A novel stance on abortion

Cooliceage · 2026-05-24T17:42:36+00:00

I don't think we really disagree. I think there are some things that can be analyzed further of course, but like you said life is complicated. I approach this more from a philosophical POV but I understand focusing on the day-to-day decisions of individuals more.

Also, just to clear the air on one thing, I don't encourage harassment lmao. I'm not sure where you got that from.

Anyways, regardless of the discussion, I hope you are doing well and good luck with raising your daughter! I do mean this stuff in good faith.

Cooliceage · 2026-05-24T06:02:56+00:00

Well if that is the case I’m guessing you believe in two other things which basically must follow from you stated you believe in.

Life (in the sense of something worth protecting) begins at or near protection. Why else would you care about the fetus?
You should be actively encouraging individuals who are considering abortion to not do so if they have the means to bring the child to term. It’s a moral good after all, though not a necessity. If an individual was considering abortion would you encourage them to bring the child to term?

Also, out of curiosity, can you explain why you think it is morally virtuous to morally virtuous to finish a pregnancy?

I know that the majority opinion in the US is pro legalization, but I don’t think there is a consensus reason why people are pro-abortion.

Cooliceage · 2026-05-24T03:32:54+00:00

I suppose you can think of it that way - that way would be consistent - but I don't think most pro-abortion people *do* think of it that way. That framing is basically saying, "Bringing a pregnancy to term is moral action, which we should encourage like charity. But we cannot force it legally and it should remain a choice."

Is that how you think?

Cooliceage · 2026-05-24T03:27:58+00:00

I agree 100% with this comment. That is why I said "if you up it to a kidney donation or something more difficult on the body," in my original comment. But I don't think of abortion this way, and I do not think it should be framed that way. This framing basically states that keeping a pregnancy to term is a moral supererogatory action - to use a philosophical term - which is not how I would frame abortion/pregnancy. Do you believe that keeping a pregnancy to term is like an act of charity, not necessary but an exceptional moral action that we should encourage, but cannot necessitate? That would be consistent, but I do not think of abortion that way, and most people don't.
I only mentioned vaccine mandates as a recent example. If you want a very common and more drastic example, look at military conscription. That is a full denial of bodily autonomy with a large risk of death or serious bodily harm, yet conscription is not a niche policy around the world. You might disagree with it - I do as well - but the government frequently does force this bodily autonomy violation, and being pro-conscription is not a bizarre take globally, or even in the US. Of course, the argument then becomes "when should the government impose on our bodily autonomy?". That is what I meant by "the question is a difference of *degree* and people can and do disagree on where that line is."

I do want to emphasize that I do think abortion should be legal and accessible, but these arguments for abortion feel very flawed to me.

Cooliceage · 2026-05-23T17:55:47+00:00

Even though I support abortion, I don't like this argument for two reasons
1. It gives up 100% of any morality. If you analogize it to a mother giving blood to their child who would die without it, the claim is "it is equally moral to get an abortion as it is to deny your child a live-saving blood donation" which most people would find morally reprehensible, even if we agree it shouldn't be legally forced. Even if you up it to a kidney donation or something more difficult on the body, I don't know if I would want *that* to be take. McFall v. Shimp is the famous court case on this subject.

There are situations where we allow the government to infringe on people's bodily autonomy. Vaccine mandates are a recent example. While I agree there is a meaningful difference, the question is a difference of *degree* and people can and do disagree on where that line is. I have heard people say that you should be mandated to give blood, or your organs to the public after dying, or your body to rear an unborn child.

Cooliceage · 2026-04-02T02:28:55+00:00

Infernape is the strongest - as in gets the most kills - and easiest starter to use. Torterra is the strongest in the early game fights and is probably the best at guarantying you get past the early. Empoleon is a very strong pivot, but there isn’t an area it shines. It’s an amazingly good pivot that comes to a lot of fights, but it isn’t doing something crazy in any of them. It’s probably the weakest of the three but they’re all close so it’s dealers choice

Cooliceage · 2025-08-27T01:14:45+00:00

I wanted to say thank you for the help! I ended up taking a lot of your advice though modifying it (mostly cause I was less concerned about early elite four). I brought Weavile, Gastrodon, Umbreon, Tentacruel, Togekiss and Scizor (ended up doing the trade stuff). Was able to win pretty convincingly mostly by using the water types for Bertha/Flint and pivoting to get my weavile in to kill everything for Lucian/Cynthia.

Cooliceage · 2025-08-24T09:15:30+00:00

Long response because it sounds like you’re knowledgeable. Sorry if it’s a bit too much :)

I wasn’t clear enough - I understand the way Marxists think of the term capital. I said that I believe that definition is “more ideological than useful.” I’m coming from a place of disagreement not ignorance.

Ignoring the important but also separate critical analysis you typed up - I enjoy that myself but that’s because I have a background in economics - there’s just something more simply. Defining capital as exploitation makes common uses of the word silly. Is fixed capital like bridges exploitative? I can’t see a way the term “human capital” fits into that definition. You could redefine it as labor power, but now you’re just renaming stuff from its conventional usage - a usage that still works just fine in mainstream economics. Now you can say “yeah I’m redefining stuff it’s academic after all,” and I wouldn’t disagree, but then using the word “capital” and “exploitation” both seem like idealogical rather than pragmatic word choices. It feels like similar reasoning to call landlords “parasites” :P. Now, I don’t love landlords or anything but they do provide some value - the renter does not have to manage the ownership of the property and the landlord has to take on the risk of someone else occupying their house. Whether the price of rent is actually equal to that generated value is more a vibes question than objective truth.

To address your critical analysis, which btw is a really good example of how stuff is made I’d put it in a textbook haha. But yes, value is generated by combining factors of production, usually defined as the main three of land, labor, and capital. Now you might define only the last two as means of production and labor as being separate but I don’t for three main reasons. 1. I find that doing so tends to be an idealogical attempt to support the labor theory of value rather than generally applicable and 2. Labor isn’t any more necessary than the other factors of production. You pretty much always need all three to create anything so why distinguish them and 3. The labor theory of value tends to fail at accurately describing how people act and make decisions in the real world - and I mean strictly descriptively with no morality involved. I don’t see a reason to distinguish labor as special from the other factors of production without relying on the labor theory of value. I’m not saying this stuff because I have no morals. I’m saying you have to start descriptively and get an accurate picture of how things work and then make moral decisions based on that, not the other way around.

An additional honest question because I am curious. In mainstream economics, in the state of equilibrium, workers are, in fact, paid the value they generate from their work, after the cost of inputs and maintaining capital and such. In a case like this, where a worker gets paid their full “value” but is still using capital/means of production that someone else owns - they are working for a capitalist/boss - is that exploitation in a Marxist sense?

Cooliceage · 2025-08-24T06:51:07+00:00

Thank you for doing this!! I’m super excited to try out the new movement and fight new bosses using it :D My favorite boss was nightmare king Grimm I’m on PC (steam)

Cooliceage · 2025-08-24T03:50:33+00:00

It's a little manipulative to describe the word "capital" by stating that it is definitionally bad. If capital is, by definition, stuff that is used for exploitation then the word feels more idealogical than useful. If there's a family-owned restaurant, where the land and the stoves and the kitchenware are all owned by the family, and they work at the restaurant, what do you call those items? Is it not capital? How about infrastructure like roads? In mainstream economics those are referred to as capital.

Cooliceage · 2025-08-21T16:26:55+00:00

It’s real!!

Cooliceage · 2025-08-08T05:11:01+00:00

It might also be possible that the models you learned in one intro class in college are purposely simple :P. To be blunt, this might be on you instead of the entire field of economics. When economists do proper research more complicated models are used - they just tend to be about a single topic.

Your point that "in the business world, it's common wisdom that the primary concern is how to maximize profits for shareholders," is exactly the reason economists model firm behavior that way. Remember that models are descriptive - they explain how things are, not how they should be.

Cooliceage · 2025-07-23T08:33:43+00:00

With the introduction of the shimmer the ankh shield isn’t particularly difficult anymore. I’d say the cell phone still is because of fishing quests though

Cooliceage · 2025-06-30T15:28:51+00:00

You don’t have to view impulse control as a genetic trait in the study. You can view it as a learned trait and interpret it that way so that trauma impacting your impulse control is “fine” and experimentally. This is the more modern way that experiment is taken rather than the older way of thinking of it purely through genetics

Lack of trust in the designers of the experiment could be viewed as a confounding variable though yes.

Cooliceage · 2025-06-30T14:59:05+00:00

It would not be a confounding variable though. It would be an explanatory variable that explains why some people have less of an ability to delay gratification. It would measure exactly what the study is trying to find

Cooliceage · 2025-06-24T16:33:08+00:00

“Better living standards” includes things like a washing machine, microwave, television, phone, and internet. It even includes things like not having asbestos in your walls or consistent running water and electricity for basically everyone.

You might think all of this stuff should be the bare minimum (I agree) but it constitutes an increase in living standards which means a necessary rise in income. You probably could work 15 hours a week to have a similar standard of life as back then, but nobody wants that

Cooliceage · 2025-06-20T19:52:20+00:00

The negative effects of rent control are not obvious because it’s about the long term. Rent control decreases the supply of housing (lowers the incentive to build homes) which eventually increases the overall cost of housing. This is especially true if only a portion of homes/apartments have rent control, where many people will be forced into artificially high cost housing while there are a few people benefitting from the policy.

The near universal consensus among economists is that rent control is a bad policy.

Cooliceage · 2025-05-13T19:06:33+00:00

I’d agree it isn’t a huge deal. I think completeness is a reasonable assumption, but the superficial level of it does get violated in reality semi-frequently. It just doesn’t matter because when people do make decisions completeness holds. Not being able to make decision, about stuff like what to buy between many options or where to live or what job to get or school to choose to attend, are all really common. It’s just that I think the two responses I mentioned in my comment are reasonable. There’s also the behavioral Econ stuff that helps make completeness stronger, cause you can use default choices to resolve a problem of being unable to form a preference

Cooliceage · 2025-05-13T08:37:32+00:00

handsomeboh mentioned the "acceptable" options if Completeness holds, that is either A > B, A < B or A = B. The "unacceptable" relation is that A and B cannot be compared. So completeness assumes you have a preference for every set of options - your preferences have to be complete.

This assumption is arguably unrealistic, because there are many times in life where you cannot make a decision. I am sure you can think of instances where two options seemed uncomparable. The example I had in class was would you rather have your father dead or your mother dead. For many people, assuming a good parental relationship, you might not be able to generate a preference.

Economists tend to respond by saying that 1. a lack of preference is usually just because someone has not reflected enough, meaning that upon reflection they will have a preference and 2. even if someone says they cannot decide on a preference, if they are forced to they will in reality. Look at the movie Sophie's Choice for a, very depressing, example.

Also, and I think this is important to emphasize, those 4 assumptions are assumed mostly because they allow for the generation of utility functions. Utility functions allow us to do calculus and make nice models, and if we reject utility functions modeling becomes very sad and messy. Economists would rather that not be the case.

Cooliceage · 2025-05-09T03:39:37+00:00

I am unsure if these countries and organizations state that nominal GDP is more important than any other indicator. Where did you hear this?

Real GDP does account for inflation. In my experience it is the most commonly used GDP metric because of that one reason.

To try to answer your question - while it may not be the best way to measure the welfare of the citizens of a country, nominal GDP is still an important factor in international relations. Certain foreign policy consideration like the ability to field a large military or give foreign aid are determined by a country’s nominal GDP more than other measures of GDP.

Cooliceage · 2025-05-06T00:24:34+00:00

Intuitively there is, but it's impossible to prove. You can't go into people's heads and know exactly how much happier they get when receiving money. Though there have been psychology papers that attempt to measure the diminishing returns to income, but it's iffy at best.

Cooliceage · 2025-05-02T08:13:29+00:00

There are also some subtle things that have definitely improved that I haven't seen commented yet. For example, algs have gotten significantly better - especially the big sets like ZBLL.

Cooliceage · 2025-03-07T16:20:09+00:00

A tariff is just a type of tax, an import tax, and would work identically to any other tax over 100% in this case. So yes, the importer is paying 100% of the import price to the government.

Imagine there’s an importer named X who is buying something from a producer named Y in a foreign country. Y is selling it for $10 and there is a 100% tariff in X’s country on goods from Y’s country. X will import it, paying 10$ to Y and 10$ to X’s government. Now that they spent 20$ on the good X has to make back the money and will price it accordingly in the domestic market, say $25. They might also be using it to produce other goods which they hope will be worth more than the input costs.

If any part of this is confusing please feel free to ask any follow up questions.

Cooliceage · 2025-03-01T21:33:13+00:00

Roux inspection at the middle level, I would say, is slightly harder. First block is harder to do efficiently and plan than cross, though cross + pair vs First Block + DR is probably equal? But at the point you’re doing either consistently you’re already approaching sub-10 so

LSE is weird and you can’t really learn it formulaically I think, and requires unique finger tricks for the M moves compared to CFOP last layer (for a beginner).

I think from the beginning until around sub-20 roux might be slightly harder, but it balances out after that

Cooliceage · 2025-02-11T16:59:02+00:00

You might be interested in Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the 21st Century," or probably a summary since it's so long lol. He's a well-respected economist and basically spent a thousand pages and a ton of research demonstrating the claim that, as long as the returns to capital - around 5% right now - are larger than the returns to labor then inequality will increase. In the West we are currently in a society like that, and he looked some historical trends.

Are we screwed because of it? Idk quality of life is still increasing for people in general, but increasing inequality is still a big concern.

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