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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • The primary weakness of this paper is its complete reliance on two extremely small and poorly-designed studies. The first was performed on Reddit with n = 194 Redditors who self-reported how healthy they were on a 9 point scale, how liberal/conservative they felt on a 9 point scale, and answered a series of questions to establish a personal responsibility score (PRS). The second was performed with n = 204 local students, mostly teenagers, recruited based on political party affiliation, whose healthiness was established only by how often they claimed to take the stairs.

    You should be able to identify at least 6 major design flaws in the studies above, but in short the researcher not only failed to prevent but seemingly employed predictable biases, especially in regards to his measures of health, which were entirely self-reported. It should go without saying but: just because some group of people tend to consider themselves better than others in some respect does not actually make it so, yet that is precisely what this paper says.

    As to contrary evidence: you typically won’t find a paper published in any serious journal whose thesis is so close to “ideology A is better.” Eschewing scholarly impartiality on politically charged topics is generally frowned upon. Doing so in exchange for publishing and/or favor with wealthy patrons has always been possible, and while increasingly prevalent in recent years, it is primarily the realm of conservative academics if only because it causes a greater stir (shares, citations, impact factor). Even using the loaded phrase “personal responsibility” in a political context, and equating it to the term used in health literature, marks this as a rather obvious insider piece not subject to the typical quality controls. So, it’s unlikely you will easily find an equivalently obnoxious antithesis like “conservatives are less fit,” “liberals have better dental hygiene,” or what have you. But does that mean conservatives are healthier?

    No. We can confirm this a variety of ways, since exposure to any social science will routinely surround you with high quality evidence to the contrary, but here is where I would start:

    1. With high statistical significance, positive health outcomes are strongly correlated with education.
    2. Yet, education is inversely correlated with political conservatism in nearly every developed nation in the world with high magnitude and significance.



  • This is the joke. Absurdist hyperbole only works with a shared assumption or common sense to play against.

    If there’s an intended target of this joke, it’s definitely not medication. It would be the inscrutability of the wording of that clinical guideline, which seems to imply morality is divergent but can be cured with stimulants.




  • No joke, once you start structuring your life as a business, especially as formal corporations, the amount of financial, legal, and professional advantages, opportunities, and protection that appear are incredible. For example, did you know that …

    1. … as an S corp, you can “pass through” the profit and loss of your business, such that your personal gross income excludes business expenses?
    2. … the employer match on a 401k account is considered a business expense?
    3. … the actual annual cap on employer contributions to various retirement vehicles are in fact much, much higher than employers are typically willing to offer you as a benefit?
    4. … the terms of commercial factoring, mortgages and loans are often far more agreeable than consumer equivalents?
    5. … many of the places where you shop offer discounts to business accounts (and not just for volume, simply because you’re a business)?
    6. … it’s considered normal/SOP to request edits to many types of agreements individuals are expected to simply accept without question, including leases offered by landlords?

    This is just a sample. Most endeavors and many functional aspects of personal life are by design simpler, safer, more scalable, and more profitable if planned and executed as a business rather than an individual in the late great United States of America.








  • What is the breaker box in your analogy? Breaking legs?

    lol I meant a [circuit] breaker box (aka power/ac panel, breaker panel, distribution board, etc)

    So how do you suspend a license that the guy didn’t have?

    It’s just a minor legal misnomer. If a defendant happens to not have a driver’s license in the first place, suspension could be more accurately termed “prevention.” Logistically speaking, the state probably just generates a stub file/account with a valid license number then just adds the suspension to that empty driving record.





  • I’ve heard this truism my whole life, and glibly repeated it myself at least a few times. But we must acknowledge that it expresses a morally defeatist attitude that poisons the person who actually lives by it.

    Instead you can reconcile kindness by being more observant. Some “good deeds” aren’t actually that good, since their extended effects amount to an unkindness to yourself or those you love.

    For example, let’s say someone asks you to donate to a just cause, or loan them some money in a difficult time. If doing so means your family goes hungry or can’t afford clothes, it might not be such a good deed after all.

    More subtle examples involve your time, such as helping someone by staying late at work, or spending hours listening to someone who really should get professional help instead.

    Ultimately, it’s not true that “no good deed goes unpunished,” but even if it were, it doesn’t matter, because helping people is its own reward.