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The internet also delivers mostly spam, and is still a public good.

The USPS needs reform, sure. But a public postal service which will deliver mail to everywhere, even at a loss, is fundamental to civilized society. Prior to the internet, this public good was more obvious. It's still needed.

Amazon delivers efficiently to 95% of addresses, so long as there's a profit to be had, and this is good for buyers. The USPS delivers to 100%, regardless of profit, and this is good for citizens and businesses - bills, legal documents, ballots and governments' communications are receivable at nearly every address in every state, thanks to the USPS. That's a tremendous public good.

If there were possible to talk about the American postal service non-ideologically, it would be a cinch to regulate away most junk mail, I imagine. Political oversight has in recent decades demanded the USPS be profitable, which misses its point.

Neither position is inherently absurd, nor is their contradiction.

A more thoughtful response might have taken the time to contemplate the origins of government and the relationship between “absurdity,” your understanding of government and of virtuous government, and of the post-enlightenment ideologies assumed natural to our societies; in truth the vague syllogism between law and privilege you present is not some physical reality or logical QED but a gestural summation of ideas only very lately arrived to human affairs. Contemplative silence is one among many more interesting responses that were available to you.

In short: it’s obvious that ancient institutions and modern humanism are absurdly dissonant. Cleary OP meant to provoke a reconsideration, not a restatement, of the obvious.

Ironically it is obvious that one should not bother trying to rescue internet comments from their own pig-headedness - but sometimes I do sorely miss past iterations of HN.

You're absolutely right. Once I saw you characterize a tax as a punishment, billionaires as "people who know how to invest [wealth] efficiently and distribute it," and wealth as solely the result of "build[ing] economically viable organisations," I dismissed the details of your argument.

Good god, man. This is slavish. And - I'll note - not unpopular, which is distressing.

Tax isn't punishment. Ever. Especially when tax rate is already so low that the proposed "emergency tax" is still less than historical income tax rates.

Tax is part of the social contract that allowed those billionaires the stability, educated workforce, infrastructure, safety from theft, etc, etc, etc, needed to build and maintain their wealth.

The idea that billionaires "invest [their wealth] efficiently and distribute it" is laughably sophomoric, a parody of the Gilded Age's self-serving justification for robber barons. Billionaires invest efficiently _for the preservation of their wealth across generations of their family_, only the most credulously optimistic model of capitalism supposes that this aligns with "distribution" (whatever that means - trickling down, eh?) or with the best investments for society at large.

Perhaps I am unsophisticated, but as a regular user of both Windows and Mac - Mac for work - I find Macs to have exceptional UX. I do not feel the pain that is regularly elaborated in blog posts such as this.

Among the best parts that Windows cannot come close to matching:

* I can use it precisely as just another unix machine, with Terminal (zsh is default!)

* Terminal integrates well with GUI tools

* GUI discoverability is straightforward, and Spotlight search almost always knows what I want

* Preferences are unburdened by crufted abstractions built atop one another (Control Panel and descendants)

* apps are clearly files, are easy to interact with using just the filesystem, are well-controlled by TCC, and poorly built installers are the exception, not the rule

* system notifications are respectful, controllable, and not a morass of spam

* the keychain is both secure and easy to interact with for non-technical users

* support.apple.com documentation is correct and easy to find

* "Help" menu item for a system utility never opens bing and searches $utility_name, which is Windows' latest laziness

* Wiping and reinstalling is not an ordeal

* iCloud backup just works

On the whole macOS pleases me immensely in comparison to Windows or Ubuntu+Gnome. The scrollbars are my most salient complaint, but merely launch regedit.exe to see how a GUI might be truly unusable.

> How do you copy-paste file or folder paths between terminal and Finder? Anyone?

Drag the file or folder from Finder to your terminal to copy the path.

To open a file or folder in Finder from your terminal simply run `open <path>`.

The open command also works with any url whose protocol has a registered handler, like slack:// or https://. With a path the file:// protocol is assumed, and Finder is its handler. Moreover since this is a unix system with good documentation, `man open` will help you with more advanced usage.

I’m no spy, but I believe your description of agents has always been true. Note that, outside fiction, “intelligence agent” is distinct from “intelligence officer.” The latter is a professional spy who recruits and handles the former from among regular people who might be leveraged, paid, or ideologically keen.

Only in popularizations are the two roles confused - though I suppose there are rare circumstances in which an officer goes undercover in order to directly pilfer secrets, as opposed to recruiting someone who can. Hard and rare one expects: language, culture and competent counter-intel have made recruiting someone already inside easier and wiser.

Also I don’t think competent professional spies have ever used “movie inspired” anything, but the generous interpretation of your comment assumes you meant the reverse.

But still a poor assumption to think the fiction ever got it right, starting with the confusion over what an “agent” is but including everything else.

Excepting Graham Greene’s “Our Man in Havana” and “The Quiet American,” which I suspect nailed the respective damnfool incompetence and arrogant ignorance of a certain type of mid-century patriot keenly. “Harlot’s Ghost,” though mystical, may also speak bizarro truth.

You could write that article, make the argument. The ability to do so does not imply equivalence, a balance of "completely right or completely wrong," in which no morally superior position is available.

This piece makes the key point against this view:

"Conspiracy has replaced ideology [in Russia], and for the most part that serves the Kremlin very nicely. You can argue back against an ideology through its own logic: Communist leaders could, at least in theory, be accused of failing to create the ideal society they promised. Conspiracy negates all criticism by accusing the critic of being a front."

Even if one notices the hypocrisy of Western history in view of liberal ideology, one is still supposing that the latter exists to guide the former. This is true even if a conspiracy towards oligarchy exists! The earnest and shared belief in a consistent vision of just society creates the political consciousness prerequisite for revolution or reform.

In contrast, to suppose that all actors' motivations are conspiratorial, all espoused values a sham for self-interest and power that cannot be acted upon, is to foreclose the possibility of reform - it is a false consciousness.

The kleptomaniac & self-contradictory 'Russian values' quoted here from Russia's new strategy paper expect such conspiratorial thinking from Russian citizens. The text's internal hypocrisy - and its hypocrisy in view of Russian history - do not matter. The response to such criticism is singular, and you have said it: "[all ideologies] are retroactive justification for [oppression]." None have any meaning or application.

Pomerantsev enlightens us by showing how this particular nonsense of 'Russian values' exists specifically to justify 'Information Sovereignty,' a euphemism for preventing Russians from hearing foreign ideas - an ancient tactic of oppression by enforced ignorance, dressed here in the finery of 'National Security.'

Your critical responses focus on parsing the meaning of "astronaut," or on the true utility of the job with respect to other non-human test pilots.

I leave all of that aside, and agree with you on egalitarian and emotional grounds. The term in America rightly has implications of public service - of deserving the fantastically unique opportunity of exploring space on behalf of all Americans by virtue of intelligence, diligence, and impeccable ethics. Topically, this might be compared to Olympians: though all extreme athletes perform extraordinary feats, Olympians carry an extra responsibility to represent us as a nation. So too with people called "astronauts."

Whether or not one agrees with this understanding, I believe it is the practical understanding underlying your (and my) insult at the use of this term.

1. The world is dangerous and people get hurt.

2. The Red Cross helps these people.

3. Their symbol is a tool which improves Red Cross's ability to help.

4. Misuse or casual use of the symbol dilutes its utility.

5. Therefore, please cease its casual use.

“[As an example of an increasingly unstable world,] … there have been 162 fatalities. [Therefore the value of the Red Cross symbol must be protected as it is desperately needed.]”

…

I will also add that in my experience a nicotine high only exists when consuming a large amount before you have developed a tolerance. I believe most addicts do not get real pleasure, either.

As a nicotine addict I caution you against assuming addiction is not looming. In my experience the onset of nicotine addiction is sudden and consuming.

For some time, perhaps, you smoke or vape merely socially, experimentally, after a whisky at a party. Then, suddenly, perhaps after one too many the night before, ferocious withdrawal threatens. It is not a slow process, but a sudden toggle.

On the main but with caveats, I agree with your argument, assuming nuance even where you do not elaborate it.

Our most important difference, I think, is around the significance and value of the hypocrisy of an ostensibly liberal system which nonetheless quietly affords the powerful with easy access to state-backed violence in the protection of their interests.

In my view, the presence of this hypocrisy is an abiding reminder to the civitas of the possibility of stable and positive change. It is the promise that such change will reaffirm, not diminish, the essence of one's culture and tradition. Just as a sinning Catholic retains the possibility of redemption by honoring their professed beliefs, a hypocritical yet liberal society has ready-made the justification and mechanism for reform. The nation may repent from its despotism and is naturally pressured to do so; what tyranny does exist must be hidden and so is neutered.

Take the French: since 1789 they have always managed to found a new, and hopefully slightly better, republic, even after interludes of imperial lunacy or foreign invasion. If you'll permit me to say so, their nation cannot escape from the hypocrisy of ruling by absolutism a people conscious of their own rights. In the extreme, this means violence, but in the smaller battles of society and change this means free protest, politics, voting, and yelling, as in America. Much - most - of the noise is in vain, but not always, and not in the matter of the most preciously held freedoms. To simplify: there, the state sins and fears the discovery of the people; in China the people sin and fear the discovery of the state.

I often feel in discussions like this that I am defending Americans from the charge of ignorance. We speak so loudly of our ideals that we perhaps beg for an insult to our intelligence, just as a common self-righteous blowhard would (hello).

And - by the fact of our empire our leaders' words carry an implicit threat, even when they speak to a laudable ideal. In the subtext I feel I am arguing for the existence of this empire. I feel I am arguing that the empire is a utilitarian good despite the arch-hypocrisy of the tyrannical, violent realpolitik that built it. I am not - though I am sure we would disagree ardently there as well.

> No matter how you get around it, as long as you have property you are doomed to live a subordinate life unless you're very lucky.

I would be curious to hear an elaboration this point.

In your view, protest never leads to change in America?

In your view, citizens of the US never visit or are visited by agents of some level of government?

In your view, the US government is not the collection of disparate power bases we see but actually a hidden monolithic “they,” with a discrete “intent” that is a composition of unspecified but doubtless nefarious interest groups?

In your view, China’s government is susceptible to radical yet peaceful change because of organized protest?

In your view, China’s government would never suppress organized protest? Or - perhaps - it suppresses protest because it would lead to change, and your view is that this is a more honest tyranny, echoing the Lincoln quote?

In your view, American local and federal governments have never reformed themselves, the variance of state laws, abolition, prohibition, the repeal of prohibition, civil rights and the expansion minority rights all being meaningless mirages? In your view this is because every hint of actual change is met with assassination or exile for some single protestor who matters more than every other?

If I’ve understood correctly, and with respect, I find these assertions absurd.

The Western concept of “freedom” - more precisely, of rights unalienably reserved to individuals, families, and private societies, even at the expense of optimal outcomes for society at large - does not assume or require the sensible judgement of its beneficiaries. As another poster alluded, this is a misconception of freedom’s purpose: it does not exist so that society may be optimally ordered, but because it is the necessary dignity (put otherwise, religiously: endowed by our creator) of a sentient human. To subordinate the individual to the needs of society for such crass goals as slightly increased economic productivity or a smarter generation of children is to deny that there may be a purpose to our existence beyond its own mindless perpetuation.

Moreover, there may be emergent boons in favoring the individual over society and the state. My ability to lead an idiosyncratic life, to make choices which may harm both me and the optimal operation of our society, allows for: subcultures flourishing unimpeded and providing joy to those who would otherwise be ostracized; clever eccentrics pursing new technology or new ways of living and thinking; the resiliency to change inherent in diversity, analogous to evolution.

Finally, I think your critique is less about the freedom of the individual and more the danger of unimpeded free enterprise acting on that freedom with ever improving and ever more terrible Skinner boxes of consumerism. It seems to me the best way to address this plight is not more restrictions on the choices of individuals - eg, spying on children to homogenize their behavior - but more restrictions on businesses. If one argues from the dignity of the individual, there is more room to restrict the freedom of capitalist enterprises than that of an individual human’s choices.

This is not a nuanced historical analysis, and therefore unlikely to be correct or even useful as an abstraction.

Some counter examples: 1861-1865, in which the Federal government raised an Army of the Republic to enforce its (just) will, going as far as burning Atlanta.

1880s, the brief period of the classic Wild West to which you perhaps allude, and in which the Sheriff - the personification of monopolized state force - was the totem of peace and prosperity; the mythical wanton violence of Billy the Kid etc was notable as a feared exception, not a norm.

1890s, the gilded age, the exception that proves the horror and economic maladaptation of private violence: Pinkertons, privately employed, violently suppressing the mere whisper of power and stability accruing to working men.

The economic progress of the 1800s in the US almost certainly had more to do with a frontier of development pressing across a vast and wealthy continent, fueled by prodigious immigration - and by the assurance that the government was the ultimate arbiter of disputes. There were, as a rule, no private armies removed from state legitimization. When there were, as in bloody Kansas, economic growth did not increase.

We absolutely can claim moral superiority, while being open to a critique of our hypocrisy - and to changing our ways based on this critique. To do otherwise than seek and claim moral superiority would be to concede to grim relativism; it would be to discard what progress we have made and what rights we still maintain; it would be to abandon an ideal that can yet still lead us to a better world.

Lincoln wrote, in reference to abolition, that he “[would rather move] to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.” [0] But the irony is that hypocrisy drove him and this nation to emancipation, and an improved iteration of the city on a hill.

0 - http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/speed.h...

Do you know what the euphemistic justification was? “Cleanliness”? I cannot think of one that is not absurd to even the dimmest ethno-nationalist of my imagination.

"All of this is for the very best end, for if there is a volcano at Lisbon, it could be in no other spot; for it is impossible but things should be as they are, for everything is for the best."

It well-known that Cuba has an impressive healthcare system and does not particularly need to be cited unless specific claims are made. Cuba is famous, for instance, for exporting doctors to other nations.

In any case, here is a short paper showing Cuba's healthcare outcomes are comparable to Canada and US: https://globalhealth.washington.edu/sites/default/files/50%2...

With respect, I think you rather missed his point. He is not making an argument that "Tracy Austin is really that boring," though he does set the reader up for this thought, so that he can playfully turn on it on the way to his conclusion.

Your analysis is a gesture towards his conclusion: "And that those who receive and act out the gift of athletic genius, must, perforce, be blind and dumb about it - and not because blindness and dumbness are the price of the gift, but because they are its essence."

Moreover, DFW speaks of the cliches evident in the internal narratives of athletic genius as, perhaps, perceived by their speakers as simple truths, imperatives to be acted on or ignored, not reflected on.

He also specifically calls out as foolish the idea that gifted athletes are dim, citing examples of technical analysis similar to the ones you've mentioned.

Finally, this piece is very specifically about the physical techne of athletes in relation to their internal and external narratives, which I, and I think DFW based on this piece, do not find of a kind with musical genius.

I am disappointed that this is a link to a YouTube video idly discussing a paper, when it could be a link to the paper.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.05300.pdf

> The duration, depth and relative achromaticity of the dip mark this out as an exceptionally unusual event, whose secret has still not been fully revealed. We find two further candidates in the VVV survey and we suggest that these systems, and two previously known examples, may point to a broad class of long period eclipsing binaries wherein a giant star is occulted by a circumsecondary disc.

Man is made is god's image, or vice-versa, in either case religion is always about humans and their deeds.

You've rather missed the point if you seek a religion not focused on humanity, because in every case religion is an explanation for the persistent mystery of the purpose of our own self-knowledge. If a cosmology does not present a teleological explanation for the existence (and often, attendant suffering) of its followers, it is more a pseudo-science than a religion.

Arguably Scientology strays the furthest from "human centered," with an eschatology apparently centered around humans being mere vessels for other beings. But still, this is an apologia for the existence of humanity.

My pops won't give it up. You laugh, as you open up vim.

A pivotal moment in the Koran is known as "The Battle of the Trench."

A language with no literature or culture has no business in the halls of state. Such a language is arguably not even a language in the real sense, but a code. A vernacular is needed - language must live and evolve.

A very good set of questions.

There will never be an objective consensus. You may only add your answers to a cacophony.

You might like to start here, for philosophers: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/

And here for priests: https://people.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/TalmudMap/Mishnah/MMaim....

https://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/06558/frontmatter/9780...

Hard questions that require philosophers or priests to answer competently, and every human to make an effort. I'm only asserting that law and ethics are not synonymous: lawful evil is a box in the meme.