And “domain registration”, which many web hosting providers will do for you. You can also start with the domain and then add services such as web sites and email, for instance via Google Domains:
fubarobfusco
Karma: 13,809
Your claim seems to factor into two parts: “There exist charities that are just selling signaling”, and “All charities are that kind of charity.” The first part seems obviously true; the second seems equally obviously false.
Some things that I would expect from a charity that was just selling signaling:
Trademarking or branding. It would need to make it easy for people to identify (and praise) its donors/customers, and resist imitators. (Example: the Komen breast-cancer folks, who have threatened lawsuits over other charities’ use of the color pink and the word “cure”.)
Association with generic “admiration” traits, such as celebrity, athleticism, or attractiveness. (Example: the Komen breast-cancer folks again.)
Absence of “weird” or costly traits that would correlate with honest interest in its area of concern. (For instance, a pure-signaling charity that was ostensibly about blindness might not bother to have a web site that was highly accessible to blind users.)
In extreme cases, we would be hearing from ostensible beneficiaries of the charity telling us that it actually hurts, excludes, or frightens them. (Example: Autism Speaks.)
Jealousy or competitiveness. It would try to exclude other charities from its area of concern. (A low-signaling charity doesn’t care if it is responsible for fixing the thing; it just wants the thing fixed.)
See Scott’s “The Goddess of Everything Else” for a poetical exposition on the subject.
So what was the wrong idea “geocentrism” about, then?
Some tribal lore tells us that it had to do with the centrality of humanity in God’s plan; or the qualitative difference between earthly and celestial things: the sun, moon, and stars belong to the heavens; the earth is below them; and hell is under the earth.
But maybe it’s more to do with a wrong idea of “revolving” instead. The ancients had no concept of freefall. When they imagined an object revolving around another, they may have imagined a sling-stone being swung in a sling. “If the earth were swinging around the sun, surely we would fall off!” The earth has discernible features such as oceans, trees, and people which might “fall off” under motion, but the sun doesn’t, being a seemingly featureless body of light: so the evidence of ordinary terrestrial experience favors the stability of the earth and the motion of the sun.
Even after heliocentric cosmology, it took more than a century to come up with the unification of celestial and terrestrial gravity: that the same rules govern the motion of the planets and moons that also govern cannonballs.
Politically, taxing gasoline is utterly commonplace and accepted. Every developed country except Mexico does it, and every U.S. state.
Is there a directory of the gods and monsters somewhere? If not, I think I’ll start one.
It’s been commented on before, once or twice!
Hitherto [1848] it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make fortunes. They have increased the comforts of the middle classes. But they have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish. Only when, in addition to just institutions, the increase of mankind shall be under the deliberate guidance of judicious foresight, can the conquests made from the powers of nature by the intellect and energy of scientific discoverers become the common property of the species, and the means of improving and elevating the universal lot.
— John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy
Like every other increase in the productiveness of labour, machinery is intended to cheapen commodities, and, by shortening that portion of the working-day in which the labourer works for himself, to lengthen the other portion that he gives, without an equivalent, to the capitalist.
— Karl Marx, Capital
It is written by the sage Brandeis that “the remedy [to harmful speech] is more speech, not enforced silence.”
In order for this remedy to be applied, someone has to actually compose the “more speech” that rebuts the harmful speech. This paper appears to be a set of recommendations for how to go about doing that; crafting “more speech” so that it actually constitutes an effective and relevant rebuttal against speech that advocates violence. I didn’t notice anything in this paper that recommended suppression or censorship, or even that those were up for consideration.
(Also, it’s really okay to not like genocide; for “let’s massacre the tribe next door!” to be among the “views you don’t like”. As it is written by the rhetor Goldwater: “moderation in the protection of liberty is no virtue.”)
“I got caught lying — again — so now I’m going to tell you why lying is actually better than telling the truth.”
Seriously … just stop already.
It’s possible to fool people’s sense of “feeling informed”.
For instance, LSD seems to often induce a sense of insight and significance … including sometimes attributing cosmic meaning to the patterns perceived in the pebbles in a concrete wall.
Or, for that matter, as some of the psychological studies described in Cialdini’s Influence or Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow appear to have failed to replicate, what is there to say about the sense of feeling informed that accrued to many of us who took them to be insightful?
They may offer to install a group-sanctioned web filter, or otherwise let you outsource the information filtering to them.
Which cult currently does this? Do you know of any?
Scientology did this … about two decades ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scieno_Sitter
Edited to add: This is presented as an example of how someone might have heard of “cults doing web censorship” as a story, without it being current.
As with “violence” itself, it seems like some uses of “bullying” strike me as being somewhat metaphorical rather than literal; but the folks using it those ways may not agree.
That said, my experience in school was that physical violence and “word stuff” could be combined arms in an effort to create misery or to drive someone away: perpetrators could use physical harm when they expected to get away with it; aggressive posturing (e.g. miming a punch) to remind the victim of the possibility of physical harm; and verbal attacks when they expected to get away with those.
Not sure what else to add, but if I think of anything later I’ll do so.
Berkeley, and the Sunday Assembly one in Mountain View. I care more about the Berkeley one, and much of the reason I went to the other was to see what differences that group was doing with their liturgy. Much more sedate emotionally, although pretty energetic musically: they have a rock band instead of a choir; they opened with “Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog”. They still did “When I Die” and “Do You Realize?” though, and their venue allowed candles. Also, I think they have a running gag about playing “Wonderwall” that I didn’t quite pick up on.
“Just being stupid” and “just doing the wrong thing” are rarely helpful views, because those errors are produced by specific bugs. Those bugs have pointers to how to fix them, whereas “just being stupid” doesn’t.
I’m guessing you’re alluding to “Errors vs. Bugs and the End of Stupidity” here, which seems to have disappeared along with the rest of LiveJournal. Here’s the Google cached version, though.
Things that persistently work for me at Solstice:
Having it happen at all.
Group singing, particularly “Brighter Than Today” which has gotten to be pretty much the song of the season for me.
Acknowledging and working with dark themes — cold, danger, extinction, loneliness — and facing them as a community and as humanity. This is a big part of what makes Solstice work as a ritual for me. I’m going to come in vaguely mopey and anxious but glad to see people; completely break down crying at least once during the ritual; hug a lot of people; reconnect with a community I don’t see nearly as much as I should; and have an awesome night.
Things that seem like areas for improvement:
Both events I went to this year had microphones cutting in and out. Even with experienced sound people involved, this still happens. It’s easy for me to laugh off technical problems, but they still are disruptive.
The Berkeley event seemed to have a lot of extra food. It’s much better to overprovision than underprovision, but the error seemed pretty high. I found myself wondering if the dinner aspect of the event wasn’t well publicized.
Even with the suggested donation above the ticket price for the Berkeley event, the overall price was much less than I would be willing to pay. This is inefficient! Sure, I can add the extra to my end-of-year donations, but mumble mumble fuzzies and utilons mumble.
Things I don’t like that didn’t happen:
“X Days of X-Risk”. It wasn’t in the Berkeley program this year, and honestly I had kinda forgotten about it until seeing this post. I find “Twelve Days of Christmas” annoying for being repetitious, and “of x-risk” is too many consonants to sing. It wouldn’t have ruined it … but I will gladly take “When I Die” over “X Days of X-Risk” any day.
Things I am not worried about:
Cultiness. It is totally okay for Solstice to be the cultiest thing we ever do. It’s certainly the cultiest thing I did all year.
I think it goes beyond violation of norms. It has to do with the sum over the entire interaction between the two parties, as opposed to a single tree-branch of that interaction. In one case, you are in a bad situation, and then someone comes along, and offers to relieve it for a price. In the other case, you are in an okay situation and then someone comes along and puts you into a bad situation, then offers to relieve it.
This can also be expressed in terms of your regret of the other party’s presence in your life. Would you regret having ever met the trader who sells you something you greatly need? No. You’re better off for that person having been around. Would you regret having ever met the extortionist who puts you into a bad situation and then sells you relief? Yes. You’d be better off if they had never been there.
It matters that the same person designed the situation, causing the disutility in order to be able to offer to relieve it. Why? Because an extortionist has to optimize for creating disutility. They have to create problems that otherwise wouldn’t be there. They have to make the world worse; otherwise they wouldn’t be able to offer their own restraint as a “service”.
Tolerance of extortion allows the survival of agents who go around dumping negative utility on people.
Contrast the insurer with the protection racket. The insurer doesn’t create the threat of fire. They may warn you about it, vividly describe to you how much better off you’d be with insurance if your house burns down. But the protection racket has to actually set some people’s stuff on fire, or at least develop the credible ability to do so, in order to be effective at extracting protection money.
Are you looking for solutions at the “how healthcare should work in this country” level or at the personal “this person should do that” level?
I’m not looking for solutions right now. I’m looking to describe a problem, specifically at the individuals-in-our-community level rather than the national or state policy level.
Hold off on proposing solutions.
Do not propose solutions until the problem has been discussed as thoroughly as possible without suggesting any.
The problem: There are a number of folks in the LW-diaspora (and adjacent circles) who live in the U.S. and are living with disabilities and chronic medical conditions. Many of these people have benefited from increased access to health care in the past few years due to the Affordable Care Act. This increased access may very well be going away soon, putting these folks’ health, well-being, and in some cases lives at rather increased danger.
What are other aspects of this problem?
https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/wiki/index might be a start.