8 ms·

No group of people, Republican or Democrat, can stop the perpetual cycles of human history. At best, we can only delay the inevitable.

by ken47 4y ago

wallawe 4y ago
But we can stop lying about the definition of a recession. Biden admin changing the definition to avoid loss political points is about as nonsensical as blaming inflation squarely on Putin. The disinformation needs to stop.
- rajin444 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - bandyaboot 4y ago
    It's similar to global warming/climate change. Moving from the former to the latter wasn't some nefarious plot to move the goalposts. The former is an imprecise term which hadn't mattered very much until that imprecision began to be weaponized by those with an agenda. Same thing with vaccines, the previous definition was inaccurate--but up until the covid vaccines, nobody pretended to be bothered by it. There hasn't been any notable effort to discredit flu vaccines because they don't offer permanent, or even particularly reliable immunity in the many years that they have existed. Along came the anti covid vaccine folks to weaponize the inaccurate definition--so, in response, the definition is updated to be more accurate.
    - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
      > nobody pretended to be bothered by it How often do you get to a successful resolution of a dispute when you start from the position that one side's concerns are made up (pretended, imagined, etc)? > There hasn't been any notable effort to discredit flu vaccines because they don't offer permanent, or even particularly reliable immunity in the many years that they have existed. These are the reasons that I never opted to get the flu shot, and I never had my professional and social lives threatened as a result.
      - bandyaboot 4y ago
        > How often do you get to a successful resolution of a dispute when you start from the position that one side's concerns are made up (pretended, imagined, etc)? There are times when one side's concerns are nonsense. Brainwashed Russians believing Ukraine is overrun by Nazis. People who believe that the 2020 election was stolen. I choose not to gaslight myself into entertaining that nonsense and entertaining the notion that there's a successful resolution to be had.
        ifyoubuildit 4y ago
        > There are times when one side's concerns are nonsense I envy your confidence. I also hope I never find myself under your authority.
        bandyaboot 4y ago
        > I also hope I never find myself under your authority. Luckily I have no interest in being an authority over anyone--too much expectation of coddling the underlings.
  - _ea1k 4y ago
    That change isn't significant. Vaccines in the past have not had 100% effectiveness, and we all know that. There've been mumps outbreaks that were primarily among the vaccinated, despite that vaccine having a very high effectiveness. The reason they were primarily among the vaccinated? Vaccination rates were well over 90%, so even with a 90% rate of success the odds favored some getting the illness. Cases were mild as the vaccine provided the expected protection. This is not new.
- headsoup 4y ago
  I think the more harmful thing this extreme political shitfighting is doing is stopping just seriously getting on with doing everything possible to improve things. "We're not actually in a recession." So what?! Just acknowledge things aren't good and get to fixing them, be honest with the public and have some bloody integrity for once. The US (and UK, and Australia, etc) partisan political playground fighting is ridiculous and the media (inc. social media) spends far too much time supporting it.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Exactly. The question of recession is red herring and distraction. More people are working and can buy less. This is not a good thing. Lets talk about what we can do to improve things.
- TigeriusKirk 4y ago
  And the political gain is so minor. It's not like people are unaware of their own economic experiences and this will change any minds. The cost in trust is very high, and the gain so small.
- deltasevennine 4y ago
  If a placebo can cure an ailment caused by sentiment then should the patient be lied to? How much of a recession is consumer sentiment? And is lying always a bad thing?
- rajup 4y ago
  I don't get why people are getting all riled up by this. Of course the White House will try to put a positive spin on things, the same would have been done by the Republican party (or any other political party in the world). As noted above the President can't technically change the definition of a recession anyway, it's another agency that does that. So much ado about nothing...
  - dfxm12 4y ago
    I don't get why people are getting all riled up by this. Because conservative media is feeding people the talking point, and they are aren't really applying too much critical thought to the matter.
    - yieldcrv 4y ago
      left wing media is making fun of this guy too protip: everyone can perceive which ways the parties are different, when people refer to both sides they are referring to the ways they are the same, not the ways they are different
      - hedora 4y ago
        Yeah; but people get cranky when you point out that one side is propped up by foreign propagandists that have explicitly said they're trying to destabilize the US.
      - ngetchell 4y ago
        Is the "liberal media" mentioning it or doing wall to wall coverage on this non-scandal? I'm hearing this talking point from relatives so I assume it is getting the wall to wall treatment on right-wing partisan news.
        yieldcrv 4y ago
        Not wall to wall
sethjr5rtfgh 4y ago
deltasevennine 4y ago
Not even science can prove that the observed cycle is inevitable. There have been people in the past who noticed the cycle and came up with methods at stopping the cycle.
- namelessoracle 4y ago
  Rocks when dropped will eventually fall. You can catch the rock and hold on to it, but will eventually put it down, you can do something crazy like build a wind machine that keeps the rock afloat, but entropy demands the machine go out one day and the rock will fall. Best case is you catch the rock, and put it down gently so it doesn't break, but rock will go down.
  - hedora 4y ago
    In this analogy, political corruption is playing the role of gravity. Covid could have been prevented by mechanisms that Trump removed. The US inexplicably kept juicing the economy with zero interest rates through the end of Obama and all of Trump. 2008 could have been prevented by depression-era regulations that were removed due to heavy lobbying and traceable payments to (bipartisan) politicians. Whatever bubbles pop next (crypto seems likely to be one of them) will probably have been fueled by that same deregulation.
    - namelessoracle 4y ago
      This is beyond political corruption, it's human corruption. Inherent to the way people respond to incentives. People inherently will try to put things to their benefit and to what incentives them. It takes a lot of structure to make the cost benefit of the incentives to outweigh the perceived benefits. It starts with something relatively good, but slightly pushed and snowballs from there. "I got stuff done that fed all these people! Surely making sure i get a little extra food is fair.....". Maybe someone notices and say "thats not fair", then why would the person go through a bunch of effort to make sure everyone is fed again and not just themselves? Altruism? Every social structure ever created to stop this has failed in Human history, its reasonable to say every one that will ever get created will. They will be exposed to powerful forces of erosion and entropy. Maybe you can get a machine system that rules over humans that has different incentives or something, but any system that seeks to curb corruption will fall sooner or later. You can try to make in the system a desire to repair itself, but that in itself becomes an incentive and then we see purges. You can build a tower to keep your rock up and defy gravity, but that tower WILL fall one day.
sethjr5rtfgh 4y ago
markus_zhang 4y ago
Some of them may actually want that cycle to happen.

No group of people, Republican or Democrat, can stop the perpetual cycles of human history. At best, we can only delay the inevitable.

by ken47 4y ago

No group of people, Republican or Democrat, can stop the perpetual cycles of human history. At best, we can only delay the inevitable.

wallawe 4y ago

But we can stop lying about the definition of a recession. Biden admin changing the definition to avoid loss political points is about as nonsensical as blaming inflation squarely on Putin. The disinformation needs to stop.

rajin444 4y ago
[flagged]
- bandyaboot 4y ago
  It's similar to global warming/climate change. Moving from the former to the latter wasn't some nefarious plot to move the goalposts. The former is an imprecise term which hadn't mattered very much until that imprecision began to be weaponized by those with an agenda. Same thing with vaccines, the previous definition was inaccurate--but up until the covid vaccines, nobody pretended to be bothered by it. There hasn't been any notable effort to discredit flu vaccines because they don't offer permanent, or even particularly reliable immunity in the many years that they have existed. Along came the anti covid vaccine folks to weaponize the inaccurate definition--so, in response, the definition is updated to be more accurate.
  - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
    > nobody pretended to be bothered by it How often do you get to a successful resolution of a dispute when you start from the position that one side's concerns are made up (pretended, imagined, etc)? > There hasn't been any notable effort to discredit flu vaccines because they don't offer permanent, or even particularly reliable immunity in the many years that they have existed. These are the reasons that I never opted to get the flu shot, and I never had my professional and social lives threatened as a result.
    - bandyaboot 4y ago
      > How often do you get to a successful resolution of a dispute when you start from the position that one side's concerns are made up (pretended, imagined, etc)? There are times when one side's concerns are nonsense. Brainwashed Russians believing Ukraine is overrun by Nazis. People who believe that the 2020 election was stolen. I choose not to gaslight myself into entertaining that nonsense and entertaining the notion that there's a successful resolution to be had.
      - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
        > There are times when one side's concerns are nonsense I envy your confidence. I also hope I never find myself under your authority.
        bandyaboot 4y ago
        > I also hope I never find myself under your authority. Luckily I have no interest in being an authority over anyone--too much expectation of coddling the underlings.
- _ea1k 4y ago
  That change isn't significant. Vaccines in the past have not had 100% effectiveness, and we all know that. There've been mumps outbreaks that were primarily among the vaccinated, despite that vaccine having a very high effectiveness. The reason they were primarily among the vaccinated? Vaccination rates were well over 90%, so even with a 90% rate of success the odds favored some getting the illness. Cases were mild as the vaccine provided the expected protection. This is not new.
headsoup 4y ago
I think the more harmful thing this extreme political shitfighting is doing is stopping just seriously getting on with doing everything possible to improve things. "We're not actually in a recession." So what?! Just acknowledge things aren't good and get to fixing them, be honest with the public and have some bloody integrity for once. The US (and UK, and Australia, etc) partisan political playground fighting is ridiculous and the media (inc. social media) spends far too much time supporting it.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Exactly. The question of recession is red herring and distraction. More people are working and can buy less. This is not a good thing. Lets talk about what we can do to improve things.
TigeriusKirk 4y ago
And the political gain is so minor. It's not like people are unaware of their own economic experiences and this will change any minds. The cost in trust is very high, and the gain so small.
deltasevennine 4y ago
If a placebo can cure an ailment caused by sentiment then should the patient be lied to? How much of a recession is consumer sentiment? And is lying always a bad thing?
rajup 4y ago
I don't get why people are getting all riled up by this. Of course the White House will try to put a positive spin on things, the same would have been done by the Republican party (or any other political party in the world). As noted above the President can't technically change the definition of a recession anyway, it's another agency that does that. So much ado about nothing...
- dfxm12 4y ago
  I don't get why people are getting all riled up by this. Because conservative media is feeding people the talking point, and they are aren't really applying too much critical thought to the matter.
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    left wing media is making fun of this guy too protip: everyone can perceive which ways the parties are different, when people refer to both sides they are referring to the ways they are the same, not the ways they are different
    - hedora 4y ago
      Yeah; but people get cranky when you point out that one side is propped up by foreign propagandists that have explicitly said they're trying to destabilize the US.
    - ngetchell 4y ago
      Is the "liberal media" mentioning it or doing wall to wall coverage on this non-scandal? I'm hearing this talking point from relatives so I assume it is getting the wall to wall treatment on right-wing partisan news.
      - yieldcrv 4y ago
        Not wall to wall

sethjr5rtfgh 4y ago

deltasevennine 4y ago

Not even science can prove that the observed cycle is inevitable. There have been people in the past who noticed the cycle and came up with methods at stopping the cycle.

namelessoracle 4y ago
Rocks when dropped will eventually fall. You can catch the rock and hold on to it, but will eventually put it down, you can do something crazy like build a wind machine that keeps the rock afloat, but entropy demands the machine go out one day and the rock will fall. Best case is you catch the rock, and put it down gently so it doesn't break, but rock will go down.
- hedora 4y ago
  In this analogy, political corruption is playing the role of gravity. Covid could have been prevented by mechanisms that Trump removed. The US inexplicably kept juicing the economy with zero interest rates through the end of Obama and all of Trump. 2008 could have been prevented by depression-era regulations that were removed due to heavy lobbying and traceable payments to (bipartisan) politicians. Whatever bubbles pop next (crypto seems likely to be one of them) will probably have been fueled by that same deregulation.
  - namelessoracle 4y ago
    This is beyond political corruption, it's human corruption. Inherent to the way people respond to incentives. People inherently will try to put things to their benefit and to what incentives them. It takes a lot of structure to make the cost benefit of the incentives to outweigh the perceived benefits. It starts with something relatively good, but slightly pushed and snowballs from there. "I got stuff done that fed all these people! Surely making sure i get a little extra food is fair.....". Maybe someone notices and say "thats not fair", then why would the person go through a bunch of effort to make sure everyone is fed again and not just themselves? Altruism? Every social structure ever created to stop this has failed in Human history, its reasonable to say every one that will ever get created will. They will be exposed to powerful forces of erosion and entropy. Maybe you can get a machine system that rules over humans that has different incentives or something, but any system that seeks to curb corruption will fall sooner or later. You can try to make in the system a desire to repair itself, but that in itself becomes an incentive and then we see purges. You can build a tower to keep your rock up and defy gravity, but that tower WILL fall one day.

sethjr5rtfgh 4y ago

markus_zhang 4y ago

Some of them may actually want that cycle to happen.