axis, just a description of some social conventions, and it's by no means comprehensive of all human society. To me, someone who identifies as "agender" or otherwise rejects the standard gender dichotomy is doing nothing more than just rejecting the social conventions and expectations that come with being male or being female. It's like everyone wants to call them goth, but they really don't identify with that scene at all; they don't identify with any of the standard cliques, so they carve something out that they feel comfortable with, call it emo, and then ask others to respect that to help craft the expectations and assumptions others will have about them.

So I personally identify as cisgendered male, not because I put any stock in gender as an inherently extant thing which matters outside its presence as (what I perceive to be) a completely fake social category, but because others find it useful and they want to know how to treat me. I say treat me like all the other guys. Though I wouldn't really care if the treated me like a girl or something else because I don't give a shit.

The thing is, I also respect that it does matter to some people. They don't identify with the categories presented to them, and are alienated by the gender constructs that we've created as a society, so they're finding their place by defining new categories. I get that and I practice the non-asshole principle of respecting what is important to other people.

> This is the point - it is a rational decision, not something that does not matter.

You still don't understand. It has nothing to do with whether you think it "matters". That is entirely subjective. But from an individual utility payoff standpoint, an individual faces a choice in which they bear an immediate cost (the time and effort of voting) in the face of no payoff (the end result is the same regardless of an individual's actions). That has important implications in political science.

At which number precisely do votes stop mattering? There's no number, there are only probabilities that your vote will effect the election. As the election includes more and more people or more complex systems of choosing a winner, the probability that any individual voter will affect the outcome goes down. For the presidential election, this number is infinitesimally small, for all practical decision making and statistical purposes 0%.

Posted here is an excerpt from this blog.

"In a game-theory sense, your vote matters only when it is pivotal. The proof follows from a thought experiment. If the election was hypothetically decided by two or more votes, then you could have safely abstained from voting without affecting the majority rule. In other words, your vote was not needed.

How often will your vote be pivotal? A mathematical approach is to calculate the odds that all the other voters will be tied. The approach treats each voter as having some probability of voting for one candidate or the other. The odds of a tie are maximized when each voter is equally likely to vote for one candidate or the other. Here are some estimates from this methodology. At 1,000 voters, the optimistic odds of a tie, making you pivotal, are less than 3 percent. At 100 million voters, the optimistic odds are less than 0.01 percent (roughly 1 in 10,000).

In fact, the true odds are lower because candidates are not equally favored. Small preferences among voters can lead to margins of victory that make your vote irrelevant. The odds can be estimated in an empirical approach that examines at the history of elections. This exercise was done by economists Casey Mulligan and Charles Hunter, and here are their results as summarized in the New York Times:

Even in the closest elections, it is almost never the case that a single vote is pivotal. Of the more than 40,000 elections for state legislator that Mulligan and Hunter analyzed, comprising nearly 1 billion votes, only 7 elections were decided by a single vote, with 2 others tied. Of the more than 16,000 Congressional elections, in which many more people vote, only one election in the past 100 years – a 1910 race in Buffalo – was decided by a single vote. (source)

The conclusion is that your vote is very, very unlikely to affect the outcome. An economic argument extends the logic to say “voting doesn’t pay.” This is because voting has little expected benefit but costs time and effort. This view holds voting in the same light as buying a lottery ticket: a losing bet."


I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, but it's a decent cursory explanation.

> Do the votes of the individual senators in the house of representatives matter?

It depends what you mean. For the most part, votes in the house do not impact the outcome. This is why congressmen from both the senate and the house skip an enormous amount of votes. For most congressmen, votes are important for two reasons. Firstly, on a small select array of hot button issues, constituents pay attention to the votes of their elected officials. Congressmen fear 'bad' votes will be seized upon by their opponents and result in trouble back home for them. Secondly, most of a congressman's job is not casting a vote. It's working with their party and other members of congress to push legislation onto the agenda and garner support for it. If you've ever seen any television, movies or documentaries about Congress you might notice that the characters or politicians often work far harder for votes in the Senate than in the House. For instance, during one of the biggest legislative fights in recent history, Obama heavily lobbied Senator Ben Nelson and made several concessions JUST to get his one vote. In contrast, Obama conducted his political operations in the house largely through Nancy Pelosi. Devoting resources to individuals in the House is much less effective -- each vote in the House is worth much less than a vote in the Senate. Controlling House votes is better left to the Speaker of the House and other leadership who can work to get large numbers of their members to support their agenda.

(by the way, individuals in the house of representatives are called congressmen)

> If we believe that "Your vote will not impact the election" holds true for each individual in a voting body, aren't we suggesting that voting itself has no use or merit as a decision-making system?

That's a fair question, and its answer is subjective. Clearly, it is impossible to create a system in which each individual vote can matter in a country of over 300 million people. It's not that the government is necessarily "unrepresentative" though, at least not for this reason -- after all, the election is decided by votes whether each individual changes the outcome or not. It may be that you decide that this fact delegitimizes the government -- and again, that's a subjective opinion. There are some people who hold that view, though as I stated this is a simply a reality of large democracies. I would also tell you that in my opinion, voting isn't what makes democracies special. It's the free exchange of ideas, the independent watchdog press and the constant debate over values & policy that makes democracy what it is.

Whether or not you think it 'matters', the fact is that no individual will change the outcome of an election through their vote alone. Again, what conclusions you draw from that reality are your own. And by the way, people make irrational decisions all the time. When you buy a lottery ticket, you're making an irrational decision. And your chances of winning are still better than the chances of your vote deciding an election (your chance of deciding a state is roughly 1 in 10 million, which is incredibly low but the chance of that state deciding an election adds a whole different layer and makes it much more unlikely than it already is)

If you're looking for further reading, I would direct you to any of these:

https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Theory-Democracy-Anthony-Downs/dp/0060417501?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Collective-Action-printing-appendix/dp/0674537513?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice

https://www.princeton.edu/ceps/workingpapers/196farber.pdf

http://reason.com/archives/2012/10/03/your-vote-doesnt-count

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory

I would highly recommend Anthony Downs and Olson, the two books off of Amazon

I think that's a rather simplistic understanding of it all, OP. You have the gist of it right, though.

Essentially, women have what you might call a dual sexual strategy. They need resources and protection to help them survive and raise their children they have to adulthood, and they want their children to have "good genes." Unfortunately finding a man capable of providing both is not always possible, so you get things like Simon Cowell cuckolding Andrew Silverman by impregnating his wife. for example. This is largely why you see fat ugly rich men with hot wives, because they can't get a moneyed man who looks like a male model, so many of them settle for a moneyed man and screw good looking guys on the side. Men who have money but not looks should really, really, really make sure any children a woman claims are his has are actually their own with DNA paternity tests.

I think also a lot of today's sexual marketplace phenomenon such as the male virgin trope (as seen with /r/foreveralone posters--almost exclusively male) is explained by this. This is a day and age where women don't necessarily need men. So a large percentage of men who are simply not higher end physically attractive but yet not wealthy either are left essentially involuntarily celibate because women can either support themselves or get money to subsist off the welfare state without needing to trade sex with these men for resources.

Here's a relevant quote from a book you might want to read on this subject called The Red Queen.

> There has been no genetic change since we were hunter-gatherers, but deep in the mind of modern man is a simple hunter-gatherer rule: strive to acquire power and use it to lure women who will bear heirs; strive to acquire wealth and use it to buy affairs with other men’s wives who will bear bastards . . . Wealth and power are means to women; women are means to genetic eternity.

> Likewise, deep in the mind of modern woman is the same hunter-gatherer calculator, too recently evolved to have changed much: strive to acquire a provider husband who will invest food and care in your children; strive to find a lover who can give those children first-class genes. Only if she is very lucky will they both be the same man . . . Men are to be exploited as providers of parental care, wealth and genes.

That isn't what racism is. Racism is prejudice or discrimination rooted in a belief of superiority of one race over another. That there are differences in the world navigated by black people and the work navigated by white people that puts different standards on behavior isn't racist, it's culturally responsive.

We all navigate our personal worlds recognising that there are groups we are part of and groups that we are not,and adjust our behavior accordingly. You speak differently with your friends than with your parents, and cringe when your parents try to speak with you and your friends the way way you do, because it rings false, coming across as them play-acting at being part of your group. Parents tpyically love their kids to death, and kids love their parents, but your parents and your friends are different. And you may see your black and white friends as just your friends, but I guarantee your black friends see you as their white friend, because your life is not their life and your culture is not their culture. In the same manner, a rich kid may just have friends, one of whom is poor, but guaranteed that poor person views them as their rich friend, different from their other friends. This is part of the way in which privilege plays out. Those with it often don't recognize its role in insulating them from harsher aspects of life common to those without it.

The N-word was and is used to denigrate and dehumanize blacks by whites. The current internal use of it in black culture can be viewed as a cultural identifier that says, "Hey, we're in this together, dealing with the past and currentjust trying to live our lives while a lot of white people still don't see us as individuals, but just another, n-word." You aren't part of that culture and can't be, because society at large doesn't view you as black or treat you as such. So you don't get to play you are and then complain that people are being racist when they tell you you're acting inappropriately at best, and veering towards abetting racism.

They may tell you they don't sit in the student section because it isn't cool, but the deeper reason is that they probably don't feel comfortable. There are a lot of reasons that could exist for that. What percentage of your school's teachers are black? What percentage of the administrators are black? What percentage of your student government is black? Does your school have a dress code that specifically targets dress or hairstyles common within their communities? Being a majority isn't what matters. What matters is having a voice, having a say, and having ownership. You see it as your school, but do they, or is it just a school that they attend.

You should read, Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria: and other conversations about race.

>Seems to me, if you wanted to be in good shape, there are much better ways to do it then spending months training to run an large yet arbitrary number of miles.

Most people do not run marathons simply to 'be in good shape.' That's one benefit of many but an erroneous framing of the issue. You can run to set a goal and meet it. It's not arbitrary; it has a history.

This usually starts out running a lower set of miles and working up. It's seeing tangible benefits for a constructive use of time. This is an important mental foundation of any kind of running but it often feeds into shorter-distance runners pushing themselves to a limit they've never envisioned themselves meeting. This is an emotional high that is very hard to match, though it is not exclusive to running.

Also, some people simply enjoy running. The fact that you see it as merely something to do to stay healthy is inevitably going to ignore that it is also something people can do for fun even if it's not your thing. I don't really see why people enjoy yoga even if I acknowledge some health benefits, but people who take part in yoga are also part of a community and a subset of fitness culture and also enjoy the act of taking part in it.

Building on that, there is a running community, ranging from ultra-marathon runners (if you think ~24 miles is bad, try 100+) to Hash Harriers. Individuals coming together as a group to set a goal and push each other is something from which a lot of people derive personal utility.

Finally, there's nothing that says long-distance running is ipso facto bad for you simply because it is long-distance. There is an argument to be made that much of human evolution focused in some part on the necessity of running for survival. You also need to acknowledge that some people, such as the Tarahumara, have an entire culture that revolves around long-distance running that surpasses the average marathon and colors everything ranging from education and holidays to courting and dispute revolution.

I can't really speak for nipple issues because I wear a sports bra, but needless to say it really shouldn't be enough to tip the scales from all of the above just because it doesn't fit one's neat aesthetic preference for athletic beauty.

Doing something for personal reward, community, and culture is not masochism.

EDIT: I forgot to add that marathons are super accessible. You don't even need to formally sign up for an event in order to run one. It's an egalitarian form of competition - either against yourself or others - that basically requires a shirt, shorts, shoes and fortitude. Some even view shoes as optional. Compare that to hockey, golf or football where they require investment in protective gear or pay-per-play course access at the least (at the most, a membership at a club.)

> One more question I would like to present is how did I get awarded the conscious of xSaintJimmy, and not somebody else, such as Barack Obama, or a citizen of Zimbabwe in poverty?

Well, it seems to me that one of the simplest things we would have to say about a consciousness is that it is a thing which can have thoughts - in fact, how else could we differentiate one consciousness from another if not be the thoughts which they each have? Now memory certainly seems to involve thought right? If we consider memory-thoughts and other thoughts (and memories of other thoughts, and thoughts about memory-thoughts, and so on) to all be particular thoughts held by some consciousness, it appears as if two people's thoughts and memories would differentiate them. But hang on, what is that consciousness if not something which has just those thoughts? What would it mean for you to be 'awarded' the consciousness of the impoverished Zimbabwean? Would that still be 'you?' If 'you' (as in 'your consciousness') is just that thing which has your thoughts and memories, and having the Zimbabwean's consciousness meant having his thoughts and memories - well how could 'you' be both 'you' and 'him'?

On top of all this, if consciousness is being 'awarded', whoever's doing the awarding certainly has a peculiar selection process; we don't see rocks, trees, or the number three getting this award - just people (arguably, maybe some animals too). But all people all the time? What about infants or embryos? Perhaps the former is arguable, but would the latter really be 'conscious'? Between this, our considerations on memory, and evidence like this, consciousness seems less 'awarded' than gradually developed; intellectually, personally, and biologically - after all, for 15-24 months of your life, your consciousness didn't even involve a 'you'.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, I would definitely recommend Hofstadter's 'I Am a Strange Loop' - compared to most philosophy it's a great read, and while not exactly comprehensive, it's an engaging treatment of this sort of philosophy of mind.

>You're still talking about removing the power from somewhere between 49 (NE) and 424 (NH) people, and placing it in the hands of one person.

And?


>In the exact same ways that Legislatures would, but with far more efficiency. would only need to act "at [their] pleasure" while a bad actor in the Legislature would need to build a consensus of somewhere between 25 and 214 people.

Please read what I wrote. OR if you prefer the phrasings of a nobel prize winner, read this for the same argument. To repeat, the order of preference is simple. A senator that does your bidding is more valuable than what you get for being corrupt. Legislators, however, cannot make senators do their bidding, for a variety of reasons. One governor, however, can.

>If a group of people in the government cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of the people they represent, why do you think moving to a single point of failure would improve things?

Because I've bothered to actually study how legislatures work, what they're good at, and what they're bad at.

If you find the video interesting, I highly recommend the book on the same subject. I'm reading it right now, and if offers a pretty good case (so far) that we should be optimistic about the future, largely by showing that humanity and life has been consistently getting better throughout history so far. We have a natural tendency to assume the past was better than it really was.

The internet is a very good place to go for people who are very worried about what other people believe. It's not so good at changing anyone's behavior, since you can't observe others' behavior through a computer. But you sure can tell people they are wrong and demand that they agree.

That means that the vegans you're encountering online aren't representative of all vegans. They're just the vegans who are very worried about what they and other people believe. By definition, that's not going to be a very humble subset of vegans.

Most vegans change other people's minds far away from the internet. They do it by simply purchasing, preparing, and eating vegan food, and when asked why they eat that way, explaining their position simply and without judgement.

> I also can't mention to anyone I know that I'm eating vegan because of the obvious social consequences.

I don't know if that's true. I don't think many people experience social consequences for their diet alone. Here's what I do if I don't want to talk about my reasons for being vegetarian, but someone asks me. I say, "Oh, you know--the usual reasons." If they press, I say, "Animal rights, environmental impact, that kind of thing." And I always go out of my way to explain that I "just ate less meat" for a while before becoming a full vegetarian. And also make sure I compliment others' omnivorous meals so people know I'm not judging anything as personal as their diet.

There's a wonderful book called Eating Animals whose author, I think, takes a very reasonable and humble approach to the ethics of eating meat.

Check out Ann Transon, and other documented female 100mi. runners. While men have outperformed her, she did hold the record for a time and even now her record is only beat by about a minute, which is negligible over the course of 100 miles. While men will tend to outperform even in these cases, the time differences are multiples smaller than they are in sprinting and marathons.

Some of the theory behind why can be found here. He wrote a book on it called Born to Run if you're interested in looking into the original source materials or criticisms against his methodology. I have the book on order, but I find the theory behind why this might be the case pretty compelling.

*edit: let me go ahead and caveat that by saying while a minute is anything but negligible for athletic purposes, it's more than sufficient to make my point about men and women hunting or at least traveling for the hunt together. While many results are less fantastic, it seems that it's not uncommon for the long distance men and women to be only a few minutes apart.

Without disagreeing on subjects in which i'm unlearned, I do have a point about genetics. Some scientists are coming to the conclusion that genetics plays a vastly larger role in our development, personality, potential, behavior, etc. than 20th century psychologists wanted to admit to. (Source: Steven Pinker.) It's not as simple as "after fetal development, they do literally nothing." That initial development has very far reaching consequences on nearly every aspect of your life afterwards.

Yes, there is free will and everyone is their own person. We may get to make our own decisions, but we all have to make do with the hand we're dealt.

How this plays into Male/Female and Man/Woman and gender roles, I am no expert. Perhaps the gender dysphoria is set up in our genes, perhaps it's environmental, perhaps it's an interaction between the two that occurs in the womb. Others may be better able to say than I.

The best answer to that is with a large portion of the population caring for some dogs, caring about the abuse of dogs under other's care, it becomes too morally confusing to eat other dogs.

Some one else referenced Some we love, some we hate, some we eat, and it really is just the fact that these need to be distinct categories for things to be simple.

There is proof of dogs being humans companions for thousands of years (last I remember, don't have a source), and dogs have been beneficial companions. So that decision has just been made through time, and there really is no reason to change it. Except it is different in different cultures, and that also stays the same.

I think this is the most important comment here. Do not confuse macroeconomics with other microeconomics-based fields of economics.

> Economists seem hopelessly rooted in the worship of figures like Smith, Ricardo, Keynes, and Marx, stubbornly committed to reworking their theories into something that sort of fits the economic realities they can't ignore and jives with the political principles they like.

A good and honest microeconomist, whether they be a labor, welfare, education, transportation... economist will not adhere to the beliefs of classic figures. They will use the tools available to better understand how people work and what are the possible reactions to certain events, policies, etc. Nowadays most microeconomists use larger and larger databases and run statistical models to test their theories. I believe that this can be called "hard science" – even if you did not create the data like you would in a medical experiment but rather recorded it from the world

> It continues to be rooted in empirically invalidated and scientifically outdated ideas like humans being fundamentally individualistic and rational simply because that is the way Western society currently likes to understand itself. The fact that this has gone largely unchallenged in the field...

We, economists do understand that the current models may not be the best even in micro. Please look into behavioral economics, for example papers by Matthew Rabin or the "pop-science" book Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein. It is an axiom in modern economics that people are rational. I understand that OP is confused by this because sometimes "irrational" behavior can be observed. My personal view is that it is the other way around: no behavior is irrational, on the contrary: we have to find the way that it is rational. Maybe it is important for you that the other person is not much better off than you are. Maybe it is too costly to obtain information. Maybe your preferences are such that in dire financial situations your immediate gratification becomes so important that you make financially undesirable decisions. These are good points – and, if they prove to be important (through rigorous statistical/econometrical testing supported by a theoretical framework), they should be included in further models.

How do you interpret this quote?

" I read Betty Friedan’s book [The Feminine Mystique] because I was very curious about it, and it’s so whiny, it’s just enough to drive a modern person mad to listen to these suburban housewives from the late ’50s ensconced in their comfortable secure lives complaining about the fact that they’re bored because they don’t have enough opportunity. It’s like, Jesus get a hobby. "

> highschool-university girls/boys

You observe these people not matching up, and propose a theory. Other commenters have pointed out problems with your theory (if makeup didn't work, people wouldn't use it).

Here's another theory that fits the facts, and also explains why people use make-up.

• people are highly selective about who they match up with, and instinctively know that in HS/Uni, there's really no urgency.
  
• people don't really know 100% if they are a 5 or 7 or 9. Even if they do, it makes sense for a 5 to aim for a 9 when there's still time to be choosy. They might get lucky, but if not, it's no great loss, there's still time. Artificially bumping their number with make-up or clothing or regular gym visits increases their odds of getting lucky.
  
• Partly, in HS/uni, people aren't actually trying to find their match, their are practicing the social queues that they'll need when they do try.
  
• It's only when the pool starts to deplete as people actually get engaged and married that people start to settle for matches at their "actual" numbers.
  
• most importantly all this is subconscious, people play these strategic dating & mating games without really being aware of what they're doing.
  
  Here's a book I'd recommend that sheds some light on this whole topic.

Wow. Well I apologize for being lazy and posting an unreliable source. However I think you wasted your time "debunking" that article. Firstly, both of your sources are the same thing. Secondly here and here: "http://www.metabolismjournal.com/article/S0026-0495(01)73890-5/abstract" are two more reliable sources. The purpose of these studies are to explain why African American men are at a dramatically higher risk for prostate cancer.

That was not my main point anyways. My point was "pseudo-science" is called when it involves racial differences, even if the reasoning is sound.

> IQ is heritable. It is also influenced by numerous other factors, as listed in your wiki link, such as access to education, health, nutrition, pollution, socio-economic status, etc, etc, etc.

Of course it is. It is influenced by environment and also genetics.

> There is a shitton of studies showing this. However, there is not a single credible study which remotely concludes in any way that race and IQ share a causal relationship.

Have you heard of The Bell Curve and The g Factor?

> Never heard of the guy. Sounds interesting. I'll look into it.

Oh are you familiar with most human genetics professors? Yes, do look into it. I provided you two sources.

> But that doesn't mean big brains = big smarts.

It addresses that in the article

Alperovitz is talking about his book. Zinn about his book. I'm not trying to sell you stuff, or convince you to read the whole thing. But they aren't just pulling stuff out willy nilly. They are respected historians. Here is a link to an excerpt from Zinn's book.

While I don't disagree with you, I'm fundamentally not libertarian.
If using drugs had no impact on those around you, then yes, definitally legalize.
If however using drugs does effect those around you (through direct threat to their health and well-being, or indirect societal costs of healthcare etc.), then the use of drugs should be discouraged.

I would argue that legalization is good, as criminilazation has been proven, at least in this case, not to be an effective detriment to drug use. But I would also say that drug use should be treated as a health issue, rather than a criminal issue. If the use of drugs is bad, then we, as a society, should be working to reduce that use. Finding the most effective ways to treat harmful drug use (which, as pointed out elsewhere is not all drug use) seems like a good idea.
Using behavioural economics (i.e. Nudge https://www.amazon.ca/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/014311526X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498670447&sr=8-1&keywords=the+nudge) would be my preferred approach to handling drugs.

You should read the book [Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers] (http://www.amazon.com/Cosmopolitanism-Ethics-World-Strangers-Issues/dp/039332933X) by A.K. Appiah, an ethics specialist at Princeton (or is he at Columbia now?), the reason being that your understanding of the term multiculturalism is confused, and the exercise of organizing the multiple ideas and questions you have in some systematic way will certainly clear up some of your concerns. The part of Appiah's book that doesn't deal with terminology will give you something to think about in regards to questions that aren't answered by filing, and then you can come back and ask a more precise question on CMV.

Regarding your original proposition you should add this book to your reading list.

There's a really excellent book I read about the psychology involved with our inconsistent views on animals.

Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat by Hal Harzog

It's very fascinating and definitely worth the read. I usually have a harder time reading a non-fiction book cover to cover but I couldn't put this one down.

Basically, Herzog breaks the animal kingdom into three categories:

• Some we love - pets, companion animals, etc
  
  
• Some we hate - animals that we have contempt for - pests - creatures considered unclean, and associated with filth
  
  
• Some we eat - livestock - animals for human consumption
  
  The way we think about animals changes completely based on these categories. An animal can usually be put in one of these groups, and there's rarely any crossover or ambiguity. These divisions do change however across cultures, but the book is mostly about modern Western ideas on animals.

I have a book for you to read...

They had a surveillance state and it was effective...

https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Inquiry/dp/0060589469

This is the book in question. I linked to an article about it elsewhere in the comment chain, but this is the book that is the source of the quote. It is by a former President of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City.

When asked about the book in 1999, Trump said "The stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true." Here's a link for that.

I don't hold onto references. Why would I?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Factor-Evolution-Behavior-Intelligence/dp/0275961036

https://iq-research.org/en/page/average-iq-by-country

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

Maybe you are just within your ideological bubble within google? it has been know to happen... unless maybe they only hire progressives now? you know the memo did claim conservatives didin't feel confortable coming out, neither did classical liberals, and im sure libertarians neither... anyways.. here is a recompilation of people who claim other sciences disagree on social constructionism of gender, or at least that is more defined by Biology that they claim.

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Gender-Matters-Teachers-Differences/dp/0767916255

https://econjwatch.org/articles/undoing-insularity-a-small-study-of-gender-sociology-s-big-problem

https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://youtu.be/cQNaT52QYYA

https://youtu.be/rBNtOCCSSRc

https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Inquiry/dp/0060589469

It's rad, but avoid hallucinogens as you near the end.

While we're making book recommendations, you should try this, this, or this. Or maybe these, or this, or hell, this if my summary of the current situation of the state as universal malefactor and the alternatives as looking better every day are unconvincing to you.

As for some misguided belief that the people will "rise up" in some faux revolution with onward marching and people's councils and all that kind of jazz; not at all, generally speaking, people are stupid. For example those that think that it's a paranoid fantasy the state operates in its own interests first despite the cacophony of evidence supporting this fact all over the world and the simple fact that it has always been so. But people also don't like being fucked over, and they're not stupid enough that they won't take whatever actions are necessary to directly counteract being fucked over as those actions become clearer and easier for them to take.

The actual 'study' is a BMO fluffpiece that starts by talking about the history of superheroes. It links to this as its source, which in turn finally links us to the source of the statistic that the first two were misusing, which comes from this book. The book does not cite its sources, and just looking at the data I can see in the 'look inside' section, it seems like the author is cherry picking stats to try and make women feel empowered. This is fine, just not very scientific.

But, what we can do is look at her claims.

In the foreword of the book (presumably written by someone else, though I can't find who), the author makes a claim that women in the US control half of all private wealth at $14 trillion. A cursory google check shows that in 2005, when the book was written, private wealth in the US was about $60 trillion. Now I'm not a mathematician by any means, but I do believe that is closer to a quarter, not half.

In the first chapter, the author claims the number is $13 trillion, jumping to $20 trillion in the next 15 years. Given that we passed $93 trillion in 2016, $20 trillion by 2020 is sure as hell not going to be 'half'.

The short version of what I'm saying, I guess, is that you need to stop believing everything you read on the internet without actually checking your sources. Especially when the claim is fairly ridiculous on its face.

I don't think you can disprove an opinion. I think you can contest an opinion, however, and I think some opinions are better than others. Let's use a more straightforward example. "The world is a better place when black people are enslaved." There is no way to objectively prove this untrue, and yet I think it's a worse opinion than the inverse. And, y'know, contesting the other opinion in this case meant fighting a war. If you think that Peterson's opinion isn't that bad, that's a different matter, but it being an opinion does not itself change the value of contesting. Given that he thinks that women fighting the fact that they were forced into the role of housekeepers were just whining about being bored, and that their complaints were therefore trivial, I think his opinion is quite worth arguing.


Here's that quote, for the record: "I read Betty Friedan’s book [The Feminine Mystique] because I was very curious about it, and it’s so whiny, it’s just enough to drive a modern person mad to listen to these suburban housewives from the late ’50s ensconced in their comfortable secure lives complaining about the fact that they’re bored because they don’t have enough opportunity. It’s like, Jesus get a hobby."

one of Trump's former colleagues recalled him saying, "Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yarmulkes every day."

http://www.amazon.com/Trumped-Inside-Trump-His-Cunning-Spectacular/dp/067173735X

So I may have gotten Trump mixed up with another Republican canidate on the poor blacks. I Will edit that.

Trump wants to deport 11 million people forcefully who are mainly of Asian or Latino decent. He is not offering them a way to become citizens and he doesn't even talk much about massive reforms to our immigration system.

Trump was firm concerning restrictions in immigration. “I’m opposed to new people coming in,” he said. “We have to take care of the people who are here.”
Source: nytimes.com/library/politics , Dec 10, 1999

No that is him continuing to assert that Chinese and other Asian manufactoring countries have teamed up to create a conspiracy about global warming so they can bring us down or something.

He never talks this way about Germany or Poland or Russia. He seems to target Asian and Latino countries with 25% tarriffs and talks of commiting war crimes on the middle east.

The last few mass shootings were done by white Christians, some of the biggest attacks on America were done by White people but after 2 shootings we should force all Muslims to register and there should be a travel ban?

Again he maybe a friend of Israel but he is a bigot.

>There is no conceivable mechanism by which the brain could generate consciousness, yet I am conscious.

Yes there is, check out I am a strange loop..

>There is no conceivable mechanism by which the universe and everything came into existence, yet here it is.

Yes there is check out A Universe from Nothing or The Grand Design.

You can argue these all you want, but (here's the important bit), even if there weren't conceivable mechanisms for these things, and even if our prior probability was really low for these things, we have roughly 10^500 times more evidence for our existance, and for our consciousness (ignoring the semantic problem with this word), than we have for things like para-psychology.

If I walked around every day, communicating with others psychically, and, when I ask the neighbor for sugar psychically, she comes over with some sugar, and when I psychically scream "Stop!" everyone stops and stares at me, then yes, I would be a fool to dismiss psychic communication.

This is exactly what happens with consciousness. I notice that people behave exactly as they would as if they are conscious (myself especially). If they weren't conscious, they (and I) would behave differently, so their behavior is a testing mechanism.

This is exactly what happens with existence. I notice that things... exist, and behave as if they exist. If something didn't exist, I wouldn't expect everyone to behave as if it did.

It's all about probabilities. nd with para-psychology, the probability is simply really, really tiny.

>He that will only believe what he can fully understand has either a very short creed or a very long head.

Your leaving out the other half here. While it may be stupid to only believe thing you completely understand (by the way, I believe many things that I only partially understand, advanced mathematics, for example), the alternative, believing everything you don't understand, is far more "stupid. (really, personal attacks, is that necessary)."

>at the top of the screen? THE holocaust is a specific event involving nazi germany. It is distinct from A holocaust.


And, nobody uses Holocaust to address a genocide different than THE Holocaust.

>No grain was requisitioned.
This is a lie.

Trosky, exiliated in Mexico during those years, is a really great source about the USSR agriculture.


>declaring that the state now owns your grain is the definition of requisition.

Declaring the land state owned is requisition. Give that land to the peasants, in exchange of an annual production quota, isn't.


>I fail to see what you think you're proving with these numbers.

That the USSR had not INTENDED to starve the peasants.

>Again, you straight up deny a holocaust. There is no doubt that millions starved. The reduced demand quotas were still in excess of what was produced.

Again, you still doesn't know what a Genocide is. I never denied the deaths by starvation, I deny that the USSR had the INTENTION of starving them. Without intention, you CAN'T have a genocide.

>There is no doubt that the famine was denied, that international aid was refused.

So, they denied the famine, but they low the quotas and send food to the starving areas?? Strange.

Your view is just factually incorrect.

> It's 2018, and we're here still fighting poverty and hunger.

If anything, the rate at which we've been eliminating extreme poverty has been accelerating. We've also been steadily decreasing world hunger.

> We should be well into finding ways to lengthen lifespan/eradicate diseases, etc.

Life expectancy has been increasing through human history and much of that is attributable to better nutrition and the eradication of infections diseases (through sanitation and vaccination).

> We have wars, slavery, religion, absurd political ideations, and the list goes on.

All of that is much less today than ever, and has been decreasing throughout human history. I'll just reccomend Stephen Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature

> What's even more disheartening is the effort to try to stifle scientists.

It's a little hard to have a good metric for science and technology but:

The rate at which new innovations have been adopted has been getting faster.

The number of patents issued is growing exponentially as is the number of Phd's (which presumably correlates with working scientists) and the amount of scientific output has been doubling every nine years.

I suppose you could say that these things would be happening even more absent politics and greed, but I don't know how you'd demonstrate that one way or the other. The main thing I notice is that these trends are remarkably consistent throughout history, regardless of who's in charge or what's happening.

Which seems to undermine the argument that we could do much of anything to speed it up, or that "greed and politics" is substantively slowing it down.

It depends on how you view dropping the bomb and what it accomplished. My sources here are Alperovitz's book examining the decision to drop the bomb. Worth checking out the wikipedia page as well but it's nowhere as interesting as the book.

• First a technical note. Terrorism as defined by the FBI is a bit of a catch-22 "the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives". The unlawful part is complicated. The attacks were authorized by the president, therefore they were not unlawful. But you're probably not interested in technicalities.
  
  
• Next up, total war and war itself. The authority on war read by general all around the world today, and back then too, is a Prussian general named Carl von Clausewitz. His book is still one of the top 10 books that the US military academy recommends students read. Probably the single most famous and influential thing Clausewitz ever said was in section 24 of volume 1. It reads roughly "War is the continuation of politics by other means."
  
  But the 20th century changed war in a way that Clausewitz might not have expected, it introduced total war. A slugfest to the end where every part of every country is mobilized to the war effort. Civilians are as much part of the war effort as everyone else. We're no longer talking two professional armies on a field settling things, but a huge industrial enterprise dedicated to protracted multi-year multi-theater wars. This is why strategic bombing was ok for example.
  
  In this view the atomic bombs weren't different. They were a means to stop by way by attacking a fundamental resource of the war: the civilians that produce things. Both sides were ok with this and Japan also attacked civilians. In this way it's not terrorism, it's just total war. The total numbers are higher at about 350,000 Japanese civilians killed in strategic bombing, about 3 times as many as died due to the atomic bombs.
  
  
• The bombs weren't that special. The fire bombing of Tokyo, which was strategic bombing and within what all sides considered normal total war and all sides tried to engage in, killed about 100k people. That's about the same as Hiroshima and more than Nagasaki. Regardless of what you think about it both sides considered strategic bombing normal military operations and hoped it would lead to victory.
  
  German officials and generals credit the allied strategic bombing offensive with crippling their ability to continue the war and leading to a much earlier end. Donitz, who was in charge of the German navy and briefly replaced Hitler at the end of the war, even thought that the battle in the Atlantic might have gone a different way if it wasn't for strategic bombing. The actual impact on the war has been debated for a long time but it's clear that it was significant but not decisive. A lot more people would have died without it.
  
  
• The alternative to the bomb might have been far worse. The alternative to dropping the bomb would have to be an invasion of the home islands. Operation Downfall. That would have been a disaster for everyone. Particularly the Japanese.
  
  At one point the Joint Chiefs estimated that 1.6 million US soldiers would be injured and nearly 400,000 would die. Truman says that he was told that around 250,000 to 1 million US soldiers would die. You have to remember that the US had just finished with Okinawa and that was insanely bloody. It went far longer than expected and far more soldiers died than expected. About 20k US soldiers died, around 100k Japanese soldiers died (that is 100% of the soldiers died!), and about 40-50% of the population died. The Japanese ordered all civilians to commit suicide rather than be caught and unable to fight back.
  
  The home islands had 4 million Japanese soldiers, 31 million civilian conscripts. If it would shape out to be like Okinawa it would be the biggest blood bath in history. "Only" 8 million civilians and 10 million soldiers died in all of WW1! Japanese propaganda had already started trying to convince people that everyone should die on the home islands if it came to it with a propaganda campaign called "The Glorious Death of One Hundred Million" If the home island invasion was similar, and it would likely not be so this overstates matters, it could lead to more deaths than WW1!
  
  The numbers floating around were so huge that the US made 1.5 million Purple Hearts preparing for the invasion.. To this day no new Purple Hearts have been made. Most of the medals made were lost, stolen, and a much smaller number were awarded during the war, only about 500,000 of those remained. Today, despite 80 years of military action, there still exist 120,000 Purple Hearts and that's what soldiers get from the stock made for Operation Downfall. That's how serious this was.
  
  It's not clear the Japanese would have given up even with Operation Downfall! There was an idea at the time that they would fight to the bitter end and the US would be involved in a mass slaughter of civilians. That would have been far worse but even the optimistic numbers for Downfall involve far far fewer casulaties than the atomic bombs.
  
  
• People were dying elsewhere. The Japanese were killing people in China and Vietnam at huge scales. They created a massive famine in Vietnam that killed 1-2 million civilians. Had it continued far more people would have died simply by waiting out the Japanese or attacking them than died due to dropping the bombs. Many millions had already died due to the invasion of China by the Japanese and that conflict was still going strong. Millions more would have died.
  
  So you can see that technically it's probably not terrorism, that total war means you can't divide military from civilian affairs and that no side did this, that it was an accepted strategy by all sides to do strategic bombing against populations, that the alternative might have been far far worse, and that there was a certain urgency to the matter because civilians elsewhere in the world were dying due to the Japanese at immense scales (far higher numbers than died to the bombs).
  
  Now, this isn't without some debate. People accept the facts above but there are many other points one can make. For example, the Japanese had been putting out peace feelers for quite a while and their main reservation was preserving the Emperor. Some talk of a peace went back to 1944 but by early 1945 the emperor was the only sticking point. Truman didn't want this for one reason or another, the historical record is very unclear and muddled about why he didn't end the war earlier on this condition. Particularly because it's clear he didn't want to get rid of the emperor. There is some speculation that it was clear to everyone that the USSR was going to be an enemy and that this was part of the machinations around who would have influence where. The effect of the bombs on people's thinking is unclear, even in Japan. Some Japanese historians think the entry of the USSR into the war was the decisive factor and that the bombs played no role, while others think that the emperor was moved to act because of this new weapon.
  
  We'll probably never know what effect it had in reality so the debate is unlikely to ever be settled, but it is complicated and nuanced.