SanityProject

The zero-sum fallacy 2

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged SanityProject on by

Authoritarian thinking of the right and left often relies on the assumption that “your gain is my loss.” The supporters of ICE think immigrants are taking jobs away from them. If enough people are deported, they think, there will be fewer people competing for the same jobs. The left’s version is that there’s a fixed amount of wealth to go around, and if the people who make the most are taxed heavily, that’s more money for everyone else with no downside.

These are both cases of zero-sum thinking. They assume that the amount of a resource, such as jobs or spending power, is a given and that the only question is who will get it. They think that taking resources away from others means more for them. In some cases, there’s a factual underpinning to that kind of thinking. The conservation laws of physics say we can’t create matter or energy out of nothing. The amount of air and water in the world is pretty much fixed. But most of the things we rely on are the products of human effort. Many didn’t exist till someone invented them.
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Sympathy and empathy

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged language SanityProject usage vocabulary on by

This is a post about word usage, not about the murder of Charlie Kirk, but it started from seeing a lot of online rage about a statement of his. According to Snopes, he once said:

I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage. But, it is very effective when it comes to politics. Sympathy, I prefer more than empathy. That’s a separate topic for a different time.

It’s strange that of all the things he said, this should draw so much anger. If I were cynical, I’d say it’s because people saw an opportunity to pull the first sentence out of context and create a deceptive impression. In this case, cynicism is fully justified.

How much difference is there between sympathy and empathy, anyway?
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Reclaiming liberalism 2

This entry was posted in Commentary Personal and tagged liberalism liberty SanityProject on by

There’s no hope for a near-term turnaround in the US. If there were any decency left in America, Trump, Rubio, Homan, Leavitt, and the rest of the crowd would be climbing out of the Potomac, covered with tar and feathers. I’ve done what I can, pointing out one outrageous act after another. Nothing helps. The United States is a nation of cowards with a large minority that favors thuggish central rule and controls Congress.

Concentrating only on the short term leads to despair. Avoiding tyranny in the US — or recovering from it — requires understanding its causes and changing the intellectual climate. There can be a resurgence of the liberal ideal in America, but it will take time.
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Tech buzzword panic

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged language SanityProject technology usage on by

EFF has run a valuable campaign on the risks of leaking metadata to third parties. If you upload a photo to a public website, for instance, the file might contain information on exactly when and where you took the picture. A stalker can make use of the information, especially if you upload photographs wherever you go. If you make a phone call or text message, the associated metadata may get less privacy protection than the what you said or typed. The US government has claimed that warrantless searches of communication metadata, which might identify the sender, receiver, and time of a message, are OK. Unfortunately, this has led some people to think that metadata themselves (I’m standing by “data” as a plural) are evil.
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