Gabriel Bodeen @gabe@qoto.org

@freemo
Applying Charity: Did I say he should give away his money? No, I said he should have done good with it. So clearly I couldn't agree with your rephrasing as any part of my accusation, let alone my sole accusation.

I guess I was hoping for a degree of precision in thought & text that I'm not finding today. 🫤

@freemo
(Applying charity: Would I agree that that's all I meant? Obviously not.)

He used *some* of his unearned wealth for charity, but kept $360 million. He, like each of us, is blameworthy for not doing the good he could have done, and in his case that good he could do but chose not to do was *vast*.

@freemo
No, my assertion is not "he inherited money", which I view as morally neutral, it's "he chose personal wealth over meritocracy", and, No, not that "he didn't make himself poor", which I view as a prudent choice, but that "he didn't use his great wealth for similarly great good".

I'd strongly encourage us all to use the principle of charity! If your conversational partner wouldn't agree to your rephrasing, then that rephrasing is *uncharitable and wrong*.

@freemo
Happy to share the two biggies in more detail, though I already referenced them. From what I've seen if your political persuasion, I doubt you'll agree with their moral valence, but that's a separate matter. (Also, I believe inaction to be equally morally relevant as action. You're free to agree or disagree with that, IMO this isn't the thread for that argument.)

• Shahzada Dawood's wealth was inherited from the Dawood Group -- quite literally unearned by him. It was his choice to accept it for personal benefit rather than to support a more meritocratic system.

• Shahzada's net worth was estimated to be around $360 million. He could have used a large fraction of that money for good; he did not. He made that choice every day.

He's currently in the public eye due to his own actions (the Titan sub fiasco), so comment on him is justified, including angry judgment of his moral failings.

@freemo
Those reasons can apply to most rich people, but interpreting it that way was your imposition into the text, not supported by the text, which as you'll note literally indicates its subject as "the individual billionaire". You misread; we all do from time to time.

You also make a number of statements about my knowledge of the individuals, perhaps supposing I haven't read the news about them. I'm very chill about such things, but for general quality of discussion it's better to avoid attempts at mind-reading. 🙂

@henryfarrell
Ah, apologies for missing that. By force of habit from old days working in security I don't usually click on tinyurls!

@freemo ,
Indeed it was fictitious, as it was neither my words nor implied by them, but rather I explicitly contradicted that fictitious reason in my first comment on this thread.

I wonder whether you're mixing me up with other people (that is to say, blaming me as an individual for arguments of other people you consider similar).

@freemo
> Except you arent blaming a rich person for their own actions beyond the act of simply being rich

Please do not put fictitious reasons into my mouth after I have explicitly given different reasons. 🙂 I understand it's easy to do unconsciously because the fictitious reasons are more emotional.

I don't think it's "out of touch" to blame someone for their bad actions, even if they've also done good actions.

(and being angry at those who are morally blameworthy in large public ways is a reasonable emotion!)

@freemo , I'd reject the analogy of course, since blaming one black person for the actions of others of the same race is morally invalid, but blaming one rich person for their *own* actions is entirely appropriate.

The individual billionaire could have done much good with their wealth; they did not. They could have supported a more just economic system that gave them less unearned wealth and better protected the rights of the weak & poor; they did not (indeed they did the opposite). These choices deserve moral blame, especially since they are now individually in the public eye.

@freemo I'd say those who have expressed satisfaction at the death are expressing anger rather than hatred. The anger is not at others merely possessing money, but at the system that gave it to them and which they heavily supported, and at the good they failed to do with the money.

@henryfarrell
Whenever I waste time on Twitter and see the trolling blue check responses there, it does create doubts in me about the competence as voters of some folk at least, heh. That's mere anecdote of course, but the book 'Myth of the Rational Voter' does seem to me like it addresses that kind of concern and brings a lot of compelling statistics to bear, even if its conclusions are highly overstated.

(e.g. it seems to me that democracy in practice only needs a few people to be paying attention to each big issue as long they talk to each other and know who they trust. But that kind of collective social process is often invisible to right-libertarians.)

At home we've slowly been watching Mrs Davis, a new comedy about a nun trying to kill a powerful AI. 😁 There have been many surprises within the show, but one of the chief surprises of the show to me is how deferential it is to Christianity.

I would have expected a popular show so close to the "bad nun" trope to lean into the dark side of religion & spirituality, and especially the dark side of the church. But Mrs. Davis does not. The protagonist Simone is an unconventional nun but her faith is straightforward and realistic.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt14759574/

The future could be unbelievably full of life. 🙂

> Our familiar, warm, yellow sun is a relative rarity in the Milky Way. By far the most common stars are considerably smaller and cooler, sporting just half the mass of our sun at most. Billions of planets orbit these common dwarf stars in our galaxy.
>
> To capture enough warmth to be habitable, these planets would need to huddle very close to their small stars, which leaves them susceptible to extreme tidal forces.
>
> In a new analysis based on the latest telescope data, University of Florida astronomers have discovered that two-thirds of the planets around these ubiquitous small stars could be roasted by these tidal extremes, sterilizing them. But that leaves one-third of the planets -- hundreds of millions across the galaxy -- that could be in a goldilocks orbit close enough, and gentle enough, to hold onto liquid water and possibly harbor life.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/05/230529171755.htm

FWIW, you can collect an online community of the people you're interested in regardless of which instance they're on! Your tags are a good start

Banned on qoto:
"Any account setup to advertise a product or service"

What's wrong with 85°F? 🌞
After living in Phoenix for a few years that temperature feels pleasantly cool, heh