javert

74 ms·

691.
by javert 11y ago
The only companies that I sometimes continue to engage with after they deceive and manipulate me are governmnent-granted monopolies , like Time Warner Cable.
692.
by javert 11y ago
AFAIK in most of the US there are only two cable companies in a given area (both of which typically will be national companies with lobbyists, and also utter shit). The traditional "telephone" company and the traditional "cab
693.
by javert 11y ago
Yeah I've bought bad batteries from Amazon (they were recharged AAs being sold as new), of course from a third-part seller. Amazon doesn't care; thousands of people complain, and they keep letting it happen. Amazon Subprime.
694.
by javert 11y ago
Came here to say this. Lenovo shits on its customers.
695.
by javert 11y ago
I think it's a side effect of the expectation of not having a crap job. For all of human history, 99.9% of people have had crap jobs. Life gets a lot better if you are OK with that, but young people are not OK with that today.
696.
by javert 11y ago
What is the significance of this?
697.
by javert 11y ago
Well, that's the equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and saying "lallalalaa I can't hear you!" edit: In other words: you should not just choose to "believe" one thing or another. You should look at
698.
by javert 11y ago
You can't "choose to believe" that there is meaning in life for the same reason that I can't "choose to believe" that God exists, or that the moon is made of cheese, or that Saturn has 28 moons, or that the wor
699.
by javert 11y ago
I meant "preposition" in the first sentence there.
700.
by javert 11y ago
Problem is, reality is knowable and there is meaning in life. So you are wrong.
701.
by javert 11y ago
I can't really follow this. For one thing, I don't know what "person of enough collective benefit" means (seems like you are missing a proposition or something). For another thing, it's not true that people are doom
702.
by javert 11y ago
First, I'm not a nihilist. Second, if we want to make the world a better place, the best way to do it is to spread rationality and to counter forms of irrationality---in this case, altruism. I'm not against human happiness. I&#x27
703.
by javert 11y ago
So I guess you are defending living blindly and doing whatever you feel like doing, rather than actually thinking about what it makes sense to do. That does not sound like a good strategy. It may lead you to being a totally self-sacrificial
704.
by javert 11y ago
But there is no reason to be altruistic. It's a total fantasy, just like any religion is. To believe otherwise is to live an unexamined life, and the unexamined life is not worth living. Some people feel like being altruistic, but fe
705.
by javert 11y ago
We get pleasure from sating our hunger, quenching our thirst, getting warm when cold, getting cold when warm. Moreover, our brains just naturally produce pleasure chemicals when we are not in a state of fear, pain, anxiety, or severe need.
706.
by javert 11y ago
Complaining about "narcissism" has recently, and strangely, become part of our cultural milieu. I don't know what is really meant by that term or why it is supposed to be a problem. It seems like the intellectual boogeyman de
707.
by javert 11y ago
Individualism has nothing to do with it. The French people actually enjoying the Champ de Mars are not not being individualistic. Rather, enjoying private pleasures is individualistic. What you are actually lampooning is being thoughtle
708.
by javert 11y ago
Bingo. Good theory can only come by looking out at reality, which is what empiricists like John Locke promoted. In France, the disease of theorizing separate from (and eventually in defiance of) reality started with Descartes, and then spre
709.
by javert 11y ago
Indeed. I have heard it said that the French Revolution marked the end of the Enlightenment. No doubt that the founders of the French Revolution didn't quite have the intellectual framework they needed. Neither did the US Founding Fa
710.
by javert 11y ago
Hmm... Noam Chomsky books? For gullible college students?
711.
by javert 11y ago
I mean really, the rules are the rules, and there is no ambiguity. So a "strict reading of the rules" is the same thing as a "reading of the rules." Because, as you say, there is no such thing as a reading of the rules t
712.
by javert 11y ago
Thanks, good observation.
713.
by javert 11y ago
Yeah, but putting "strictly" there does not change the meaning of the sentence, it's just a superfluous word.
714.
by javert 11y ago
You would think that they would be smart enough to only cheat when they won't get caught. Here, they got caught, so they were being stupid. You don't expect big, successful companies to be stupid (after all, they spend a ton of mo
715.
by javert 11y ago
> For example, Finnish is utterly genderless, but it has more declension cases for nouns than Latin had. That's consistent with simply making a tradeoff. So a Roman could say: I don't understand why the Finns created more decle
716.
by javert 11y ago
I find that I get the most mental and spiritual energy, by far, when I just "do what I want to/feel like doing." Rather than trying to live by some rational maxim like "maximize productivity." Part of what you said
717.
by javert 11y ago
> Consider that "spanish" and "italian" are officially separate languages, while the US and Scotland both officially speak "english". The terminology won't help you predict which pair has an easier time
718.
by javert 11y ago
I am sympathetic to your argument, but would take it farther. A person has no obliation to others, whatsoever, period. Anyone who disagrees would have to overcome the burden of proof. (Which you can't, by the way, since I know things t
719.
by javert 11y ago
Moral authority doesn't come from one's station in society. It comes from approaching the question rationally and being able to prove your case. Indeed, the author has no moral authority.
720.
by javert 11y ago
Make the companies that profit from the research do the research themselves, in house, and pay for it and direct it themselves. That's the only way. You can't set up academia as a soviet-style bureaucracy and expect it to perform

More ›