There was a time when one of the virtues was not to brag about how virtuous you were. I think that's why a lot of folks have a problem with virtue signalling. In their minds if you're signalling by doing something publicly it karmically negates what you're doing and almost alchemically turns it into something resembling vice.
I'm merely trying to explain how it is that people can have a problem with virtue signalling and to them it doesn't really contradict what is to them true virtue where you do something good and stay quiet about it.
This comment feels like it was made outside the context of the existing conversation. The comment I replied to was calling all charity virtue signaling and not just vocal giving.
But either way, I personally don’t think a library is any less valuable to a community just because it has Carnegie’s name above the entrance.
Society providing incentives for rich people to give money to charitable causes is good actually. An evil person doing good things for selfish reasons is still doing good things.
The real problem comes when you look up what charity actually does with the money.
It is hard to not get the feeling that outside of the local food bank, most charities are a type of money making scam when you dig into what they do with the money.
Why we keep killing the birds that survive the infection is beyond me. It's an evolutionary pressure that we refuse to allow to work.
It's almost as if we want to give the flu as many opportunities as possible to spill over, instead of just letting the birds who have immunity survive and thus basically drive the virus to extinction.
> Why we keep killing the birds that survive the infection is beyond me
We don’t know the reservoir capabilities of novel viruses, nor can we confidently rule when a previously-sick bird is well and non-infectious at scale.
> It's an evolutionary pressure that we refuse to allow to work
We’re selecting against birds that get infected in the first place. (Probably to no tangible effect. But the goal isn’t to have birds that can survive a plague, it’s to prevent it in the first place.)
Thanks for the response! I agree that it's not obvious the reservoir possibilities.
I don't agree that we're selecting against birds that get infected in the first place, or at least I don't think that's how it works. My understanding is that if any birds on a farm get sick, the whole house is killed. Maybe the whole farm.
To me that seems like selecting for lucky birds not selecting for populations that never get sick because lots of populations never get exposed.
I could be wrong on my understanding or how I interpret the impact, though, so I'm super open to learning more.
The main idea behind culling is to prevent the virus itself from evolving inside the herd. Viruses evolve much more rapidly than birds.
Now sure, if there were a clear way to tell that some birds have been infected and survived and recovered, it could be a good idea not to sacrifice those birds, and even to specifically breed them. However, there is no good way to do so, especially not with any confidence. It's much more likely you'll end up infecting any population that you put these new birds in to.
So, the best and cheapest solution is to sacrifice the entire group, to prevent the disease from spreading to other populations, and to do so quickly, to prevent the virus from evolving or crossing a species boundary.
I believe the rationale is that during the process of infecting a flock of birds the virus would be exposed to pressure that would encourage its mutation, especially as these birds begin to successfully fight it off. The current avian H5N1 only needs a couple of mutations to spread human-to-human pretty well.
So the current culling of entire flocks is seen as a means of nipping any of these mutations in the bud.
During the 20th century the American government (as well as others) put a lot of effort into finding ways to control people. Drugs, control of the media, MK Ultra and Mockingbird are just two examples of many. Everything more or less failed. Dosing unsuspecting civilians with LSD doesn't have much useful effect.
But one thing worked, and they should have known it all along. Fear. If you can make people afraid, you can control them. They want us to fear birds. They want us to fear our neighbors. They want us to fear other governments, and faceless terror organizations that are probably hiding in your bushes outside, if you see something, say something!
They've been beating the bird flu drum for years, and why? Suppose bird flu is a real threat, what is the public meant to do about it? Stop eating birds? There is no pragmatic course of action anybody but highly specialized scientists can take to counter this alleged threat, and yet they keep beating the war drum, trying to make everybody afraid. Fear is the point.
They did know it all along. It's been used since time immemorial.
But mass media and social media have given it new opportunities. Ironically I think we all expected that having access to more information would have been a tool against that, but it turns out to be much less effective at explaining fear than conjuring it.
I think that's one very reasonable interpretation. The other is "I really want these people w to come work here and they don't want to do the polygraph because it's a huge pain so I as the manager I'm going to waive it to reduce their objections to being hired".
That's something that companies do all the time, they pay people "out of band" or give them extra benefits or accelerate their vacation accrual or vesting, or one of hundreds of other things.
I agree it looks bad for sure but it isn't necessarily sinister.
"I could stop being poor, I just don't like the tradeoff."
I feel like this is an ugly truth, but still a truth. It's also very ugly.
For some people there's no tradeoff on how much they have to suffer to get some financial security because they already have it. Some people have to suffer a bit but quickly hit escape velocity. Some people never stop suffering. It's terrible.
I think Dave Ramsey has many annoying qualities but his "sometimes you have to act crazy to get out of it" is basically correct even if it's very, very uncomfortable IMO.
It's one of those difficult topics that people like to take to extremes.
Many poor people are in difficult situations with no clear way out. They're already working the best paying job they can find, as much as they can, and doing as much as they can to advance. Learning new skills requires time and energy they don't have.
Some are poor by choice. They could put in more hours, get a second job, or learn new skills, and escape the trap. But they don't want to. This might be "lazy," or it might be "prioritizes family time," or whatever.
But as soon as you say that some people are really stuck no matter how hard they try to get out, it's taken as saying nobody can ever get out of it. And if you say that some people can get out of it and don't, it's taken as saying every poor person is just lazy.
What's curious about this post is that it seems like a pretty good insider description of being completely stuck, except the author isn't.
I mean you could listen to the reasons that people who have lost trust in the institutions say they lost trust, and then try and rectify those reasons. But to do that is to admit that MAYBE the US govt didn't handle COVID perfectly. And that's a conversation many folks are unwilling to have. So this is the alternative we're left with.
It's uglier this way for sure and will cause more suffering. Sucks.
Those reasons are simple. People they trust are lying to them for monetary and political gain about a subject they personally know nothing about.
That's it. That's all there is to it.
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> But to do that is to admit that MAYBE the US govt didn't handle COVID perfectly.
My friend, antivax bullshit has been swelling long before COVID. Turns out there's way more money and power in peddling these people snake oil than something that will help their health.
And secondly, whatever complaints you have about handling COVID, the vaccines for it were and are safe and effective, but no amount of evidence will ever convince them.
Current estimate is that some 5.6 billion people took at least one dose of a COVID vaccine[0]. You would think that if there severe complications, we would have seen them in, I don't know, hundreds of millions of people by now. Any day now, I am sure those people will all get super cancer and/or turn into zombies.
The Biden admin (no idea if Biden himself was involved) literally sued Texas to stop Texas from enforcing border law. This same admin also essentially redefined "asylum" to be economic asylum rather than "I'm afraid that if I go back to my country I'll be killed" which is how people typically thought of asylum.
You can absolutely think that what's happening now is an overreaction, un-American, gross, illegal, and morally wrong.
But if you're unwilling to try and understand how it's possible that over half the country voted for someone who would enact policies that lead to what we're seeing now, you're simply not paying attention.
If you just want to see the people who voted for this as "the enemy" and "evil" you're basically doing the same tribal "othering" that's lead to these outcomes you don't like.
Is that ugly and uncomfortable? Yes, absolutely. Will things get better by ignoring it? Absolutely not.
>If you just want to see the people who voted for this as "the enemy" and "evil" you're basically doing the same tribal "othering" that's lead to these outcomes you don't like.
"If you point out problems, you yourself are actually the problem. I am very rational."
It is incredible, because a lot of people dismiss it so eagerly.
Let me try to phrase it differently: ostracization rarely yields positive results, and is more likely to lead to opposite of desired course of action through future radicalization.
In other words, saying that bad people are bad is - as paradoxical as it might be - less likely to making anyone better than make bad people even worse.
Sorry, I absolutely appreciate the explanation instead of a snark remark, but I don’t understand.
What was tired or supposed to work out? Not ostracizing is not exactly a solution (grandparent comment haven’t made suggestions as to what to do instead), and alternatives aren’t one possible approach but a giant spectrum of possible reactions. Instead of saying “you’re a bad person” a lot of different things can be done, right?
Or do you possibly mean that we collectively tried everything and nothing ever worked out, so we’re fairly positive this is wishful thinking? Or am I misunderstanding something, or falling to some fallacy here?
Okay so what's the solution then that doesn't involve having to disappear the half of the country that you don't agree with? I'm super open to better solutions. I just rarely hear any other than magical thinking. "All these evil shitbags will get reeducated and agree with me now" if it's not that, what is it?
> But if you're unwilling to try and understand how it's possible that over half the country voted for someone who would enact policies that lead to what we're seeing now, you're simply not paying attention.
Anyone who's read about the history of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s should understand how it's possible. We can still feel disappointed and helpless that the same mentality is rearing its head again, especially in a country that itself sent people overseas to fight it 100 years ago.
Off and on throughout my life as an American, I thought my fellow Americans could be sometimes be described as arrogant, sometimes uninformed, sometimes overconfident, sometimes over-patriotic, sometimes selfish. But never needlessly cruel and cold-blooded like millions are today. This is new and terrible. It's absolutely sickening to walk outside in my neighborhood, look at 10 houses and think maybe 3 or 4 of them are homes to people who are OK with what is happening.
>But if you're unwilling to try and understand how it's possible that over half the country voted for someone who would enact policies that lead to what we're seeing now, you're simply not paying attention.
Actually it was more like 25% of those eligible to vote, not "over half the country."
It can't just be better than the average human driver. it has to be some like 10x as good as the average human driver or on par with a race driver.
Everyone thinks they're above average, even people who know statistics! So if it's merely 20% better than the average driver a huge number of people will conclude "I am above average so I'll do a better job"
Will some of them be wrong? Of course. But tons of them will be right, too.
It can't be statistically significantly better, it has to be statistically overwhelmingly better. Not a part of a standard deviation but several of them.
Those stastics need to be figured out. You are on the right track - there are a few really bad drivers (and I'm not sure if race drivers are better on common roads - anyone have data?). We need to work through those issues. I didn't say average though I said better than humans and left the measurements open because I don't know all the issues to account for.
Correct
The averages include teenage males, elderly, driving while texting, road ragers, people who drive late&tired and DUI enjoyers. Accident rates are extremely fat tailed.
If you aren’t in one of those categories you are immediately dramatically better than average. This is fairly easy to do before even considering being a “good driver” / defensive driver / etc.
If you look at the far right hand bar the B-N/S says 131% which is the highest bar on the chart. So it's producing more than the standard tilted slightly south orientation from what I gather. The legend is a bit hard to read for sure.
I'm merely trying to explain how it is that people can have a problem with virtue signalling and to them it doesn't really contradict what is to them true virtue where you do something good and stay quiet about it.
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