tripu @tripu@qoto.org
Technologist, Spaniard, male, 42
Joined May 2020
“Humanity went from thinking that the sun was a hummingbird-shaped warrior god requiring human sacrifice to using solar radiation pressure to power interplanetary spacecraft. We credit most impressive achievements like that to science, and some to Al Gore.”
I sympathise with the sentiment, but:
- Hybrids and electrics too? Sure, they still pollute. But what doesn’t!? Your bicycle pollutes. Electric cars pollute significantly less than equivalent dinosaur-juice-based ones. Electric cars are still quite expensive and some (many?) people make that effort out of concern for the environment. Do they (we) deserve to be punished, too?
- Isn’t this going too far? It’s bordering on vandalism. One thing is to put a leaflet on the windscreen, or approach the a driver to start a conversation — a very different thing is to completely disable a vehicle. BTW, doesn’t the recovery vehicle that will have to be summoned to tow the SUV pollute a ton, too?
- This kind of actions across the board are always tricky: you just don’t know the owners of that car, nor their circumstances. I can think of a few scenarios where an SUV parked on a city street at a given point in time makes sense and is justified.
I just discovered this, and I’m quite conflicted about it:
Curious about the inner workings of the @w3c? Interested in their job openings? Willing to join their broad community, either as a member company or as an individual contributor?
My ex-colleague @koalie has written a great intro for the world:
tripu
boosted
🇳🇱
Reading #Dynomight explaining #DerekParfit I realise that just as #liberalism/#libertarianism is the most inclusive political/economic system because it allows for other orders to emerge within it, #consequentialism may be the most inclusive moral theory because it may contain other systems just by redefining what a “good outcome” is.
That is:
A group of free individuals (liberalism) may enter voluntary agreements and commit to redistributing their wealth (socialism), transferring all power to a certain person (autocracy), abiding by rules decided by the majority (democracy), etc.
A consequentialist, in its narrowest definition, is free to conclude that the best possible outcome is one in which they and their special ones enjoy the best of life (egoism), one where certain rules are obeyed most strictly (deontology), one where all actions align perfectly with the word of god (theological voluntarism), etc. — and to act accordingly.
Useful taxonomy of moral theories (#DerekParfit via #Dynomight)
https://quillette.com/2022/07/23/stop-sharing-political-memes/
I agree with the sentiment, although “memes” is too broad a category. A quote is a #meme; a blog post is a meme; a chart is a meme. And all that may be useful to advance political understanding
So I’d rather say “stop sharing simplistic and confrontational political memes”. That’s the truly corrosive, mind-numbing stuff.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/07/stop-drinking-now.html
Fully agree with #TylerCowen on this one.
Last night I dreamt that I went to tutoring with my #literature professor, someone whom I admired greatly (entirely fictional character).
We were casually talking #books and getting along very well. Then he asked me what I was reading at the moment. I said volume three of Proust’s “In Search of Lost time”, and his face changed immediately.
He looked very serious, and told me we’d go right then to my place to grab the book and burn it, because it was a waste of time. It was clearly all in good spirits, and he was playing a certain role to amuse me — but at the same time there was no doubt in my mind that he was intent on doing what he had said.
So I had to play along. We walked together to my place, while I questioned him. He explained to me that yes, Proust is indeed good, but that investing so much time in reading >4,000 very dense pages was simply not rational. Very poor ROI. I kinda agreed and felt somewhat relieved of my self-imposed burden of reading the entire series, although I hated the idea of halting the project and burning the book (never mind that I’m reading on an e-reader!).
#MissEntropy walked me up at that moment, and so I don’t know what was going to happen in my #dream.
And so I’ll have to keep on reading #Proust.
tripu
boosted
“The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly’, meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘ticks’, meaning ‘blood sucking parasites’.”
— Larry Hardiman
#Q4TD http://q4td.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-word-politics-is-derived-from-word.html
I order home-delivery very rarely, and when I do it I feel a strange guilt.
Home-delivered meals have always bothered me. It looks like the perfect example of overlooked irresponsible #consumerism.
You have a fridge where you can store food for days, a freezer where you can store food for months, grocery stores and supermarkets everywhere around you (some of them open during weekends or at night), convenient online orders and cheap delivery of those groceries…
…and yet you need that a local restaurant wraps their stuff in way more plastic and paper than is necessary, and that some kid jumps on a dirty moped and whizzes dangerously through the city to get to your door right now?
At 11PM?
Probably the best distillation of #morality in one sentence, by #DerekParfit:
“Everyone ought to follow the principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/09/05/how-to-be-good
Technologist, Spaniard, male, 42
Joined May 2020
