SOME PEOPLE HAVE BOTH.
We have drinking water issues (lead, broken mains because the infrastructure is old), but I still have a spring in my basement.
I used to think that when people ran out of water, they'd move away. Since then we've had a couple more droughts and I learned that if people run out of water, people will stay put and demand water. In the 2006-2009 drought we offered relocation money and no one took it.
Honestly, even absurdly expensive water isn't a very big percentage of household expenses for a family that owns a house.
I think we now pay more for water than we do for electricity, but that's mostly because of sewage issues.
My friends in Colorado make prepper jokes when I tell them I'm in the Midwest because it has lots of water, and in the scale of our lifetimes, I guess they're right to laugh. But someday!
Don't you guys have legal weed now anyway? No reason to move expect scenery.
I used to think that when people ran out of water, they'd move away. Since then we've had a couple more droughts and I learned that if people run out of water, people will stay put and demand water. In the 2006-2009 drought we offered relocation money and no one took it.
That reminds me, that I've been reflecting on this piece recently, about how important it is to think about problem solving as a measure of societal capacity, rather than individual capacity.
Consider if you ended up in the Trolley Problem in real life. How would you make a good decision in that situation?
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You'd need to be alert, well-rested, well-fed, not distracted, attuned to circumstances -- what the man on the tracks is doing, how securely the other people are attached to the tracks, whether the ground and tracks are wet and slippery, the speed of the railcar, the age of the equipment, etc. And finally, you would need to be motivated to do the right thing.
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One thing that doesn't seem to help is a well-developed set of ethical principles. A 2014 research paper surveyed the empirical evidence collected by studies of various moral behaviors and found "no statistically detectable difference between the behavior of ethicists and non-ethicists."
In any real-world situation, good decision-making is enabled less by abstract principles than by temperament and discernment, i.e., self-possession and wisdom. The person who takes in the most information, can see the situation through the appropriate lens, and can act on priorities amidst pressure and uncertainty will likely make the best decision.
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We do that by creating better moral agents, which we know how to do. We make sure that everyone has their basic needs cared for; that every family expecting a baby receives prenatal care and basic childcare training; that every family with a new child receives time off from work and regular nurse visits; that every child has access to quality public education, from pre-school through college; and that every adult receives adequate health care and housing. We create a compassionate, law-bound society that incentivizes prosocial behaviors. These are the kinds of things that create the necessary foundation for widespread S2 thinking.
I thought the point of the trolley problem was that it didn't have a right answer?
Although I wholeheartedly agree with the last two paragraphs in 10.
I think that the second to the last paragraph is wrong. Taking in information is not just a trait of the decision-makers, but also of the situation. That's what was always so stupid about Trolley Problems. There's no uncertainty in them and for most hard problems, uncertainty is the thing you need to deal with.
If you're too debilitated to make a decision, the trolley just goes straight and runs over the five people, right? The whole point is that inaction is itself an action.
I liked it better in the Rush song ABC I don't like Rush.
13: The linked post talks about that. I was trying to compress for the sake of an excerpt.
If you choose to put typos in your Rush reference, you still have made a choice.
God, the trolley problem in The Good Place is just the best.
YES. The last episode broke my heart though.
I still haven't seen it. I'm working my way through Arrested Development first. But I keep having to stop whenever I feel Michael is being put upon.
Can I skip season 3 of The Good Place? I loved S1 and 2 but got bogged down after that. I want to see what happens at the end though.
Yes. Hang on, let me find which exact episode you should re-enter during...
Season 3, Episode 9 is the last episode where they're living as people on earth. I feel like their life as people on earth sort of drags.
Season 3, Episode 12 is where you learn the premise for season 4. So you could also just watch the last two episodes of Season 3 and be fine.
We watched Lupin which was good but only a few episodes so we just started Barry which is confusing because the actresses for Janet and Simone are friends in a different universe... or maybe it's the same universe and they're just playing living humans on a TV series!
Thank you! It's this kind of practical, time-saving advice that balances out all the hours I've wasted reading cock jokes on this blog.
Season 4 is, in general, not as good as Season 2, but the ending is worth it. I thought the final episode was very satisfying.
And sad.
... and I knew it complete when I wore a younger man's clothes.
Dammit, Moby, give me back my clothes.
Season 3 Episode 4 is Jeremy Bearimy, which explains the key concept of Jeremy Bearimy. It should not be missed.
Anyway, the final episode is terrific. The series got a lot of undeserved credit for being profound (it was great for its silliness), but I thought the final episode nailed profound.
The project I'm busy procrastinating on right now is water shortage related. There's a contrast between physical availability of water and legal availability, and this is especially true where there are (a) rights run a certain amount of water through turbines on dams downstream on the main river and (b) instream flow rights stemming, inter alia, from the treaty by which the land I occupy was, uh, alienated from the local Indigenous people. Is there enough water for a nearby small town to expand? Not without some serious mitigation efforts.
I keep getting distracted by the Montana legislature. A house committee passed that bill making anti-vaxxers a protected class, and the bill eliminating funding for public radio is coming up. I'm hoping that Sen Tester can get through to Sen Manchin re Rep Haaland. Nothing Manchin pretends to be concerned about is going to be any different with any other nominee, and the whole let's make trouble for nominees of color thing has no real political value for him, and can only hurt the rest of us. I'd be willing to horetrade away N. Tanden -- I don't have a problem with her, but her nomination just doesn't have the same kind of significance as Becerra and Haaland, and there's no doubt that some other nominee will be able to do just as well at the actual job and in the representational role.
S3E4 is definitely one of the show's highlights. Every course on ethics should be begin by showing the clip of Chidi making really gross chili and explaining the three schools of ethical thought.
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The Daniel Prude case in Rochester makes me so angry in so many ways. I don't even think I can be coherent about it.
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36: The whole thing is so "why we can't have nice things" that it has sapped my will a bit. (And not necessarily these specific nominees/outcomes, but just the whole "partisanship" and other fun elements of the world's worst deliberative body.
See also the hearing on the Capitol riot today. Alao.
Also Merrick Garland thing. Used by some to attack women of color assistants.
Coroners are still saying "excited delirium"?!
Lawrence Ferlinghetti was still alive?
Remarkably so. I don't know what he was up to these last decades but City Lights was still a cheering bookstore to visit, NMM on the premises.
45: Apparently he published a novel in 2019! (I guess it might have been written earlier.)
You usually have to write something before you publish it.
25, 26, et al.: What? No. Don't skip any of The Good Place. What's wrong with you?
25, 26, et al.: What? No. Don't skip any of The Good Place. What's wrong with you?
I thought it was a sequel to Becker.
49: You'd rather she ditch the entire series? Clearly not an adherent to harm mitigation, are you.