Ideally the answers aren’t just political soapboxing.
Conservatism.
Just…all of it lol.
Being hesitant to change and wanting to temper out things and make sure things are imolemented effectively is one thing. And ensuring we respect tradition and culture is another (though progressives are more in line with that lol.)
Today’s conservatism is just hate and bigotry. And they don’t even recognize it as such.
One of the big ones: motivation.
Most people when talking/thinking about “motivation” are referring to extrinsic motivation.
Even if they make a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic, they basically assume these add together to create “more” motivation.
However, they don’t sum together. One crowds out the other, like in a neverending battle.
That science is rational and objective.
In reality, the way that science works is much muddier than most realise. It’s full of subjectivity, and this isn’t a bug, but a feature. Intuition and tacit knowledge play a big role in basically any research (and this is why I am confident that AI can’t replace scientists). Politics are also present at every stage of the process. Science is at its least objective when scientists convince themselves that they’re being objective. We can’t escape our biases, so we need to actively acknowledge them and embrace the subjectivity of our situated perspectives.
The problem is that talking about this is a great way to piss off other scientists. I’ve been accused before of “betraying the side”, by a scientist who was aware that science has a disproportionately large epistemic platform (epistemic means pertaining to knowledge — basically just that as a result of the huge benefits of scientific advancements in the last century or so, science has been on a bit of a pedestal in terms of trusted expert knowledge in society. Criticising this is seen by a betrayal by some because of the concerning rise in psuedoscience and anti-scientific rhetoric.
However, I’m of the belief that some of what has driven the rise of psuedoscience is that the average person doesn’t like to be told “shut up and do what the smart people say”. They feel a lot of mistrust towards society (which, in many cases, is entirely reasonable, especially in the case of marginalised groups who have been heavily exploited by science and scientists),
The problem goes far beyond just science, but I think this is certainly an aspect of it. I sympathise with scientists who want to continue to have the privileged position they hold, but I don’t think that’s helpful in the long term.
The phrase I’ve heard is “epistemically privileged.” And deservedly because from a standpoint of pure ethics, “science” has done way more good than damage than competing ways of looking at the world.
But let’s say someone asks you how a car works. You go into a bit about the internal combustion engine. You explain how little explosions make pistons go. They ask you about these explosions, so you have to take them to a chemist to explain. Then they ask the chemist why does this reaction happen, and the chemist sends them to the physicist. You go through the Newtonian bit, which seems intuitive enough, but when you ask about atoms, you have to go into subatomic physics. Which is something you cannot experience without special equipment that you trust the physicist is telling the truth about.
So, yeah, while the empirical method is fantastic and the best model we have, in the end it relies on faith as much as any religion.
Great answer.
not all “sugar free” subsitute sweetner is sugar free. if you look at ingredients, maltodetrexin, dextrose or equivalent is just sugar in another form. these companies word it in a way to obfuscate that they use actual sugar to sell sweetener as"sugar free". misconceptions about gluten free products, unless you re actually have CELIACs, gluten products wont have noticible effects on you. leaky gut or whater gluten is asscotiate with in healthy people is just marketing and pseudoscience.
Or that sugar substitutes don’t cause diabetes. Diabetes rates took off after diet sodas went mainstream.
Recipes are even worse. “Low sugar” recipe, it uses a shitload of honey or maple syrup instead.
Irs impossible to build beautiful citys like they used to. It is still possible and cheaper even
Climat ≠ Weather
Artificial leather is better than natural leather for the enviorment (its not. Atleast where i am from you are not allowed to rais cattle just for leather production. And i rather would use all parts of a slaughtered animal that had to die, than poluting nature with chemicals)
I think animal welfare is the bigger factor for most people avoiding leather, and while artificial leather is just plastic and certainly not great environmentally, traditional leather production is also very very much polluting nature with chemicals (Chromium tanning etc. ) plus it still supports the whole factory farming system which is terrible in its own right. I’m hoping fungus based leather or some lab grown variant will bring a real alternative someday.
Natural leather is durable and lasting and where its used can be repaired, unlike artificial leather.
If a cow has to be killed due to people wanting its meat, why waste its hide instead of using it? The poluter here is the meat industry. Not leather production. To turn hide into leather one can use chemicals yes, but natural tanning is still used widely.
In a perfect world lether can also come from animals that have died of natural causes.
Plastic leather also wears out so quickly. Real leather is much stronger and easier to repair/restore.
As the person highlighted (and you have expanded on), there are a lot of ethical and sustainability problems with the leather industry as it is, but I think it’d be far better to improve the problems with natural leather than to expect much from the plastic leather
That because a problem is real, any proposed solution to it is a good idea, and anyone arguing against a proposed solution doesn’t want to solve the problem.
Yes, grease fires are bad. No, you should not use water to put it out. No, that does not mean I am pro-grease-fire??
Tax Brackets. “I got a pay raise and will now be taxed more and make less money than before the raise”
If <=30k was taxed at 25% and 30+k taxed at 30% and you go from 30k to 31k a year, only the 1k is taxed at the higher rate.
Is this really a common misconception?
Benefit cliffs do exist however.
I get that this might not be super intuitive. but how can one not notice that this is untrue? don’t people check their accounts and see that there is still more coming in and not less? just not as much as one might want, but still.
You assume people look at their accounts and do some form of account keeping?
That people are either purely evil or purely good. I once argued with a homophobe who wanted to protect her children from seeing lesbians on tv. She said she had to protect her kids because they came to her from turbulent backgrounds. So she adopted kids in need, that makes her a good person. Still, she was a bigot and teaching her kids to be bigots and that is a problem. Homophobia is bad and harmful but not all homophobes are automatically completely horrible people.
As an add-on to this, people having the thought pattern of:
They’re saying that my friend said something racist -> Therefore they’re saying my friend is a racist ™ -> However, my friend is a good person -> Therefore they’re not a racist -> Therefore what my friend said wasn’t racist -> Therefore the people calling my friend out are the bad guys
You can substitute in words like homophobic, transphobic, ableist, classist etc. for racist — the flow goes the same. An excellent book that helped me to understand this was “racism without racists”. Reading that as a teenager helped me to more constructively respond when I have been called out for prejudiced attitudes, such as racism.
It makes me feel deeply uncomfortable to think of myself as a racist — and so I don’t. However, unlike people who default to this thought pattern that turns cognitive dissonance into indignant resistance to change, I work to accept the fact that I am absolutely capable of doing, saying or thinking racist shit — it’d be hard not to, when I’ve grown up in a systemically racist culture. But I can acknowledge that without blaming myself for it, which allows me to avoid the discomfort of considering myself a racist whilst maintaining my moral fortitude.
A phrase that’s helped me a lot is “you’re not responsible for your first thought; you are responsible for your second”. That helps me to actually interrogate where something is coming from if I catch myself having a reflexive thought that shocks or disgusts me. Unfortunately, this habit isn’t one that many people have.
Thinking about things in terms of innate essences people have (even if they’re less binary than good Vs evil) is harmful even when we’re just looking at harms to ourselves. For instance, I was a super bright kid, and “the smart one” was a core pillar of my identity. However, as I entered my teens, I was so scared of losing this that I became more concerned with appearing smart than actually being smart. It felt like something I didn’t have control over, which was terrifying. But I often say that I got a hell of a lot smarter when I let myself be dumb. That’s because when I think about what a smart person actually does that makes them smart, it’s stuff like being curious about the world, self reflecting on one’s beliefs and knowledge and being open to being corrected etc… It was a lot less pressure once I stopped thinking about things in terms of immutable, innate essences
“USA is a democracy”. It is a country where corruption is legal Lobby groups and election donations are de-facto corruption.
The whole notion that a living is something that needs to be earned.
That the world is a zero sum game. That in order to have something, someone else has to go without. That in order to be great you have to drag others down.
These people must fail to understand how consensual sex works
It’s the driver for misogyny, homophobia, racism, xenophobia, and so much else.
A lot of those aren’t necessarily a “zero sum game” strategy and more of just that many people are genuinely judgemental, ignorant piles of shit.
Exactly. If we could lose that somehow the world would be so much nicer to live in.
It has been my experience that, if you could identify these people, they are the best to avoid. Excising these people from your life can very quickly prove it.
Capitalism is worse. It’s literally Monopoly. We’ve all played that shitty fucking game. With capitalism you get perpetual inflation. A negative sum game. A zero sum game at least implies some basic conservation mechanics, perhaps even a fairness. A negative sum game is a total debt based economy. Waste is a feature. Disposability and commodities go together like peas and carrots, and that ethos sadly reverberates across ecosystems until the planet is dead but you got those pounds or dollars or pesos or whatever. Can’t eat them. Can’t really do Jack shit with them.
The rich gonna wake up some day soon and find the farmer has a well oiled rifle. They’ll make rich fertilizer… 🤑
Yeah I agree that isn’t true
People tend to assume if someone is smart in one thing, they’re smart with everything else too.
That’s not usually the case.
Yup this is me and my dad, he’s great with handy work and has built numerous homes. I am good with technology and can build a server and make my own software. Put us in opposite roles and were both dumbasses.
This effect was described by Dunning and Kruger.
Or if they are rich, they must be smart or a genius, because they got rich while everyone else did not, its further from the truth, since most of these people come from wealth to begin with. adjacent, same goes for these succesful youtubers/streamers/influencers, these top ones we see all the time dint come from rags to riches, they came from being rich or very well off.
And also assuming that someone who’s not smart in one area is not smart in any area.
Good point I like that answer. Conflating knowledge on a specific topic with general intelligence.
Similarly, people who assume that anyone who struggles with English as a second+ language is an idiot
Sure, but without this flaw engineers wouldn’t have any personality at all.
I can differ 17 different kinds of glue by taste!
That if something is marketed with health-based language or claims, it must be true. (or that things that are healthy offset other unhealthy activities/behaviors/consumption, i.e. “I might have eaten a ton of ice cream today, but I had a lot of protein so that’ll make up for it”)
Way too many people buy into “healthy” products, especially the very expensive ones, without doing so much as a single search regarding if it’s even necessary for them, or if that particular product is even healthy in the way it appears.
People think anything with protein is inherently healthy, and the more the better, even if their body can’t use all the protein they consume, so they’ll eat multiple protein bars, have meat with every meal, and drink a protein shake every day.
Someone on social media says eating all raw meat and drinking raw milk is healthy, and they don’t even look up how much more likely you are to get a disease from consuming them. (not to mention the impact on their wallet)
A drink will be advertised as a “wellness shot” and is just some fruit juice with ginger, but people will pay 8 bucks for it every day assuming it’ll revolutionize their health, then drink a bunch of beer later that night and wonder why they feel awful later.
Hell, people will even take multivitamins or supplement powders that have 100’s of %'s of their recommended daily intake, and just assume that if they get 500% of their recommended vitamin B, they’ll magically become “healthy” by doing so, instead of “only” getting 100%.
“I might have eaten a ton of ice cream today, but I had a lot of protein so that’ll make up for it”)
There is another one. In the end, you can see proteins as just another form of calories; if you don’t exercise them off, a overabundance of them becomes fat. Proteins are not generally healthy or make muscles just like that.
And btw, eggs are the best protein source. While of oats it’s still around 10% accessible.‘Made with real fruit’ is a perfect example…they almost never say how much
Our blueberry muffins are made with real fruit!
Yep, bits of grape skins to simulate blueberry skins + blue dye and just enough blueberry juice to keep regulators happy.
and tbh straight fruit isn’t always good for you, especially not when they’re taking out the pulp / fiber.
They have to say the proportion in the ingredients.
In the US the ingredients are listed in order but not with the actual quantity. So if they’re listed as like “water, sugar, strawberry, …” then you know there’s more sugar than strawberry but not by how much. The nutrition label gives proportions of macro and micro nutrients, though.
Only kinda in the US. The ingredients must be listed in order of prevalence. They absolutely aren’t required to tell you how much of which ingredient, because of “trade secrecy” laws so that you aren’t able to recreate a "Big Mac,’ for instance, despite the fact that you can totally find all that info in public domain, should you look.
I think some offsets are valid. For example exercise for ice cream. Especially if you do it while the sugars from the ice cream is still in your blood
High price = high quality.
The luxury pricing model has totally enveloped markets at this point and the correlation rarely applies now.
With automobiles, there is an anti-correlation.
Broke: You get what you pay for.
Woke: You don’t get what you don’t pay for.
that is true, or just slapping a label like supreme, or tesla on thier products and people thinks its high quality. or with ELECTRIC toothbruses, 100-200 seems to be more likely to be defective than cheaper lines of the same company. Always seek out reviews and peoples experience on specific products. same goes with healthcare/insurance, paying more doesnt mean you will get better quality(it actually incentivized that customers dont seek out care due to potential costs), likewise if you get too cheap of insurance you will get cheap results, not decent and not so-so.
Fuck me that is a lot, think my electric toothbrush was like £20-30
Absolutely. I’ve learned over the years that it usually works out pretty well to find out how much the cheapest dogshit option is and aim for an option roughly 1.5x the cost. Obviously not a blanket rule but it covers a surprising amount of common items and I’ve gotten plenty of long-lasting affordable alternatives that I actually enjoy using rather than having the crappiest version of everything.
Yeah I look for the cheapest option and go a step or two higer
Depends on what it is but as a general rule to start from it isn’t a terrible idea.
Veg I will go cheapest because I don’t care if a carrot has a curve. Cooking equipment I usually go midrange and try to find out WHY the really expensive ones are better, then look for those specific features if they actually matter.
My bike is quite a bit higher, though there is a very wide range for bikes. I went for the cheapest of the high end bike range at £600. Probably spent close to than in accessories and maintenance by now too. Although some maintenance costs are me buying tools I didn’t have before too.
As much as I’m laughing at people spending more than $50 on a kettle or toaster or toothbrush or what have you and calling themselves clever shoppers, I think it’s worth spending on anything that goes between you and the ground, e.g. tires, shoes, bikes, etc.
Though I’m sure that adage has also been incorporated into modern pricing models and every damn thing is a fucking scam to manipulate you into thinking you’ve made a shrewd and balanced decision when you spend just a weeee bit more.
I despise every company with a fiery passion.
Expensive doesn’t mean the shoes are good, but cheap does mean they are shit. Of course you also get different types of shoe that may not directly compare with others.
Then you also get different shops selling the same product at different prices.
I selected my toaster by visiting a store and physically fiddling with the levers. From 20€ onwards, the feeling got noticeably better until 120€ price point after which it got worse. The range ended at 300€ SMEG(ma) toaster that felt like what it sounds like. I’m happy with my 120€ toaster.
What store are you shopping at that has €300 toasters??? How could anyone ever get that much value from a toaster???
You spent 120€ to toast bread! I don’t think you get it…
It’s the best toaster apparently. Tbh I don’t know why I would care about the feeling of the lever but at least they have the best toaster lever money can buy.
For that kind of money I would expect it to make, cut and toast the bread for me.
That’s true but the other direction is generally true. Not always, but often high quality does come at a cost.
That’s a great one
That their neurodiversity absolves them of any responsibility and the rest of the world should cater to it.
This is true, but at the same time it does not mean that people shouldn’t be given reasonable accommodation for their particular needs.
Many people struggle to grasp that these two ideas can coexist.
Oh god yes. Good friend of mine was dating someone with autism, and he was constantly asking me, “is neurodivergence just an excuse to be a dick to people?” Yeah sometimes it sure is, just a helpless excuse to act out your baser, ruder instincts. If you’re neurodivergent and not in therapy, you should be asking yourself regularly, would others around me benefit from my being in therapy? Because the answer is almost certainly yes.
Absolutely fair, good answer!
