snek_boi
@snek_boi@lemmy.ml
- Comment on The real personality test 2 weeks ago:
I’m sure this is a quality shitpost, but I don’t get it 😅 Can someone explain the context for this?
- Comment on What are your favorite books? 2 years ago:
The Ethical Primate by Mary Midgley
- Comment on What review websites do you use? 2 years ago:
Alternativeto.net
- Comment on FBI confirms it obtained NSO’s Pegasus spyware 2 years ago:
This is exactly why Schneider advocates for security for everyone. Insecurity for one person (through the development/finding/enabling of Pegasus or whatever) means insecurity for everyone.
- Comment on Have you ever pooped outside? 2 years ago:
Have I?
During a trip, there was this coffee shop my friends were raving about. They suggested to go there. Sure. Why the hell not. What's the worst that can happen?
The plan was to go there to get lunch and then spend the day in the massive park next to it.
Now, this part of the story is totally unrelated to pooping outside, but I think it's a disservice to leave it out.
So we get to the coffee shop and we hear someone in the back end having a fight. It's fucking wild. Someone's threatening to steal someone else's car and shit. As we walk in I notice there's a couple of tables with people watching the fight. Nobody is doing anything. My brain lights up in fire as I'm thinking "this is the bystander effect. This is exactly what I've heard about! I need to intervene!". I run up a flight of stairs and stand between a girl with her high-heel shoe in her hand, threatening the guy who is prostrated behind me.
She stares at me, and her dimples twitch while she figures out what to think of me appearing out of nowhere. Then the guy behind me starts laughing. She immediately bursts into laughter. "Oh, my god. I'm sorry. It's just a play.". The people around, the 'bystanders', laugh. I realize they're the audience of the play, and as it all clicks in my mind, I open my mouth and bring my hand to my chest as I take a second just to breathe.
She pats me in the back and says "Come. I'll get you something to drink," as she guides me out of the makeshift stage.
I hear the guy behind, the other actor, saying "Sorry for the interruption." The audience laughs. "We'll resume shortly."
I say I'm sorry to the audience as I walk out.
My party is all cracking up. The girl takes it all in jest. I thank her for how well she handled it all. She thanks me for being "a hero" and tells me whatever I order to drink is on her. She then leaves to speak to the guy in the entrance, so that he can warn other people about the fact that the apparent fight is really a play.
My ex and her friends are still giving me shit as the waiter comes over. They all know exactly what they want, since they've come here before. I don't want to think, so I just say "What's good?".
"Their cold brew."
I figure if I was old enough to drink alcohol, I should probably try coffee for the first time in my life. Heck, and if it's the recommendation of the recommended coffee place, it's probably good, right?
So, here's the thing about coffee, or caffeine more generally: it makes you wanna shit.
We wait for our orders and the fighting resumes. We hear the same lines again: the threats to steal a car, the revelation that she lied about her family...
My ex suggests to have the drinks to go, so that we are spared the noise. Sure enough. We get our drinks to go and head off to the park.
And so we walked for a while through the forest as I tried coffee for the first time, and a couple minutes later had to shit by a wooden bridge.
- Submitted 2 years ago to meta@lemmy.ml | 4 comments
- Comment on 2 years ago:
As opposed to what? To being idealistic? Then it wouldn't be a science, would it? It'd be a doctrine, a set of principles.
But to properly answer, I'd say you'd first have to define what strand of economics you're talking about.
Neoclassical economics (the dominant strand) historically has not remained close to the evidence. Even today, at its fundamentals, it doesn't. Just look at the controversies surrounding the evidence for marginalism as opposed to the labor theory of value. Or look at the controversies surrounding marginal cost curves in the theory of the firm, or the differences (and not the equality) of profit rates for companies in the same industry due to, for example, differences in equipment. The evidence tells a story, but neoclassical economics insists on telling the same (non-empirical) story.
At the same time, neoclassical economics tries to solve its lack of empiricism by relying on behavioral economics, which at the very least tries to account for a cognitive and cultural context that was previously ignored.
Neo-keynesian economics tries to account for problems in neoclassical economics by looking for a different set of evidence (demand-side policies, for example), and by framing issues differently (profits being the result of imperfect competition). They have gotten closer to solving some problems, such as having a less wonky marginal cost curve in the theory of the firm. But they have also gotten into problems, such as explaining worker agency in the broader framework of their theory.
Finally, classical economics is the strand that keeps as close as possible to the evidence. Every single controversy previously mentioned (theories of value, theory-of-the-firm curve shapes, differences in profit rates, cultural contextualization, policy effects, and framework validity) is, in my eyes, satisfactorily dealt with in classical economics. You can be a judge of this by looking at the classical theory and the criticism it levies against neoclassical and post-keynesian theories in Anwar Shaikh's Capitalism book.
If your worry is that economics is forgetting its political implications ('the purpose of science is not just to understand the world, but to change it'), each economic strand has your back. Neoclassical economics legitimizes and justifies capitalism. Post-keynesian economics legitimizes and justifies monopoly break-ups and demand-side policies. Classical economics legitimizes and justifies worker demands and socialism.
Tools are never created in a vacuum. They can be repurposed, but it's naive to say an AR-15 is a toy meant for long-distance tic-tac-toe.
Hence the danger of classical economics: if people were to stick close to the evidence, they'd realize, for example, that value comes from human work and not by magical markups, or that the wage ratio (how much of the surplus goes towards profits or wages) is socially 'negotiated'.
But all of this is assuming you are contrasting empiricism with idealism. I could be wrong. What did you have in mind when you wrote "excessively"? For you, what would "too much" be? Would that be problematic?
- Submitted 2 years ago to coronavirus@lemmy.ml | 0 comments