Is "European military revolution still a thing?; alien (octopus) minds; Jesus H. Christ U.S. mortality; very briefly noted; Frawley needs therapy, Bell orates, Smith praises Star Trek, McKenzie has...
Antisocial Media: Angreyea: Substack Notes and the Nazi Bar Problem… writes [inserts mine]: Substack's official response to the uproar is basically, "Nazi bar? What's that?"..... The piece is an impressive bit of doublespeak and wishful thinking. .... But the gist of the response is that they [Substack] intend to do almost nothing about hate speech and harassment, leaving the writers to protect themselves by blocking people..... because Substack apparently won't do anything to stop that person. They are leaning heavily into the notion that free speech means allowing hate and pretending that because other platforms' moderation policies have not completely eliminated harassment, hate speech, and misinformation that moderation is worthless."
If Substack is thinking that way, then it needs to consider:
1) The right to free speech doesn't come with the right to be heard by everyone.
2) Substack ought to get off the pseudo-libertarian cloud. I think it was John S. Mill who once asked libertarians (I paraphrase): Should libertarians be free enough to sell themselves into slavery? If yes, then they are NOT for liberty (and thus, not libertarians). If no, then there must be rules and someone to enforce them.
The owners of Substack ought to know that they are not being anti-libertarian or anti-free speech if they formulate and enforce an anti-Nazi bar code of conduct. If they do not grasp that, then I'm sorry to conclude that they value only profits. They should know that when the time comes, the rest of us (I hope) will happily show that Substack doesn't get to make money off of us. I hope that is simple to grasp.
Noah and Star Trek. Actually I agree with him on ST:STW and ST:LD. ST:P not so much. Technically, ST:SNW is post the Kelvin timeline, but it seems to try to adhere to what little was known of captain Pike and the USS Enterprise. Pike definitely sees his fateful accident in his future. ST:LD is a fun take on ST. It is inventive and funny. The Crossover episode with ST:SNW was imaginative.
Now as for bunnies as a household pet. I only knew one person with a rabbit that was allowed the run of the house like a cat. Most people keep them caped, or outside. This seems rather cruel to me, like keeping birds in small cages, or even large animals in zoo cages. Only the San Diego Zoo seemed to create a better balance for its animals' lives.
cephalopod intelligence. My very limited interaction with CogSci people suggested that there was very limited thought given to non-human species with regard to theories of intelligence. Different species, especially as different as cephalopods offer a multitude of models for comparison. Unfortunately much of animal intelligence testing is geared to using tests humans can pass and therefore implicitly demonstrating our innate cognitive superiority. From a cephalopod's perspective, its own tests might well show human inferiority.
As we build our artificial intelligences, understandably, we tend to model them on human intelligence. However, for robots that do not need to interact with humans, different animal models might be more appropriate.
Tokyo as an affordable city. What, what? At one point residents were forced to buy multi-generational mortgages to buy a property. Perhaps rents perhaps completely decoupled from price?
Tokyo remains one of the most expensive cities to live in, hardly a recommendation as highly affordable. It was more expensive than New York as recently as 2022.
On US mortality: It's probably overreading, but I can't help but notice that it stopped advancing in 2016 before the 2019 recovery-less drop. Again, this is probably prejudice, but you could a tell a story of the country losing state capability to improve health outcomes in general: absent an negative external shock you thread water, and when there is one you can't recover - a sort of capability threshold.
A few years ago it was quite clear that the rapid decline in mortality was due to white, non-Hispanic males, committing suicide. This doesn't account for the long slide away from from nations with much more affordable healthcare. Given the current failures of Britain's NHS, I wonder if the mortality statistics will start showing a flattening or decline there too.
This is correct. In Alabama the average life expectancy started dropping in 2015. Covid worsened it, obviously. But there is continuous ongoing damage as hospitals are staying chronically full of all sorts of diseases compared to pre-pandemic. It is curious that the rest of the world is rebounding after the delta wave. It makes one wonder what else is involved.
Cohort age-profiles (and thus, period age-profiles) of mortality (i.e. how populations age) have likely shifted upward. They have since the 1980s in the U.K.
Antisocial Media: Angreyea: Substack Notes and the Nazi Bar Problem… writes [inserts mine]: Substack's official response to the uproar is basically, "Nazi bar? What's that?"..... The piece is an impressive bit of doublespeak and wishful thinking. .... But the gist of the response is that they [Substack] intend to do almost nothing about hate speech and harassment, leaving the writers to protect themselves by blocking people..... because Substack apparently won't do anything to stop that person. They are leaning heavily into the notion that free speech means allowing hate and pretending that because other platforms' moderation policies have not completely eliminated harassment, hate speech, and misinformation that moderation is worthless."
If Substack is thinking that way, then it needs to consider:
1) The right to free speech doesn't come with the right to be heard by everyone.
2) Substack ought to get off the pseudo-libertarian cloud. I think it was John S. Mill who once asked libertarians (I paraphrase): Should libertarians be free enough to sell themselves into slavery? If yes, then they are NOT for liberty (and thus, not libertarians). If no, then there must be rules and someone to enforce them.
The owners of Substack ought to know that they are not being anti-libertarian or anti-free speech if they formulate and enforce an anti-Nazi bar code of conduct. If they do not grasp that, then I'm sorry to conclude that they value only profits. They should know that when the time comes, the rest of us (I hope) will happily show that Substack doesn't get to make money off of us. I hope that is simple to grasp.
Noah and Star Trek. Actually I agree with him on ST:STW and ST:LD. ST:P not so much. Technically, ST:SNW is post the Kelvin timeline, but it seems to try to adhere to what little was known of captain Pike and the USS Enterprise. Pike definitely sees his fateful accident in his future. ST:LD is a fun take on ST. It is inventive and funny. The Crossover episode with ST:SNW was imaginative.
Now as for bunnies as a household pet. I only knew one person with a rabbit that was allowed the run of the house like a cat. Most people keep them caped, or outside. This seems rather cruel to me, like keeping birds in small cages, or even large animals in zoo cages. Only the San Diego Zoo seemed to create a better balance for its animals' lives.
cephalopod intelligence. My very limited interaction with CogSci people suggested that there was very limited thought given to non-human species with regard to theories of intelligence. Different species, especially as different as cephalopods offer a multitude of models for comparison. Unfortunately much of animal intelligence testing is geared to using tests humans can pass and therefore implicitly demonstrating our innate cognitive superiority. From a cephalopod's perspective, its own tests might well show human inferiority.
As we build our artificial intelligences, understandably, we tend to model them on human intelligence. However, for robots that do not need to interact with humans, different animal models might be more appropriate.
I'm encouraged that the UK now recognizes octopi as sentient and as a consequence how they are treated when prepared as food.
Lol!
Tokyo as an affordable city. What, what? At one point residents were forced to buy multi-generational mortgages to buy a property. Perhaps rents perhaps completely decoupled from price?
Tokyo remains one of the most expensive cities to live in, hardly a recommendation as highly affordable. It was more expensive than New York as recently as 2022.
On US mortality: It's probably overreading, but I can't help but notice that it stopped advancing in 2016 before the 2019 recovery-less drop. Again, this is probably prejudice, but you could a tell a story of the country losing state capability to improve health outcomes in general: absent an negative external shock you thread water, and when there is one you can't recover - a sort of capability threshold.
A few years ago it was quite clear that the rapid decline in mortality was due to white, non-Hispanic males, committing suicide. This doesn't account for the long slide away from from nations with much more affordable healthcare. Given the current failures of Britain's NHS, I wonder if the mortality statistics will start showing a flattening or decline there too.
Useful article about this problem. https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/how-misreading-adam-smith-helped-spawn-deaths-of-despair/
This is correct. In Alabama the average life expectancy started dropping in 2015. Covid worsened it, obviously. But there is continuous ongoing damage as hospitals are staying chronically full of all sorts of diseases compared to pre-pandemic. It is curious that the rest of the world is rebounding after the delta wave. It makes one wonder what else is involved.
It does indeed...
Cohort age-profiles (and thus, period age-profiles) of mortality (i.e. how populations age) have likely shifted upward. They have since the 1980s in the U.K.
- small copy editing note (in case anyone else clicks through and stumbles onto it) - "major zero" is "measure zero".