The entire premise here is a bit odd to me; are people forced to spend their time and money watching a sub-par movie? Couldn't they watch one of the innumerable television shows that are available, watch YouTube, older movies, etc., etc.? The comparison made above to having to eat McDonald's in a desert doesn't make any sense in this context since that is talking about needing life-supporting nutrients in a literal desert.
If there's nothing in movie theaters but trash, but your culture values movie-going experience, then you have no choice but either watch trash or forgo this part of your cultural experience altogether. I've been choosing the latter for years now, but I can understand people that choose the former - because I still miss the experience. I'd love to go back to it - but not with trash.
The McDonalds analogy is actually better than you think - imagine by some market quirk most of the restaurants in your city hired chefs that suck at their job. Because, say, The American Culinary Institute declared food is not supposed to taste good, it is supposed to send the right message, and the taste is secondary. It's not like the food isn't edible or harmful anymore - it still delivers the nutrition, and still kinda edible, but sucks. Ignoring the fact you could cook for yourself - let's imagine for a minute you have to dine out - what would you do? You'd go and eat sucky food. And since you do, the business model is provably working. Maybe if the whole town agreed to not eat out for a couple of months as a protest against sucky food, it could be changed - but what are the chances of that actually happening?
Invert it. I want to watch a movie in theaters because that's a treasured pasttime. What's available to see is what's most profitable to the producer (which is measured globally), rather than what's pleasing to the customer (which is measured locally). It doesn't matter that there are alternative avenues - we're talking about a specific, consolidated economic sector that is behaving irrationally at the local level.
I didn't write the McDonald's thing, so I'm not gonna try to contextualize it.
I understand your frustration but I still cannot get past the point that, generally speaking, an individual must make a specific, conscious, and unforced series of decisions in order to repeatedly end up in front of movies that they dislike. Their decisions must also by necessity happen in a context where there are many other media options available.
I also enjoy the cinema but I only go when there are films that I find interesting and worthwhile. In my specific case this means that over the past few years I've seen Parasite, a showing of the original Alien, a few midnight B-tier horror movies, etc. I don't get to go to the movies as often as I would prefer but the alternative of wasting my time on films that I don't find attractive while simultaneously financially supporting an industry I disagree with seems obviously non-viable to me.
Lots of people go to movies to go out with a group of friends. They have to agree on the movie, and don't each pick their own one. They enjoy spending time together maybe more than they enjoy the actual movie.
> I understand your frustration but I still cannot get past the point that, generally speaking, an individual must make a specific, conscious, and unforced series of decisions in order to repeatedly end up in front of movies that they dislike.
That seems like another odd assumption to make. It doesn't need to be based on individual choices, social dynamics drive plenty of decision making [1]. FWIW, I've only seen 1 new movie this year, and I only plan to see 1 other, so it's not like I disagree with you at an individual level. That's not how it works out in the larger population though - for many people it's their leisure activity of choice.
But are the statements "reality minimizes action" and "reality solves differential equations" actually, literally equivalent to each other? It strikes me that this is not in fact the case. There are solutions to systems describing skyscraper sway that have the building stand at a terrifying lean angle; what is supposed to be selecting the particular solutions that we observe? A purely random walk through the solution space seems unsatisfying as an answer.
They are actually, literally equivalent to each other. Differential equations aren't a "purely random walk," they are a statement of what is about to happen based on what is happening. You have three formalisms: Newtonian (differential equations), Lagrangian (action minimization), and Hamiltonian (differential equations, but derived from a scalar field kind of like in Lagrangian mechanics). They are all different ways of writing down the same thing, and their advantages and disadvantages are related to situational convenience.
Thank you for the response, I find this very interesting.
So is it true to say that the production of a particular solution to a differential equation is a statement about how a system will behave based on its initial conditions, and that the statement captures within it the principle of action minimization by virtue of the fact that it is a derivation of information from natural laws?
"Action is minimized" and "F = ma" are the same in the sense that x+5=0 and x+6=1 are the same. In both cases you can go from one to the other with a sequence of deductions. There's no way to tell which one is the "natural law" because you can take either one as a fact and derive the other as a consequence.
I understand your frustration and share it, but I personally believe that we are at the point where this behavior (i.e., failure to act) should be expected of tech companies. The economic incentives of the companies who run the most popular social networks seem to be negatively aligned against robust responses to the propagation of bots and disinformation, and that doesn't appear likely to change.
I also wonder whether the mitigation strategy for this type of societal threat is not to be found via strictly technological means anyway since the line between bot and human actor appears to be blurring more and more as time passes and technology improves (artificial face generation, improved NLP, statistically-informed posting and behavioral modeling, etc.). Imagine how complicated the process of discriminating between automated and human-controlled accounts might become in ten or twenty years from now; it seems as though there will have to be some sort of public education component to reduce the credulity of human users in online environments - an adjustment of weights in the network of information sources among the general population, if you will, in a direction that de-emphasizes online content.
At the risk of being confrontational, I have to question whether you have ever had a low-paying job in the USA or if you have even taken the time to look at the typical "benefits" and work requirements attached to such jobs. The absolute and unquestionable reality for millions of workers in the USA (food industry, customer service, transportation, and many others) is that they have zero paid sick leave and are also subject to work requirements that allow for their termination with little to no warning for any form of work absence. It follows logically that there is a great deal of people who work while sick and are afraid of missing work for any reason - they have minimal rights, live paycheck to paycheck, can barely afford healthcare, and have almost zero job security.
This is the environment that rabidly pro-business regulation and the erosion of worker protections has created; assertions that the hideously benighted situation of low-paid workers in the USA will magically "self-resolve" without strong legislation go against the entire history of the labor rights movement and basic common sense.
>The absolute and unquestionable reality for millions of workers in the USA (food industry, customer service, transportation, and many others) is that they have zero paid sick leave and are also subject to work requirements
I don't doubt that - but I'm asking for numbers because I also know that some proportion of supervisors even in shitty jobs are understanding enough to offer sick days. And just as in this current system some people are understanding enough to give people time off, under legislation there will also be some proportion of people who ostensibly are doing nothing illegal but indirectly pressure employees not to take time off - the same way people often accumulate vacation time from the same pressures!
That's why I'm legitimately asking for numbers. Because neither case is going to be black or white. Laws are hard do undo and frequently have unintended consequences. Some things are better solved through social reform, if they are necessary at all.
It's like the oft quoted idea that millions of Americans are struggling working multiple jobs to make ends meet and this requires some form of price floor - but if you look at official BLS reports, less than a couple percent (can't remember exactly) are actually in this state. For decisions which affect millions of people, numbers are everything.
The idea that the number of employers who might pressure their employees into not using legally-enshrined sick leave could be comparable to the number of employers who, through the goodness of their hearts, currently offer sick leave to their low-wage employees in the absence of a requirement to do so doesn't hold water. Furthermore, the (quite real) threat that employers will attempt to violate the spirit of a worker protection law should not be justification for society to not implement such laws. History clearly shows us that the goal of improving the lives of American citizens cannot rely upon charitable behavior from corporations.
I agree that neither case may be black or white; however, one is dark, dark gray and the other is eggshell.
Not OP, but I share his / her perspective. My reasoning is that the act of killing is a serious and irreversible decision that should not in any way be trivialized. Furthermore, a full evaluation of the consequences of killing should not be deflected, distorted, or colored by something like amusement. Since killing is a necessary part of life (others mentioned vaccines, food production, and gardening below) it seems important to foster a sober and cautious attitude toward the act so as to prevent unnecessary loss of life; the "gamification" of death, even in trivial cases such as with the salt gun, does not appear to promote a sober attitude toward killing.
Essentially, my stance is that there is a difference between accepting an action as necessary and engaging with it as needed and making said action fun / associating it with enjoyment. I don't count video games as part of the issue for the moment since, at least currently, it does not seem like the characters and units that populate video games are in any sense alive. This may change, however, and if it does then I expect radical consequences will unfold.
Since when are sources required for basic observations on reality? Thanks to Republican opposition to providing first-world amenities to U.S. citizens (universal health care access, education access, childcare access, etc.) new generations of Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to start families. The evidence for this is multitudinous and moments away via any search engine...
The unstated conclusion of your response seems to be that the absence of basic social service rights has no impact on rate of demographic change in developed countries; however, your comment appears to be focused on current measurements, and not rate of change. Keep in mind that the average American's economic position has been degrading for decades now, while the same cannot be said (to the same extent) for the citizens of the European countries you mentioned. Your source only has data through the year 2015, so I have supplemented it with projection data for the year 2020 from the CIA World Factbook [1] to more clearly illustrate the trend; the earlier date for each example I cite below is sourced from your link [2]. I've also included data for several other major countries (and the EU as a whole) that offer basic social safety rights to their citizens.
The USA fertility rate in 1990 was 1.98; in 2020 it is projected to be 1.84 (a delta of -.14).
The fertility rate in Denmark in 1990 was 1.65; in 2020 it is projected to be 1.78 (a delta of +.13).
The fertility rate in Portugal in 1990 was 1.52; in 2020 it is projected to be 1.41 (a delta of -.11).
The fertility rate in Germany in 1990 was 1.36; in 2020 it is projected to be 1.47 (a delta of +.11).
The fertility rate in Canada in 1990 was 1.66; in 2020 it is projected to be 1.57 (a delta of -.09).
The fertility rate in France in 1990 was 1.75; in 2020 it is projected to be 2.06 (a delta of +.31).
The fertility rate in Norway in 1990 was 1.85; in 2020 it is projected to be 1.84 (a delta of -.01).
The fertility rate for Europe in total in 1990 was 1.70; in 2020 it is projected to be 1.62 (a delta of -.08).
This is obviously not a thorough (or even statistical) analysis of the situation, but a cursory look at the data from the perspective of multi-decade trends does not lend credence to the notion that the availability of social safety nets has no impact on demographic rate of change in a developed country.
Data shows [1] educated, empowered women with access to contraceptives have less children overall, and defer having children until later in life, full stop.
I also argue it is a net positive, regardless of the underlying mechanism(s), that the fertility rate is declining across the world considering the unsustainable consumption rate per capita of the first world.
This is a good point. A lower fertility rate will probably result in a better quality of life for people in the long run since there is less competition for resources
I agree with those points but I have not seen evidence for the idea that the availability of social safety nets is not also a significant factor in fertility rate trend, which I took to be the thrust of your original post.
Conversely, I haven't seen evidence that the availability of social safety nets is a significant factor. More data is required, but I still believe my theory is on sound footing based on existing fertility data.
I'm trying to interpret your comment in a charitable manner, but no matter what angle I come at it from it seems disingenuous ("whataboutism" comes to mind, for starters). No one in this thread has pretended that disinformation is mono-directional in the political arena; what has been stated is that there is a disproportionate amount of disinformation emanating from the conservative end of the media spectrum and that said misinformation has been coupled to the process of micro-targeting.
With the premise that advertisements are information streams that are designed to modify a person's behavior, I have few questions for you:
1. Do you believe that advertising is effective?
2. Do you believe that targeted advertising is more effective than non-targeting advertising?
3. Do you believe that misrepresenting information in an advertisement is acceptable?
>there is a disproportionate amount of disinformation emanating from the conservative end of the media spectrum
There is no evidence of this though. Have you considered that whatever you have read to suggest that a "disproportionate" amount of disinformation is from the right is itself a disinformation campaign by the left?
Maybe another way to look at it would be: Nobody would give a shit if "micro-targeting" had been used against Trump. The hand wringing over all of this is solely the result of a humiliated establishment trying to save face by pretending some Facebook ads cost them the election rather than their own hubris.
I'll ask again, what evidence is there that these micro-targeted ads swayed a single vote, much less the entire election? At what granularity is it "okay" to target an advertisement?
> At no point did I argue that we understand everything about nature. My point is just that every single thing in nature has turned out to be eventually accessible to rational modeling and understanding.
I'm having a hard time following this explanation / statement - it seems to contradict itself and yet is used to justify your subsequent point:
> To carve out a niche for certain areas and argue that these will eventually turn out to not follow that pattern has been a losing strategy throughout the history of science.
However, we have the obvious examples of pre-big bang ontology, as well as the origins of life and the evolutionary process, as "things in nature" that arose and yet do not appear accessible to our methods of understanding.
The observation "if you don't know how to do it, then you don't know how to do it with a computer" comes to mind here. I've yet to see any research indicating that we have or are on the verge of having a theory that describes a consciousness-generating mechanized process; assertions to the contrary seem to rely upon enlarging the definition of the word "machine" to a scale of abstraction that renders it unintelligible.
The problem is that the American public elected a reality television show host who can barely string a coherent sentence together as president. Since expertise, honesty, and competence represent direct threats to the administration (e.g., decorated military whistleblowers, career foreign service workers, etc.), the administration has steadily removed such people from critical positions in an attempt to stifle internal resistance to its behavior. A side effect of this type of purging is that we now have a reduced capacity to respond to complex geopolitical and natural threats. Hopefully the hard reality of a pandemic shakes some folks out of the propaganda bubble before too much damage is done.
