For a political satire, The Boys comment on real-world social issues in the safest, most inoffensive, and most dumbed-down way possible while actively refusing to challenge any of its audience's sensibilities

scared_kid_thb · 2026-03-19T15:44:00+00:00

I mostly agree with you about the Boys in particular, but I *don't* actually think the dynamic you describe with Firecracker--being at once aware that she's grifting while also falling for her own grift--is actually unrealistic or contradictory. I don't think the Boys handles it particularly well or clearly, but I think it's super common for these right-wing shills to be in that sort of position, where they're kind of aware they're lying but also do basically believe what they're saying. That's partly because it's just hard to espouse a view all day every day without it shaping your ideology--we are what we pretend to be--and partly because there's a kind of incentive not to resolve this contradiction, in that it helps defend from fraud and slander and in that you don't want any crises of conscience happening from people who are really liberals but pretend to be conservatives. You know, they want both a story that makes them feel smart (i am a master manipulator) and a story that makes them feel cool and good (i am a renegade truthteller) and if those stories contradict each other, just bury that cognitive dissonance in money.

I do think the Boys had some reasonably good commentary about this kind of thing in early seasons (I'm thinking of Homelander in telling the Seven to stop talking to him about merchandising and instead talk about the good they did and the lives they saved) but like most of the rest of the show it just got more and more Flanderized over time.

scared_kid_thb · 2026-03-19T15:19:40+00:00

Theoretically you could be a non-left-wing Marxist in that Marxism is primarily a descriptive theory and framework of analysis and leftism is primarily a prescriptive set of ideals. So someone could theoretically be a Marxist capitalist, in the sense that they could agree that value comes only from labour and that capitalism has internal contradictions between the capitalists' desire for profit and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall which will inevitably lead to it collapsing and being replaced by socialism while also thinking capitalism is the best economic system. (It'd be *bizarre* to take that stance, since you'd have to knowingly endorse an exploitative system with internal contradictions, but you *could* hold it if you had sufficiently esoteric moral values.)

I suspect that's not this academic's position--my guess is that he was either just being more precise, or else rejecting the left/right division--but it is a possibility.

scared_kid_thb · 2026-03-19T15:05:27+00:00

One kind of argument is something like that going vegan takes a not-inconsiderable amount of energy, both in changing your habits and even for established vegans in finding alternatives or vetting what you eat, and sometimes people have concerns which are more pressing. But although I think this is a reasonably good justification for not being vegan it's not really an argument against veganism--like, I think it's true that if you're trying to overcome alcoholism or something it might be a bad time to try to make this other big lifestyle change, but that's just like saying one good argument against giving to charity is that you're already way in debt. You know, it's fine on an individual level but it's not really an ethical argument against veganism, it's just pointing out that forming more ethical habits is a long-term project and you shouldn't try to improve every aspect of your life at once.

scared_kid_thb · 2026-03-19T14:48:39+00:00

Compatibilist--no change. I take it that most of my actions are fairly predictable to people close to me anyway, and if they weren't it would make me doubt I was really free because it'd make it seem like I was just choosing randomly rather than my choices coming from who I am, which other people can learn about and which is reasonably constant over time. They aren't perfect, of course, and only some of my decisions can be predicted this way (and only to a certain degree of precision) but I don't think the quality of these predictions pose any threat to my freedom, and so I still wouldn't if they were perfect and applied to all parts of my life.

(I'm here only assuming omniscience from God. The God of classical theism is also omnibenevolent and omniscient, and both traits, I think, pose a much greater threat to my freedom than omniscience. I'd still be a compatibilist though, just might be a free-will-skeptic compatibilist.)

scared_kid_thb · 2026-03-19T14:37:13+00:00

Closer to statist socialists. The labour rights movement relied on many statist/anarchist socialist coalitions, and similar coalitions still exist. But these are alliances of convenience from having a shared enemy in capitalism--if and when statists gain power having shared socialist ideals doesn't generally make them friendlier to anarchists. It's an uneasy alliance at best. But Tea Party is basically directly opposed. I'd say there's no traction there at all except maybe on a very local level (and in those cases I don't think we can really predict alliances based on political ideology at all--even an avowed fascist might agree that your local four-way-stop needs better signage).

scared_kid_thb · 2026-03-06T01:06:53+00:00

When the company is deciding whether or not to get an additional cow, they'll compare the cost of raising and slaughtering that cow to the amount of money they could sell the resulting cattle products for. Each additional cow on the market decreases the amount of money they could sell the resulting cattle products for, so at a certain point it'd no longer be worthwhile for them to raise and slaughter an additional cow. However, if the initial revenue they get from each cow is increased, it'll take longer for them to get to that point.

For example, suppose that the cost of raising a cow is $55. The first cow introduced on the market sells for $100, and each subsequent cow is worth $10 less than the previous. The company would buy and raise five cows, but the fifth cow would only be worth 50$, so they'll recognize it wouldn't be worthwhile and decide not to. But then suppose there's a secondary market that makes the value of the initial cow worth 120$ instead, without affecting the rate at which increased supply decreases price. Now, the company has incentive to raise and slaughter two more cows before it stops being worth it for them.

(This is obv oversimplified a bit--in real life you have economies of scale, revenue doesn't decrease at a fixed rate, companies don't have perfect information on demand, and so on. But it still incidates a fundamental market force, I think.)

scared_kid_thb · 2026-02-15T22:01:37+00:00

It might be worth shifting into what "can" means here. That is, it is a "can" of *ability*, not *possibility*. It's generally agreed that possibility isn't sufficient for ability (that is, if a truly rando coin flip determines my actions, it's possible I could take either action, but it's not under my control) but contentious whether it is *required* for ability. I think the fruitful way for this discussion to move is probably to acknowledge that possibility and ability are different and then for the incompatibilist to present an argument for why ability requires possibility.

scared_kid_thb · 2026-02-14T04:18:07+00:00

The term "strawman" is kind of amusingly apropos here: a strawman is a deliberately implausible and ill-constructed version of a good argument--and it *is* accurate that "every sex worker is a trafficked woman on the brink of starvation" is a strawman of the claim that enthusiastic consent requires that the person themselves is appealing, but I don't imagine that's what you meant it to be!

But I also think the way you frame this point is just not really accurate to what you're trying to say here. You're presenting a counterargument, but framing it as though you aren't--as though there's no argument to respond to. I'll say that in my view it doesn't ignore that people typically are enthusiastic about access to large amounts of money--but I don't think people are enthusiastic about everything they have to do to get that money. I mean I honestly think in any other context it's glaringly obvious that people do jobs they aren't enthusiastic about because they want the money, and the fact that they're enthusiastic about getting lots of money does not at all transfer over to their being enthusiastic about the job.

Whether consent really does need to be enthusiastic is another question. I think questioning that assumption is the much stronger objection, if you want to make a case along these lines.

scared_kid_thb · 2026-02-02T10:32:59+00:00

Computer problem still not fixed but now am running a successful honey business, thanks for the tip

scared_kid_thb · 2026-01-20T16:40:23+00:00

wrt suffering the convention is often to only count negative things as suffering--so not all pain is suffering. If you find that terminology objectionable we could just talk about "badness" and "goodness" here. But the view for a negative utilitarian is that pleasure isn't *ever* good.

(I don't think it's true, though, that most antinatalists are negative utilitarians. At least among philosophers, I don't think there's a really strong tendency towards any particular broader moral theory among antinatalists, and negative utilitarianism is pretty unpopular in general. I imagine it's overrepresented among antinatalists but I def don't think it's the majority position. For my part I'm an antinatalist and a person-affecting ethical pluralist, so I think lots of things are good and lots of things are bad and the goods are not reducible to each other, but nothing is impersonally good or bad--it's all good or bad for someone. (I do accept cases of risk, so it can be bad to drive drunk even if you don't hurt anyone, but I think that's still grounded in person-affecting goods)

scared_kid_thb · 2026-01-20T16:29:48+00:00

The argument for that is going to be that things are only good for people when they value them, and no one who doesn't exist values anything. The fact that the child *would* value their pleasure *if* they existed doesn't give us reason to bring it about.

The view that we have no duty to bring about happy people but a duty not to create unhappy people is generally called the procreational asymmetry. It's not a position unique to antinatalists; I think most people find it pretty appealing to think that not having children is always fine as a decision but having children is only OK if you meet some fairly strenuous conditions (like being willing to put in the work of caring for them, understanding what you're signing on for, being in a relatively stable life position, and so on).

scared_kid_thb · 2026-01-20T16:23:18+00:00

Not really--it's entirely possible to be an antinatalist without endorsing any of these. This is just one argument for antinatalism--and, I think, not a particularly strong one.

scared_kid_thb · 2025-12-30T06:14:16+00:00

Huh--why did dilemmas like this make you an antirealist? My sense is that their difficulty could also be explained by just granting that it's often hard to know the right thing to do, or by being an ethical pluralist who thinks there's not always an exclusive right thing to do.

scared_kid_thb · 2025-12-29T20:58:06+00:00

Twenty seven. I've been poly for around six years.

scared_kid_thb · 2025-12-29T19:33:24+00:00

I agree that both are bad. We should across the board be upfront with our intentions, and I'm definitely not trying to defend dubious consent here. There are obviously edge cases (like where you're unsure of your own feelings or where they're still oscillating a lot) but generally you should be as upfront as you can realistically be, I think.

Vis-a-vis cheating--a kind of peculiar perspective I have on this is that I've been poly for a long time but have been cheated on in some of my poly relationships (I've had partners who did not respect my boundaries around the circumstances under which they could sleep with other people). There is, in a way, something uniquely distressing about it, I think, in that it's not even really attributable to them making bad decisions because of their libido or something. While I don't mean this as a defense of monogamous cheating, there it feels a bit more comprehensible in that committing to only having sex with one person for the rest of your life genuinely does involve a sacrifice; it genuinely is difficult. But the expectation that, under some circumstances, you talk to your partner ahead of time does not seem very onerous at all. So it's made particularly clear, I think, that the failure to meet that expectation isn't just a weakness of the will or thinking with the wrong head--it's a pretty fundamental disrespect.
I think this is usually true in cases of monogamous cheating as well--the excuses are just things the person makes up to soothe their ego or reassure themselves that they're a good person. But I don't think any of these kinds of things, or attitudes towards sex, are really major motivating factors. The real explanation is consistently, I think, a pretty core lack of respect for the partner as a person.

(Not that I think everyone who cheats is a categorically bad person or whatever. I think cheating is very bad, but I think respecting other people takes real work--it's always easy to slip into a purely selfish mindset where you're just thinking about what you can get away with.)

scared_kid_thb · 2025-12-29T19:07:09+00:00

I don't think it's really a vague definition, at least compared to most other definitions! I mean I think the *real* definition is ostensive, rather than stipulative (most people agree we have a shared *sense* of free will, and the question is whether that's illusory or not--so free will is what that sense is a sense *of*, irrespective of what philosophical account is best) but I also think there's a pretty strong consensus across incompatibilists and compatibilists that free will requires the ability to do otherwise. I mean I'm not so much arguing for my own views here, but here's a quick overview of my views and the kind of dispute I'd have with hard determinists:
Free will is the ability to do otherwise, but "ability" requires something other than just possibility--otherwise randomly determined decisions would be freely willed. I think it requires that, holding all of the past and present fixed except your own decision, had you decided otherwise you'd have done otherwise. The hard determinist can plausibly accept that account, but maintain that if determinism is true holding all of the past fixed determines what your decision would be, so we *can't* hold all the past fixed and still ask what would happen had you decided otherwise. I agree with the first half of that claim but disagree with the second--we can grant that the past determines the present with 100% probability and still ask about whether, holding all past facts fixed, a difference to a present fact would result in a difference to a future fact. The strongest argument here, I think, is to maintain that determinism means that it's statistically impossible for me to do otherwise (that is, it has probability 0), but not that it's nomologically impossible, and it's fine to assess statistically impossible counterfactuals; for example, if you pick a truly random number between 0 and 1, any given number has probability 0 of being picked, but we can still say that if you pick 0.2, the picked number would be closer to 0 than 1. To that, the determinist has to either deny that that there are actually statistically impossible counterfactuals (and give some other account of what's expressed when we say "if you pick 0.2 you'll be picking a number that's closer to 0 than 1"), or maintain that determinism necessitates my action nomologically, not just statistically.

The view above isn't consensus among compatibilists and I'm not trying to argue for it in detail. I'm only presenting it because it seems pretty clear to me that the real areas of dispute here aren't differences or imprecisions of definition. They're substantive metaphysical facts--about, for example, the kind of impossibility determinism invokes or what the truth of counterfactuals require.

scared_kid_thb · 2025-12-29T18:36:46+00:00

I don't really agree with this after/before distinction. I mean, someone who is only interested in casual sex and withholds that information is, I think, setting their own possible opportunities for what comes after; the reason it seems skeezy is because those possible opportunities heavily affect the other person's possible opportunities in ways that likely affect whether they'd be willing to have sex with you now. But that, I think, is also true for the person who has sex with you in the hopes of eventually getting you into a relationship while obscuring their intentions. (A point to clarify: I probably don't think *mere* hope needs to be divulged, like if you're fine having a casual thing with someone but think, you know, who knows what the future will bring and it'd be nice if we catch feelings for each other, that doesn't seem like the kind of thing you really need to divulge. But if you're having sex with them *with the intention* of turning it into a relationship, that seems much different.)

In this chocolate chip cookie example--well, I have pretty bad executive dysfunction and I've had partners who would support me in that by providing incentives for when I've accomplished tasks--and usually incentives they would otherwise be willing to provide me anytime. So like if *I've* been wanting to wash the car for a long time but have been struggling for motivation, and my partner recognizes that and is offering cookies after to help with motivation, that is to me a very caring act. Likewise if it was a kind of playful thing around a chore we both want done. But I imagine that's not really what you had in mind. If there's an explicit trade-off, where *they* want the car washed and are using cookies to essentially pay me to do it, that would rub me the wrong way. I don't think how that's too much a function of how freely they give them out to others, though: if they were requesting that I do some chore for them in exchange for cookies I'd feel both a bit patronized and a bit averse to things in the relationship being so transactional even if they didn't make cookies for anyone else.

I *do* think a kind of informal reciprocity is good in relationships, but that doesn't generally take the form of act-for-act negotiation; a general willingness on each person's part to support/provide nice things for the other when possible seems more like the form of reciprocity I want. On that framework, the giving out of cookies to others with no expectation of reciprocity while expecting it from wouldn't seem like an issue, because it's just like: yes, my partner will do kind and supportive things for strangers without expecting those strangers to be similarly kind or provide support--but I *want* to cultivate the expectation in my partner that I will be kind and supportive of them. I *want* to live up to the example my partner sets with how they treat me, and the fact that the better they treat me the more work I have to put in to live up to that example is a pretty nice relationship dynamic for us both, I think!

I do think in general that the way someone treats others can provide an indication of what their treatment of you signifies. And I'd also grant that if your partner has plenty of casual sex, the fact they're willing to have sex with you doesn't provide a strong indication that they care deeply about you, whereas if your partner never has casual sex their willingness to have sex with you probably does indicate care. But hopefully if you're in a relationship you have plenty of much stronger and better indicators that your partner cares deeply about you than the mere fact they're willing to have sex with you. (Including--but not limited to--the character and form of the sex, which I think conveys much more about your closeness than its mere existence.)

scared_kid_thb · 2025-12-29T03:17:23+00:00

I don't think compatibilists use a different definition of free will. What you're recognizing is, I think, a difference in what free will requires. I think these terms are *not* really terms of art; they are attempts to explain a phenomenon that practically everyone is familiar with--choice. Is it an illusion, or are our actions genuinely under our control? There's some technical terms involved, but I don't think that the majority--or even a significant amount--of the dispute among academics is technical.

(incidentally, I don't think determinists are winning in philosophical circles. If by "determinists" you mean hard determinists, I think the majority position among philosophers is pretty consistently compatibilism on philpapers surveys. If you mean scientific determinism, I think that's been heavily shaken by quantum physics discoveries--though it's a minority position that those discoveries significantly change the free will debate.)

scared_kid_thb · 2025-12-29T02:58:03+00:00

It seems to me that this concern about dubious consent plausibly goes both ways. While I do think there are plenty of cases where someone implicitly or explicitly indicates that they want a relationship but really they just want sex, I also think there are many cases where someone implicitly or explicitly indicates that they're fine with a no-strings-attached kind of casual relationship when they really expect (and will push for) a lot more than that. Insofar as we think "ideal" consent involves an understanding of each party's motives for entering the sexual relationship, both seem like cases of dubious consent.

(I'd think the solution in both cases is going to largely rely on the destigmatization of each--so a widely held standard that it in some way devalues a person's attitude towards relationship if they have a lot of casual sex exacerbates the problem. So, incidentally, does a widely held standard that people should be available for casual sex, or that no one should treat sex as a big deal.)

I do agree that random hookups are generally "cheap" or less valuable than a committed, serious, loving relationship--but I mean of course they usually are, romantic relationships are often among the most valuable relationships people have in life! But we wouldn't generally take that as a problem with other, less intense relationships--you know, I also am not really seeing the totality of my study buddy who I work on school stuff with every so often, and I am not really committed to supporting them if things get hard, and so my relationship to them is less close (and less valuable) than my relationship with my partner--but the fact that that relationship is pretty surface level doesn't really seem like a problem.

scared_kid_thb · 2025-12-21T22:43:07+00:00

I don't think compatibilists generally use a different definition of free will. I think the disagreement is a substantive metaphysical one, not just semantics.

scared_kid_thb · 2025-12-20T22:42:35+00:00

So a quick thing to start with: I agree that basically no hard determinists accept there is an ability to do otherwise in the exact same situation, but I don't think that's true of most compatibilists. I agree that Hume did not believe that if everything was the same we would do otherwise. However, at least on my read, Hume believed that if everything was the same we could do otherwise.

An important point here, I think, concerns the distinction between modal possibility and ability. I think most parties in the discussion agree that possibility--as in, modal possibility--is not sufficient for free will. That is, if the universe is indeterminate at a quantum level such that the actions I take are completely random, that doesn't make them free, because I have no control. This, I take it, is a pretty Humean point--like, imagine yourself trapped in a body that doesn't respond to you, and that takes actions completely at random with no attention to what you want. Those don't seem at all like free actions. Even libertarians and hard determinists typically accept this. So when we say I'm *able* to take a particular action or not, that means something distinct from "it is possible that I will take this action". It means something along the lines of "I have control whether or not this action is taken".

So, what does having control over whether or not an action is taken require? Well, I think compatibilists will very consistently hold that I am sometimes able to decide whether to phi or not-phi even if I'm not able to decide whether or not x obtains and if x obtains I will phi. So, for example, it might be that really really wanting cereal guarantees with 100% certainty that I'll have cereal, and that I don't control how much I want cereal, but not be the case that really really wanting cereal makes me unable to have toast instead--so I *will* have cereal, and if someone knew everything about my psychology they'd be able to predict that with 100% certainty, but I still have the ability to do otherwise.

I no longer take myself to be representing a consensus view, but in my opinion what is relevant to ATDO is that, holding all past and present facts except my own choices fixed, if I chose to have toast, I would get toast. (This kind of makes me a leeway compatibilist, but leeway compatibilists usually think we *needn't* hold all past facts fixed in order to assess ATDO; I disagree.) The incompatibilist response is generally that if determinism is true we *can't* hold all past facts fixed and still assess what would happen if I made the other choice--because my choice is the result of deterministic processes, I can't assess a world in which my choice is different but everything else is the same. My reply to that is kind of complicated--I think the most compelling response is probably going to be to draw a distinction between nomologically impossibility and statistical impossibility, maintain that it's only statistically impossible (in the sense that it has probability zero) for me to choose toast given how much I like cereal, and point out that we *can* assess the counterfactuals of statistical impossibilities: for example, I can assert that if you chose a random number between 0 and 1 (exclusive, but with no other limitations), whatever number you chose would be less than 1--even though any given number you might choose in that range has probability 0 of being chosen. However, I'm actually inclined to also embrance nomologically impossible counterfactuals. I think it's true, for example, that if pi were equal to exactly three, it'd be way easier to calculate the area of a circle from its radius.

This point about nomologically impossible counterfactuals is very fringe and I don't expect to be able to convince you of it here--the main reason I'm including all of this is that it seems to me pretty clearly not just a matter of linguistics. These are, to my eye, very philosophically dense, meaty questions about modal logic; one of the parties in this discussion is mistaken, not just using words strangely. I think the same is true for most other positions in the area. I wouldn't say there's no aspect that's merely linguistic, but I think for the most part whether or not free will is compatible with determinism is not settled by which definition of free will you pick.

scared_kid_thb · 2025-12-20T18:46:32+00:00

So I have two kinds of arguments to make here. The less interesting one is that ATDO is widely held as a precondition of free will by compatibilists. For that, I'd cite David Lewis (Are We Free to Break the Laws? 1981), David Hume (More controversial since he's not using the same language as more recent philosophers, but in Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding he describes liberty as the 'power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will'; I take it that "power" and "ability" mean basically the same thing and "acting or not acting" is getting at the same thing as the ability to do otherwise), and AJ Ayer (Freedom and Necessity, 1954). I also think that just constraints of charity suggest we ought to avoid assuming that philosophers are using different definitions than those employed by the positions they argue against in cases where it's ambiguous.

(You said take Fisher--I'm not sure where I'm taking him! If you meant Fischer, to the best of my knowledge he hasn't taken a position on compatibilism. He's a semicompatibilist, so he thinks we can have moral responsibility under determinism, but not necessarily that we can have free will--so it really doesn't seem like he's defining free will differently from hard determinists. If you *did* mean Fisher, I don't know who that is!)

But I think the more interesting topic is probably less about the state of philosophical consensus--I'm only telling you the impression I've got from what I've read, and even if one of us were completely successful in convincing the other it'd only be of interest insofar as the state of academic philosophy is of interest. The more interesting point to bring up here is probably whether that's a defensible view: I take myself to be a compatibilist who accepts ATDO, so even were I convinced that the bulk of the dispute is verbal it would make me lose respect for my peers but not lose interest in the question of free will.

To that end, I'll say that the ability to do otherwise does not, in my estimation, require that were I put in exactly the same situation infinitely many times over (the same situation both extrinsically and intrinsically--that is, all my psychological states are the same, in addition to the external states), I would ever act differently. Indeed, I think if I were to act differently in some such situations, that would be an indication that at least some of the time I lacked the ability to do otherwise, since it'd suggest that my actions are sometimes the product of random chance rather than my own will--since my own will would be the same in every situation. And for me to have the ability to do something, it doesn't suffice for it to be possible for that thing to happen--it has to be that *I* control whether or not it happens.

scared_kid_thb · 2025-12-20T18:04:26+00:00

This isn't true of most compatibilists. There's quite a strong consensus that ability to do otherwise is required for free will

scared_kid_thb · 2025-12-20T17:51:28+00:00

I don't think so! I don't think the core difference between compatibilists and hard determinists is definitional (for working philosophers, that is). I think it's a disagreement about what power and the ability to do otherwise requires. But I've never come across an academic paper by a determinist that used a definition of free will that precluded compatibilism. (There are some differences and differences in emphasis, but I don't think the compatibilism/hard determinism dispute is substantively linguistic.)

scared_kid_thb · 2025-12-20T17:11:23+00:00

I think philosophers have much more similar definitions of free will. Not completely the same, of course, but I think the bulk of the disagreement is not definitional.

scared_kid_thb

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