Content mill runs rage content all day too. Unfortunately those get eyes and thus revenue. More a comment on us as a species than anything else.
On an individual to individual basis we might recognize bad content meant to feed off of our base emotional instincts versus content meant for accuracy and to inform.
However collectively it appears there's more of us that rather get sucked into the rage content than try for objective or accurate reporting.
This mirrors the transition of television News from not needed to be profitable to needing to be profitable. Look at the success of cable news.
> More a comment on us as a species than anything else.
I think this is less of a comment about us as a species and more a comment about the economic systems that we have in place. Our economic systems used to support journalism.
"it's just human nature" can be a powerfully self-fulfilling prophecy
We ought to exercise what agency we have in shaping social systems, but not only this, we need to remind ourselves regularly that we do have agency in order to exercise it
Our economic systems used to be very bad at scaling. They also used to be very bad at incentivizing value-add economic activity. Which system do you want?
Our ids tend to run wild on the internet, so it’s not surprising. It is extremely disappointing that there is always someone willing to take advantage, but that is the story of humanity I suppose. My hope is somehow we are capable of creating something better than this.
I wish instead of just waving a wand around saying 'because physics' the author would bother to explain more clearly what their problem with physics here is.
It’s the same point he made above in the previous discussion of the same question:
> The problem with this answer is that it’s… absurd? How could a soul change your behavior? Does it have a magical wand to push atoms around or stimulate neurons? Physics seems to prohibit this.
He’s saying that the particles in our bodies are doing what they’re gonna do based on physics, and our subjective experience of consciousness / feelings can’t make them do something different. For me, this is the main point of the article.
Feelings (emotions not sensory like touch or sight) are experienced are they not? Not the other way around. As in you observe your feelings; not you tell yourself what to feel.
The problem is how any subjective experience relates to the physics of the particles that make up our brains.
I feel hungry and so I eat. But how did that feeling cause the result? My brain particles would have done the same thing (because physics) even if I were an unconscious zombie.
Because feeling hungry stops when you eat? Presumably your body was taught this when you were a child.
An unconscious zombie might eat but it would be eating human brains. Generally Cannibalism, especially of neural tissue, can lead to prion disease.
The part that separates us from the animals as far as I am aware is language.
Here are people that were not raised by humans, they seem to have an inability to adapt to human society if they develop past a certain age without reintegration with humans:
Then what about everyone else trying to get in through the Mexican border?
"Now, folks like the guy in this story are not “refugees” by the technical definition; . They’re either asylum-seekers, which is a technically different thing, or they’re people who just try to move to escape a bad situation back home. But to me this is a distinction without a difference; "
So can be said for a lot of people wanting to come to the U.S. to make a living.
Personally making immigration affordable and efficient to meet the demand is a possible direction we could go (I think it would reduce harm) but that isn't the one we've gone down so far.
Note they are attributing some of the increase to the higher than average/normal price for energy since Ukraine war started.
"The electric company defended the increase, saying they cushioned the much more expensive purchasing costs for customers for an above-average period of time during the energy crisis but had to secure future amounts of energy for customers at high prices on the wholesale markets last year."
There is no point to having a Representative if they act against my interest based on my popular misunderstandings. I can act against my own interest via direct democracy.
I'm just saying how it is in the U.S. in practice.
Regardless ending nuclear power in Germany is a popular enough position that Merkel was re-elected. Probably not just on that issue but she listened to what her people wanted and she kept getting elected because of it (as far as I know; I'm not German).
Fusion is not close[1] and it's insane to give up on fission while waiting for it. Fission is safe and inexpensive. With the addition of batteries to spread out the base load, we should be expanding it globally.
Um fusion being close to being viable, which your link is supporting, doesn't mean it's close enough to help us this century with regarding climate change (which is what your link is about), which isn't what I said it would do. I apologize if I worded it a way that you felt implied that.
South Korea I understand is investing heavily here[1]. If I'm not mistaken so is China. Too bad we (Western society) can't work with Iran on this as well.
However, please consider when we talk about changing our sources of energy over, that what will work has to work within costs and regulatory conditions.
If I'm not mistaken it can take around 20 years for an experienced nuclear capable nation to get a reactor up and running from initial phase of saying yes you can build a reactor.
Solar is outpacing that.[2]
Which your link also supports.
"The pattern of power supply is changing. The massive take-up of solar power by households means we have now permanently shifted from the old model of large power stations to one where supply is distributed around the network. "
Fission (by itself) is not solving climate change this century either.
Additionally I think fission powered cargo ships would be a great option to reduce carbon emissions too. Since the U.S. Navy is very experienced with nuclear powered vessels and Russia has that nuclear powered icebreaker, I think it's technology possible.
Unfortunately setting up a regularity system for that is likely completely unrealistic though I'm happy to be wrong here.
Okay but how are we supposed to get teen girls not to compare themselves to the looks of global stars?
This existed before social media. At best I can see it being a catalyst here and so sure limit or ban social media (at least for under 18s ~ 25s, whatever we agree on is a developed adult brain).
Lowering the percentage of teens with mental health issues is a good thing.
However that doesn't stop teens from comparing their looks to their peers, adults they know, and obviously global media (magazines, billboards, films, music, etc; what 'successful' women look like on cable news). How are the underlying cause for these negative feelings going to be addressed?
You're never going to get people to not compare themselves with their peers. Comparing yourself through media like magazines etc has been the case for at least 50 years. The teen mental health epidemic has really started in 2012 is what Haidt is talking about.
More like 100: my grandmother had skimpy eyebrows that she penciled in her whole adult life because she overplucked them as a teen, trying to look like the movie stars she saw in the rare magazine she could buy in the Dust Bowl-era Texas Panhandle.
Before social media and smartphones came together exposure was infrequent. Now it's nearly constant. It's like the difference between going to a restaurant where smoking is allowed and living with a chain-smoker.
This article is about making people even acknowledge that social media is a or the problem. Acknowledging that one has a problem is the first step. Unfortunately, I don't have a societal solution ready.
No one really talks about it but I think it is a symptom of bad parenting. How many times have people sat their kid down and explained these Hollywood types are not the average looking person?
Do you have children? How old are they? Do you actually believe that "sitting your kid down and explaining XXX" to them is likely to cause substantive changes in what are fundamentally deeply non-cognitive takes on the world?
I'm pretty sure the people suffering are well aware of that. This sort of mental illness isn't the kind of thing thats rooted in logic-brain, and simply "explaining" it doesn't make it go away, else society wouldn't have as much of a problem.
Today, you also have to explain that even the pictures of your friends are not "the average looking person" because almost everything online gets fed through various filters.
> However that doesn't stop teens from comparing their looks to their peers, adults they know, and obviously global media (magazines, billboards, films, music, etc; what 'successful' women look like on cable news). How are the underlying cause for these negative feelings going to be addressed?
Is it such a bad thing that they compare themselves to their peers?
In 2018 "obesity prevalence was [...] 21.2% among 12- to 19-year-olds." [1] according to the CDC. That's one out of 5 being obese, not just overweight. And it has more than tripled since the 70's [2]. I have to wonder if it's related. A lot of teenagers are bombarded with images of their peers' perfectly healthy bodies that, quite simply, won't match what they see in the mirror. The solution? Ban mirrors.
So if your peers have a nice fat ass that the boys all like to oggle at while walking between classes and you're stuck with a skinny thigh gapping flapjack white girl tush you bet your ass you're gonna start eating some cheese berders.
The feeling of wanting to fit in is constant for teens. What 'fitting in' looks like changes over time.
What's desired has changed over time in my life alone. Booty is a great example. I grew up with mostly white women in media shaming themselves and asking if their dress made their ass look fat while also trying to get boob implants.
Nowadays booty is WAAAAY more prominent and desired and those old tired jokes about their ass looking fat a hell of a lot less common.
> What's desired has changed over time in my life alone. Booty is a great example. I grew up with mostly white women in media shaming themselves and asking if their dress made their ass look fat while also trying to get boob implants.
The "ideal body" is actually healthier now than it was 20 years ago.
But I'm not talking about skinny vs a few curves. I'm talking obese. Clinically obese. As in BMI over 30.
> The underlying question remains: how do the electrons "know" what the weights are? When a new charge carrier enters the maze, how does it "know" that "turning left" will be an easier trip than "turning right"? How do most of them end up taking the express lane?
Question: when you observe water flowing on a flat surface do you see the water droplets freely separating from each other all over the surface until it's kind of evenly distributed or do you find the droplets tend to kind of follow or stick to one another?
For example, imagine you have nice trickling stream of water and that stream comes near a droplet, does the droplet join the stream or does the stream miss the droplet?
Does the new "charge" in the maze join with an existing stream or is it starting with a neutral maze and has to find the exit again?
It doesn't need to know that it needs to turn left or right, it just needs to go with the lazier option which happens to be the less resistant one.
I am confused. Apple made an agreement with a City. Both parties seem to benefit from the arrangement. I am not sure I see anything illegal here.
The Japanese "hometown tax" sounds rather intriguing though. I think it would be difficult to implement efficiently in the U.S. but I think it's a great idea none the less to help smaller towns with limited growth potential. Though I think work-from-home + cheaper cost of living will make small towns quite promising to live in today.
Imagine being able to have small farm for the price of a house in the city + city income. Easily do a bit of farming in the morning, remote work during day, finish up anything else the farm needs for the day, and you're set for a pretty nice life in my opinion.
> I am confused. Apple made an agreement with a City. Both parties seem to benefit from the arrangement. I am not sure I see anything illegal here.
The illegal part is where the reporting of locations of transactions by Apple, for which they get kickbacks from Cupertino, violates California state law on how location of transactions subject to sales tax are reported by reporting them as occurring at Apple HQ rather than where the goods involved in the specific transaction are located at the time of the transaction.
Alice and Bob making an agreement for Alice to forge documents so that Bob gets money that belongs to Clara and for which Bob provides a kickback to Alice may be a mutually beneficial agreement for Alice and Bob, but it is still illegal.
> In California, the local portion of collected sales tax goes to the location where the transaction took place, not the location of the customer. The corporation can designate where a given transaction has taken place, separate and apart from the underlying origin and destination realities.
I am sorry I'm just going of the linked article and I am sure I am missing some nuances here however it doesn't seem like what they've done is exactly illegal.
Alice and Bob agreeing the forge a document is illegal.
Bob agreeing to give Alice some money back that Bob collects from Alice's customers because otherwise Bob would get no money from Alice's customers doesn't appear to be illegal (yet). Of course Clara (the State) is free to change her positions on the matter.
For example set a limit on how much a city can charge sales tax.
> Tax Districts
The statewide tax rate is 7.25%. In most areas of California, local jurisdictions have added district taxes that increase the tax owed by a seller. Those district tax rates range from 0.10% to 1.00%. Some areas may have more than one district tax in effect. Sellers are required to report and pay the applicable district taxes for their taxable sales and purchases.
> I am sorry I'm just going of the linked article and I am sure I am missing some nuances here however it doesn't seem like what they've done is exactly illegal.
When the linked article says they “The corporation can designate where a given transaction has taken place, separate and apart from the underlying origin and destination realities" it is correct only in the extent that, say, you can report money you spent on narcotics and escort services as “charitable donations” on your federal tax returns, in that it is physically possible, but definitely not legal, to do it.
The entire reason this is in the news is that state sales tax authorities audited Apple’s sales tax reporting and found it out of line with the law.
I am still not seeing anything here explaining the actual illegality here. As far as I can tell, and it appears still to to be determined, Apple and the city in question are both operating within the law.
If anything it looks like the State is just now getting around to realizing that they foolishly left money on the table and now they want it.
As it is we have Thursday it looks like to find out the results of the audit.
Plus, bigger picture, what the city is being accused of doing to other cities, the the State's themselves already do to each other. Ask yourself why so many corporations are home in Delaware?
> I am still not seeing anything here explaining the actual illegality here.
The illegality is Apple assigning sales where the goods were not in Cupertino at the time of the transaction to Cupertino for sales tax purposes, to take maximize advantage of sales tax kickbacks offered by Cupertino, despite state law which says the location for sales tax is the location where the goods physically were at the time of the transaction.
> If anything it looks like the State is just now getting around to realizing that they foolishly left money on the table and now they want it.
The state gets the same share no matter where in the state the transaction is assigned for sales tax purposes. The entities losing out are other localities, not the State.
> The illegality is Apple assigning sales where the goods were not in Cupertino at the time of the transaction to Cupertino for sales tax purposes, to take maximize advantage of sales tax kickbacks offered by Cupertino, despite state law which says the location for sales tax is the location where the goods
physically were at the time of the transaction.
This directly contradicts what the article states.
> This directly contradicts what the article states.
No, it doesn’t.
It contradicts what you appear to have falsely inferred from the very vague writing in the article, and that false inference may be the intent of the vague writing, but it doesn’t contradict what the article actually says.
“In December 2021, the CDTFA notified the City that they were reviewing one of the taxpayers in the City. In May 2022, the CDTFA updated the City, saying they had asked the taxpayer for more tax returns. […] In March, the CDTFA verbally informed the City of their preliminary determination that tax dollars had been misallocated to the City, and they gave rough estimates of how much money the City might lose. The CDTFA said the City would get a letter with the final results of the review, including the actual amount of money that would be lost, in the next four to six months.”
So that tells us the issue is about “misallocation”. So, how are sales taxes supposed to be allocated? Here’s official information from the CDTFA, the agency responsible for sales and use taxes in California: https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/industry/localanddistricttaxes.htm#...
“Regulation 1620, subdivision (a)(2)(A), states that participation in the transaction in any way by the in-state place of business is sufficient for the transaction to be subject to sales tax. However, to constitute participation, an activity must serve some real purpose and have some meaningful effect in the actual sales process and involve some genuine physical human interaction with the sale from that location.
“Generally, activities taking place after the sale has occurred are not participation in the sale. There are also activities that a retailer might conduct from a California location to support its operations that do not constitute participation in the sale for purposes of Regulation 1620, subdivision (a)(2)(A), including price setting, purchase of resale inventory, web design, and general marketing.
“Internet transactions are generally designed and intended to be processed online, without direct human intervention until the property is picked, packed, and shipped at the storage location. As such, a storage location is often the only place of business that participates in an Internet transaction. Activities related to creating and maintaining the automated online processes would generally be considered the type of support operations that do not constitute participation in any particular transaction. The location of the server where the website is hosted or maintained is also immaterial”
A. What you are describing here isn't illegal activity. You're describing the State determining that Apple incorrectly reported where the sales tax should go (no one is saying deliberately). Now the state is trying to remedy this.
B. From what I was gathering there's been a change in law regarding online sale tax in 2019 or so. Fair enough for the State to take a couple of years to audit and find compliance.
Doesn't really seem to be malicious actions between Apple and the city.
Additionally Apple is free to apeal here and say they did report their sales tax correctly.
> What you are describing here isn’t illegal activity.
Yes it is.
> You’re describing the State determining that Apple incorrectly reported where the sales tax should go
Failing to report as legally required is illegal.
> (no one is saying deliberately).
Sure, but that’s not germane.
> From what I was gathering there’s been a change in law regarding online sale tax in 2019 or so.
There was; mainly, from looking at the CDTFA information on sales tax (which calls out the 2019 changes) affecting sales through internet marketplaces and in some circumstances making the marketplace, rather than the seller-through-the-marketplace, the retailer for sales tax purposes, and requiring registration and use-tax collection by retailers in certain cases. The change doesn’t seem related to the Apple/Cupertino sales tax issue.
On an individual to individual basis we might recognize bad content meant to feed off of our base emotional instincts versus content meant for accuracy and to inform.
However collectively it appears there's more of us that rather get sucked into the rage content than try for objective or accurate reporting.
This mirrors the transition of television News from not needed to be profitable to needing to be profitable. Look at the success of cable news.