cal5k

36 ms·

331.
by cal5k 8y ago
Steven Pinker's latest book, "Enlightenment Now", has a pretty good treatment on suicide rates and other "broken-ness" indicators. The data-driven conclusion is that on almost every metric civilization is less broke
332.
by cal5k 8y ago
Ironically the "society is broken" narrative, aside from being unsupported by the evidence, is often used to sell mindfulness products & services.
333.
by cal5k 8y ago
One hypocrisy that I always find galling: while Americans (and really any of us living in the Western world) find bulk collection of metadata to be abhorrent, nobody raises an eyebrow at the expanding scope of KYC/AML legislation. I ca
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by cal5k 8y ago
I'm not really sure what people want from Facebook at this point - it's clear that Zuckerberg is genuinely trying to respond to critical feedback, but there's no pleasing anyone apparently.
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by cal5k 8y ago
As an aside, just grabbed a copy of your book - looks like an interesting read, and I can definitely relate :-P
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by cal5k 8y ago
I agree with most of what you're saying. I think I actually may have misinterpreted this line: "We tend to associate the early civilizations with great monuments, but they key difference between early societies and advanced ones i
337.
by cal5k 8y ago
Fair enough :) The Articles of Confederation obviously resulted in a (smaller) Confederacy in the 18th century, but as a Canadian I’m less familiar with the popular parlance that would be taught in American schools.
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by cal5k 8y ago
This was long before the civil war. And my objection was to the idea that advanced countries somehow subscribe less to process - I don’t see compelling evidence that this is true.
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by cal5k 8y ago
I don’t find this to be a compelling theory. I’m currently reading “James Madison: A Life Reconsidered”, and it strikes me that at the beginning of the Confederacy it was surprisingly difficult to get states to actually comply with treaties
340.
by cal5k 8y ago
A lot of vehicles allow access to the trunk by folding down a section of the back seat (so you can haul longer items like skis), so I'm not sure this would be quite as easy as suggested.
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by cal5k 9y ago
I live in a parliamentary democracy (Canada). The ability to elect a minority government is actually a super useful protection mechanism because it creates 4 or or more options. 1. Majority for Liberal government 2. Majority for Conservativ
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by cal5k 9y ago
I object to the premise of this article. Democracy isn’t broken, it’s just messy. A cursory glance at history should reveal that it has always been messy. Thinking back on civics lessons we had in high school, it’s sort of weird that we te
343.
by cal5k 9y ago
I think the problem is that people often get away with doing ethically dubious things in early-stage startups. It only makes news when they got caught. For example: Airbnb started out by scraping Craiglist for their listings. This was not o
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by cal5k 9y ago
I'd be interested to read more on the topic if you have some recommendations? My suspicion (hypothesis, really) is that CEO compensation is too abstract a concept to actually impact behaviour all that much. It might spark outrage when
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by cal5k 9y ago
This is actually a perfectly logical thing for Canada to do given our geographic proximity and economic ties. Do you know what would happen if the US suddenly dropped its defense budget and pledged not to defend its NATO allies? We'd s
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by cal5k 9y ago
Most people don't become wealthy by getting a job as the CEO of a large company - they start companies, work in finance, inherit their wealth, etc. It's an entirely symbolic ratio. If you halved it tomorrow it would not make one w
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by cal5k 9y ago
This is to a large degree explainable by way of "rosy retrospection". Quality has many facets - for example, I doubt they could tell you how often people in their youth died from salmonella, e. coli, or the like. Food was also sig
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by cal5k 9y ago
They don't. I'm not even sure what the "means of production" are in a service economy like the US.
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by cal5k 9y ago
China spends less than half what America spends on defense, and yet nobody is crazy enough to want to attack China. I'd also argue that a de-escalation in defence spending is entirely possible without sacrificing national security. Wou
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by cal5k 9y ago
This is a classic logical fallacy called an "Appeal to Extremes" ( https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla... ). It is about as compelling as stomping your feet and yelling at the
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by cal5k 9y ago
I think this is fundamentally the correct point of view, however my argument would be that it's best to focus on improving the lives of the bottom half than bemoaning the wealth of the top 1%. This can be accomplished through progressi
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by cal5k 9y ago
You can assure me all you'd like, but it's data that I find compelling. Many of the deaths in Maoist China were of starvation, a direct consequence of Mao's crackpot policies. Venezuela is a striking modern example of the sam
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by cal5k 9y ago
I think it's disingenuous to argue against words the above commenter did not actually write.
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by cal5k 9y ago
Marxist reverence for the proletariat has been an enduring concept. The problem is that nobody has actually defined who the prols are - are they the factory workers? Entrepreneurs? Teachers? Accountants? Lawyers? Engineers? Civil servants?
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by cal5k 9y ago
Between Mao and Stalin alone you're probably talking 50-100MM deaths. That's one hell of a downside.
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by cal5k 9y ago
I think the picture is perhaps more muddy than it's made out to be re: "keeping up with the joneses". I can't really speak confidently to the research from memory, but Pinker does address this specifically.
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by cal5k 9y ago
> Which they are not: real wages for the bottom four quintiles have been stagnant since the seventies and the 1% have captured essentially all income gains from productivity growth since then. That is the source of the discontent. I&#x27
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by cal5k 9y ago
I totally empathize with your situation, but globally the numbers are irrefutable. That's not to say that many people aren't still struggling - we can always do better, but I think there's reason to be optimistic.
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by cal5k 9y ago
I don't disagree at all. I just don't see how railing against the notion of inequality does anything to address this - the US collects enough in tax revenue to solve these problems already. What it needs is better policy. I should
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by cal5k 9y ago
The main thrust is that this seems to simply be a consequence of differing ability/circumstance, and there is no counter-example in recorded history - even our views on the "noble savage" are probably skewed by the fact that

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