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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • I will admit when doing something like buying from an evil corporation that I’m making a trade off. I won’t pretend it’s fine. I try to acknowledge it.

    It’s impossible to live in the modern world without participating in exploitation. This phone was probably made in ways that hurt the environment and labor. But I need a phone to participate in modern life. So I got one, and try to hold onto it as long as possible.

    I think there’s a big difference between trying, and acknowledging tradeoffs and shortcomings, and just refusing to engage. “But I like it” is refusing to engage. I would respect “I know this milk comes from cruelty to cows, but I don’t care about cows” more. At least it’s honest.



  • I imagine most people who are rewilding their lawn are doing so for environmental reasons, which I consider more valid than mere personal preference. If someone was doing so for mere aesthetics, maybe.

    With respect to murdering, there is a social contract or a legal “contract” that says you absolutely can’t, so this argument obviously doesn’t work.

    That’s kind of the point. The reason why you don’t murder isn’t merely because you like it. There are actual reasons. Personal preference alone is not sufficient to override reasons like social contracts and laws and stuff. So if one side of the argument is “this is good for the environment”, the other side saying “but I like it” should not be compelling.

    It is compelling to some people when they consider stuff like the environment non-issues on the same level as personal preferences. Those people are assholes.




  • One of the things that bothers me more than it should is people responding to actual problems with “but i like it”.

    You say something like “a ‘basic’ lawn like that is bad for the environment in many ways, in addition to being labor intensive.”

    They respond with something that amounts to, “But I like it.”

    That wasn’t the question! If someone likes murder that doesn’t justify it, right? Because if so this conversation would take a very abrupt turn. So we can infer that there must be some other justification. Probably, “I don’t care about other people”, which remains an insufficient justification for murdering a whining selfish prick.








  • I’ve known 3 philosophy majors that I know of.

    One had a PhD and was absolutely insufferable. We were coworkers, and he’d often say falsehoods to try to be funny. Like, “Did you write that documentation I asked for?”, and he’d say like “I spent all morning writing it as a series of haikus”. I’m like, my guy, just answer the question. I’d ask him to stop being sarcastic so often in professional contexts and he’d be like “I’m not being sarcastic I’m being ironic.” You knew what I meant, Ryan!

    He would also use language to say things that were tEcHnIcAlLy true. Like, “I finished that task (or 1 equals 1)”, except he had more subtle ones.

    Was it because he was a philosophy PhD? Probably not. Some of his annoying habits he tied back to philosophy stuff, but he was probably just an asshole. But that’s who I think of (other than chidi)

    The other one I knew was fine in a messy nihilist rich kid way. Fun at parties. Can’t be friends.

    And the last one is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Just thoughtful and patient and a really positive person.





  • “”"

    A worker is getting out of his car at the company parking lot when the company owner pulls up in a new sports car.

    “Wow,” says the worker. “How did you afford that beauty?”

    “I’ll tell you what,” says the owner. “If you work hard, put in some extra hours, hit all our numbers, I can buy another one this quarter.”

    “”"

    Wage theft is bigger than all other theft. Some people are happy to be a cog in the machine.