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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • There are so many issues with this. Unsolvable issues.

    The first that I saw was basing income on grades. This means that the person who determines whether you fail or pass, also determines how much money you get. I don’t think there is any good teacher out there that wants that responsibillity. So fuck that. Grades are for determining whether you pass or fail. The government should not use them for their own needs. If they so desperately want that, then let them make their own tests and grade these themselves.

    The second is fixing income. If I do better than my peers, I want to be recognized for that. Otherwise, why would I put in the effort? Maybe this works for super simple jobs, like fruit picker on a farm. But anywhere where cognitive skills are required, you need to incentivise people to excel.

    And that was still talking about jobs where you spend a fixed amount of time working. There are also many jobs, where it makes wayyy more sense to pay directly for delivered performance. For example: how do you fix the salary of a sex worker? Does that mean you fix the pay rate for the customers? Demand for certain people certainly won’t be equal, so how do you fix that?

    What about overtime? What about working during holidays/weekends? What about nightshifts? Etc.

    Then there is the issues of different personal survival needs. No single set of 3 meals a day will be both allergy-safe for everyone and nutricious enough to survive for everyone. Some people live fine without a microwave, others can’t live without it. Etc. Just giving people money removes the responsibility of determining what exactly is required for survival.

    Then there is the issue of labor shortages. Take the Dutch childcare system for example. For many years now, the government has had the idea of lowering the prices significantly. But they can’t, because the number of licensed caretakers is already not enough to fullfill demand right now, and lowering prices would skyrocket demand.

    The whole point of UBI is to let the market figure out many of the solutions to these problems. Keep it simple for the government, and only regulate when and where it actually helps.








  • The “rationale” behind such atrocities is always based on emotion, not actual reason. Usually fear. Analyzing why you feel that fear, and whether it is justified, will help to avoid falling into such logical fallacies.

    Ignoring the fear, and dismissing it as illogical will not help anyone. You have to acknowledge the emotion, and analyse it. Allow it to exist, but avoid acting on it before analyzing it.

    In fact, acting on emotions, especially on fear, will often result in such atrocities. Since it is fear, not reason, that eliminates compassion.

    Ps. I like the discourse. Please don’t see my comments as a personal attack. Even if neither of us changes their oppinion, understanding the other is valuable.


  • But understanding, predicting, and reacting differently on emotions are all learnable, and very rational.

    For example: don’t punch the TV when you are angry about loosing a game. Instead realise where the anger is coming from. Probably frustration, but why are you so frustrated when you loose? Some frustration is understandable, but what causes so much frustration that it turned into violent anger? And can you predict what actions or circumsfamces may result in that frustration or and anger (e.g. alcohol consumption)?

    The most rational fictional species I know, Vulcans, do not lack emotion. Quite the opposite. But they have learned to control their emotions.



  • Natural selection.

    If you decide to give up on life, you won’t reproduce. Hence, people are naturally selected to have a high tolerance for missery. Humans are evolved to keep struggling and fighting.

    If there is something to fight for, such as loved ones, a cause, or a personal goal, then it becomes much easier to keep fighting. Hence, depression is usually not just misery, but also a lack of purpose.

    But finding new purpose in life is very doable. Making new connections with people, experiencing new things, and changing the environment you are in are the easiest ways to let externals factors help you here. Hence why people go on trips to “discover themselves”.

    As for your example; if during your childhood you are always told how important a job is, it is likely you will set the job as a purpose in life. Then spending all that energy towards it, feels like working towards a purpose and will make you proud. If, like me, you think this culture is horrible, and it should be fought against, then there is cause to fight for. Be the change, refuse those hours, and defy the system by carving out a happy life without adherence to that culture. Be proud of every smile you have!

    I’m not saying that finding the energy to get out of a depression is easy. I have been there myself. Especially since a depression is more than a lack of purpose by itself. But I know that if you find even a tiny bit of fighting spirit in yourself left, you can feed it bit by bit. Take yoga lessons, take instrument lessons, find a book club, try a new sport, go on a roadtrip, switch jobs, etc. Don’t expect to like any of the new experiences and magically be undepressed. Just experience something new. It took me years go to from properly depressed, to finding joy in all the things I do and learn.




  • I remember a javascript library where the was a function that returned, according to the documentation, “a color”. Did it return an object with 3 fields? Were those fields RGB or some other color scheme? Is it a string encoding a color? What format is that string? None of these questions could be answered without just running the code, and analyzing the object you got back.







  • Large beer containers are “rare” for the same reason large soda containers are rare: carbonization. If you store an opened bottle of beer for a few hours, it will go flat, killing part of the taste with it. Beer is even worse in this regard than soda. You want to finish the whole thing in one sitting for beer. Very few people consume 2 litres of beer in one sitting. … But … Every single self respecting bar has beer from the tap, right? That stuff doesn’t appear magically. It comes in kegs. You can buy those kegs from a wholesaler, or from the internet. These kegs work by inserting CO2 to pressurize it. So you will need CO2 tanks and a system to pressurize the whole thing. Not super hard to get, but not something you find in your supermarket either. But if you consume enough beer, it can absolutely be worth it to buy a tap, CO2 and kegs instead of bottles.