HelixDab2

joined 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 month ago (4 children)

My basis is: read what i fucking said.

No single person can rationally have a thorough understanding of every single issue facing a country of 1M+ people. An engineer with expertise in electrical systems shouldn't be expected to have a reasonable understanding of public health policy, and expecting people with no understanding of a <> to make good decisions about it is folly.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Average people simply didn't have access to information at the scale we now enjoy at that time. Leaders of countries and militaries might know, but unless it was being reported by wire services and in local newspapers, the average person would have had no rational way of finding out about it.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 month ago (16 children)

Yeeeeeeaaaaaaaah direct democracy is pretty awful too. The problem there is that most of the people have no understanding of what they're voting on. You don't want every single person voting on every single issue, unless you want a society that's bogged down in details and backwards. What you want is to find experts that actually understand a subject, and appoint those experts to deal with the issue. Which, in theory, was what we had with various gov't agencies, before the systematic defunding of them. E.g., you can't rationally expect the average person to understand all the ins and outs of climate science/collapse, or what policies/steps are required to prevent it (minimize it at this point).

But the problem with that is that you can easily end up with a bureaucracy that doesn't answer to anyone at all. Which, if they're actually all experts in their given area, and genuinely working for the best public outcomes, isn't bad, but can seem bad. And if they're not experts, then it's actually bad.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I don't know that my parents were ever the kind of person that bitched about paying taxes. They might have privately, but i don't remember it ever being a big deal. Me, I understand that my taxes are too low for what I expect the gov't to be doing.

And you're exactly right about the social experience. One of the enormous struggles for atheists has been building a community. Churches fill that need, even though they cause real harms in other ways. If you go to a church, it's easy to meet people and make friends when you move to a new community. If you don't, well, good luck because you're going to need it.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (8 children)

Honestly, this is why I don't discuss Mormon history and the massive, gaping chasms in their claims of Truth with my parents. My parents are old--old enough that the family is talking about who is going to call the coroner, who's going to deal with tying up finances, etc.--and knowing that they've wasted an entire lifetime and hundreds of thousands of dollars in tithing on a con isn't going to do anything useful at this point. Fifty years ago? Sure, they would have had plenty of time to come to terms with it. Now? Meh.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

The low birth rates aren't just rampant capitalism though; it's also SK women having a choice to not get married and have children, combined with a culture that's almost rabidly misogynistic. If I were a Korean woman, I absolutely would not want to get hitched to a Korean man and have children with him, because I know that it would be very unlikely that I'd treated like a real person or an equal partner. But the culture--much like Japan--seems to prize people that put in horrifically long hours, and even if you fix the cultural misogyny, you're still stuck with not having much time to spend with your partner.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Honestly, it's hard to find information about exact temperatures versus times. Usually the temperature that's being used is the temp needed to immediately kill all solmonella bacteria, which is--depending on your source--145F-165F.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Oh, I agree; makes me gag, and that takes some real effort.

I'm not saying I would want to, just that you can.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Not where I am; DOT 5.1 costs 2-3 times as much as DOT 5 locally.

DOT 4, $.375/oz.

DOT 5.1, $1.42/oz.

It's 3.8x more expensive to buy DOT 5.1 locally.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 month ago

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

I fail to see any downside to this.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Just want to point out that suicide rates/attempts are more a reflection of the way transgender people are treated than a some kind of pervasive mental illness. High-functioning autistic people also have very high rates of suicidal ideation and attempts, because--much like transgender people--they (we) tend to be socially isolated and ostracized. Transgender people that are in accepting communities and who have non-shitty parents tend to have much, much lower rates of suicidal ideation and attempts.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah, we're doing the same in the US... :(

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