volkris @volkris@qoto.org
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
I don't know what makes her think lower court judges weren't constrained or that Supreme Court wasn't constrained. It clearly is.
What in the world is this person talking about?
It's funny that you would call for the abolition of the Senate since that is the chamber not subject to gerrymandering.
But no, our democracy is not dysfunctional. Our population is dysfunctional. Throughout the country we have serious disagreements in the population. The representative Congress is just representing the people and showing the very real disagreements that the people have.
Congress is working perfectly, in a way, really representing that people have very strong and honest disagreements.
It would be a malfunction if given the disagreements in the population somehow Congress was all in the same side. In that case it would not be representing the people.
No!
Well I'm slightly joking, but this is part of my point here, being specific about what science is. I say that science is a process, not any sort of concrete thing. It doesn't correct itself; it is the thing that does the correction.
It would be like saying sanding wood correct itself.
No, sanding wood is not the thing that is being corrected, it is the process by which wood is smoothed.
It's sort of like saying science is a verb, not a noun.
Science, as I promote the term, is a way of uncovering wrong ideas about how the world works. Science is not corrected. It is the thing promoting correction.
That wouldn't resolve the crisis because no matter what the tax rates are a year from now the president is still demanding to borrow more money today.
Also, mathematically, it wouldn't raise that much money compared to the total deficit.
Again you're overlooking the democracy part of the system.
Voters are very polarized, so we elect polarized representatives to represent our polarization.
There is not consensus throughout the country that any justice has misbehaved to the point of needing to be removed, so the democratic process reflects that by declining to impeach.
But no, we cannot treat justices like federal employees in other branches of government without violating the judicial independence of the Supreme Court.
Once the legislative and executive branches are allowed to punish a justice the justices become beholden to the other branches, which is exactly what is not supposed to happen in our system of government.
Why skip the democratic process of the impeachment vote?
Impeachment is there specifically to hold officials like justices accountable.
It's the only way to enforce accountability without sacrificing judicial independence.
@Ruthie@mstdn.social
People are really off the rails talking as if the president has a choice about whether or not to abide by constitutional requirements like the 14th Amendment.
No, the president MUST apply the 14th Amendment and service debts, or else he should face impeachment for intentionally shirking his constitutional duty.
Yep, that's exactly my point. Science is only one out of many tools in our toolbox, and that's part of why it's useful to be specific about what science is.
@JohnShirley2023 @luckytran
volkris
boosted
Friend texting me: I could SWEAR I saw you just now at the airport carrying a duffel bag.
Me: I am here! Terminal A?
Friend: No! Terminal D!
Me: Huh. Must be my duffelganger.
@Ruthie@mstdn.social
No, I mean I would ask Jeffries to support his claim.
That math doesn't seem to work, so I'd want to see how he arrived at this claim.
Right, but you go a step farther when you say the other orgs get nothing back.
Well, they definitely do, and understanding that is key to seeing why the situation is like it is, and it's key to working with them to bring them over here.
Knowing what they get out of the other system is key to competing against it for their efforts.
It's the opposite.
Defaulting is defined as not paying at all.
Trying to pay with Monopoly money is more analogous to the mint the coin proposal: it's offering payment that's legally dubious.
One way to think about it is that science--the application of the scientific method--is only one part of what a scientist does in practice, the same way that sawing is only one task of many that a woodworker engages in.
So for example, collecting data outside of a hypothesis is an important task, but since it's not direct application of the scientific method, I wouldn't call it "doing science".
In the same way, science can tell a researcher that this chemical has fatal effects, but it's not science that tells him whether he should expose his enemy to it.
We put up a firewall between science and morality so that each of them does its job as well as possible, science telling us what is possible and morality telling us whether to actually do it.
Don't forget the role of voters, though.
If a candidate had no chance to appeal to voters then nobody would write them checks in the first place.
We elect these people. We actively go out and pull the level to vote for them.
If we would stop voting for bad people, the money for bad people would dry up as they would be bad investments.
So long as we can be relied on to hand these people power they will keep running, keep fundraising, and keep getting into office as we empower them.
@dangillmor I think people underappreciate the role bureaucracy and management plays in legitimate news organizations.
This isn't a matter of a paper one day realizing #Fediverse is a place to be, setting up an instance, and letting it rip.
Instead, there are so many layers of review involved in such a process, from technical review through marketing, through figuring out how to fit it into workflows, budgeting, and even over through legal review.
If you want them to be present here, think about the actual practical issues they will be facing through the process of joining a new, decentralized platform like this one.
Well, have you asked some of them why they're using it?
I bet they can help you answer your question.
You don't see that he allowed journalists to dip into DMs for journalists' gain? And journalists sort of like that?
volkris
boosted
"A trench of jostling anglerfish, gaping and preening and starving for lack of prey"
There's too much to quote here; this is brutal: Burning Down The House: The overheated register in which Silicon Valley types have tended to talk about Twitter -- as...
https://jwz.org/b/yj_1
I think the quote makes a mistake lumping Musk in with the other group, missing that his trolling differs from their pursuit of wealth.
"Where Musk has struggled to keep that constituency happy, it reflects less on his seemingly sincere receptiveness"
The above sentence captures it.
Musk struggling to keep that constituency happy? I think don't think he does or cares. He plays with his toy with happiness a second thought.
Seemingly sincere? Musk seems sincere to this author? I can't imagine how.
The article is spot on about those silicon valley types, but it doesn't see that Musk is not like them. Doesn't make him better or even ok, but he's a different type of jerk.
Wrong branch of government, wrong party.
The Treasury is responsible for paying bills, and it's part of the executive branch, under the control of the president.
Biden is threatening to tell the Treasury to default unless he's given more power to borrow. His finger is on the button.
He doesn't want to go to the table to discuss that expansion of power because he believes the public doesn't realize how their government is organized, and so is buying his spin.
He's probably right, though.
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
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