There's also the "You have to suffer as much as I did" mentality from people who have actually been hurt by the current system. I see that argument a lot about free college / student loan forgiveness
sadly a lot of poor people are stupid and make shitty choices. most of my friends form high school went to shitty schools and dropped out and did nothing with their lives and ended up married with kids very young. they partied and didn't study. they took out loans they could not afford. they had no discipline or drive. they now are in dead end low paying jobs and struggling and miserable.
as someone who 'made it out' I was only able to do so because i was able to make sacrifices to do so. i didn't party. i worked. i spend all of my 20s working my ass off to improve my situation. because i knew the consequences for me if I ever slacked off would ruin my life. fortunately i was also able to realize that my parents were complete idiots and not to follow any advice they ever gave me about money or life. but that all came at a huge emotional cost.
like... why should I or anyone feel bad for people facing the consequences of their actions?
but on the flip side, the wealthy can fuck around and never find out because they will be bailed out of all their poor choices by their parents wealth. if we create a society where everyone is bailed out of their own poor choices by never having to pay negative consequences for what they choose, what kind of society will that create?
you could say the same thing about people who purposely destroy their health by eating poorly, smoking etc. which is sadly the majority of our health crisis in America... it's self-inflicted. and again my motivate to be healthy is because i know i can't afford to be sick, it would bankrupt me.
truth is a lot of people are shitty people, why should they be given equal footing for those of us who chose to do the right things?
several people i know who were banking on the loan forgiveness... could pay back their loans. they just refused to because they wanted to travel and party. nor should they have taking out a six figure loan to become a social worker.
One thing that gets me with this is an idea that everyone should be as competent as I. I know a lot of folks that are doing the best they can but not only did I sacrifice in various ways but I have a bookish nature and an inquisitive mind. This is the main reason I was in the advanced group in high school. But you know I was at the bottom or close to of that group. Was it because I was lazy. Maybe but I certainly felt like I had to work at it a lot. My experience with that and college has made me realize I just can't memorize as quickly or as perfectly as my peers. This put me in a poor position in some ways but it gave me a leg up in understanding as this is how I competed. Anyway everyone cannot be top of the class or good at a whole bunch of things (I feel america expects everyone to be a doctor and a lawyer and an accountant and a mechanic along with every other type of tradesman). People at the bottom should have a decent enough life and people at the top should not have wealth representing 10 or 100 or 1000 people because as good as they are they are not that good. In many cases they are not even good but inherited or lucked into it or bastarded their way through.
people at the bottom should have more resources, but we can't force them to make good choices with those resources.
that's the issue you fail to see. that many people choose to live shitty lives despite whatever they are given. that is the ugly truth.
you can't force people to live positive lives. you can't force them to get help. you can't force them to utilize teh resources available to them.
why is it that poor immigrant kids do so much better than poor domestic kids even though they have far less resources? because they have drive to succeed and make a better life for themselves.
some people are just lazy. it's not a matter of competence, it's a matter of them not giving a fuck about anything outside of gratifying their immediate wants.
like the people who take out huge loans, get good jobs, and then don't pay the loans back so they can party and travel.
I think that you are missing how people have a variety of capabilities and intelligence. I would pose you this theoretical to ponder. You have a maze, and six rats. Of the six, one finds the exit with ease, while the other five struggle and don't find the exit. Yay for the smart, efficient rat!
What are you going to do with the other five? Maybe some of them can learn the maze, but is there any utility in this now? Will you, knowing their deficiencies, throw them back into the maze over and over until they learn it? Some of them never will. Is this not a cruelty to them? What benefit do you derive from doing that?
Beware this feeling: "I worked hard and I made it, while these fuckers dicked around. They don't deserve anything." That thought is entirely focused on yourself, and does nothing but cause suffering in others. What do you wish to do about the others, leaving your own feelings out of it. What is best for society? You know they are not as efficient and hard working as you are, but you really do not know why this is the case. What will you do about that?
Those are the useful questions. Feelings of self righteousness help no one. They harm even you.
plenty of my friends were smarter and more capable than me. they simple chose not to develop their abilities. a lot of them had wealthier parents than me too and didn't have to pay for school like i did. they chose drugs and being deadbeats.
people have free will. do we want to actively subsidize people fucking up their lives? that they choose suffering when they had other options? that's a hard thing to say yes to for the majority of people.
not everyone is an angel who is misunderstood. lots and lots of people are assholes. just look at what happens when rich and successful people have positions of power.... they pull the ladder up behind them. hence the system we have now.
it's not about righteousness, it's about how people behave. and lots of people behave poorly and without consideration for their futures or anyone else around them. they ignore opportunity and abuse privileges.
people really seem to think the rich and evil and the poor are good... but they aren't. they are just people.
nobody owes anyone anything. i'm not talking about theoretical questions, I'm talking about the real world in which people make choices for themselves. and a lot of people choose poorly even when they have good opportunities.
That's great but the VAST MAJORITY of poor people are only poor because they were born poor, and never had a chance to grow past it. Not because of personal choices.
And the VAST MAJORITY of rich people are only rich because they were born to rich parents, not because of personal choices.
So all that stuff you're talking about? Even if it's true, which I doubt, it's just edge cases. Not worth discussing.
the real argument is the moral hazard one, in that if you don't have skin in the game you won't appreciate or respect what you've been given.
i mean, if college was free, yes there would be a huge uptick in 'useless degrees' or whatever, but that might be a net benefit for society in the long run. we can't know that though.
My old boss felt this way about the industry (healthcare/emergency services). This attitude literally drove all our quality providers away. Now my supervisor has the mentality that our goal is to make our industry better for ourselves and for each class (yearly graduates). How much we suffered is a reminder of what we are building away from, not a litmus for "trial by fire" of our new hires. I took a slight paycut (but better work/time off cycle) to take this job just to escape the "I walked uphill both ways naked so they can too" mentally. I don't understand the idea that other people getting better treatment than I got will somehow hurt me.
I want to tax billionaires and churches their fair share, but if raising my taxes gave everyone healthcare I would do it. First, it would probably save money getting private insurance out of peoples lives, but also the overall benefit to society outweighs any small burden I would shoulder. I see myself as a pretty antisocial person, and I rarely want to interact with others. I don't think the people I want to avoid should suffer
Yeah. A few years ago there was a referendum whether to keep compulsory military service in Austria. All the 18 year olds where like, fuck no, abolish this shit. All the old farts where like, I had to do it, I hated it, so you have to do it too.
That's when I realised democracy sucks. They made a big deal of giving voting rights to 16 year olds, but in the end it doesn't matter, it's still the older people deciding what the young people have to do.
It's really important IMO for folks to keep in mind that anti-psychiatry / anti-medical people borrow this rhetoric heavily in order to make their own goals sound appealing to the antiwork / anticapitalist demographics.
So absolutely - you can't "therapy" away poverty, and antidepressants don't cure eviction; but it's definitely worth understanding that as much as poverty and work-related stress can contribute to or even cause mental disorders - those disorders still need treatment, and in most cases they won't be fixed if the person's financial situation is restored. Like how bad OHSA can cause injuries, but fixing the OHSA doesn't put Timmy's leg back on - people can be wealthy and retired, and still have depression or anxiety. Just because someone is also poor, or under workplace stress, doesn't invalidate their mental health as mental health.
If someone is experiencing distress due to their mental health, regardless if that is caused by finances, they should have access to treatment and aid, and they should have the support of their working-class peers.
Diminishing the independent significance of mental health and mental disorders in order to make points about work and finance cheapens both viewpoints for the gain of neither.
1.) It’s not about deminishing independent significance of mental health and mental disorders in order to make points about work and finance but pointing out how much current working society strains our mental health.
2.) Not only does the current society create mental health problems but also makes mental health problems WORSE for people with unrelated mental health problems. Making things easier for everyone would help everyone get better including people with independent mental health problems and mental disorders and not the opposite like you say.
Also funny how it is ignored by our representatives, they are more involved with a bs culture war, instead of busting up monopolies, rooting out companies who are blatantly gouging consumers and creating policies that actually help the people they represent.
Like, I know it's not news. And I know in "true color" it's closer to grey. But Jupiter was not blue when I was a kid. It's just so much more colorful. So much more going on. so much more dynamic and complicated.
I cannot comprehend how anyone could ever think sending probes out to take pictures is a waste of money, even ignoring all the real and applicable science that can come from it.
If we want to solve global warming and survive as a society, extraplanetary research is crucial. When we look outward, we learn about things that apply inward. NASA has something like a 17-1 return on investments. Every dollar we put into NASA returns so much more in tech and knowledge we can apply to help people here. It's always a good investment.
Comedians and similar people who make content out of stuff they see in the news seem to be especially prone to this kind of thinking. They see an article about a phyics discovery or a math theorem or a sociology experiment and say something about science should focus on solving world hunger or curing cancer instead.
Seemingly ignorant of the facts that
a) Science isn't a monolith, and a sociologist or mathematician isn't a virologist or oncologist or whatever else would be needed for the problem they're ranting about.
b) Even if someone happened to be in the correct field for the problem the idiot is ranting about, they often couldn't help with the problem anyway because they're lacking the required experience and knowledge and just throwing people at the problem doesn't help if those people are grad students or barely postgrads.
I mean, if it's not a true color photo and they added the blue for informational display reasons, then the blueness of this photo isn't really a meaningful part of it to get excited about. (Sorry to be a downer.)
With that said, this photo IS something to get excited about because (based on the post title) it shows a part of the planet in a way never seen before, and it shows it in astounding clarity. And i absolutely agree that NASA science missions are enormously worthwhile.
False color can also just be a more visible way to display a range of frequencies that wouldn't be visible to the human eye anyway. Take the images from the James Webb Telescope for example. The JWT operates in the infrared, but it can see more than just one infrared wavelength and can differentiate between them. Rather than showing three or more grayscale images, you can layer them over each other in different colors or hues and create a single image. If you need the individual grayscale images, they exist, but that's not what usually ends up in communities like this one.
Isn't it weird how policies that help the poor are treated like a zero sum game ("anything they get is less for the rest of society") but policies that help the rich are treated as good for everyone ("a rising tide lifts all boats").
That’s capitalism for you where rich have significant control over media and people are uneducated enough to realise those problems. And people that know about the issues mostly don’t do anything bacause people don’t have energy and time to organise and push for the better future because everyone is fucking overworked from trying to literally just live.
Actually I have been happy with most of the work my states rep have done but much does not get through with the rest of the countries reps or things go through despite my reps not voting for it.
Mine support plenty of status quo to but usually they are trying to at least shift it in a better direction. I get it to because they can push radical change with a certain chance of getting it which is low or gradual and have a good chance of making it through. Now don't get me wrong. I realize how useless gradual change can be at this point but I think the same of radical but im sorta a doomer.
I hate those “pull yourself up by your boostraps” people, who don’t realised the phrase was coined satirically because it’s impossible to actually pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Your way of thinking makes sense but you’re interpreting it wrong.
If you can round up and say “0,9_ = 1” , then why can’t you round down and repeat until “0 = 1”? The thing is, there’s no rounding up, the 0,0…1 that you’re adding is infinitely small (inexistent).
It looks a lot less unintuitive if you use fractions:
No, because that would imply that infinity has an end. 0.999… = 1 because there are an infinite number of 9s. There isn’t a last 9, and therefore the decimal is equal to 1. Because there are an infinite number of 9s, you can’t put an 8 or 7 at the end, because there is literally no end. The principle of 0.999… = 1 cannot extend to the point point where 0 = 1 because that’s not infinity works.
The tricky part is that there is no 0.999…9 because there is no last digit 9. It just keeps going forever.
If you are interested in the proof of why 0.999999999… = 1:
0.9999999… / 10 = 0.09999999… You can divide the number by 10 by adding a 0 to the first decimal place.
0.9999999… - 0.09999999… = 0.9 because the digit 9 in the second, third, fourth, … decimal places cancel each other out.
Let’s pretend there is a finite way to write 0.9999999…, but we do not know what it is yet. Let’s call it x. According to the above calculations x - x/10 = 0.9 must be true. That means 0.9x = 0.9. dividing both sides by 0.9, the answer is x = 1.
The reason you can’t abuse this to prove 0=1 as you suggested, is because this proof relies on an infinite number of 9 digits cancelling each other out. The number you mentioned is 0.9999…8. That could be a number with lots of lots of decimal places, but there has to be a last digit 8 eventually, so by definition it is not an infinite amount of 9 digits before. A number with infinite digits and then another digit in the end can not exist, because infinity does not end.
They said its the same number though, not basically the same. The idea that as you keep adding 9s to 0.9 you reduce the difference, an infinite amount of 9s yields an infinitely small difference (i.e. no difference) seems sound to me. I think they’re spot on.
Yes, thats what we’re saying. No one said it’s an infinitesimally small difference as in hyperbolically its there but really small. Like literally, if you start with 0.9 = 1-0.1, 0.99 = 1-0.01, 0.9… n nines …9 = 1-0.1^n. You’ll start to approach one, and the difference with one would be 0.1^n correct? So if you make that difference infinitely small (infinite: to an infinite extent or amount): lim n -> inf of 0.1^n = 0. And therefore 0.999… = lim n -> inf of 1-0.1^n = 1-0 = 1.
I think it’s a good way to rationalize, why 0.999… is THE SAME as 1. The more 9s you add, the smaller the difference, at infinite nines, you’ll have an infinitely small difference which is the same as no difference at all. It’s the literal proof, idk how to make it more clear. I think you’re confusing infinitely and infinitesimally which are not at all the same.
Right, it’s only a problem because we chose base ten (a rather inconvenient number). If we did math in base twelve, 1/3 in base twelve would simply be 0.4. It doesn’t repeat. Simply, then, 1/3 = 0.4, then (0.4 × 3) = (0.4 + 0.4 + 0.4) = 1 in base twelve. No issues, no limits, just clean simple addition. No more simple than how 0.5 + 0.5 = 1 in base ten.
One problem in base twelve is that 1/5 does repeat, being about 0.2497… repeating. But eh, who needs 5? So what, we have 5 fingers, big whoop, it’s not that great of a number. 6 on the other hand, what an amazing number. I wish we had 6 fingers, that’d be great, and we would have evolved to use base twelve, a much better base!
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