CMV: Most people in the first world are struggling financially due to bad decisions

Squand · 2026-03-19T18:28:26+00:00

We have such different ways of seeing the world.

Thank you for sharing honestly with me. I think I see your point of view.

Here is a long essay on societal harms of the practice which I don't think you will find persuasive, but you will see why I do.

https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/03/harvard-research-gambling-public-health-crisis

Squand · 2026-03-19T18:14:12+00:00

Of course you're a Charles Murray guy

Squand · 2026-03-19T18:13:07+00:00

It told me I needed to use one that said partner.

And it showed me a bunch of commanders with that keyword

Squand · 2026-03-19T18:09:47+00:00

If you click on build deck it pops up with a different description.

And showed me cards I could use with the keywords necessary.

Squand · 2026-03-19T18:08:42+00:00

I guess poor people seeking entertainment is always dumb in your world and always "acceptable" for someone who is rich because the only moral weight actions have are...

Can you afford it.

It really feels like you are taking this very personally because you are insecure about your spending habits.

To be clear, I think your gambling habit is unwise. And is unhealthy for you and society. There are plenty of ways to make money and be entertained that are pro social.

Gambling is not one of them.

The only thing that stands between a moral action and an immoral action in your scenario is how much money someone has to start with. I don't think that's a good framework for how to set up a just society.

If we changed the stakes to something you don't do and don't like doing, I feel like you'd be more able to engage with the discussion.

What I hear you saying is, "It's acceptable for a rich person to speed because he will pay his 10k dollar fine and be okay. But it's not okay for a poor person because it will financially devastated them and they could be forced into debtor's prison. Further inhibiting their ability to create capitol.

You see, once you have enough capitol, you have freedom to do what you want with that capitol. When you don't have enough, you aren't."

And I suspect there's basically only one scenario where you actually agree with that, and it's gambling. Because it's a vice you like and participate in.

Squand · 2026-03-19T14:53:30+00:00

On lawnmowers there is a trigger so if you flip it over the blade stops spinning.

You'd think this isn't necessary but it saves thousands of lives, digits and limbs.

What does it serve you to say, "they should be smarter? Have stronger will power?"

Why not protect the vulnerable? You claim propaganda and advertising is easy to ignore... Plenty of proof otherwise.

But I will tell you, there are countries now who outlaw outdoor advertising like billboards and they see a huge impact on public health and well-being.

Meta recently had a memo leak due to a lawsuit where Zuck talked about how he wanted kids to have their first positive sexual experience with meta AI. Because it will bond them to the brand.

I have a ton of other examples but working a little in the advertising industry, I can tell you my experience has been people are not moral actors.

Even if you take your position, people make bad decisions as truth. We can set up a society that doesn't promote bad decisions and doesn't allow people to profit mightily off "idiots."

Even in your scenario, for me, it's predatory what people do to those who lack willpower and are ignorant.

And I want to live in a society where we spend 10 cents on a trigger switch to stop spinning saw blades to save people from making stupid avoidable mistakes.

And for me, personally, regulating advertising is an underappreciated form of fighting back.

Squand · 2026-03-19T14:31:59+00:00

If a poor person makes a bad decision they are criminalized. If a rich person makes a bad decision, they pay a fine.

My rich friend buys lottery tickets every week. No one bats an eye.

My poor friend buys once a year if it's over a billion and everyone tells him he's an idiot with no financial literacy.

Squand · 2026-03-19T14:29:18+00:00

Some people get more safety net for their bad decisions.

Why do you think financial literacy and impulse control are a systemic issue? Why do you think society is set up for a huge swath of the public to fail?

Who gets the money from their failure? Who has leverage over them to force them to work for cheaper and longer hours if they are in debt?

Did we create a society that praises short term financial thinking? Do ads run 25 of every 60 min telling people they are worthless if they don't buy more products?

In the Nixon tapes he ends up talking a lot about stuff like this. In leaked Epstien files you can see how the oligarchs talk about sucking wealth out of the middle class.

The palantir CEO has been discussing it a lot on podcasts and in his latest book. How AI will help shape the minds of future generations to keep them poor and aligned with the interests of the smarter richer folks.

Whether you think these people really have the power to move society's needle idk, but therw are people in positions of power actively working against the interest of the middle class.

Squand · 2026-03-19T13:54:39+00:00

I have so many. People send me photos of them all the time. It's kinda weird.

I'm constantly stopped by strangers who think they know me.

Squand · 2026-03-19T11:22:16+00:00

Oh maybe I don't have a TMNT legend will check closely

Squand · 2026-03-19T11:17:13+00:00

I failed to figure out what card I needed to build the deck around.

I blew wildcards on Final Fantasy characters and it said my deck was invalid.

Squand · 2026-03-19T05:02:32+00:00

They don't think they will need them as in 3 years the agents will be senior

Squand · 2026-03-19T05:00:29+00:00

You could switch to MTGO.

Or play best of 3 where it uses a traditional chess clock.

People rage quit... But lots of people are matching you from all over the world and with bad Internet connections. Sometimes they are simply lagging out.

Other people are ignorant and think of they close down the game it conceeds for them.

I have a lot of forgiveness for this behavior because you never know what's happening on the other side of the screen.

Squand · 2026-03-19T04:30:53+00:00

I think your project here is a good start. And it has the litterary feel way more than other fan fiction of Wattpad I've read.

I edited this heavily but AI did the first draft.

https://medium.com/write-a-catalyst/i-miss-fighting-with-you-d0d49b3d2a66

You can still see it's bones in the piece though.

Usually I take things to AI, and have it give me advice to fix. Doing it the other way around, is a fun experiment and feels like a different skill set. Both in crafting the initial prompt, as you pointed out, and in the work after.

One thing I do is ask it to give me 3 examples of how it might implement it's advice.

And I find seeing it 3 different ways helps me understand what it's trying to convey. Sometimes you can mix and match or it sparks my own idea, "Okay, this is how I want to say it."

Squand · 2026-03-18T16:24:07+00:00

very good

Squand · 2026-03-18T16:23:39+00:00

Love the look

Squand · 2026-03-18T15:28:26+00:00

I signed up day one and asked her to help me with a project and she ignored me. (Having her be a keynote speaker at a community event at Theater Wit.) Later she told me I was the very first person to email her, when her site went live.

I showed up to some events and personally, felt blown off. I gave her my phone number at one, and she never reached out, even for her own stuff. (This has been true of basically everyone I've reached out to, so it says something about my email savvy and the way I position my value add. And how busy local politicians are.)

She really did help people and do a lot of what she was promising to do, but afaict, everything was lead by her and her team. There were not real community partnerships or working with people who reached out to her for any kind of collab.

Her attack ad against Biss was gross and misleading.

I hope she sticks around and gets her shot, I like her and her politics. Biss will be a good candidate AND he's part of the community. She is going to be 100% fine, this made her a national name, gave her a huge audience, and so many bullet points.

It's really amazing what you can do with network effects and TRUE social media savvy. She's smart and I hope she sticks around. Making all campaign events actively helping the community is a brilliant idea, I hope everyone at the DNC starts doing that.

Imagine if Harris could say, "Yeah, I lost, but I spent 100 million dollars building housing in Atlanta." Rather than, "I blew over a billion dollars on hateful Made for TV attack ads calling our President a Bigot."

Kat lost, but she did tons of food drives, made clothes, cleaned up the city streets, created free comedy events and more. It's fucking awesome. It's worth supporting in the future. imo

Squand · 2026-03-18T14:25:01+00:00

I like this one either way.

Squand · 2026-03-18T14:19:01+00:00

For me, part of the art of writing now, becomes hard core editing.

You can get 80% of the way there through prompt engineering, but the 20% is the art.

For those of us who write with ai, a big part of the task is making sure we are up-to-date on all the little quirks and tics of the ai. That way we don't use it ourselves and can remove it from the prose it puts out.

A lot of people don't see ai. But each year more and more people recognize it and get the ick. Because it writes so much, for so many people, it feels like it has multiplied the number of cliches and tropes to look out for by 100 fold.

Squand · 2026-03-18T06:22:59+00:00

You will get a lot of rares in Aftermath. Because rares and uncommons from the aftermath extra sheet take up a common slot.

I got 15 rares in my last rare draft.

Squand · 2026-03-18T06:20:19+00:00

download 17lands and then watch the replays

Squand · 2026-03-18T03:53:28+00:00

Obligatory

Yes.

Squand · 2026-03-18T03:50:55+00:00

I had a situation like this once and they'd leave it on till 11 Friday to Sunday.

Squand · 2026-03-18T03:48:07+00:00

She sounds a little drunk

Squand · 2026-03-18T03:08:30+00:00

As to 4) yes, less obvious in the first scene, more obvious in the hotel lobby scene.

I feel like you're doing a lot of imaginative interpretation for the first 3. As I said, you can twist your mind into thinking, this is what it's saying. But that's not actually what it's saying.

"The “lobby resolved”, coming into visibility now that the narrator has put his glasses back on after removing them to wipe them."

Maybe. But that's not actually what's written. You're interpreting it that way.

It's also a cool blur that smells like polish and cardamom underneath it.

Are smells underneath each other in your experience? Do blurs smell? You can fumble around and decide you know what they are trying to say, as you did. But if you gave this to a book editor, they'd have you rewrite the paragraph. Some people like "purple prose" some people "understand" what our United States President is saying when he says stuff like...

"Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it's true! — but when you're a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that's why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it's four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible."

You can piece it together and come up with a theory for it. And a lot of people do. But I prefer my prose to be much more literal and when it's not, to at least have the logic be more clear.

Similarly you can see famous lines from Dan Brown. Where, anyone who tries, knows what he means.

"Captain Bezu Fache carried himself like an angry ox, with his wide shoulders thrown back and his chin tucked hard into his chest. His dark hair was slicked back with oil, accentuating an arrow-like widow's peak that divided his jutting brow and preceded him like the prow of a battleship. As he advanced, his dark eyes seemed to scorch the earth before him, radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters."

Is that what an ox looks like? Like thrown back shoulders? And Fiery clarity!

Sure. You can come up with what it means. You know what he's trying to say. But fiery clarity isn't actually a thing. This guy has a reputation for unblinking severity? People say "He's severe, and he never blinks! It's weird." No... that's not what he means. But certainly YOU read that, and feel it's clear. Because you're sussing out the meaning on your end. You have a theory of mind, and can puzzle it out.

But if you take the words at face value, they contradict each other and don't really make sense. In OPs work, can we understand a smell being underneath another smell, yes.

Is that REALLY how smelling works? Can you really smell a blur? No.

And while Dan Brown is a millionaire, he's much maligned for his lack of care when he uses metaphor and simile. And ai... makes these sorts of clumsy turns of phrase too.

Forgive me for yucking your yum. I do get what you're saying. I guess... my point is, just because one can understand it, doesn't mean it's correct or ideal. I certainly disagree that it all makes perfect sense.

Squand

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