chmod600

"We did not take direct advantage of the benefit; but a reasonably well educated populace benefits me in a host of other ways."

But that's precisely the point: what does "well-educated" mean? If the money is going toward reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, then few will disagree. When the curriculum, environment, or manner of teaching drift into more controversial areas, then you might start to see things differently.

Imagine the school starts teaching things that don't align with your values, and they leave out things that do. How would you feel about the way your tax dollars are spent?

Public schools don't have some inalienable right to that money either -- they are entrusted with the money by popular vote. If we want that to continue, then there needs to be very broad consensus that the things teachers are teaching are the right things, or at least not the wrong things.

If you home school, you don't get the money back. Public school is something like $12k/yr. That's a lot of money that you're essentially opting out of.

For parents who do so for political or culture war reasons, that must seem profoundly unfair. To be driven out of the public schools means to be denied resources.

Public schools using public money should be especially sensitive and as neutral as possible on political or culture war issues. That's increasingly difficult, but without that, public school doesn't have a good future.

Normally schools are thought of as Democrat-controlled, but that's not true everywhere. So rather than just saying that everything is OK the way it is, think about how it will be when your political opponents are in control.

That's something I've wondered about for a while. Why?

Japan and Germany were two of the best foreign policy outcomes in the history of humanity. They were defeated decisively but not destroyed and they people were not subjugated for any long period of time (except East Germany). They recovered peacefully and their people are free and prosperous.

It's hard to think about for much time without coming to the conclusion that America did some important things right. But it's really out of fashion to say so nowadays.

WW2 was ended quickly and our two primary enemies became not just our allies, they also joined us as top-5 economic powerhouses. That's really something to be proud of on many levels.

The bombs were horrific but also seem likely to have contributed to that outcome.

"Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts."

That's the most controversial, because a lot of people want to be authorities and don't want to be questioned.

For instance, the origins of Covid... or really lots of things about the pandemic were pushed by authorities with little justification other than authority. It turns out many of those things were subsequently reversed or reasonably doubted.

The great thing about that idea is that I don't care about personal air travel, so a ban costs me nothing. I can feel good about myself without needing to think about my own excesses.

Sometimes life is better when you just accept that something is different but not necessarily worse.

Natural gas fireplaces aren't real wood-burning, and I can tell, but I just appreciate that they are way cleaner.

Now, furniture is a different story. Wood is much better than the engineered crap. Try lifting a modern piece that looks like wood and maybe has a thin layer of wood (very heavy and easy to damage) and then try lifting something made of real wood (light and strong).

The worst are floors with a thin layer of hardwood surface (a few mm) over some "engineered" material below making up the rest of the plank.

I'm not sure vinyl is indistinguishable from real hardwood, but I'd take it over a worst-of-both-worlds compromise.

Right. Social systems and the effects various interventions have are very complicated. The idea that some intervention is proven or disproven is, in all but the simplest cases, ridiculous.

Even with research, the results are going to be hard to understand and apply without unintended consequences, and whatever intervention is going to have mixed results even if the overall effect is positive.

"I guess when you're up against anti-vax fear mongering, you need to fight fire with fire."

That's seems like a dubious strategy likely to backfire. I hope you're not serious.

"Crime did rise nationwide in 2020 and 2021. The disruption caused by a deadly pandemic, a record increase in the availability of guns, a pullback of policing in some cities and perhaps other factors combined to create a surge in homicides and other crimes."

Why not look at those one by one?

Guns last basically forever, so I don't see how a spike in purchases followed by a drop in purchases would explain a spike and then a drop in crime. The guns are presumably still around.

Next, a pull-back in policing in 2020 may have reversed somewhat by now. A bad DA in SF was recalled. It's plausible that this explains at least a part of the spike followed by the drop.

I'd be interested in hearing other explanations. Maybe the criminals are busy with other things (jobs, etc.)? Maybe the free flowing pandemic cash drying up means less money to fight over? Maybe criminal-enablers (drug users, etc.) are busy with other stuff?

A lot of people have built the idea of being "right" so deeply into their identity that admitting they are wrong is unthinkable and traumatizing. They weave a narrative about how they were really right in some way.

Normally, people have been wrong so many times in their life that they learn to admit it, learn, and move on. Only if you are highly insulated from objective reality can you maintain some idea that being "right" is one of your qualities.

Where is such insulation from reality happening? College is the most obvious answer. Rather than being a place to be challenged intellectually, it has become a place to learn the current politically-correct perspectives and have them reinforced constantly.

I have no idea why someone at the NYT was not more skeptical of an official from one of the parties involved in the conflict. But once the headline goes out, they are "right" and that will never change.

There are different causes of violence and a ceasefire solves some kinds but not others.

For instance, fear is a major driver of violence: attack "them" to reduce their ability to attack "us". A ceasefire is a good solution here, because it develops a mutual trust that you'll leave each other alone.

But if there are other reasons for attack, e.g. one party is unhappy with the status quo and sees something to be gained by violence, a ceasefire doesn't work. They will just wait for the next opportunity and strike again, regardless of how peaceful the situation is.

I'm not making a moral statement here, just a practical one. A ceasefire today would not magically make everyone content to leave each other alone.

Bread doesn't have fructose, right?

I wish there was some easy way on either the cable or the port to just disable data. 90% of the time I just want power.

That at least clarifies that the antecedent of "it" is WFH rather than RTO (which the grammar of your original comment implies).

But the comparison to communism is not along the axes one might expect, so it makes the relationship to your point a little hard to follow.

Can someone recommend a relatively short and disinterested survey of the issues and conflicts in that area?

I'm not looking to be an expert, but just to understand why various potential solutions are unacceptable. For instance, what's wrong with the two-state solution?

"Why do you think Paul Graham compares it to communism?"

Link, please?

You are expressing your low-cost lifestyle, and that's great. But I'd also like to hear about the benefits of life you are experiencing within that lifestyle.

At 8 years old I'm not sure what the downside is to waiting a bit. It's not like she's accruing vet school debt right now.

"Your work computer" is (mostly) an oxymoron. If you didn't buy it, its their computer.

Considering that the construction costs are identical, there needn't be a very strong reason to do it one way vs the other. Any reason would be enough, which might include some remote possibility of a battle advantage.

Intellectually I understand this, but it's really really hard (for me) to consistently avoid this fallacy.

Both concepts can be true. A lot of people, especially in the developed world, have way more opportunities than they realize. Those that take on some (often very modest) risk to exercise those opportunities are self-made.

It would be ridiculous to say that Picasso didn't make a painting because someone else supplied the paint. He's the one that saw the paint and the canvas and put them together in a unique way.

Social phenomena (such as crime) are not distributed evenly.

Your first sentence is regrettable in an otherwise informative post.

There are tons of laws, and part of the problem is that many laws are just, well, stupid and poorly-implemented.

California has some kind of review process for guns themselves, in order to go on the "Roster" from which normal people can buy them. This is a highly restricted list that excludes most new models even if they are functionally the same. It serves no useful purpose and does nothing to reduce the danger of guns in any way, it's just to interfere with lawful gun owners who want more modern models, and cause trouble for manufacturers who need to keep producing old ones.

If you were a gun owner, you'd probably think that they really are out to get you, and you may question whether those who passed the law even care about bringing firearm deaths down. That makes it a lot harder to work on legislation that's actually useful.

And laws that are actually useful, like those that put violent people in jail (and put them back again if they are caught with a gun after they get out) have been tried and they do work. But a lot of cities are not enforcing those laws consistently.

Could more be done? Yes, I think so. But compromise is a two-way street where both sides are trying to create a better balance. As long as "compromise" always means a one-way ratchet of gun restrictions, the other side will resist it with whatever they have.

By far the easiest win would be to enforce laws more strictly against people who have proven themselves to be violent.

Many homicides are committed by people who already have a violent past or other very troubling crimes. Putting them in jail, and preventing them from purchasing guns for at least some time after release, would dramatically bring down homicide numbers.

And once they are a prohibited person, if you find them with a gun put them in jail again.

No constitutional challenges and no new laws even need to be passed. Just police and DAs doing their jobs.

Unfortunately in a lot of cities the clearance rate on murders is pathetic. In Chicago it's about 50%, and it's only that high because so many suspects are found dead.

https://wgntv.com/news/wgn-investigates/rise-in-cpd-murder-c...

Information is hidden when we generalize too much.

How many are innocent children (or teens) vs crime-or-drug-involved teens? Note: this is not to say deaths of criminals is somehow OK, just that any policy prescription would be very different.

Similarly, mixing homicide and suicide obscures meaningful policy discussion.