There is literally nothing any President going forward can promise without Congress completely having the President’s back or the Justices agreeing with the President.

This was always true. The Affordable Care Act was met with repeated judicial challenges and survived thanks to judicial interpretation.

Regulatory rules have alsp always been subject to judicial review, especially after the public comment period. If an agency does not respond to comments, a rule can be struck down as arbitrary.

The difference now is that the courts can evaluate rules not based on scientific and administrative expertise but on ideology whether they adhere to the legal authority Congress granted them. Chevron deference implied that Congress gave agencies the legal authority to adapt to new situations. The misanthropes of the Supreme Court disagree because, for them, the Constitution is a dead document allowing adaptation to anything at all.

Okay, so like…the green skills are stupid.

These could be technical skills relevant to renewable industries (knowing how to preserve water systems or install heat pumps for example), or broader skills such as climate action planning, corporate sustainability, sustainable procurement, sustainability reporting and impact assessment

Corporate sustainability?! Come the fuck on.

I got one.

Boomers are desperate to be good people but the experience of a whole three generations after them said they are so underskilled they actually pose a ‘risk’ to democracy.

From your link:

With the creation of the Socialist Party of America, this group formed the core of an element that favored reformism rather than revolution, de-emphasizing social theory and revolutionary rhetoric in favor of honest government and efforts to improve public health.

I think you’re both wrong and right. People do recognize the necessity of producing and consuming less. But that doesn’t necessarily lead to degrowth’s proposed goals.

But focusing on the goals as such is the more effective approach. If we want people to consume less, then we should give them a reason to do so. A day spent at an animal festival (just randomly off the top of my head) is one less spent doom scrolling and buying something from Amazon and is fun af.

Why people consume less matters less than that they do so, imho.

Hence, given the immediate relevance of the monetary growth imperative for degrowth, one would expect that degrowth scholarship would feature the issue of money rather prominently. The same is true for the development of concrete policies addressing distributional issues or monetary system design. However, a lack of concrete policy proposals from the degrowth literature has been lamented repeatedly over the years in different contexts…

This is my criticism of most leftist ideas: how do you get from here to there? Most of the stuff I’ve read on degrowth is often about why it matters based on the result it’s intended to science, as if people aren’t taking the idea seriously enough. But there’s so little on how to get from here to there, what should happen if we do take the idea seriously.

I think I’d settle for having actual, preferably objective reasons for one’s argument to indicate a reasoned position. If someone says I believe the moon landing didn’t happen because of the direction of the shadows, then that’s a reasoned position in this sense I’m talking about. After all, we can reason ourselves into incorrect beliefs.

The function of drumming up counter-arguments against your own argument is to identify weaknesses. Merely asking the question of, “How are shadows expected to work on the moon anyway?” suggests that one’s disbelief in the moon landing may be taking something for granted.

The difference between a reasonable person and someone driven by emotion is how they handle the discrepancy between their incorrectly reasoned argument and reasoned counter-arguments. Basically, the reasonable person must consider the counter argument, or at least not reject it out of hand.

On the other hand, as Hume said, reason is driven by emotions. So, the difference between the two may be an illusion to begin with.

Cronometer? It’s more for calorie tracking, but it’s recipe builder does what you want.

Since you wrote this post, you probably have some idea of what a moral genius is supposed to be. Can you describe what makes a person a moral genius and maybe give an example?

I mean, that’s interesting in and of itself. The concept of a moral genius isn’t clear. Others have brought this up, too.

A genius is someone who generally displays some exemplary skill. Terrence Tao, for example, attended university-level mathematics courses when he was nine. Most people couldn’t have possibly have done what he did. In contrast, Pablo Picasso was also a genius, creating artistic masterpieces, among his many other talents. Many of his contemporaries didn’t achieve what he did.

So, at least we know that geniuses can be recognized as such at any point in their life, and it seems more about achieving a level of mastery or insight into their field or practice that others aren’t privy to, even other practitioners.

People keep saying morality is subjective, which is true, but so is art. Still, Picasso was recognized as genius. Still, there are widely recognized universal moral values, like don’t kill other people. So, I’m not sure moral subjectivity is sufficient to dismiss what I’m asking.

Other commenters have brought up various moral philosophers like Kant and St. Augustine. Different moral frameworks, both geniuses. Sure. The same commenter brought up Buddha, and I think that’s closer to what I’m after. Buddha attained “enlightenment” and then everybody and their god came to him for moral guidance.

I think it’s this beacon of guidance as a genius that really captures my concept of a moral genius. Like, if you’re a professional mathematician and you get stumped on a proof, you may turn to Terrence Tao to see what he thinks about resolving the apparent problem. Similarly, if you’re trying to understand some aspect of art that eludes you but you see in Picasso paintings, you might engage in-depth study of his artwork until you get what you’re trying to find.

But let’s say you’re widely understood to be at least a good person, then who do you turn to? Who is widely understood to be a morally superior person that exceeds even the normal best to which they turn? Such a person would fit my understanding of a moral genius.

And while children are often lauded for being innocent and pure, it’s like their untainted understanding of morality isn’t recognized as proper moral decision-making. In contrast, the Dalai Lama is often respected as spiritual leader, but I think that stems more from what the Dalai Lama is and the tradition around him rather than the inherent goodness of whoever is the Dalai Lama. The same goes for preachers/the Pope/etc. That might be unfair to discount them, though…idk.

Yeah, but who is today’s Buddha?

Art is subjective too, but artistic genius is a thing (but takes longer to develop, I guess. I can’t recall any young artistic geniuses)

Ha! You’re right. I didn’t mean it was open source. I did mean that it was available.

Idk about as powerful as gpt 4, but openrouter.ai has a ton of open source models you can use, including gpt 4.

I don’t understand how this can be so powerful, but so many people believe it and vote accordingly. It’s not rational, it is identity, it is tribe.

Who we are and how we see ourselves is extremely powerful. Take me for example: I cultivate a self-identity of an aspiring intellectual. I generally want to be seen as rational, with evidence-based beliefs, and having spent time thinking about my own thinking. I go to great lengths to shore up this identity for myself. This may not make me popular with the ladies, and I may not be able to easily converse with my friends on pop culture topics because I prefer analyzing arguments, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

In contrast, some people want to be seen as loyal. This is irrational to me, but it’s not like being an intellectual with properly weighted beliefs has ever been particularly useful for fitting in. Being loyal means adhering to the norms of the group because it’s your group. Fundamentally, it’s about identity for those that value loyalty and want to be seen as such. They’ll side with their SO even if their SO is wrong to demonstrate that loyalty. They’ll terrorize the out-group, believing themselves virtuous, because being loyal is virtue to them.

Republicans are winning this game. And we’re becoming increasingly tribalistic in the U.S., where loyalty is more valued than a belief in democratic pluralism. What is public transport, public healthcare, unions, expanded medicaid, access to abortion, etc, in the face of belonging, being valued as a member of a greater community? The latter is existential; the former, just policy.

Oh, you wanted that, too? Shoot, I’ll save you some trouble:

• These three below are the academic powerhouses of conservatism. The Heritage Foundation (and their news arm, The Daily Signal) are your standard rage-bait, but they still put out influential stuff)
  • Heritage Foundation (Project 2025 folks)
  • Cato Institute—Actually more Libertarian, and has praised Biden before, but generally sides with conservatives
  • American Enterprise Institute
• Family Research Council—They hate abortion and everything to do with it. The Washington Stand is their news arm.
• Alliance Defense Fund—Current Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, used to work for these ghouls as a lawyer.

That’s all I got off the top of my head. I used to have RSS feeds of all of these organizations, but reading their headlines was infuriating. It was like a shot of hate every time they popped up. So, if I’m looking for arguments, I know where to go, otherwise, out of sight out of mind.

Mises’ Socialism and the economic calculation problem threw me for a loop for a while. It really rocked my preference for socialism at the time. Then I realized modern corporations with modern computing power are doing exactly what Mises says a theoretical central planner can’t do.

While I don’t disagree exactly, the way he puts his arguments is far better than Shapiro. Reading or listening to Sowell is a lesson in uncovering sophisticated conservative arguments. It took me a while to understand how Sowell reasoned, so that’s why I include him and think he’s a great example of conservative thinkers.

Yeah, that’s what they do and say.

Yes! I’ve been on this journey!

Thomas Sowell’s bibliography is easily the best starting place. Just pick something and have at it. As a prominent conservative economist, his books actually make good arguments. It takes actual effort to deconstruct his arguments and identify where he’s wrong. He’s widely and highly respected in conservative communities and tackles a lot of the common cultural war issues.

Then there’s granddaddies Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek. Also economists, they were directly impacted by the Cold War, and make intellectual cases that capitalism is the only economic system that leads to real individual freedom. And they also try to prove why the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union and every lesser species of it undermines liberty. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom are staples.

Castigated by modern conservatives because they’re not serious about anything, sociology’s Emile Durkheim is a cornerstone of the discipline. I’ve never read it, but his book *Suicide *concerns individuals within community and the institutions of it. He talks about a type of suicide derived from moral disorder and lack of clarity, anomic suicide.

One book that I found incredibly insightful was Yuval Levin’s The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left. This book is genuinely fair to both sides, and it shows the historical roots of conservatism and its relation to the French Revolution, when the right and the left as political stances first became a thing.

Do only older white conservative men do this?

No. An older Hispanic man almost did it to me. He stopped himself, though, thankfully.

I’ve had this! Idk why they’d call it the exploding head syndrome, but it sounded like a door shutting really loudly

Yeah, that’s not terrifying at all…