Recent submissions

Comment · 4 years ago
No, no. You are going in the right direction in analysing the morality of such proclamation. The point is, you can a) give others and collect reward in terms of other's people perception/rewarding of you (what the Bible passage above suggests is bad), b) do the same because someone just convinced you you'll get a reward from .. someone important, worthy of respect/awe (what the passage suggests is good, though I'm sure there will be those who say it's just parabole for being humble in giving, which of course the text could say but somehow doesn't), c) for some another reason. We'll get to c) in a minute.

When you think about what this is really easy to see is a = b. That I am rewarded with promise of heaven for a deed, or hope of being well-respected by others who see what I've done, affects the same object: ego. It's not driven by desire to help others (compassion, love or else), but desire to be seen /judged as good by others.

There is a c) (and more for sure). The much more mundane reason c) is "give to people and let your reward be the feeling you get that you do a good thing". Good thing can be in this case simply the result of mental congruence of your act with, say, your utilitarian belief that "helping others by decreasing their suffering is good".

If I tell people "a good act is when you help others to help them maximize utility", it's a moral stance. It's a very different moral stance than "a good act is when you do what someone says you should do in order to get eternal life".

The former is far better from ego-point of view, and less prone to corruption, and focuses on the values and reasons why somethign is good, in other words - promotes understanding and is clear why it's good. The latter promotes blind following and subservience to anothe person/being becomgin the guide of y our actions.

It's clear that most people need a guide, but be careful what kind of guide you pick.

Comment · 4 years ago
GDPR covers EU citizens. I don't think it says anything about non-EU citizens.
Comment · 5 years ago
I wasn't suggesting OP's mother wanted to manipulate. I wanted to express that it's a very common situation in relationships of all kinds that there's assymetry in desired closeness and it's difficult / non obvious what to do there (i.e. no easy solution).
Comment · 5 years ago
Many people cry, shout or even try to manipulate you when you tell them their behavior (based on excessive attachment or dependency of some kind) is an issue for you. Many of the same people's loved ones realize that and are in a clinch: do I distance myself, hurting them? do I not distance myself, hurting self? It's not something you can just ask about: "I'm not as attached to you as you are to me, what do we do?"
Comment · 5 years ago
If you were running a business, and wanted someone to do tech talks, or design/run interviewing for tech candidates, or have mentoring for junior devs, would you prefer non-developers to do it?
Comment · 5 years ago
If that's the case, I could write an article "Company X developed technology that enables people to see individual atoms and hear the explosions on the other side of the Earth."
Comment · 5 years ago
Clickbait :( It's a device that plays back - through headphones - specific normal-range sound which is crafted in such as way as to help you locate a source of another (ultra)sound which you normally wouldn't hear. Nothing in this thing enables people to hear ultrasonic sources. They still hear sound from normal range.
Comment · 5 years ago
When you say "then walk into the center", you do realize you are talking about a (edit) 20-30 minute walk one-way. A car could cut that in 2 minutes.

In my lifetime I was a driver in a city where it took exactly 5 minutes door-to-door from my home to ANY location in the city (at night). During the day it was maybe 8 minutes.

Then some years went by.

I now live in a city where at night it's 20 minutes, and during the day it's 45-60 minutes.

From 5/8 minutes to 20/45-60 minutes.

It's the same city.

Things change, I get it. It just feels like things are getting worse and worse and yeah, it elicits serious questions like "is this going to be my last car, ever?" etc. :)

Comment · 5 years ago
In my town you have largely 4 options: - walk - drive - take a bus/tram - bike

Walking is too slow and cumbersome for most people (e.g. 6-8 km one way to work seems like too much to do every day), and impossible if you want to go shopping anywhere except on your way to work.

Public transport is really slow and not as flexible as you want (many places without good connections, wait times 15-20 minutes, transit times 20-50 minutes).

So you are left really with bike (flexible, constant travel time regardless of traffic, keeps you fit -- but very susceptible to bad weather) and car (flexible, fast, great for transporting items -- but very susceptible to traffic).

Comment · 5 years ago
I am presenting a counterpoint to the claim in the article that "it's just 1 more block" in a real world scenario (under somewhat different condition though: non-grid street network).

Do you think the phenomenon I described does not exist, or are you saying it's not relevant?

Comment · 5 years ago
While I don't know of the safety impact of removing left turns, the actual trip time impact in a busy city is severely understated. In my city (700k people), an old European town, city center has seen the removal of a few key left turns in the past few years. Consequences for traffic outside city center: probably none. Consequences if you want to drive from within the city center to the outside (e.g. go back from a shopping mall / restaurant / business meeting): walk further (many places to park are inaccessible) back to the car, drive a block or two more than you normally would. Extra time: +5 minutes to walk, +10 minutes for those 1-2 blocks (traffic is heavy).

Now the "best" part: Consequences if you want to drive into the city center: you need to make a sequence of correct turns 1-2 kilometers before your target, and if you don't, you are punished with extra 20 minutes in traffic at least (and still won't land where you wanted) - there is simply no route to where you wanted to go unless you pick 1 specific ideal route which many drivers don't know. Results: if you know the city / have good gps (Google Maps sometimes gets it wrong) +10 minutes in traffic, if you don't - + 20-30 minutes in traffic.

[edit] You may ask "why you can't do a triple-right-turn?" that's because the city center is not a grid. Many streets are don't have cross-paths for long stretches around historical part of the city.

Now the really painful part... Your trip outside the city center is only 5-10 minutes. Losing an EXTRA 20 minutes is a huge loss, it makes the ttrip almost as bad as walking - but inside a car. Bad for everyone really.

My main beef is with the fact that many places in the city become almost inaccessible due to a huge reduction in possible routes. E.g. 7 years ago I could get to a large mall / parking area next to the town square maybe in 5-6 diffferent ways (allowing me to balance the traffic out).

Now there's 1 way only from my side of the city, and I can't balance anything out by going where others aren't.

Guess the "grid" street network is really a hard prerequisite.

As for safety, safety records in the city haven't moved at all in the past 10 years so I don't know. (But traffic has grown so maybe it's ok?)

Comment · 5 years ago
My point was I didn't understand why making a decision that gives a manager an extra (hidden) benefit is a crime - i.e. it's not money laundering (money laundering is misrepresenting the source of money, right?, and "wire fraud" and "mail fraud" is too elusive to me - it's a name, not an explanation of the nature of the wrongdoing :)

It's clearer now.

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