pfkurtz

9 ms·

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by pfkurtz 5y ago
Current lists of the laws I have in mind, YMMV, but there's some good stuff in here (by which I mean assaults on freedom of expression from one and only one political quadrant). https://freedomforallamericans.org/legisl
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
I did not know about the Pro, thanks for planting the seed of desire! I've yet to get into keyboard reprogramming, someday I'll take the plunge and learn to type efficiently. One thing I really love about the Freestyle is that, wi
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
I've been on the Kinesis Freestyle Blue for years and I love it. I paired it with a Logitech trackball that's apparently discontinued; I'm looking for a replacement as good. Their setup here is really close. Long term, what I
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
I forgot to answer a question you asked, sorry. I am not saying that he is giving different "moral weights" to anything. I am saying he is invoking an extreme moral context: religious persecution, totalitarian wartime governments.
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
"If you doubt that, imagine what people in 1830 would think of our default educated east coast beliefs about, say, premarital sex, homosexuality, or the literal truth of the Bible. We would seem depraved to them." The way I put it
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
Oh, they would so blow our tiny minds that to even think through one hypothetically would ruin the entire article? So I should just imagine how horrified someone (anyone?) in 1830 would be by the fact that I think black and white people, me
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
You're right, I'm not a mind reader, I don't know if "discomfort" is the right word; my original comment was snark, meant to draw attention to the moral divergence between his examples. But honestly: the stuff about
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
PG proved right! But honestly, I stated my "priors" unequivocally, with specific examples of current legislation that's coming from only one side, and you went "both sides", didn't answer a specific thing, and
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
Liberals haven't done anything of the sort, and no one "is using morality as an excuse to cause harm". Morality is about the harms that exist in this world. Conservatives have false beliefs—about trans people, homosexuality
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
We don't need to look to Catcher in the Rye. Conservatives are banning books and outlawing kinds of self-expression, kinds of self-identity, in many countries, RIGHT NOW. What opinions, in 2004, or 2022, does Paul Graham not think one
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
This is a fair point, that he is discussing abstractions. I almost wrote "I wish people would read moral philosophers on moral philosophy, not tech founders." He does give some examples, and they seem to fit in two categories: thi
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
I am implying, and in no way do I take myself to be doing anything more noble than shitposting here, that the kinds of forbidden opinions he is probably imagining himself to suffer for, are radically different from the kinds of opinions tha
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
The word "defeatist", for example, has no particular political connotations now. But in Germany in 1917 it was a weapon, used by Ludendorff in a purge of those who favored a negotiated peace. At the start of World War II it was us
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
His historical examples of when you need to keep your opinion to yourself: in circumstances of chattel slavery, totalitarianism, world war. His problem in 2004 (the year the United States launched an attack on a foreign country): people dis
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristin_Lavransdatter Sorry to see this one not mentioned.
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
People have fewer children as economic opportunities increase. All over the world birth rates are falling—even India is approaching below-replacement. So you can probably move on from your concern, and focus on getting the benefits of econo
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
Make it easy to get contraception. Make it easy for young men to get and then reverse vasectomies. Invest much more in the education system and children in general. Make it easy to get an abortion.
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
Sorry I read "all" but you wrote "also", which is more in accord. Sorry! Nevertheless I think what you said is a special case of what I said.
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
That is one thing, and it is important, but what I said encompasses a lot more people and needs, so I think it doesn't quite "come down to" merely helping this one specific set of "problematic" adults you personally
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
It all comes down to being willing, as a society, to devote adequate resources to everyone, and in particular to every child, regardless of circumstance.
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
Well before I started learning to program, I was carefully reading David Chalmers' early magnum opus The Conscious Mind . I still find myself convinced by the argument: consciousness is a basic ontological feature of reality, the part
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
Thanks for this comment. Ulysses very much rewards the reader of the classics, you should give it a try sometime! You might be interested in the Catherine Project.
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
I'm thinking like page 130 or so.
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
Ulysses gives slowly, then greatly. It rewards return. But it is very hard at first and I know few people who've gotten through it just on their own. I didn't. My route: 1) I read it out loud with someone I loved at a beautiful
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
Yes, making society worse off, knowingly: that means harming others: yes, be ashamed. If you're no longer convinced of that, it's because you are looking for justifications for defect in the prisoner's dilemma, rather than co
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
Add a vertical on the other side and achieve enlightenment.
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
2560x1080 curved horizontal with editor between two vertical 1080x1920, one with terminal, one with browser.
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
Rupert Murdoch owns the centerpiece of the right wing media empire and has used it relentlessly to radicalize right wing people and undermine democracy. Charles Koch is one of the great oil magnates and uses his immense wealth to fund, amon
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
That's a bingo.
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by pfkurtz 5y ago
Interesting. There seems to be some debate among the critics, but putting that aside... If it's all gone to land, the situation seems worse as far as inequality goes. The top 1% of households own 40% of land in the US as of 2017. The

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