vict7

I appreciate the discussion. Not entirely sure why you appear to be becoming somewhat incensed. I’ve been engaging in good faith.

I am aware of MAGA arguments and the continued expenditure of large amounts of money on other countries. I don’t think you have connected that well to inequality however.

I’m surprised that you treat the current way things are done in this country as monolithic. There are countless parameters to play with here… not just “what we have always done” and “throw all of that out and do everything different”.

> No it's not impossible to have a market the size of ours with less inequality.

Good, we agree on this.

That’s a really interesting argument that I hadn’t considered. The US certainly has the unenviable position of being the world’s “policeman” for lack of a better term. Other countries wanting help from the US, yet also maligning it. Which… is probably more fair now than before to be sure.

> Ironically it's the fact that our economy is forced to be large enough to pay for everyone else's defense that forces the economy into more inequality than there would be were America only responsible for its own sovereignty.

This is the part I’m not fully understanding. Are you saying it’s because the US is forced to spend more on defense leaving fewer resources to reduce inequality? I don’t see how suspect people like Musk are a necessary outcome of this paradigm... I do get that there is an insane amount of money pumped into the military-industrial complex though.

If you take the (naive) perspective that returning to a higher level of taxation on the most wealthy would increase government income, reducing inequality is just a beneficial side-effect there.

Edit: I apparently missed your point about inequality correlating to the size of an economy. Are you saying it’s not possible to have an economy as large as the US with less inequality than is currently present?

America has higher levels of inequality than any of its post-industrialized peers [0]. It’s absolutely an issue here. Combine that with the ability to purchase political power, and you get the mess we have today.

I think we actually agree on most things; I generally agree with all the rest of your points. Liberals may as well be controlled opposition now.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_Unite...

> And then the other party that claims anyone who's done better than anyone else is necessarily immoral.

This is both a strawman and dismissing a real issue. Inequality is a real problem that has a corrosive effect on democracy. Also, American liberals have done little if nothing to reduce the gross inequality in this country.

So no, the guy that said “nothing will fundamentally change” is not helping reduce inequality nor demanding ideological purity in that regard.

For mobile HN, I have been using the Hack [0] app for some time now and found it to address some of your wishlist items.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hack-for-hacker-news-yc-reader...

> relative lower quality in other fields except technology

As a political aficionado, some of the political takes are surprisingly primitive given the seemingly high IQ here.

It reminds me of the phenomenon wherein you trust the articles you read written by journalists, until you read an article where they are opining on a topic you actually know something about… and realize they have no idea what they are talking about.

No hate to anyone, just wanted to provide a perspective on my version of you seeing people talk about medicine.

I was fortunate enough to grow up without cable television. Any clip I see from Fox/CNN is usually a bunch of inauthentic, ignorant talking heads that I wouldn’t even trust to tell me the weather.

I’m curious at how many Millennials and younger actually watch the news with any consistency. My sense is it’s mostly older folks that still get their info from TV.

AKA Roko’s Basilisk

False equivalence. Remind me what political power Unicorn Riot actually possesses compared to the party currently controlling the federal government. Unicorn riot hasn’t “done” anything because they don’t run the government.

Statements or actions taken by some fringe group are in no way equivalent to statements and actions taken by the actual government—which is currently being run based on fringe right wing ideology.

I have a decent rig I built (5900x, 7900xt) of course it blows my M1 MacBook out of the water.

You seem like a reasonable person that can admit there’s some nice things about Apple Silicon even though it doesn’t meet everyone’s needs.

That’s my bad for not clarifying I am talking solely about the laptop form factor here. It’s a given that laptops are not comparable in performance to desktops. In terms of laptop hardware, Apple Silicon performs quite well

Nice assumptions though.

It’s not just my opinion that Apple silicon is pretty performant and efficient for the form factor; you can look up the stats yourself if you cared to. Yet, it seems you may be one of those people that is hostile towards Apple for less well-founded reasons. It’s not a product for everyone, and that’s ok.

Curious perspective. Apple silicon is both performant and very power efficient. Of course there are applications where even a top spec MacBook would be unsuitable, but I imagine that would be a very small percentage of folks needing that kind of power.

Sadly, the choice is usually between Mac and Windows—not a Linux desktop. In that case, I’d much prefer a unix-like operating system like MacOS.

To be clear, I am not a “fanboy” and Apple continues to make plenty of missteps. Not all criticisms against Apple are well founded though.

False dichotomy.

^ Snide internet comment that is wrong

> You will have to learn C eventually

Quite a bold assertion. I learned C in university—and while I am sure it was beneficial to my development as a programmer—there have been exactly 0 times since then that I have needed to read or write C.

That’s just my anecdotal experience, but I’d reckon many people can have a very successful professional career while never having touched C.

As someone that owns the (now discontinued) original Steam Controller with the touchpads, I imagine the touchpads on the SteamDeck are much better? It’s probably common knowledge at this point that the Steam Controller appeared to be a kind of testing ground for some aspects of the Steam Deck.

There's always https://www.reddit.com/user/useles-converter-bot/comments/ if you're looking for useless conversions.

I am deeply sorry to hear that happened to you. I completely agree that a possibly positive encounter with a stranger is not worth the potential of assault--verbal or otherwise. I sometimes feel limited by this, but it ultimately feels worth it to help avoid some monstrous people.

I thought they denied oxygen to the fetuses of the lower castes for set amounts of time?

To provide an additional example. Unelected ex-senator Kelly Loeffler's husband is chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. She made trades using non-public information. How is this sort of conflict of interest legal?

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/oct/31/raphael-wa...

I've always been a big Monokai fan. Usually Monokai Night now. I did try out this theme recently and really enjoyed it with the caveat that my @emotion/core CSS template literals weren't being highlighted correctly.

I notice some themes have more robust syntax highlighting out of the box. Is that something I can tweak easily?

I can't remember the last time I tried a light theme in VS code. But I will have to give them another chance.

Does programming at day/night factor in what sort of theme you prefer?

I can definitely confess to being hot headed at times. I agree with you about the lack of data and will do my best to consider this going forward.

Hey I truly appreciate the honesty! I can't easily assess the exact reason why I got downvotes without comments like this. Thanks for filling me in!

As someone that just stopped lurking, it's clear downvoting is used primarily as a "disagree" button. Case in point, this comment I'm replying to. I believe they're making a meaningful contribution to this discussion. Yet the downvotes have already commenced.

Isn't this still a form of control? Like the idea here is to psychologically manipulate people to have different values? What happens when some people don't respond to this proposed conditioning?

I would like to believe I have somewhat of a unique perspective on this. I was raised with the exact cultural values you talk about, and I ultimately chose to reject them (at least partially).

However, I do want to acknowledge what seems like a destabilizing, negative effect "hookup culture" or the like has had on society. Dating apps are part of this whole issue as well.

My own position is that I want to be in a committed relationship but never married. So I guess you could peg me as a serial monogamist.

You seem to know a lot about this subject! Years ago, an acquaintance of mine told me of their idea to use railguns to remove space junk. Is this a remotely feasible solution?

You could say it's special pleading on my part, but for the continuation of homo sapiens, sex is required (at least for now).

> violence, incest, tribalism, and other undesirable evolutionary behaviors

None of the explicitly mentioned things in this list are similarly essential to the continuation of humans and human civilization. Like violence may in reality be unavoidable, but that doesn't mean it's strictly necessary.

But I do agree that appeal to nature alone isn't very strong. Like to me, I guess it's moreso what seems like extreme impracticality in trying to control people's sexuality to a finer degree than is already in place.

Excellent point! Seems like some are more interested in pushing their own beliefs and morality on others rather than examining the evidence of what makes effective (or ineffective) public policy.

Sex is something hardwired into people. Basting in this example? Not so much.

Like just replace the word basting with the word sex in your example.

"The government tried outright banning sex"--sounds pretty ludicrous! Has any government even tried such a thing in all of history?

Personally, I welcome the prospect of my tax dollars being used to help people rather than kill and maim them. The amount each individual has to contribute for such a thing is likely incredibly low as well.