Moonside

Moonside wrote

Reply to What are the economics of charity? by twovests

Philosopher Peter Singer has writte. about 'effective altruism' and questions like these in his books

  1. The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty.
  2. The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically.

I'd say that there are things lacking funding that will bring a higher "ROI" on human welfare than investing in a balanced bundle of stocks and bonds and then giving to charity would.

To be clear, I'm no fan of utilitarianism but some similar principles are less objectionable when applied to charity imo.

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Moonside wrote

Reply to I wonder if the galaxy brain meme format is going to be the new "motivational poster" meme format by toasthaste

The nice thing about is it that it covers two distinct uses:

  1. Sincerely ranking things from the worst to the best
  2. Ironically ranking things from the worst to the best

and only rarely do I as a viewer mix up the different intentions. I don't think that the motivational poster meme ever really did that and I do like this meme's origins better. Like how did we all come to share the understanding that all these silly light show CGI graphics had to do with smarts and wisdom?

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Moonside wrote

Reply to Kingdom Come Owes Its Popularity To 'Realism' And Conservative Politics by devtesla

Kingdom Come: Deliverance has sold more than one million copies in less than a month. Its all-time concurrent player peak is higher than The Witcher 3's. So why is a janky role-playing game set in the Holy Roman Empire so popular?

TBH this almost strikes me as answering it's own question, as this thing alone is distinguished enough to win attention from me. Basically only other thing that would make me explode with excitement would be a movie or game (action or rpg) with centered on the varangian guard, because I'm the kind of person who always plays with Byzantium if available. Actually a game set in Warring States or Three Kingdoms period of China would be plenty cool too, but also make it mythological and magical.

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Moonside OP wrote

Reply to comment by eep in Presented without comment by Moonside

Jordan Peterson fans are known as lobsters after a thing Peterson's been waffling about in support of his reactionary positions. Peterson had a thing where he says that lobsters prove that hierarchies are natural (and desirable) because lobsters are evolutionarily old, share some mechanisms with human (they too have neurotransmitter serotonin) and they dominate over each other. This is very bad reasoning actually, but it turns out that crows have contrariwise virtues and are nicer and it's easy to use them to mock the idea of lobsters proving this-or-that about human nature.

In other words, it definitely is a niche joke, but Peterson is the latest reactionary 'public intellectual' in part because he peddles Christian self-help stuff along with his reactionary ideas. Because the kind of alienated young white men who were previously big into New Atheism couldn't find much help of meaning in it, they were bound to have someone pick them up with someone promising to give it to them.

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