My video game, Moon Garden Optimizer, just released a demo on Steam. If you’ve already tried previous versions, it’s not new. Otherwise… try it! Looking forward to a full release soon.
The Ace Journal Club this month talked about global ace solidarity. It’s a very good discussion of how queer activists around the world can support each other, as well as the specter of cultural imperialism. Great article, although maybe I’m biased because the article praises a blog series that I ran ten years ago.
The Many Schools of the Rationality Debate | A Failure to Disagree – This article discusses several different stances in the “rationality debate” in psychology. There’s the classical view of decision-making that assumes people are following economic decision theory. Then there’s the idea that people follow heuristics which cause them to be biased. There’s the “Fast and Frugal” view which points out that heuristics are often rational. It is rationally incorrect to calculate the exact trajectory of a ball in order to catch it; you’ve already failed to catch the ball at that point. The author advocates a fourth school of thought, which is based more on empirical study of how experts really make decisions.
For all that skeptics have discussed rationality and tried to advocate good epistemological practices, they largely stopped at the heuristics and biases viewpoint. Nobody ever talked about computational costs or its implications on best epistemological practices.
The Death of Free Trade | Unlearning Economics (video, 1:07 hours) – This video explains the case against free trade. The case for free trade is analogous to the case for free markets. Free trade is traditionally a “right” policy, while tariffs and other trade restrictions are traditionally “left” policy. Free trade can have net benefits while hurting certain groups, and exacerbating inequality. There are good reasons for tariffs in some situations, for example to protect a domestic industry. This is all context worth knowing.
However, the video does not get into what’s wrong with Trump’s trade policy. Trump has been applying tariffs across the board, and rescinding them haphazardly. This utterly fails to boost domestic manufacturing, because a) the tariffs also apply to the raw materials needed for manufacturing, and b) nobody wants to invest in building domestic factories when the tariffs are changing wildly month to month. Other people say we’re waging this trade war because it’s a war we can win. We can argue over the merits of trying to wage a trade war against China, but then what about Canada? Sure, we can “win” a trade war against Canada, but why the hell are we trying to? Waging trade war with Canada certainly does not help us against China, quite the opposite.
I think the real reason for Trump’s trade policy is because tariffs are the one kind of tax that the president can impose unilaterally without approval from congress. And it gives him the opportunity to meet with various world leaders and demand that they personally flatter him.
The Games Behind the Bans: Vile: Exhumed and Girls Purgatoriem | Endless Mode – Remember how I was talking about the Itch.io and Steam bans? I was defending the banned games even under the assumption that they were not “good” games. But what if the games in question were more defensible than that? For example, what if a game explored sexual abuse specifically in order to criticize it? What if a game has incest only in the technical sense, because it’s a sci-fi game where all the characters are clones of each other? That’s not a hypothetical, it’s real, these are actually the games that got banned.
Being Right vs Doing Good | Tell Me Why the World is Weird – Faith or good works? It’s the classic Christian debate. In my recollection, this was discussed in my high school Catholic education, with a pretty strong leaning towards “good works”. Evangelicals are on the side of “faith”, and this article unpacks some of the consequences. They’re all about having the correct beliefs, and rejecting harm reduction.
It occurs to me that there is a secular analogue. For example, atheists may also argue over the importance of belief vs action. If someone is a Christian, but outwardly behaves well, is that acceptable? Or should we be suspicious of malignant effects? I don’t have a strong opinion either way, but I sympathize with people who place value on correct beliefs. Although I think it’s weird that Evangelicals value correct beliefs without placing value on good epistemology.
faith over good works could be a reason for left purists evangelizing against harm reduction voting. christ i hate those motherfuckers.
That’s partly the nature of the internet, where the most basic verb is expressing an opinion, rather than taking action. I think it’s important that we talk about and normalize the basic voting process, which is why I often write about it even though it’s not exciting and I’m often unsure about individual issues.
… tariffs and other trade restrictions are traditionally “left” policy.
Ssshh! Don’t tell Trump or the Trumpistas, or we’ll all get injured by fragments of exploding heads.
… it gives him the opportunity to meet with various world leaders and demand that they personally fellate him. FTFY.
Faith or good works?
Apparently some scholars interpret “works” as performance of ritual, not anything like actually helping people. Pffft!
… it’s weird that Evangelicals value correct beliefs without placing value on good epistemology.
Not weird to me. What I consider “good” epistemology leaves very little room for any beliefs not supported by evidence or logic, whereas I consider faith as (mostly) the cultivation of credulity.
Thanks for linking to my post~ I think there is an equivalent in progressive/feminist/left spaces on the internet, where people make a big deal about somebody posting a bad opinion and then we need to “cancel” them- but in reality, if someone has a bad opinion about something due to being uninformed, or due to their religion (ah well that’s a whole other issue, how religion requires people to hold certain bad opinions about queer people, women’s rights, etc), but they are also taking actions which actually help people, then it’s not right to just label them a bad person. But we can only see what they post on the internet, we have no idea what real actions they are taking in real life.
Many people who come from an evangelical or fundamentalist background, and then later change their beliefs and join a progressive or feminist or atheist movement, still have that kind of mindset that “we have to make sure everybody believes the right thing, or else they’re not ‘one of us.'”
Also, when we talk about politics and what politicians to support, it’s all about whether they have the “correct” opinion on every issue. But are they able to actually get things done? Do they have skills related to communicating well and managing people and boring stuff like that? It’s hard to actually evaluate that, but easy to check if they have the right opinions on everything.