Even if rich people were no more likely to believe stupid shit than you or me, it'd still be a problem.
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@pluralistic I mean, it's arguably what killed the Roman empire. Rich Romans got fancy indoor plumbing, made of lead for easy maintenance. The lead leeches onto the water, giving them a strange line on their gums and a tendency to believe idiotic nonsense.
@madengineering @pluralistic Until Trump I assumed all the discussions of Nero were hyperbole
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Even if Peter Singer were no more prone to ethical missteps than you or me, the fact that he is morbidly wealthy means that his ethical blind spots leave behind a trail of wreckage that rivals a *comet*. And of course, being as rich as Peter Singer inflicts a lasting neurological injury that makes you incapable of understanding how wrong you are, which means that Peter Singer is *doubly* dangerous.
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@pluralistic *Paul Singer
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Even if rich people were no more likely to believe stupid shit than you or me, it'd still be a problem. After all, I believe my share of stupid shit (and if you think that none of the shit you believe in is stupid, then I'm afraid we've just identified at least one kind of stupid shit you believe in).
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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@pluralistic If I only knew what shit that I believed was stupid.
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@pluralistic *Paul Singer
@gneilyo Fixed!
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@madengineering @pluralistic Until Trump I assumed all the discussions of Nero were hyperbole
@etchedpixels@mastodon.social @madengineering@mastodon.cloud @pluralistic@mamot.fr
As I posted elsewhere, "if there are future historians, I wonder if they will wonder if Trump literally golfed while the world burned." -
@pluralistic If I only knew what shit that I believed was stupid.
@Enema_Cowboy@dotnet.social @pluralistic@mamot.fr
A significant chunk tends to fall into areas where you lack enough knowleged to "know what you don't know". Sadly, there's a lot of people where such "areas" effectively comprise "everything". -
@etchedpixels@mastodon.social @madengineering@mastodon.cloud @pluralistic@mamot.fr
As I posted elsewhere, "if there are future historians, I wonder if they will wonder if Trump literally golfed while the world burned."@ferricoxide @pluralistic @etchedpixels @madengineering The world would be in a much much better place if all he had done was played golf for 4 years.
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Ford was a vicious antisemite, a bigot, a union-buster and an all-round piece of shit, but also, he believed that his opinions trumped the axial tilt of the planet Earth.
In other words, Henry Ford wasn't merely evil - he was also periodically as thick as pigshit. Ford's cherished stupidities didn't just affect him, they also meant that a whole city full of people in the Amazon had windows facing the wrong direction.
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@pluralistic I don't understand why the factory would even have to do anything differently. You could simply turn the entire building - or the entire town - around 180 degrees.
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@pluralistic If I only knew what shit that I believed was stupid.
@Enema_Cowboy @pluralistic One good filter: ask who told you something. Then, go to someone who actually works in that field and ask them if whoever told you that is a reliable expert in that field. Their answer will tell you whether or not to believe that something.
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@gneilyo Fixed!
@pluralistic No worries! Great thread/essay, thanks for writing it
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@pluralistic I mean, it's arguably what killed the Roman empire. Rich Romans got fancy indoor plumbing, made of lead for easy maintenance. The lead leeches onto the water, giving them a strange line on their gums and a tendency to believe idiotic nonsense.
@madengineering @pluralistic
The Roman empire ended when the Ottomans conquered it in the 15th century, long after their plumbers did the initial work..... -
Even if rich people were no more likely to believe stupid shit than you or me, it'd still be a problem. After all, I believe my share of stupid shit (and if you think that none of the shit you believe in is stupid, then I'm afraid we've just identified at least one kind of stupid shit you believe in).
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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@pluralistic Rich "people" believe the STUPIDEST shit. For example: They believe they deseeve to be rich.
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The airline went from being the *least* enshittified airline in America to the *most*. Southwest is now worse than Spirit airlines - no, really. Southwest doesn't just merely charge for seat selection, but if you refuse to pay for seat selection, *they preferentially place you in a middle seat even on a half-empty flight*, as a way of pressuring you to pay the sky-high junk fee for seat selection:
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My favorite anecdote about comeuppance for airline execs is that on New Year's Eve 1999, at the witching hour for the Y2K scare, the Chinese govt made the top execs of its state airlines be on one of their aircraft and in the air from 11.00 pm to 1.00 am. It was an incentive to make sure they had sorted out any Y2K bugs.
If only something similar could be sorted out for scores of top American airline execs. Their policies might not be so rapacious.
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@pluralistic I mean, it's arguably what killed the Roman empire. Rich Romans got fancy indoor plumbing, made of lead for easy maintenance. The lead leeches onto the water, giving them a strange line on their gums and a tendency to believe idiotic nonsense.
@madengineering @pluralistic How come when the rich died out, Rome didn't become a socialist paradise?
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@madengineering @pluralistic How come when the rich died out, Rome didn't become a socialist paradise?
@DavidReed @pluralistic They didn't die, they just developed a real bad case of crazy decision, which made it a really big problem for everyone who wasn't rich also.
Your boss has commanded you to cover the parking lot on gasoline to keep the dragons away.
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@pluralistic I mean, it's arguably what killed the Roman empire. Rich Romans got fancy indoor plumbing, made of lead for easy maintenance. The lead leeches onto the water, giving them a strange line on their gums and a tendency to believe idiotic nonsense.
@madengineering @pluralistic The Romans knew about lead poisoning and to avoid it in drinking water. They preferred clay pipes over lead for drinking water, wherever possible. To the extent that lead poisoning was a problem, it was more likely because of the preparation and widespread consumption of must (grape juice) reduced to a half or a third volume in copper or lead containers.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/Encyclopaedia_romana/wine/leadpoisoning.html -
@madengineering @pluralistic
The Roman empire ended when the Ottomans conquered it in the 15th century, long after their plumbers did the initial work.....@ColmDonoghue @madengineering @pluralistic still takes that long to find a plumber
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@madengineering @pluralistic The Romans knew about lead poisoning and to avoid it in drinking water. They preferred clay pipes over lead for drinking water, wherever possible. To the extent that lead poisoning was a problem, it was more likely because of the preparation and widespread consumption of must (grape juice) reduced to a half or a third volume in copper or lead containers.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/Encyclopaedia_romana/wine/leadpoisoning.html@clayfoot
Thank you for the reference. I had a great time reading about wine in Rome.
@madengineering @pluralistic -
@madengineering @pluralistic The Romans knew about lead poisoning and to avoid it in drinking water. They preferred clay pipes over lead for drinking water, wherever possible. To the extent that lead poisoning was a problem, it was more likely because of the preparation and widespread consumption of must (grape juice) reduced to a half or a third volume in copper or lead containers.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/Encyclopaedia_romana/wine/leadpoisoning.html -
The Gates Foundation blocked the Access to Medicines WIPO treaty, which would have vastly expanded the Global South's ability to manufacture life-saving drugs. And during the acute phase of the covid pandemic, Gates *personally* intervened to kill the WHO Covid-19 Technology Access Pool and to get Oxford to renege on its promise to make an open-source vaccine:
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One more thing we have Bill Gates to thank for.
