Comment by const_cast

Comment by const_cast 8 months ago

Neither talent nor hard work have anything to do with helping humanity.

The reality is that our measurements of success don’t correlate with “goodness”, they correlate with getting stuff done. And you can do lots of evil stuff pretty easily.

The reason so many rich people seem evil is because they are. You don’t become rich via charity. You become rich by exploiting others and siphoning their success to yourself.

It’s just plainly evident in every sector of our economy. You don’t have to pay for the bad shit you do. Look at tobacco. Tobacco is a zero-value or negative-value industry. The sheer existence of tobacco actively makes the world a worse place.

But guess what? They don’t pay for your COPD medicine. They don’t pay for your congestive heart failure. But they will happily take your money for a carton.

All bad costs are externalizer, and all profit is kept. The end result is obvious. The more good you do, the stupider you are. The more evil you do, the more money you make.

xkcd-sucks 8 months ago

Tobacco actually has some value: It produces a craving, which can be satisfied temporarily. Being able to fulfill some kind of desire, even a contrived one, is the value. Or rather, the addiction of smoking created a desire that can definitely be satisfied.

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const_cast 8 months ago

It's a net-zero benefit good because it artificially creates a problem then solves it. It's just an obvious example of this, but many products (even software) fall into this description. Which is the larger context I'm speaking to.
You don't need to make things better to make money.

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sershe 8 months ago

Are you sitting in a room while typing this? At the margin to reduce the odds of heart attacks, you should be at a walking desk outdoors, or ideally not arguing on the internet at all. Someone trying to "help humanity" should decide the threshold of acceptable self harm for you, just like you feel free to decide it for smokers; then after determining how you should live, they can declare that the alternatives make the world a worse place.

If I was asked about the best correlate for being evil, honestly trying to make the world a better place by determining how specifically others should live would be on top of the list by a huge margin.

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const_cast 8 months ago

> If I was asked about the best correlate for being evil, honestly trying to make the world a better place by determining how specifically others should live would be on top of the list by a huge margin.
Really? Telling people, "hey, don't give other's poison, that's bad"... is worse than giving other's poison? You actually believe that?
To give some context, I used to smoke. For a long time!
Nobody wants to smoke. The only people that want you to smoke are the people literally extracting value out of your rotting corpse.
Look, if you actually think those people are better, then whatever. Clearly this isn't something I can dispute or even try to argue against so who cares. Just... find some medication or something, I don't know. This pathetic, self-destructive method of thinking can't be right.

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- sershe 8 months ago
  
  Yep, I used to smoke too. I wanted to smoke and i still sometimes miss social and contemplative aspects of it 17 years after stopping, even though any chemical cravings stopped in a couple months
  On the later part, your comment was very insightful too, cause you are a perfect example of what I'm talking about.
  1) You decide for others what is good for them, implicitly treating their judgements with contempt.
  2) When someone suggests that people might have different thresholds and tradeoffs and you probably wouldn't like it if someone who disagrees with you would make life decisions for you with the same moral certitude as you do in 1, you respond with "This pathetic, self-destructive method of thinking can't be right.", dismissive contempt.
  The person coming across in these comments is a self-important possibly power-hungry psychopath - exactly what I was talking about. A mini version of the people behind everything from great leap forward and collective farms to white man's burden. I mean you gotta tell these wrong-thinking people how to live their lives correctly, cause you are right and their objections are just some mental defect!
  
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  const_cast 8 months ago
  
  > "This pathetic, self-destructive method of thinking can't be right.", dismissive contempt.
  I'm not saying this to be mean, I'm saying it because it's true and you need to know.
  You are objectively arguing for things that are _worse for you_, at your own expense, for other people's gain. Other people who don't know you, don't care about you. Who, if you died, not only would they not care, they would not even notice.
  That, is pathetic. That, is self-destructive. You are not selfish enough. You are not mean enough. Not only do you allow your exploitation, you revel in it. As if your own desire for your destruction is a moral virtue. As if you are more pure, more forgiving, because you forgive even the ultimate crime against yourself.
  Such forgiveness is not a virtue, it is a cancer.
  
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  sershe 7 months ago
  
  I don't think in terms of forgiveness, there's nothing to forgive for. I've greatly enjoyed smoking, being well aware of its ill effects. After some time I have reevaluated and decided the benefits (that I still miss) are not worth the costs for me.
  1) The important part is FOR ME. Back to my original comment, some doctors claim you need 5 hours of cardio a week for optimal heart health and some papers even claim prolonged sitting is harmful regardless of exercise. Woe the furniture maker that sold you a chair to sit upon while commenting, they are harming society by destroying your health! You could also think of coffee, beer, meat, sun exposure, gasoline, cycling accidents, extreme sports; or million things known only to the state of California to cause cancer.
  Sure, smoking is a lot more harmful than most things, but why is it that you get to decide which tradeoff is reasonable and which isn't?
  So,
  2) While I was smoking I was engaging in voluntary transactions with tobacco companies.
  While tobacco companies are not angels, and do a lot of shitty things tangential to their main function, like most organizations, I am grateful they provided me with cheap, good quality, varied cigarettes back when I wanted them. That itself is in no way evil.
  Deciding for others with moral indignation how they should live though, is.
  
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