Tabs & tweet like thoughts
So many open tabs, so much work to write down the thoughts they inspire
Elon Mush, er, Musk (liked that typo) IS buying Twitter. I hope he finds a way to encourage more linking to more thoughtful pieces.
Neo notes:
“Twitter may be a cesspool, but at least let it be a cesspool that doesn’t favor the messages of the left and censor the right.”
» Twitter banning conservatives was terrible. But twitter is a very lively place, with lots of commenters, and the platform pushes very short responses.
While in theory it allows a set of longer tweets, like I’ve seen some on the under-reported Ukraine military and how important destroying the dams was (to flood places and cause MUD!), I much prefer more intellectually meaty blog posts. While blog comments here, or at other lively blogs, is often similar to twitter.
Instapundit is almost a set of tweets – pointing to interesting stuff. Like Neo’s roundups. (I’m looking at my 30 open tabs in browser Brave, like Chrome).
« [so here’s most of those open tabs - there’s another different set on my IPad tablet]
Music! to listen to while reading or writing, tho if they have the lyrics, it’s hard not to read them. The The (album, often great rock piano)
Also heard the Cowbody Junkie’s version of Sweet Jane, and my fav Phoenix (with lyrics) Liztomania. It’s a bit sad that YouTube almost always has the song I want to hear, if I look for something specific. Often a good list of possibilities, like this album, but also the Sweet Jane - almost went for the Lou Reed version, but his live version.
Neo thinks about Putin’s responsibility in Ukraine, and I disagree a bit.
Sometimes people get confused about the assignment of responsibility for some bad result. For example, I don’t go out walking at night in a high-crime area. But if I did, and if I were to become the victim of a crime there, the person who committed that crime is 100% responsible. I bear no responsibility at all. No one forced him (it would probably be a “him”) to break the law and attack or rob me. The fact that my decision could be considered somewhat risky and not all that smart has nothing to do with the fact that he has total responsibility for his own crime and I have none. The fact that the crime would not have been committed – at least, not on me – had I not gone walking there that evening is utterly irrelevant to the apportionment of responsibility.
»Putin is a bad guy – just like a car thief who steals an unlocked car (with or without the keys in it).
How much “responsibility” is there? Either it’s up to 100% total, a single 100%, or it’s some uncountable #of people making influential decisions, each of which is up to 100% (like Putin or a car thief), plus all the other partial 5, 10, 50, 90% decisions by others.
These are two different ideas about responsibility, and defining its characteristics. Either it has a maximum, like 100%, or there is no upper maximum.
The world would be better if we agreed on the former idea, a single maximum 100%, with at least 51% given to the person who is acting & deciding, and to this minimum for the final decider, a maximum of 49% for all other actors.
Then disagreements can be more clearly defined numerically – I think it’s Putin at a (bad) 70%, with corrupt US Mil-Ind-Complex + NATO (10%), Biden weak (10%) and all other responsibilities 10% for a total of 100%. Others might think, and thus disagree and discuss, that it’s Putin at 90%, and all others at 10%; or Putin at 51%, and all others at 49%.
Life is full of tradeoffs. Also shades of gray (or grey, if more like Gandalf, one of the reasons I chose that spelling when I changed my name in ’84).
The thief who steals a car with the keys is more like 51%; the one who steals an unlocked car w/o keys is 70%, and the one who carries car stealing tools and chooses a car to steal and then steals is more like 98%. In the later case, choosing to buy a “likely target” car over a less desirable “less likely target” car, is a small but not nothing encouraging choice with some responsibility.
We all DO have “some” responsibility for others, but it’s limited. And the others who have choices always have 51% or more responsibility for their choice. Including the heroic choice to risk losing your life to stop the evil Putin from taking over your country.
The The is singing around min 38: “If you can’t change the world, change yourself”
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Another reason for open tabs is as a Thing to Do, like this two hour talk of Jordan Peterson with Marion Tupy on Ten Global Trends. But I can’t listen to thoughtful words and read other stuff nor even play games.
The People’s Cube has a good note about the Drama Triangle in Ukraine: Russia is a Villian; Ukraine is a Victim; but NATO / EU / US (mil-ind-complex) is a Rescuer. With various False Arguments like this #2:
I'll be the first to point out that Biden and the rest of the Obama team had turned Ukraine into a feeding trough with their corrupt schemes. But that has little to do with Putin's paranoia and his megalomaniacal motives to invade Ukraine and the rest of the former Soviet territories, redefining established borders, encouraging other known bad actors, and setting a precedent that may indeed start WW3.
This triangle is different but not so inconsistent with The Mind Club (review), which focuses on Agents who act & think, (with mind), and those who feel (with mind) but, when harmed or suffer, become victims or patients. Which is more a moral judgement. I’m thinking about it a lot since a talk hosted by Arnold Kling
»It was a great talk that went by fast, so there wasn’t enough time to go into everything.
Big takeaway: To persuade somebody else, focus on the lesser harm of your proposal, and the greater harm of the alternative, or current. Gray’s current work has shifted away from the Agent – Patient discussion, which might be because it seems fairly accepted, towards the issue of harm. In papers available that I haven’t read yet.
The uncertainty of harm was not discussed. I think the best example to be more explored would be drunk driving, and drunk driving laws, combined with other driving laws. The drunk driver was the agent in deciding to drink, and drive, and to risk harming themselves and others. Note that the vast majority of drunk drivers do NOT cause fatal accidents; far more are arrested for DUI than cause accidents.
There was an example of rich man who, in dying, left his house and his rich art collection to the city of Philly, on the condition that the art stayed in the house, a few miles outside of the city. Later city officials moved that art into the city, under the theory that it caused “no harm”, since the prior owner had died. One mother of such an official disagreed, claiming all people wanting to put restrictions in their wills have been harmed, with the precedent that violating the express wishes of people who are now dead causes no harm.
The idea that violating some rule or prior agreement, because of “no harm”, seems nearly certain to be rationalization that uses a specific instance of claimed non-harm to stop enforcing some accepted norm. The loss of such a rule might well cause some harm to others. In the “art move” example, it seems clear to me that there is real harm in violating the agreement. But I can also understand those who claim it’s not harm.
For society, it seems certain that there are rules, laws, and cultural norms which result in some social optimal. Deviation from this results in a sub-optimal society, tho it might not be clear to identify exactly who was harmed, or by how much.
Children being harmed by the divorce of their parents is one I’m very familiar with – and now believe that “no-fault” divorce is a sub-optimal policy for society. Normalizing consent-based promiscuous sex is another socially sub-optimal norm.
Trying to measure, and compare, alternate moralities based on comparing the harms of those moralities seems a way to allow more fruitful discussions of comparative societies. But making harm the basis of morality might shut down those discussions. I’ve ordered a book and so I’m now waiting in Slovakia.
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Well, that’s enough tab links for today - as I go thru them, I spend more time writing and linking and reading more.
The purpose is partly to be clear in my own mind what I’m thinking, now, and hopefully make it more clear. Also a record for my kids - maybe grandkids! If they, or any friends or acquaintances want to make a comment. Tho my own long length might be intimidating, so maybe next time a bit less - but more often? (Saw Glenn Loury on the purpose of a public intellectual, but that’s for next time.)