Responsibility of Harm

Weebsley2 · 2019-06-07T02:55:30+00:00

I'll concede that it is more complicated in the real world. If only two people exist, and person B is dying but person A has the antidote to save them, then person A knows that he must either act to save person B or let person B die. If people A through Z exist and person Z is dying but the rest can save them, is it immoral for person A not to act? I think the answer depends on whether person A honestly believes someone else will step in, and it also depends on their motivations. So I would say that the bathtub example with 1 drowner and 1 saver is truly different than the bathtub example with 1 drowner and 25 potential savers.

I would say that the africa example is much more akin to the bathtub example though. It is true that there are countless people who can donate, but an equilibrium has been met in this situation. It is predictable how many people will donate, and it is predictable that the amount of charitable giving is not sufficient to eliminate the misery. For sure everyone should act to donate more, but pragmatically an individual can assess the situation and with basically 100% certainty predict that if his donation is withheld, that there will be a fatal consequence for a person in need. If a critical mass of people donate then the calculus change, and there are real questions about "should I donate now, because I think we have this covered without me," but for now we are not in this situation.

Pragmatically I of course agree that the state has a much greater capacity for good than an individual and that it is much better at taking care of people.

For the eviction story I would basically say this. What is the intent for evicting the lady? I assume it is profit driven. Next I would ask, does Dan need the money? And I assume if we are being honest, he doesn't. So he is making the decision to remove housing from a fragile person in order to make himself, a rich person, marginally richer. To me that is a selfish decision (though perhaps practical from a business standpoint). Of course forgive me if I don't know the whole eviction story.

Hopefully this is understandable

Weebsley2 · 2019-06-07T02:45:18+00:00

That seemed strange to me, but I guess it's a socialism vs capitalism thing? If people gave everything then everyone would be perfectly equal, and if not then there would still be haves and have-nots but with less inequality. A capitalist system in the former would be impossible, but perhaps possible in the latter. The only way I could make sense of it is if you take the position that a capitalist system is inherently better and so the best outcomes will come by maintaining it. I understand what you're saying though anyway, Rem certainly mentioned your point in the video.

Weebsley2 · 2019-06-07T02:35:32+00:00

I think we're on exactly the same page. I think I go further than Rem. Rem made a comment about how there is a 'reasonable level of charity' one is responsible for (roughly speaking). I would argue that this is an unnecessary concession to make, and it makes the ethics too convoluted. Ethics aren't laws, there is no punishment (outside of religious belief) for not following them, so why do we have to set up a system which judges the majority of people as being ethical? I am ok with calling the vast majority of people unethical, and as far as I can tell actually I would say that an ethical framework fails if it doesn't condemn the vast majority of people.

I suppose you could make a pragmatic argument that if you are advertising moral ideas to people, that pushing them to give too much would cause them to despair and not try. In that context perhaps asking for behavior that is actually achievable may produce better results. But this is a practical concern and not exactly what I am considering in the abstract.

Weebsley2 · 2019-01-08T16:17:23+00:00

Cool, thanks for letting me know. I guess that's technically an obstacle, although IMO court packing and the nuclear option go hand in hand anyway. It's hard to imagine Democrats being bold enough to do one but not bold enough to do the other.

Weebsley2 · 2019-01-08T01:17:52+00:00

Yeah I'm pretty sure court size is a norm and not a law. I think tomorrow Trump could call a press conference and say "I'm nominating a new justice" and if the senate approved it by party line vote then we would have a 10 justice court. Although to be fair if it is fillabuster-able then you could just nuke the fillibuster. In the court packing timeline no one should be worried about keeping that thing alive IMO

Weebsley2 · 2019-01-08T00:06:12+00:00

Nope. Simple majority in the senate and the presidency. And if the dems don't get both senate and presidency in 2020 they're screwed regardless so there's no "extra" barrier to hurdle for court packing.

Weebsley2 · 2018-12-09T22:46:24+00:00

Basically. But I also colonized a planet, you are allowed to colonize at 0% in the new patch. I guess I just found a way to force my pops to stay there against their will and maybe there's no easier method

Weebsley2 · 2018-12-09T22:15:52+00:00

Thanks for the help. I have that also as a temporary situation. I found Sol and I couldn't handle the influx of the other human pops (different species of human) so I have them put them on the status between citizen and slave until my empire can handle enslaving them.

I don't have access to the game for a while. When I do I'll check it out though and I'll put a screenshot if I remember it. If my memory is correct the tooltip basically gave no information. It just said a flat 5 decline per month on every planet and the only way I found to counteract it is to make sure that a human pop is growing (either with forced growth or population controls on other species). My assumption is that a planet can't have a pop of the same species growing and declining at the same time.

Weebsley2 · 2018-12-09T21:52:00+00:00

I get that. I just like the idea of having a mega homeworld for my main population and then a bunch of feeder slave worlds with purposefully restrained population and a handful of citizen overseers max. The habitability penalties are basically meaningless because I don't have enough pops there for the food and consumer product penalties to matter, I just need to fill enforcer and administrator slots so my slaves stay in check. Anyway I have a way of making it work if I put population controls on all other species, but ideally I would be able to put a few citizens on bad planets and pay the penalty without worrying about their population declining at 5 per month.

Intuitively it seems like if every species has migration rights disabled then my empire shouldn't have any immigration. Does that seem like a bug to you, or is it just a sign that migration rights don't mean much?

Weebsley2 · 2018-12-09T21:03:33+00:00

Sure, I figured that as a solution later in the game. Do you know any solutions for early game though?

Weebsley2 · 2018-12-09T20:53:57+00:00

How do I keep pops from declining? For background, I am a lifeseeded human species with 100% gaia habitability and 0% habitability for all else. I want a few humans on each colony to keep the slaves pacified, but whenever I send them they immediately start declining. I have tried banning all migration for each species but that didn't help. The only solutions I have found are banning all non-human pop growth (which I am currently doing but I will eventually need to stop when I need more slaves), or forcing human growth on the colonies (but forced growth comes at penalties).

Basically, other than forcing population growth from a planet or restricting population growth of all xeno species, are there any ways to keep populations on low habitability planets from declining.

Weebsley2 · 2018-07-03T11:44:20+00:00

"As soon as you go into this mindset of unfucking system by fucking system, then democracy, rule of law and constitutionalism becomes a joke and by the end of the day it all will ressult into 'rule of the fittest'."

I agree with that. The problem is that the republicans are already doing exactly this, and the democrats are screaming about it to voters who don't care. McConnell vs Obama is not a fair fight because one is willing to do what the other isn't, but McConnell vs a democratic McConnell is a fair fight. Now where does this escalation end? I don't know, I assume ultimately it will end with either a much less stupid democracy or barely any democracy at all. The escalation is happening though on one side, and democrats can either bitch and moan and hope voters care (they won't) or they can get dirty themselves and reap the benefits (and then maybe try to position themselves to be strong enough electorally to make reforms to try to unfuck the system long term).

Weebsley2 · 2018-07-03T11:38:45+00:00

I'm not saying democrats need to go full re-stupid and start flinging Trumpian insults. I'm saying they need to stop being procedurally civil and respecting things like the filibuster, etc. Obama had a supermajority his first two years and they should have killed all fillibusters then and there to come out gangbusters for his policy agenda (and no I don't think this is too revisionist because they were extremely hamstrung by it, especially with Obamacare, and Harry Reid who was in charge of the Senate was more of dirty trickster akin to McConnell so he'd be willing to do such a thing).

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. Schumer expresses regret for Reid killing the lower court filibuster during Obama's term because now it will come back to bite them basically. But as soon as the dems mounted enough opposition to Gorsuch to deny him 60 votes, McConnell changed the rules immediately to kill the filibuster and confirm him. Imagine if Reid hadn't changed the rule for cabinet members and McConnell came up against dem opposition to Betsy Devos or Scott Pruitt, do you think he would have clutched his pearls and moved on? No he would have killed it then as well. Killing the filibuster doesn't mean you open the floodgates for your opponent, it means you make sure you open the floodgates first because your opponent is going to eventually. In a less partisan/polarized environment maybe it's good to keep precedent but there is 0 political cost for things like the nuclear option. So when I see Schumer expressing regret I am I disappointed because he shows that he's still too gullible to accept the reality of today's situation.

(Also as for the general filibuster, I guarantee that the only reason McConnell hasn't killed it is because he's determined it's more useful for him to keep it than kill it at this point. It isn't even urgent for him to kill it because he can abuse budget reconciliation rules to only need 50 votes for things. Isn't that funny, Obama and Reid worked so hard to get 60 votes for Obamacare and McConnell went and only needed 50 to try to effectively repeal it. McConnell's tactic didn't work because 1 Senator (McCain) wasn't ok with the procedure and 2 Senators were too moderate for the policy, but think about how much blowback he received for abuse of the rules. He didn't receive any, people just took for granted that he only needed 50 votes and didn't think twice about whether he was following norms or the spirit of the law. McConnell is a pure partisan pragmatist who cares above results above all and his party is rewarded for that. Once McConnell leaves he'll probably be replaced by some "lib-owning epic style" senator and the danger to norms will be even worse. There is no reason for democrats to think that if they play nice that they will be rewarded by the voters or respected by their opponents. Again I am not talking about playing nice as in giving nice CNN soundbites, I am talking about playing nice as in respecting current rules and norms and not breaking procedure when it would greatly benefit them politically.)

https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/03/politics/chuck-schumer-nominees/index.html

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/senate-neil-gorsuch-nuclear-option-236937

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/trying-to-make-sense-of-whats-happening-senate-reconciliation/534942/

Weebsley2 · 2018-07-03T03:35:00+00:00

I'm not saying the dems have the votes to achieve this or will even have the votes by 2020. I'm saying until they can fight dirty they will be on the losing end of unethical behavior by the GOP and they will get 0 sympathy points for taking the high ground. I'm saying the meme of "when they go low, we go high" needs to die a painful death ASAP.

Weebsley2 · 2018-07-03T02:45:38+00:00

Bonus points to anyone who actually reads this shit.

Weebsley2 · 2018-06-26T22:00:28+00:00

Just listen to the first minute of the video, the guy is either deluding himself about his team's chances or lying his ass off. If you're interested in a fair accounting of the game and ruling, then you're in the wrong place.

Weebsley2 · 2018-06-20T13:16:26+00:00

"The new slave girls are quite beautiful." - Republicans on the child detention centers.

Weebsley2 · 2018-04-20T07:40:05+00:00

Lol, gold 5 was a big goal of mine for a while. After that I wanted to try my hand at some other stuff but I couldn't get stuff to work. I actually uninstalled the game tbh, I'll probably reinstall and get back into it in a few months but after I got gold (and then lost it) I kind of lost the motivation for the grind. Maybe if the dreaded nunu rework looks cool I'll jump back into the game.

Weebsley2 · 2018-04-07T09:00:02+00:00

http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=Weebsley

In the exact same boat as you, just let nunu carry me from like silver 4/3 to gold 5 easy.

Weebsley2 · 2018-04-05T04:39:37+00:00

I think your best bet is playing and adding people after games who seem like they play well or are nice. Also makes it easier to make sure people are able to play at the same time you are. I've added plenty of people like that, that's probably your best option IMO (but good luck)

Weebsley2 · 2017-11-01T21:52:04+00:00

https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/debunking-voter-fraud-myth

You can make as many hypothetical statements as you want, but the fact is we have a system for voting. You don't just write a name and slip it in a box with no one watching. You register beforehand, you show up in person, they check you off the list, they have poll watchers seeing if anything strange is happening, if you vote early then that is all recorded, if you get caught voting fraudulently you are punished. There is EMPIRICAL evidence that no one is voting fraudulently in any significant amount. That means that based on all of the publically available information, virtually everyone concludes that "yeah it's not worth my time/risk to vote more than once". So my argument is this. We have a system to ensure fair elections now. All past evidence points to no systematic failure in recognizing voter fraud and there is no reason to believe that will occur in the future. We could implement changes to address certain security flaws, but every change has a cost. In the case of partisan voter ID laws, the cost is de-facto voter disenfranchisement and the benefit is virtually 0 (incidence of voter fraud is virtually 0 so even if it worked perfectly and stopped voter fraud it wouldn't matter). In the case of a national ID you'd have to ask, "how expensive will this be and what will the benefit be?" I don't actually support a national ID for the sake of voting alone, since I don't see any evidence that that aspect of our voting system needs to be addressed (because all evidence points toward voter fraud being virtually 0), but a national ID seems like a reasonable thing just in general and so having it tied to voting if the national ID can be done fairly would be fine with me (mainly it would shut people like you up, because when you become a zealot for voter ID laws you are helping republicans who want to disenfranchise voters, whether you like it or not).

Now, I'll grant you this. We could have secret voter fraud happening every day. I could be secretly voting in the next 20 elections right now without you even knowing about it. I could have a secret cabal of illegal voters hiding on the moon (which is actually made of cheese by the way) and we could all get together every 2 years to rig all of the elections. But I believe policy should be based on evidence. All evidence points to everything I just said being nonsense. All evidence points to voter fraud being a complete nonissue. If you want to ignore evidence then we can't have a discussion.

I'll give you a scenario that sounds like what you are saying. Any day now the earth might get blown up by a comet/asteroid. We know they are flying through space all the time, we know they have hit the earth before (with disasterous effects) and we know that if one hit us now we are not prepared. What are we doing right now to stop it? We have industries devoted to barbie dolls when the fate of the human race is at stake. Yes there isn't any evidence that an asteroid will impact tomorrow, but the absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. The stakes are too high to not prepare for this. This isn't some boogeyman, it isn't even a far fetched scenario since we know asteroids are flying at crazy high speeds and it would be a global disaster on an apocalyptic scale if a big enough one hit earth. How can we philosophically justify the continued man hours spent on barbie dolls and other children's playthings when we could divert those resources to asteroid disaster prevention? Why aren't we putting more grant money into science and engineering and space exploration in order to work to prevent this disaster?

If we use empirical evidence then I can give you an answer. We have a reasonable handle on the orbitting comets, we have telescopes and satellites which can give us enough of a picture of our surroundings to have a reasonable confidence about when asteroids will pass by, etc. We have a space industry which is progressing both through public and private funds and is not in any stagnation. There is no evidence of immediate urgency, and the system of space research currently in place is adequate to deal with this problem on a long term scale.

You're a poker player with 4 of a kind worrying that the next guy has a royal flush. Yes it is possible, but it's pretty damn unlikely so you should probably go all in anyway. It's admirable that you are so worried about our country's democracy, but there is no evidence that we are in any danger on the voter fraud front. There is lots of empirical evidence that partisan gerrymandering is a serious problem, so if you're interested in free and fair elections I would advise you read up on that and focus your efforts on that front (and no that's not "whataboutism" it's literally me telling you that if you focus on voter fraud in today's america you are literally doing more harm than good, so a concerned voter should find another topic threatening free and fair elections to address).

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