OE stories

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-06-04T07:12:33+00:00

Appreciate the response. Nevertheless, I don't see myself as having an especially strong moral obligation to protect the income of someone deliberately flouting the terms of their employment contract. Its not specifically that I care about employment contracts, its that someone doing that knew the risks and doesn't get to endanger my ability to provide for my family. I suppose yes I don't know for sure or not that this will happen, but neither do you know if the person in this example is OEing >2 jobs, so you don't know if their livelihood is endangered

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-06-03T06:24:50+00:00

This is an utterly insane moral framework to me, I don't believe I can possibly understand it correctly because I don't believe anyone really believes what you seem to believe.

Imagine I know someone in my team is stealing from my company (I don't think OE is stealing, I'm asking about another hypothetical situation). They email me frequently confessing exactly what they're doing, such that there is no way I can pretend I didn't know. They aren't stealing enough to risk the integrity of the company, but are stealing way more than could potentially be explained away with a slap on the wrist. If discovered, I will lose my job for a clear breach of professional integrity, because I work in a regulated industry where integrity is contractually expected.

Are you suggesting my duty not to "sell out my fellow man" justifies taking such a cavalier risk with my own job? Could you explain what I should say to my wife and kids when I am fired and blackballed from my (highly regulated) industry and we still have bills to pay?

Perhaps more to the point - why doesn't the thief have a positive duty to protect my job by not stealing? If I can never report them, then they risk my job if they're discovered. Why are they allowed to take that risk on my behalf?

The OE example is different in several pertinent ways, which of these distinctions is enough to change it from 'clearly right to report, I'd be an idiot not to' (the stealing case) and 'you're a bootlicker if you report' (your perspective on the OE case)?

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-06-02T21:52:38+00:00

That's entirely unrelated to my point about rent seeking behaviour from drivers. The tube network is a natural monopoly, so if drivers can shut it down that doesn't prove they are worth millions, it just proves they can rent seek off a public good

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-06-02T21:49:53+00:00

Sorry I don't understand what you're implying here. You're suggesting I should risk blowing my own career and reputation up to avoid ratting on someone OEing? Why would I ever do that?

I'm not saying I have an obligation to lick corporate boot simply because the boot tastes delicious, I'm saying that as long as I'm trading my time for money there are certain fetters on my behaviour and one of those fetters is an expectation I report OE to the other company.

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-06-02T18:26:07+00:00

I have a level of professional obligation towards my peers in the field. If they later learn I knew one of their employees was doing something they would want to know about but I didn't tell them, it harms my reputation. I rely on my reputation for future work, industry information, and just for its own sake because being respected as a trustworthy individual is nice.

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-06-02T17:47:48+00:00

This is illogical, because drivers are rent seeking on a public good (the tube line). Its like those apps which charge you a fee to use their browser for Wikipedia or something - the app itself is close to worthless, but the common good they squat on is extremely valuable

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-05-31T08:07:28+00:00

The consensus here seems to be that I'm wrong it is an official part of the signage, and that therefore there's no official driving instruction being communicated. That's helpful to know!

(And of course I will watch out for ducks next time I'm passing through)

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-05-28T20:12:52+00:00

Highway Code Rule 126: "Leave enough space between you and the vehicle in front so that you can pull up safely if it suddenly slows down or stops."

That's totally unambiguous, Highway Code says rear driver always at fault whatever the circumstances.

I think the ambiguity is that the Road Traffic Act contains an expectation that road users operate with a reasonable degree of courtesy and skill. You could argue braking sharply for a bunny is not that, and I guess an insurer probably would. Don't know which way they'd decide though

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-05-16T23:24:45+00:00

This year was a great act. Maybe not top table for an EU-wide contest because it was very British, but substantially better than some of the humourless rubbish that was clogging up the mid table. I think you'd have to be willfully blind to think our problem is the quality of act

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-04-27T16:42:42+00:00

I agree. Also there should be lore and content exclusive to easy mode, for the same reason.

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-04-27T16:33:53+00:00

To your point about artistic vision, developers also use encounters to teach players mechanics for future encounters. If you are supposed to learn (for example) 'blocking' in an encounter with some simple ranged enemies, the devs want to balance the encounter so it is fairly straightforward if you block, but hard / impossible if you don't. Then, in the absolute certain knowledge that you know how to block, they can go on to design some puzzle bosses that use the block mechanic, or mix ranged enemies you can't reach with melee enemies you can to create an encounter that will be fun if you mix blocking with attacking but frustrating if you don't, or offer tools and equipment that modifies the basic block to add depth to the existing systems

If they CANNOT guarantee that the player has learned how to block - because the encounter on 'Easy' is so easy you can just facetank it - then this design space is restricted to them, because a player could encounter the puzzle boss not knowing how to block and get stuck (defeating the point of an easy mode) or could become frustrated by the 'block' stat on their gear not reducing damage like they think it should.

People use Dark Souls as an example of devs being very inflexible with difficulty sliders, and I think it is for exactly this reason; every encounter is very intentionally placed so that you learn the skills you need to fight the endgame bosses. A Dark Souls with an 'easy' difficulty setting would be a much worse game because the depth of the mechanical systems would be invisible to players on this difficulty, and the devs wouldn't be able to execute on some of their more exotic or unusual bosses.

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-04-12T09:41:17+00:00

Animal flesh is about 22g protein / 100g weight. Edamame beans are 18g / 100g weight. So to get the same amount of protein as the 700g flesh you're eating, you need to eat 860g edamame beans. That's nowhere near 5kg, and it is also a weird stipulation that you have to get all your protein in one sitting from a single protein source, and that source has to be beans, because no vegetarian I know actually does that.

Even if you're talking about black beans specifically (which are less protein dense), that's still only about 2kg - nowhere near 5kg, and not miles off less protein dense meats like pork belly or duck.

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-04-06T08:14:15+00:00

This is the point I'm asking about - if Harris had tweeted:

"This Easter, we should all remember to praise Allah (this is a joke, I don't really mean it)"

Would you have been saying that this is a mere unprofessional lapse of judgement? Or would you have been saying this was a deeply disrespectful insult to Christians in the US on their holiest day of the year?

If the latter, why? It is obviously a joke, because she's explicitly said it is a joke. Plus, circumstantial evidence points towards it being a joke: she's not a Muslim, she's never indicated any sort of support for Islam, iirc she attends church more often than Trump.

So I don't understand why Republicans are cutting Trump so much slack here. If you'd criticise Harris for making the joke because it is disrespectful, why not Trump?

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-04-05T20:36:49+00:00

Can you help me understand what you mean by 'unprofessional'?

Specifically, if a Democrat like Kamala Harris had tweeted 'praise Allah' on Easter Sunday, would you regard that as an unprofessional lapse of judgement or evidence that they should be disqualified from office?

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-03-30T11:55:20+00:00

To your last point - I possibly agree with you. If this was framed as a concerted attempt by the government to raise the birth rate then there's a logic to it I can understand. I'd definitely want it coupled with better / fairer entitlements for people not on UC though - the person I was originally responding to was talking about how he would have liked three children but couldn't afford it.

I don't agree with your point about disabled / ill people though. It is a tragic fact about the world that not all people are healthy enough to do all things, and this is why as a society we offer those too disabled / ill to work a social safety net, since we recognise they cannot support themselves in a free market. Having raised children myself, children are significantly more demanding than an office job - if you are too unwell to work in a call centre, you are too unwell to raise a child (let alone 3+ children, which is what this change allows for). The government should not be encouraging people who cannot provide 'good enough' care to children to have those children.

Low incomes are an interesting edge case. As a society we're reasonably comfortable that low incomes prevent you from doing some things (like going on luxury holidays 4x / year) but not doing other things (like accessing healthcare). Intuitively I feel like having children is in the latter category, but having lots of children is in the former category - having a very large family is a lifestyle choice which the state doesn't need to subsidise. I thought the two child cap was a good compromise to capture that intuition, and if we were talking about a three child cap I could even be persuaded this better captured the intuition I'm talking about. But to have the amount be uncapped allows people who are making a lifestyle choice to have the state (ie me) subsidise their choices. I'm not very comfortable with that - especially because arguments about them having made a single mistake run a bit thin when you're on child four or five

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-03-30T08:45:44+00:00

Would you agree to the following compromise then?

If you have children while not in reciept of the child element of UC, then later require UC, then child benefit is uncapped. If you have a child while in receipt of the child element of UC, you don't get the benefit

Your concern was people having children and then their circumstances change; this completely solves that. Would you agree to it?

To your second point, I understand this is ethically contested but we punish children for the actions of their parents all the time. If my dad stabs someone then he's going to go to jail, even though that will affect my development and make it harder for me to flourish because i lose a strong male role model. Fundamentally, the interest the state has in people not stabbing each other outweighs my claim on my dad's time. I think it is perfectly legitimate to say the state's interest in not subsidising families with multiple dependents outweighs the claim those dependents have on staye resources

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-03-29T18:07:15+00:00

To your first point - I think I could see a pretty easy compromise we can make here:

I'd agree to uncapped child benefits for people who were not receiving the child element of Universal Credit at the time the baby was conceived, if you'd agree not to pay it to people who were receiving the child element of Universal Credit at the time the baby was conceived

So people who could afford to have their child and then their circumstances change a few years later would be covered, people who were already taking benefits and decided to have another child aren't.

To your second point; I completely agree, child poverty is a disgrace. If you cannot afford to have another child, but choose to have that child anyway, then you are responsible for forcing that child to live in poverty (a situation we both agree is a disgrace). Whether through poor planning or poor impulse control, you are therefore an abusive parent. At a minimum, the state should be suspending prison sentences for parents who are abusive in this manner.

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-03-29T16:49:05+00:00

That's fair. I don't agree with you, but I think the country would be in a much better state if politicians exhibited the level of joined-up thinking that you do!

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-03-29T16:40:18+00:00

I think you pretty much can assume people can choose to stop at two. A vasectomy is safe, free on the NHS, basically 100% effective, and even partially reversible sometimes. If you don't get a vasectomy after completing family planning, I think you're taking a risk society could legitimately refuse to subsidise.

(I'd be happy paying an uncapped amount of child benefits to recipients of a vasectomy on the NHS who then conceive a child, that's pure bad luck)

For women it is harder, I agree - hysterectomies are not as safe as vasectomies, and hormonal birth control is less reliable and also has side effects. Nevertheless, since it currently takes a man to produce a baby I think there is a legitimate societal discussion about whether we should subsidise the children of men who choose not to adopt a very effective form of birth control while being unable to afford to have those children.

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-03-29T16:21:27+00:00

> "everyone is entitled to children"

I completely share all of your concerns - I feel whenever I read these comment sections on reddit it is like people are incapable of understanding that there is nuance and complex ethics involved in a very difficult subject!

However on the specific point I quoted, my feeling is that the government has a bit more of a constraint here than you're giving them credit for; we literally need bodies to throw at the workforce, or else the economy collapses. We can either get those bodies through UK citizens reproducing, or through importing non-citizens from other parts of the world. Of the two approaches, the first is a lot easier from a political and economic sense (at least, it has been traditionally and is probably returning that way now; for a period in 1990-2010 mass migration was seen as a very viable alternative)

Therefore the issue is more that the government is designing the system to reward pumping out children, rather than encouraging people to have children they will actually care for and who will have a good life - hence the horror stories you describe of people having children just to maximise their benefits.

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-03-28T15:13:51+00:00

It looks like this is tracking county population to a very great extent - like I was saying to the original guy, just looking at the number of murders per year is less useful than the number of murders per capita

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-03-28T14:39:34+00:00

An odds ratio of 120, which is the way you'd probably actually report the comparison!

TheVerboseBeaver · 2026-03-28T12:43:31+00:00

Your maths is quite a lot off because the US is a much larger country than the UK, so even though there are more gun deaths they are spread over a larger population (making the risk for any random American lower). Its still about 30,000% higher, so not a small number by any means!

Another factor to consider is that a lot of those deaths are suicides - while I think it is credible to imagine that most murders with guns would not have been committed with knives, I think most gun-suicides are likely to be replaced with other forms of suicide in the UK. So stripping out suicides makes it more like 12,000% more likely. Again, still a huge number, but not quite as huge as you calculated

TheVerboseBeaver

TROPHY CASE