legend

"It's a human and killing humans is wrong" is a terrible argument that equivocates with the word "human" in the two premises and asserts an overly simplified rule as if it were universal. If there wasn't real life-ruining harm caused by this position, a bad argument like this could be ignored -- we all make mistakes -- but Jesus, wake up.

I think "ethics" tends to have a little less baggage but also still drives conversations into the ground. I get why someone would want to reach for the words because I've spent considerable time trying to layout useful versions of them, but I've come to the conclusion the mere mention of the word tends to kill productive conversations almost immediately. Instead it's more useful to ground things in what someone is trying to accomplish, harms and benefits of choices, etc.

Starting an argument with the goal of determining what is "moral" is a category mistake from the start. "Moral" an absolutely useless word that only serves to prompt people to regurgitate their arbitrary cultural biases. Many have strived to rescue to the word into a more useful definition, but the campaign has been a failure with may competing alternative campaigns only making the matter worse. The term is irrevocably broken and we should never begin argument with it ever again. Its failure as a meaningful term that causes everyone to talk past each other in the most unproductive of ways is perhaps only rivaled by the term "free will."

That terrible. I'm so sorry Cancer is a massive fucker and perhaps my biggest lament of living in this era is even with all the amazing technology we have, we still haven't solved this horrifying curse on life.

It may surprise you to learn that neural* plasticity loss is a very important topic in my subfield of AI (reinforcement learning) that I discuss and investigate with some regularity! *Artificial neurons which are almost nothing like biological neurons except when you squint.

Beyond my grumpy old man laughing at things they do like the center part, I think Gen Z is the best generation and they give me some very small amount of hope for mankind.

That's true, you can't go backwards. Though the inability to run for office after an age would probably be the least "unfair" outcome of aging Sadly aging just sucks and we have to accept that reality until my AIs solve it.* That or just think of time as happing all at once from a different perspective in which case it doesn't really matter. * Do my AIs still have trouble walking straight and being confused by a bit of noise in the image? Yes, but I'm sure they'll crack the aging problem for us any moment now...

You have my condolences

The first two on the list occurring in the same year is enough to make 2023 a very memorable year for gaming. Both Tears and BG3 are generation defining games. But then there just continues to be a lot of great stuff beyond them.

Thanks for the link! I'll definitely keep this mind if I decide I want to take the plunge!

Same situation for me. Giving it a try since it feels more bounded. I'm enjoying it and at least considering trying the anime, but I still dunno about that length

I don't even have a problem with playing devils advocate, if that's even what he was ever doing. I never felt frustrated disagreeing with sbl and I appreciated his viewpoints on lots of things. Maybe there existed times and I'm forgetting, but if you asked me right now, I couldn't tell you a single time I've had a bad interaction with sbl.

Well that sucks. I'm taking the time to argue with sblfilms more substantively because I like him

Oh shit. Wtf just happened?

Answering questions for the public is very much part of being a senator. "Sorry the senator can't take any questions right now because they're having a brain failure" is uh, not good But even that aside, these are simply the most publicly visible and indisputable examples of how aging is impacting some of these people. Great lengths are taken to cover up problems. We've heard the whispers about Feinstein being problematic for years, but only now is it so extreme that you just can't hide it at all anymore. So, no, I don't think it's reasonable to conclude that these are the only two age-related problems. I've also had concerns about the aging government long before McConnel was shutting down in font of the public. Sadly, aging sucks big time and has many residual effects well beyond these very visible examples. There are also health risks that come with aging beyond mental degradation too. The chance for serious health problems goes way up. It's one of the reasons why I very much didn't want Bernie to run for president -- it's a big gamble when the next major health issue comes and I don't want to roll that dice with a president or any serious position (I'm not happy about Biden's age either even though he seems to be in decent shape). We can add RBG to the list of the how horrible the outcome was for her sticking in there all the way to the end too if you want another very visible example though. You can label a maximum age as "anti-democratic" and while under some definitions that could be technically correct, I think it fails to represent the proposal of a maximum age restriction faithfully. We usually don't label any policy with any restriction as anti-democratic. I would have never used the term "anti-democratic" to describe the various minimum age requirements even though I think some of them maybe should be lowered and are too high. By calling it that, it feels like you're trying to get an emotional reaction from the associations rather than assess the situation at hand. Though I don't think you're doing that deliberately and manipulatively, it's an easy thing to fall into doing without that explicit intent. Words and terms are vague, often by design, but you can't let that vagueness be a substitute for argument. I'm happy to hear an argument about why adding a maximum age restriction might be bad. I'm not convinced it's the right thing to do even though I do absolutely believe some of these people in government should have left, because every additional rule makes the analysis of how that rule can be gamed more complex to analyze. Maybe a maximum age restriction would open the door for abuse of some kind that I'm missing. Seems like not given it applies to everyone and every person would have a very long opportunity to serve, but I'd love to have that conversation! But saying "no because by some definition it's anti-democratic" just shuts down conversation, closing the door to finding better ways to govern. And maybe we're closer to agreement than it seems. If your position is "maybe it's fine, but I'm hesitant to add more rules because I'm unsure of the consequences" then I can understand that more. But it seems like you're coming out very hard against the idea, rather than just being unsure.

If you think McConnell being unable to answer questions does not represent an inability to serve adequately then, no, we're never going to find common ground on this one!

I think it might be the best, beating the epic gaming year of 2007.

Petty sure the internet thinks of this as more of a feature.

Yeah. It's... big

Naa, Halo Infinite's campaign is the first non-Bungie Halo campaign to deserve the name.

Was it the

We are. The very notion that we elect people to represent is a choice of government and we're discussing what the structure of that should be. But I'm not sure this matters all that much. We can argue semantics, but I don't think the distinction you're making here changes the point I'm making. Consequences of policy are necessary to make a persuasive argument. Otherwise it's just an arbitrary position that can be ignored as easily as it can be made. There are plenty of legally established rights that can be argued for because of the consequences holding them (or not holding them) entails. Reduce the chance of people incapable of serving office due to mental degradation or other health issues that prevent them from doing so holding office by default and preventing people who can serve from doing so. This isn't hypothetical. This is happening right now.

But governments are almost never pure democracies precisely because pure democracy doesn't work in large modern societies. You seem to be appealing to some kind of right of people, but that's not really a useful argument because anyone can dismiss a so called right as easily as someone can assert it. So what are the actual negative consequences you're imagining? What are the negatives facts you believe would be true if the policy was enacted? You mean because younger people can have cognitive or other debilitating health problems too? Who said I'd be wholly opposed to other restrictions? (I also didn't say I'm completely for age restrictions -- I haven't thought about it nearly long or rigorously enough to say that confidently -- but I'm not seeing why it's bad either) Age is a very simple policy that doesn't discriminate between people though and simple policies to enforce that are not easy to abuse have a massive advantage in practice. If similar restrictions that are not susceptible to abuse can be made, I might be in favor of those too!