> _“The painful truth of my #reading life is that I read slowly. It’s not uncommon for me to read only 10 or 20 pages per night. […] [Over the course of a year, that comes to roughly [ten 370-page-long] books.](https://www.goodreads.com/review/stats/64930929-tripu) This isn’t a horribly small number, but […] I have to be selective.”_
> _“I’m a devoted reader. I want to be a dedicated audience to whatever #book I’m reading. […] I want to commune with a great mind, wordsmith, soul. For the right experience, I submit myself to it willingly.”_
A recent article on #Quillette on #TheGreatestBooks, #books, #literature (and #audiobooks):
https://quillette.com/2021/07/28/listening-to-literature-what-we-gain-and-lose-with-audiobooks/
I felt identified with so much, that here go eight direct #quotes that I make my own, where I made just a few edits (between square brackets):
@fidel
Sorry, I wasn't very clear. I meant my site where I use my real name — not tripu.info . The one I link to on LinkedIn etc.
I don't think that expecting everybody to be “wealthy enough to have their necessities covered” is “pragmatic”.
I believe in progress, too. But precisely because I'm pragmatic I assume fallible individuals, misfortune, illness, disasters, etc.
Even in a very wealthy and egalitarian society there'll be people who find themselves destitute, maimed, threatened… People who give birth to a sextuplet, who are born predisposed to sabotage their own lives (addiction, self-harm), who lose all their family members at a very young age, etc.
My thought experiment appeared farcical — that's why it's a thought experiment. But even in a much more prosperous society, there'll always be an **A** and a **Z**, _by definition_. Those two may never stumbled upon each other by chance as depicted, but they are still fellow citizens and coetaneous. As I see it, the challenge stands.
Sometimes I wish I had a “#couple's dashcam” — recording in a loop the conversations my wife and I have — so that we can resolve on the spot silly misunderstandings about whether I said “always” or “often”, she said “our” or “your”, etc.
🤪
tripu
boosted
We (@w3c) are #hiring our Web Accessibility Development and Operations Lead
https://w3.org/blog/news/archives/9174
This is full-time position, based in Europe. Works starts on September 1, 2021.
Please, apply 🙏 Please, boost 🙏
tripu
boosted
The Darkest Hour by Annibale Siconolfi
You are joking, right?
In my thought experiment I painted what is literally the most justifiable case for compulsory #wealthredistribution — one where the decrease in wealth and well-being for a person being “taxed” is indistinguishable from zero, while the benefit to an utterly helpless recipient is enormous (the difference between life and death, no less). Even you “believe in that moral obligation to a point”.
…and yet you worry that admitting so much, and defending a system where that absolute minimum of redistribution is somehow “imposed” on people, could easily lead to what is (again, literally) the most extreme case the world has ever seen of forced redistribution (ie, #socialism, #communism).
> _“It's a short step from stealing just a dollar to feed the poor to the massive taxes we have today.”_
No, it's not. It's a huge leap.
@monika@mastodont.cat https://masto.nogafam.es/@aperalesf/106566689384732122
To me, #feminism is primarily about “equality of the sexes”, and (only after that) “especially” about “women's rights”. That's [the original meaning from the very end of the 19th century](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-philosophy/#FemiBeliFemiMove), and also the _current_ meaning according to [Britannica](https://www.britannica.com/topic/feminism), [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feminism) and [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism).
With that in mind, this is good news about the end of an outrageous inequality before the law between the sexes that still exists:
https://www.econlib.org/whats-wrong-with-registering-women-for-the-draft/
Totally!
¿Soy yo o las respuestas no tienen mucho que ver con las preguntas? 🤔 RT @technology@twitter.com Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is visiting ...
One more point where I think you're wrong:
You are right in that forcing an _action_ upon others is in principle morally wrong (eg, nobody should force you, in principle, to donate money to the poor). But forcing an _inaction_ is equally wrong in principle. This is how I think your reasoning actually imposes _inaction_ upon others:
Imagine three people:
* **A** is the most privileged person imaginable (say, Jeff Bezos),
* **Z** is the most miserable and helpless human being, and
* **Y** is someone who is slightly above Z, but still basically destitute and resourceless.
The three people stumble upon each other. **A** sees without a doubt that **Z** is in agony and on the brink of a horrific death, but **A** is utterly selfish and decides to give **Z** nothing, not even a glass of water from his Olympic pool. **Y** contemplates the scene, and feels the moral obligation to steal a dollar, or a banana, or a paper clip (since **Y** doesn't even have that to spare) from **A** (exerting no violence upon him) and to give it to **Z** to somehow remedy their plight, or even save their life, at least temporarily.
I bet you that the vast majority of human beings (including the sub-groups of ethicist and political philosophers) would agree with **Y** and defend his “altruistic theft”.
Your absolutist #Libertarianism, on the other hand, would _impose inaction_ on **Y** and condemn/prosecute/ban that behaviour.
**2.** Even the most staunch sceptic/relativist/rigorous critic would agree to an absolute minimum for that threshold, don't you think? If you think my assessment (whatever it is) is too generous, divide it by ten. Can we agree on that, at least?
Imagine a person who is ill and malnourished to the point where any doctor would predict their death in a matter of hours if they don't receive assistance. Or a person with chronic pain who lives in constant agony but doesn't have the resources to afford painkillers, anaesthesia nor euthanasia.
Do you believe in the moral obligation of society, or of the Sate, or of _you personally_ (Fidel Ramos) to somehow help that complete stranger who is staring you in the eye?
If your answer is “yes”, you agree with me in that there's at least a minuscule baseline for human dignity that imposes moral obligations in others to help. There's the hole in your Libertarian absolutism.
If you answer “no”, then there's a much wider gulf between our philosophies than I thought.
