Shihali

joined 2 years ago
[–] Shihali 1 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Quoting your previous post:

Whether the IQ part is true or not, there’s basically no reason for the average person to bring it up or account for it.
Finally, let’s say for the sake of argument people with a certain skin color are just plain 10% intelligent...

I'm running with your "for the sake of argument" scenario and constructing a fairy-tale-level example to illustrate why the average citizen of a democracy has a reason to care. Namely, the average citizen votes on policy, and a policy of equality of opportunity doesn't lead to ethnic equality when there is a big gap in average intelligence, or tenacity, or health, or what have you.

Let’s say I’m a purple person with completely average intelligence. If I meet 100 random other purple people, statistically 50 of them are going to be less intelligent than me. Right? Now I meet 100 random green people. How many of them on average are going to be less intelligent than me?

If I've got the statistics right, on average 75 of those random green people will be less intelligent than you (and 25 more intelligent). I am surprised and expected the numbers to be less skewed. I wouldn't expect 75 of those random green people to also be poorer than you, but 60-65 sounds reasonable.

If I had to choose - without knowing my color in advance, I’d have no problem going for the world where if I lucked into being born as purple my ability to be wealthy would be subject to a slight limitation.

Then my post did its job of making you think about what policy you'd vote for in this situation.

[–] Shihali 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (8 children)

The problem comes up when making policy. Let's say there are green people who average 10% less intelligent than purple people, and that jobs for smart people pay better than jobs for stupid people. Waving a magic wand to end racial prejudice and provide equal schools, safety, housing, and food would still leave the average green person worse off than the average purple person. You could wave the magic wand to end racial inequality of opportunity until your arm falls off and not get rid of the average pay gap between green and purple people because less intelligent people are being paid less no matter whether they are green or purple but more of them are green. If you want the average green person to be as well off as the average purple person, you need to make jobs for stupid people pay as well as jobs for smart people or take money from the mostly-purple rich and give it to the mostly-green poor.

If you are a commoner in an absolute monarchy or a subject in a dictatorship, maybe it's best for you to forget about that because policy-making is in the hands of your betters. But you probably live in a democracy which means you have a small say in policy and need to think about whether a policy will do what you want before you support it.

[–] Shihali 4 points 2 years ago

qpdb are completely symmetrical in Bierstadt, so no.

[–] Shihali 3 points 2 years ago

Agreed that it's wider at the same point size. Not sure if it's easier or harder to read yet, especially that "a". Seems a little heavier to counter display technology that makes old fonts so thin (and maybe superthin fonts falling out of fashion?). Probably blends better with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean due to being squarer and having shorter descenders, but I don't trust my eye.

[–] Shihali 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

The update hasn't happened for me yet, so we've still got some time to get used to Bierstadt a.k.a. Aptos. It has a curve at the bottom of the lower-case l like Liberation Mono, DejaVu Sans Mono, and Cascadia Code, but without the top serif.

[–] Shihali 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Do you have an opinion on CK2+ versus Historical Immersion Project?

[–] Shihali 1 points 2 years ago

My corners of Reddit -- the apolitical, narrowly to very narrowly focused subs -- never protested or gave up. Some are trying to move to various platforms: one to Lemmy, another to Squabbles, a third thinking about Tildes. The one that posted about moving to Lemmy appears to be a moderate success; the others not.

[–] Shihali 2 points 2 years ago

Pro kio multaj homoj eklernigis la tokiponan lastatempe?

[–] Shihali 31 points 2 years ago

The three tax prep firms named are H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer.

[–] Shihali 3 points 2 years ago

Really? 3,000 characters or more? By default?

[–] Shihali 17 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Tumblr is still popular with the 2000s LiveJournal crowd, i.e. people who need 500 words not 500 characters or 500x500 pixels.

[–] Shihali 1 points 2 years ago

Amod Lele raised the same question of whether there is an end to suffering here: https://loveofallwisdom.com/blog/2009/09/one-and-a-half-noble-truths/

I don't know a strong argument for the claim that the end of suffering is possible outside of claims made about the Buddha himself and other similarly ancient figures, although the experiences of a few monks are evidence that greatly reducing suffering is possible for some people.

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