rilezg's comments

Very true, and a good point. Strong culture and community is certainly not exclusive to rural areas. I imagine there are many neighborhoods in large cities where an outsider moving in expecting mass media American culture would not feel welcome (although it may be easier to travel to an area of the city with more generic culture where they do feel welcome than it would be living in a rural area).

>Boy, where do you get off?

My guess is that this attitude is where:

>In small town USA, the local culture usually is inferior.

Big cities often have people from many different cultures, including small towns, which is neat, and interesting things can happen when different perspectives collide, but, for the most part, cities just operate under the generic mass media American culture.

But, in my experience, people living in rural areas rely on their immediate neighbors for more than those living in larger developments. This is conducive to the development of a strong local culture, and outsiders who move in expecting the mass media American culture will likely not feel welcome.

Having lived a variety of places, I personally prefer the rural culture (at least here in Vermont), but I would not say big city culture is inferior...just different.

A tip: if you say a person's culture is inferior, they probably will not see you as worth listening to.

Idk, if you tried to use your phone as a bike I bet it would fail pretty quickly.

it's pretty common to use 'they' when gender is unknown or irrelevant

>The entire point of getting the private sector is that their incentive should be to do it in the most efficient manner possible

It seems like a common misconception that businesses do anything in 'the most efficient manner possible'. A business's incentive is to do things in 'the most profitable manner possible'. It happens that efficient and profitable have a lot of overlap, and business schools love case studies about eliminating inefficiencies, but in the real world it is often easier to boost profit thru marketing/client relations/lobbying than thru searching for possible inefficiencies.

I do not understand. What are fines if not deterrence?

I don't know, bud. When other people aren't accepting your idea of where something leads, it does not always mean they are wrong. It is easy to cherry-pick data and studies that seem on the surface to support your preconceived conclusions, but I feel you are missing the forest for the trees.

Cheers.

Should we also have a single lump sum tax rate that everyone must pay equally?

As LeBron James once said, 'two points is not two points'. If 'fairness and equal treatment' are context-blind, then they are just another empty platitude.

If a person does not revise their core beliefs based on acute events, then, given time, their chronic happiness level will revert to what it was (speaking very generally).

I don't agree with the implication that genetics are to blame, but rather I believe it is incredibly difficult for a person to change their core beliefs, even when reality is at odds with those beliefs.

This reminded me of the youtube video 'What Games Are Like For Someone Who Doesn't Play Games', specifically the section 'Thinking Games Would Be Cooler' (begins at 14:43):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw

I think games both appeal and do not appeal (to different people, or the same person at different times in life, respectively) because of the limitations of what the game allows you to do. It can be empowering to feel like you understand the world of the game you are playing, or disempowering to have to follow the arbitrary rules created by the developer.

Agreed. I was just imagining people posting publicly on social media, but good to say that situational context/audience also matters a ton when understanding a given statement. There is often much unspoken nuance/implications.

Great points. I would also highlight the following:

> The clearest evidence of this is that whether a statement is considered x-ist often depends on who said it. Truth doesn't work that way. The same statement can't be true when one person says it, but x-ist, and therefore false, when another person does.

I would offer the analogy of a broken (analog) clock. If a broken clock says the time is ten o’clock, and the time actually is ten o’clock, it is more important to note that the clock is broken than that the clock is correct. Similarly, if someone says something that is technically true, but they are a person who often lies or has goals that harm others, then it is more important to note that they should not be trusted than that they are correct.

Critics of 'intolerance'/'cancel culture'/'heresy' often invoke truth in their arguments. They miss that the phenomenon has nothing to do with the truth of an out-of-context statement, rather it is about whether a person should be trusted.

If you believe you will be unremarkable and do nothing interesting, you will be right. 99.9% of people may be unremarkable to you, but I would say that 99.9% of people are remarkable to someone. Purpose does not mean fame and fortune. And for those who live your lives based on statistics: Remember, you are a sample size of 1.

Thanks, that makes more sense. The whole 'true passions, true desires, true opinions, true self' is a bit wishy-washy for me, but I appreciate the idea of thinking twice about whether you actually want something, or if you are just blindly wanting what the world has told you to want (especially in this age of ubiquitous advertising and mass media).

That's fair. I would say a person is defined by what they do next.

I think what you're saying is that you should be careful telling someone that they 'are a baby' or 'are dumb', because they might believe you.

I would also be careful of telling someone they are 'acting like a baby' or 'acting dumb', because most people won't appreciate the semantic difference.

In the context of this article, though, I'm not too bothered since the article is about how one can change their baby-like habits. But it is always a good reminder.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder ;)

I might be misunderstanding. Are you saying that the secret to true freedom/happiness is to feel no emotion and care about nothing?

Is this just another way of saying, "accept the world as it is and as it happens and be content for it is kismet"?

I certainly agree that it's important to leave people room to change who they are, but if a person isn't defined by their actions, then what are they?

I guess it is polite discourse these days to distance a person's actions from some intangible person-ness, but it feels very mushy.

This reminds me a lot of Black Mirror season 2 episode 1.

Always good to treasure the time we are given.

I think with any tech demo (or other corporate PR piece), it is good to assume the worst, because companies spin things to be as ducky as possible. This is a self-reinforcing cycle, because if two companies have identical products, then the best liar--er, marketer--will win.

(not to say this sort of behavior is exclusive to corporate PR. as the best and smartest person ever, I would never need to exaggerate my achievements on a job application, but others may)