wellbehaved

If the judicial and legislative branches were doing their jobs properly, and if the public had some due diligence about knowing what is the proper role of government, and if the media were truly aimed at educating people on the pertinent facts, then these agencies wouldn't be a problem, they'd be properly checked. But assuming we're not going to fix any of those things, then certainly it can hypothetically be an improvement to abolish this or that agency, if it's become even more corrupt than the surrounding political infrastructure.

How do people learn better: lots and lots of practice with varying levels of quality and published examples, or against a single powerful adversary that's trying to conceal what they are doing?

I.e. your question is stupid.

If you prohibit it then it will only be done secretly by governments and then used against naive populations. At least this way the population can learn how to identify and defend against it.

If we had transparent governance then maybe this wouldn't be a problem.

"He prefers iconoclastic approaches, whether by directly funding asteroid detection or advocating for nuclear power to combat global warming."

Ooh, scary dude. /s

Kids nowadays. I remember when nuclear power was a futuristic clean energy sort of ideal and when the way we figured out who was right and who was wrong on a complex topic was to let both sides openly debate and then pick who is more credible by how each is able to rally the facts in defense of their position.

Beware your society, which is doing the same thing to people like Kirsch that it did to Socrates two thousand years ago. The masses never change, apparently. All that changes is whether they're held in check or whether they're exploited by demagogues.

Beware David Gorski:

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/how-david-gorski-defends-...

This is what happens when you let non-technical people direct technical people. Really the only kind of person that should manage and direct a technical person is an even wiser technical person.

There's nothing more silly than presenting the appearance of reasoning that tries to undercut reasoning as such.

Censorship morons on parade. Obviously we need to return to a First Amendment ethos. Obviously we never should have abandoned it in the first place.

Says you? Present your proof.

That'd be your troll logic not mine. According to my logic, he has no moral right to speak about it.

This is mere hand-wringing; Steve Jobs never cared to consider the aspects of our political system that leads to this, on the contrary, he positively exploited them for his own gain, e.g. patents and his app store tyranny. Steve Jobs is among the worst people to talk about this kind of neo-feudalism.

As if that's a good thing or makes it all OK. I understand there are complex reasons why "workers" would not be engaged, but this is a horrible ethos.

I think open source is a kind of compensation for the fact that our political economy doesn't create meritocracies, analogous to how when one part of your body is injured some other part compensates. The compensation isn't "good" in the sense that it's bad to be injured and therefore to need it, but without the compensation things would be even worse.

Most people lack the philosophical chops to opine on this subject. Not that that stops them from doing so.

Everything is politicized and weaponized.

Like all principles, if you don't understand it, then you're going to misuse it, and then some people will wrongly blame it for being "over-rated" rather than blaming their own understanding of it.

"Are Cows really Bad for the Planet? Why did we start blaming them?":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdrhpThqlCo

"Fact checking" by social media giants is an inherent farce, which would be laughable if it weren't leading to people getting oppressed and killed and governments being perverted.

Such a sad commentary that you so blithely assume that if it's on a government website then it's not misinformation. Across the ages, governments have been the most heinous purveyors of misinformation, and are the biggest misinformation threats to humanity. Ergo the 1st Amendment.

So? Some people need exercise, does that mean the government should force everyone to exercise?

Because insidious connections between government and big business is called "fascism", and free market people are opposed to that. Those who don't acknowledge/comprehend this issue yet are claiming to defend a "free market" are called "vulgar libertarians":

"Vulgar libertarian apologists for capitalism use the term "free market" in an equivocal sense: they seem to have trouble remembering, from one moment to the next, whether they’re defending actually existing capitalism or free market principles. So we get the standard boilerplate article arguing that the rich can’t get rich at the expense of the poor, because "that’s not how the free market works" — implicitly assuming that this is a free market. When prodded, they’ll grudgingly admit that the present system is not a free market, and that it includes a lot of state intervention on behalf of the rich. But as soon as they think they can get away with it, they go right back to defending the wealth of existing corporations on the basis of "free market principles."" -- Kevin Carson

I don't appreciate your victim-blaming.

"A lot of time" is probably not enough. I've spent enough time riding to have had at least 3 objects thrown at me, including a beer bottle, a wet wad of something, and some unknown object. On all three occasions these were juveniles having "fun", not someone angry about my cycling courtesy.

Lots of rotten prohibitions would have "beneficial effects." If we prohibit medical treatment for people over 65, the rate of Alzheimer's will go down. If we prohibit driving except to and from work, traffic accidents will decrease dramatically. Etc.

Yes, you missed my point, because no, I don't want the demand side of the equation ignored.

You missed my point, which was that factors that influence productivity are more fundamental than those that influence consumption.

Nobody (sane) enjoys going the doctor.

Barking up the wrong tree. Costs are driven down mainly by innovations at the production side not due to consumer behavior.

The cost problem is almost entirely due to myth, paranoia, and authority worship, which means innovation that would drive down costs comes very slowly and painfully. These are the wages of refusing to question dogma.