- Einsteinmonkey
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Member for 19 years, 2 months, and 20 days
Last active Sat, Feb, 27 2016 23:39:31
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Nov 13, 2008Einsteinmonkey posted a message on HGeez MM, you're such a stalker (cf my wiki page). But it's obsolete info.Posted in: Ugstal Urniancepter Doggienavicenewton Bobwebacks
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Oct 1, 2007Einsteinmonkey posted a message on Free trade can be bad?I understand what you're saying. I'm seeing it as such:Posted in: Animated Economics
Protectionist policies are in place. The government has two options: keep the current protectionist measures in place, or abolish them. Although free trade does give more choice to consumers and businesspeople in their capacity as buyers, every working citizen in their capacity as a seller loses business. This looks at each individual in more than one light - one part as a buyer and one part as a seller - so when I say "buyers" and "sellers", the same person can be both a buyer and a seller.
Further, this model is looking at the situation as it stands before the decision, which is what introduces the uncertainty. The buyers clearly gain, but the sellers lose out; but by how much do the sellers lose out? - more precisely, how much do they expect to lose, and what are their probability estimates? - and is it enough to overshadow their gains as buyers?
This question is the crux of the matter. If people do not expect their individual returns from trade to be better than their individual losses, they will obviously not like the decision to abolish protectionist policies. Smith simply demonstrates that it's theoretically possible for this to happen (which is not to say that their fears are necessarily right or reasonable).
Of course, after the decision and its consequences, there will be no uncertainty.
And as you know, I agree with you on the rights issue, though personally, I don't like mixing utility and morality. -
Jun 10, 2007Einsteinmonkey posted a message on SXSW Japan NiteTsumasaki is an awesome song.Posted in: get faded
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Are you sure it's him?
Although humans are the product of all sorts of real-world factors, we can abstract from these concerns to some degree. The situation of a state of nature "applies" equally well to hypothetical Martians. It isn't about particular societies or even particular species. It's about counterfactuals dealing with the behaviour of rational agents, a description that applies with some success to the world we live in. See my previous post in this thread.
Maybe not higher numbers, but certainly higher rates. There's a chart, if I could only find it.
Excerpts:
Pronunciation changes
Kyoshi Warriors
Compression
Plenty on racebending as well.
At least the actors voices were spot on. If you closed your eyes, they really sounded like the voice actors. Even Shaun Toub was pretty close considering his own accent. Luckily I'm rather undiscriminating in my movie tastes.
What?
I don't know much about it, but that sounds like one form of mandated choice. There may also be a third option, "Ask my relatives", which is sort of a default, but you are still forced to make some choice.
This option is used in Illinois. Although, apparently Virginia tried to do it too, but 24% refused to choose, so you can’t really get away from defaults.
I understand where both sides are coming from. Going out on a bit of a limb, I venture that – provided the implementation of the choice and any other similar choices were entirely costless and not representative of any larger presumptions – those against presumed consent would have no problem. Of course, this is not the case. If you were to implement too many presumptuous defaults (spanning more decisions than that of organ donation), ensuing difficulties in actually opting out could infringe on people’s rights. That is, we have to be careful to keep rights de facto and not merely de jure.
Given such limitations on the frequency of presumed consent, what sorts of decisions should even be in the realm of consideration for opt-in or for opt-out? Or perhaps framed another way, given that there are only so many decisions dealing with the government that people can feasibly make, what decisions should be primarily emphasized?
Here is a decision tree which can help companies figure out how to set their defaults. I’m not so sure that it is exactly applicable to government decisions, however, since one of the options is to hide alternatives.
This isn't accepted even for humans. A torturous slaughter is more reviled than a painless murder. Why would it hold for other animals?
edit: Aha, here we go. I had a hunch it was Paul Bloom.
"Social constructs" don't just float around in the air and magically cause Jack to believe that harming innocents is evil. They're embodied in the mind of Jack himself, and by extension Jack's brain. You believe this at least implicitly unless you are a dualist.
Well yes, but presumably they have in mind a certain criterion for their decision, namely that their donation effects as much good for humanity as possible. The best decision is one that maximizes this good. Otherwise, how would they evaluate even their own propositions? Leaving aside personal connections to particular modes of charity, then, what do you consider to be the best decision? If you were an altruistic billionaire, how would you give away your billions? You could give everyone in the world an equal share, for instance. But that would amount to handing each person $15 (given a $90B donation). Or you could fund a heap of X Prizes, say nine thousand $10M prizes for all sorts of things: "preserving biodiversity, mapping the oceans, developing clean aviation fuels, energy storage, sustainable housing and carbon sequestration" (so says Wikipedia). That might encourage innovation with more far-reaching effects than handing out twenties.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37731478/ns/us_news-giving/
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-16/buffett-gates-press-billionaires-to-pledge-50-to-charity.html
http://givingpledge.org/
There are many possible avenues for discussion on this; take your pick. Bear in mind that Gates is a particularly involved philanthropist. My obvious question: what are the best ways to spend megasums of charitable money? Foundations to cure diseases? Political campaigning? I've heard good things about X Prizes.
If you're inclined to worry about government power, you could construe Obama's informal directives as effectively formal commands since the former might just be a quicker way of implementing the latter. In that case, BP's decision wouldn't seem quite so voluntary. And if you are thus inclined, now might be the time to raise concerns; BP is profoundly unpopular and using government seems to be an automatic response to anything, so the chance of problematic knee-jerk reactions feels high. The ACLU defends Nazis, after all. I get what you're saying, but it doesn't take total extremism to do this. As far as I can tell, though, I don't see a problem with the situation. It's not quite analogous to the ACLU, and even were there concerns, now is not the most strategic time to argue.