My wife used to apply pressure to get me to participate, but she's pretty much given up on that by now. This year my only involvement was to go ahead and seal the envelopes destined for my friends and family, which she had left unsealed just on the off chance that I wanted to write something personal in them (as if!).
It's helped my cause that the number of cards we receive each year has declined precipitously -- it seems to be a dying custom. At least, I prefer that explanation to the possibility that 60% of our friends and family no longer care about us.
Christmas cards, and related acts of thoughtfulness towards friends and family in general, are my wife's domain. I don't know but I suspect that my siblings each had a mild cardiac event on their first birthday after my marriage, when they actually received in the mail a genuine birthday card with my name on the return address (though in my wife's handwriting).
I can't even assign it to lack of organization on my part -- perhaps I might have some fleeting micro-thought about needing to send these cards, but mostly it stays below the level of consciousness.
"Christians get angry at Jews for not celebrating Christ related things "
Which Christians? All of them? Most of them? A loud minority? The missing quantifier is a big part of the problem here, given that you're clearly accusing this other group of being insensitive and silly.
It was a long time ago now, but I recall reading a book about the history of TV advertising that mentioned a study done not too long after TV sets had become a household staple. The researchers asked the respondents how much their purchasing decisions were affected by TV commercials, and the vast majority said they were hardly affected at all; but the company data the researchers had acquired that gave the before/after sales when a TV ad campaign was begun for a product generally showed a very large increase in sales.
I might be mixing up the studies, but I think this one might also have found that they got a more credible answer when they asked people how much they thought their friends were affected by the advertising.
Y'know, on balance I think this is a bad law (at least on the understanding that it affects coverage that's sold outside the exchanges and thus not subsidized), but I think that some folks are really over-reacting. Assuming this stays in place, I think you'll find that health plans in Michigan will make it extremely easy to get that extra coverage, so much so that the only real effect of it will be that just the folks who want abortion coverage will be paying for abortion coverage. Is that really so bad?
Note that I'm personally pro-choice and wouldn't push for anything like this, but I do understand why people who find it to be a horrible moral wrong would want to do everything they could to avoid having their own money support it.
I don't mind Twitter and texting conventions in their natural habitat, but I can't stand it when someone sends me a normal email using the same silly abbreviations (though my irritation lessens if there's a "sent from my [mobile]" apology at the end). Those things especially drive me up a wall in business emails, and the steam comes pouring out of my ears when I see that one of my colleagues has used them in an email to a client.
On a different note, my daughter hates it when I use the typical abbreviations in my texts to her, although she's fine with her friends doing the same. Apparently I do it with a geezer accent.
the extent to which it will detract from every other level of success.
I understand this point, but I don't think I agree with it. Take March Madness -- there are teams whose season is made just by getting into the tournament, and others who are thrilled to make it to the Sweet Sixteen. And they get the opportunity to see just how far they can go.
Personally I'd prefer the old bowl system to what we have now, because the determination of who exactly is #1 and #2 is so contentious -- better to leave it totally up for discussion than to select just two teams rather arbitrarily out of the top X to play it out.
probably how we’re going to get to an eight or nine team playoff
That's the best outcome IMO -- take all the AQ conference champs plus a couple at-large teams. Then you basically guarantee that the theoretical "best team in the country" at least had a chance to play for the championship, regardless of which conference it was in.
I think comparing the strengths of different conferences is only slightly more sensible than arguing about who would win in a fight between Batman and Spiderman -- there's not nearly enough information to determine a reliable answer. Our judgments are mostly formed by bias, reputation/historical performance (not too helpful in college football given the personnel turnover), and vast overgeneralizing from a tiny number of early-season inter-conference games. The most frustrating part of the 2011 SEC Bowl was that the Powers That Be pissed away the opportunity to add a useful datapoint for the cross-conference comparison.
What does being a majority have to do with empathy?
Without meaning to speak for Tod, I'd answer that in a democracy, any given majority has more political power than the corresponding minority (broadly speaking). If the members of a given majority don't have empathy for the members of the minority, then they're more apt to push for laws and policies that disadvantage the minority, even without intending to cause any harm. The minority may not have any more empathy than the majority, but they're less likely to be in a political position where that lack of empathy leads to harm.
We have a couple of great horned owls that are frequent visitors. The hooting was very cool at first, but it got to be kind of an annoyance at the point that we wanted to actually sleep. Not a problem now that we're in closed-window season. We keep hoping they'll make a dent in the chipmunk population (which are slowly destroying our patio, but so far I haven't been able to bring myself to take action to get rid of them).
This Thanksgiving, a half-dozen wild turkeys waddled across our driveway -- that provided some entertainment (and an opportunity for some obvious jokes) for our guests. A little while later we saw a fox in our woods -- perhaps the timing wasn't coincidental.
A few years back we found a snapping turtle waiting for us on our back patio one day. This would've required his (her?) climbing four steps -- pretty impressive for a turtle. As we were worrying and trying to figure out how to get him back to the pond (which is about a half-mile from us) without getting bitten, he wandered back on his own.
Deer and skunks and raccoons and opossums are a common enough sight not to cause much excitement anymore (though the babies are awfully cute when we get a glimpse of them).
This is a definite drawback of the (no-longer-very-)new site design -- it's not easy to tell that this post is actually in the sub-blog, especially if you come to it by way of a comment link rather than the main post link. I agree that the expectations are a little different given its location.
I haven't been around here for a while, so maybe this has already been discussed, but is there any evidence for this theory:
But, see, this has had the unfortunate consequence of alleviating the pressure on the companies that offer unsustainable jobs… they would likely not be able to find someone to do the job at that wage if there wasn’t government assistance covering the difference.
Offhand it doesn't seem self-evident -- it suggests the availability of a higher-paying job for that someone in the absence of subsidies, but where would that job come from, and if it's an option, then why wouldn't that someone still take the higher-paying job even with subsidies? If the subsidies are allowing that person to take the Walmart job over the other one, then there must be some benefit to the Walmart job that the person is receiving.
I could see it actually working the other way around -- without subsidies, a person would be more desperate to take whatever he/she can get, but with subsidies, he/she could be more selective.
Tod, I think you're mixing up two different things. It's true that an insurer uses the premiums collected from all its clients to pay the claims of the ones who've had an adverse event requiring payment, so if you want to call that insurance, go ahead. But nothing in that arrangement requires that the less risky people pay for the risk of the more risky people.
Take life insurance -- if you're 25 and healthy and I'm 55 and horribly unhealthy, I'll pay a dramatically higher premium than you. If we're covered by the same company, then both our premiums go into the same bucket of money to pay out any claims, but our premiums are each based on our own risk profile. The healthy young person is not paying for the risk of the unhealthy old person.
Alas, real life is not letting me participate very deeply in this, but I should say that my statement was not meant as an argument against utilitarianism/consequentialism in general but rather against the thought in the OP (or at least, in the penumbras and emanations of the OP -- I'm not sure now that it was really there) that if we just get rid of our ideological commitments and focus on determining consequences, we can resolve most of our disagreements with careful open-minded empiricism.
I do agree that "ideology" in and of itself isn't the real target -- rather it's the tendency to treat one's own ideological package as Truth rather than as a convenient bundle of assumptions and values that help us to make sense of the world. I don't know that "tribalism" is exactly the right word for this, but I can't think of a more appropriate one at the moment.
Reihan Salam once labelled himself, in a jokey post at TAS, as a "realservative" -- by which he meant more or less that he had a conservative outlook but was always mindful of the fact that he had no proof that his outlook was superior to others. You can see this shining through his posts, which is why he's one of my favorite bloggers. I think we should all strive to be "real" in that way -- libereals, librealtarians, etc. Easier to say than to do (and easier to see others' failure at that than our own).
Having not read others' comments carefully, I apologize in advance if I've simply repeated what's already been said.
This is not an argument against utilitarianism per se -- it's solved just by adopting a more sophisticated evaluation mechanism, with the appropriate weights/multipliers.
However, it does point up that utilitarianism depends on prior agreement on values -- what results are good, what results are bad, and most of all, how do we adjudicate between different bundles of goods and bads. It's likely that there's a substantial connection between one's political ideology and one's decisions on how these various trade-offs should be resolved even in the absence of a political ideology.
And yet, would the bird consider a painful and struggling existence life still preferable to no life at all? Animals in that sort of situation generally still do everything they can to stay alive, though presumably that's "just" instinct and not the result of examined preferences.
As a cat owner who's also an animal sympathizer in general, I have to ponder this question (and act or not act on my decision) way more often than I'd like.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Yuletide Tuesday questions, Hallmark edition”
My wife used to apply pressure to get me to participate, but she's pretty much given up on that by now. This year my only involvement was to go ahead and seal the envelopes destined for my friends and family, which she had left unsealed just on the off chance that I wanted to write something personal in them (as if!).
It's helped my cause that the number of cards we receive each year has declined precipitously -- it seems to be a dying custom. At least, I prefer that explanation to the possibility that 60% of our friends and family no longer care about us.
"
Christmas cards, and related acts of thoughtfulness towards friends and family in general, are my wife's domain. I don't know but I suspect that my siblings each had a mild cardiac event on their first birthday after my marriage, when they actually received in the mail a genuine birthday card with my name on the return address (though in my wife's handwriting).
I can't even assign it to lack of organization on my part -- perhaps I might have some fleeting micro-thought about needing to send these cards, but mostly it stays below the level of consciousness.
On “Jews and the Paradox of a Secular Christmas”
"Christians get angry at Jews for not celebrating Christ related things "
Which Christians? All of them? Most of them? A loud minority? The missing quantifier is a big part of the problem here, given that you're clearly accusing this other group of being insensitive and silly.
On “Doctors as touts”
It was a long time ago now, but I recall reading a book about the history of TV advertising that mentioned a study done not too long after TV sets had become a household staple. The researchers asked the respondents how much their purchasing decisions were affected by TV commercials, and the vast majority said they were hardly affected at all; but the company data the researchers had acquired that gave the before/after sales when a TV ad campaign was begun for a product generally showed a very large increase in sales.
I might be mixing up the studies, but I think this one might also have found that they got a more credible answer when they asked people how much they thought their friends were affected by the advertising.
On “Michigan regains lead in “Worst Legislature in the Country” Award….”
Y'know, on balance I think this is a bad law (at least on the understanding that it affects coverage that's sold outside the exchanges and thus not subsidized), but I think that some folks are really over-reacting. Assuming this stays in place, I think you'll find that health plans in Michigan will make it extremely easy to get that extra coverage, so much so that the only real effect of it will be that just the folks who want abortion coverage will be paying for abortion coverage. Is that really so bad?
Note that I'm personally pro-choice and wouldn't push for anything like this, but I do understand why people who find it to be a horrible moral wrong would want to do everything they could to avoid having their own money support it.
"
Wait, so you're saying that it should've been up to each individual to decide whether to have slaves or not?
On “Eventually we reach bottom, right?”
Offensensitivity.
"
Here is another analysis of humor, by the famed humor scientist Dave Barry.
On “Stupid Tuesday questions, Strunk and White edition”
I don't mind Twitter and texting conventions in their natural habitat, but I can't stand it when someone sends me a normal email using the same silly abbreviations (though my irritation lessens if there's a "sent from my [mobile]" apology at the end). Those things especially drive me up a wall in business emails, and the steam comes pouring out of my ears when I see that one of my colleagues has used them in an email to a client.
On a different note, my daughter hates it when I use the typical abbreviations in my texts to her, although she's fine with her friends doing the same. Apparently I do it with a geezer accent.
On “Context, It Seems, Does Matter”
Is there a page for Baby's First Concussion in your Baby Memory Book, decorated with pictures of little football helmets?
On “College Football 2013, Coming To A Close”
I understand this point, but I don't think I agree with it. Take March Madness -- there are teams whose season is made just by getting into the tournament, and others who are thrilled to make it to the Sweet Sixteen. And they get the opportunity to see just how far they can go.
Personally I'd prefer the old bowl system to what we have now, because the determination of who exactly is #1 and #2 is so contentious -- better to leave it totally up for discussion than to select just two teams rather arbitrarily out of the top X to play it out.
"
That's the best outcome IMO -- take all the AQ conference champs plus a couple at-large teams. Then you basically guarantee that the theoretical "best team in the country" at least had a chance to play for the championship, regardless of which conference it was in.
"
I think comparing the strengths of different conferences is only slightly more sensible than arguing about who would win in a fight between Batman and Spiderman -- there's not nearly enough information to determine a reliable answer. Our judgments are mostly formed by bias, reputation/historical performance (not too helpful in college football given the personnel turnover), and vast overgeneralizing from a tiny number of early-season inter-conference games. The most frustrating part of the 2011 SEC Bowl was that the Powers That Be pissed away the opportunity to add a useful datapoint for the cross-conference comparison.
On “The real meaning of “privilege” in a nutshell…”
Without meaning to speak for Tod, I'd answer that in a democracy, any given majority has more political power than the corresponding minority (broadly speaking). If the members of a given majority don't have empathy for the members of the minority, then they're more apt to push for laws and policies that disadvantage the minority, even without intending to cause any harm. The minority may not have any more empathy than the majority, but they're less likely to be in a political position where that lack of empathy leads to harm.
On “A New Neighbor”
We have a couple of great horned owls that are frequent visitors. The hooting was very cool at first, but it got to be kind of an annoyance at the point that we wanted to actually sleep. Not a problem now that we're in closed-window season. We keep hoping they'll make a dent in the chipmunk population (which are slowly destroying our patio, but so far I haven't been able to bring myself to take action to get rid of them).
This Thanksgiving, a half-dozen wild turkeys waddled across our driveway -- that provided some entertainment (and an opportunity for some obvious jokes) for our guests. A little while later we saw a fox in our woods -- perhaps the timing wasn't coincidental.
A few years back we found a snapping turtle waiting for us on our back patio one day. This would've required his (her?) climbing four steps -- pretty impressive for a turtle. As we were worrying and trying to figure out how to get him back to the pond (which is about a half-mile from us) without getting bitten, he wandered back on his own.
Deer and skunks and raccoons and opossums are a common enough sight not to cause much excitement anymore (though the babies are awfully cute when we get a glimpse of them).
On “Working on Holidays is Rarely a Choice”
This is a definite drawback of the (no-longer-very-)new site design -- it's not easy to tell that this post is actually in the sub-blog, especially if you come to it by way of a comment link rather than the main post link. I agree that the expectations are a little different given its location.
On “So on an odd vein…”
This might be relevant to the discussion.
On “Great Moments In Corporate PR History”
Patrick,
I haven't been around here for a while, so maybe this has already been discussed, but is there any evidence for this theory:
Offhand it doesn't seem self-evident -- it suggests the availability of a higher-paying job for that someone in the absence of subsidies, but where would that job come from, and if it's an option, then why wouldn't that someone still take the higher-paying job even with subsidies? If the subsidies are allowing that person to take the Walmart job over the other one, then there must be some benefit to the Walmart job that the person is receiving.
I could see it actually working the other way around -- without subsidies, a person would be more desperate to take whatever he/she can get, but with subsidies, he/she could be more selective.
On “The 10 Biggest Lies Being Told About the Government Shutdown”
Merci beaucoup!
"
Crud, screwed up the italics...
"
Tod, I think you're mixing up two different things. It's true that an insurer uses the premiums collected from all its clients to pay the claims of the ones who've had an adverse event requiring payment, so if you want to call that insurance, go ahead. But nothing in that arrangement requires that the less risky people pay for the risk of the more risky people.
Take life insurance -- if you're 25 and healthy and I'm 55 and horribly unhealthy, I'll pay a dramatically higher premium than you. If we're covered by the same company, then both our premiums go into the same bucket of money to pay out any claims, but our premiums are each based on our own risk profile. The healthy young person is not paying for the risk of the unhealthy old person.
On “One Ideology to Rule them All”
@pierre-corneille @chris
Alas, real life is not letting me participate very deeply in this, but I should say that my statement was not meant as an argument against utilitarianism/consequentialism in general but rather against the thought in the OP (or at least, in the penumbras and emanations of the OP -- I'm not sure now that it was really there) that if we just get rid of our ideological commitments and focus on determining consequences, we can resolve most of our disagreements with careful open-minded empiricism.
I do agree that "ideology" in and of itself isn't the real target -- rather it's the tendency to treat one's own ideological package as Truth rather than as a convenient bundle of assumptions and values that help us to make sense of the world. I don't know that "tribalism" is exactly the right word for this, but I can't think of a more appropriate one at the moment.
Reihan Salam once labelled himself, in a jokey post at TAS, as a "realservative" -- by which he meant more or less that he had a conservative outlook but was always mindful of the fact that he had no proof that his outlook was superior to others. You can see this shining through his posts, which is why he's one of my favorite bloggers. I think we should all strive to be "real" in that way -- libereals, librealtarians, etc. Easier to say than to do (and easier to see others' failure at that than our own).
Having not read others' comments carefully, I apologize in advance if I've simply repeated what's already been said.
"
Ditto on the first line -- I've really enjoyed your contributions, VB.
"
This is not an argument against utilitarianism per se -- it's solved just by adopting a more sophisticated evaluation mechanism, with the appropriate weights/multipliers.
However, it does point up that utilitarianism depends on prior agreement on values -- what results are good, what results are bad, and most of all, how do we adjudicate between different bundles of goods and bads. It's likely that there's a substantial connection between one's political ideology and one's decisions on how these various trade-offs should be resolved even in the absence of a political ideology.
On “A bird with a broken wing is not a three-legged dog.”
And yet, would the bird consider a painful and struggling existence life still preferable to no life at all? Animals in that sort of situation generally still do everything they can to stay alive, though presumably that's "just" instinct and not the result of examined preferences.
As a cat owner who's also an animal sympathizer in general, I have to ponder this question (and act or not act on my decision) way more often than I'd like.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.