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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • My conclusion was that raising minimum wage gave people more money to spend (obvs), and although it could be linked to some increase in inflation, that that cost was borne over the wider economy, so those on MW still saw an meaningful increase in real terms spending power. The evidence for MW rises causing unemployment were mixed, but meta-regression analysis showed that there was significant publication bias in MW studies (preferring those that showed MW raised unemployment) and once that was accounted for, MW was neutral on unemployment. Apart, perhaps for a small effect on teenagers.

    But it was a few years back that I had to look in to that, and the studies themselves are often focussed on data from decades earlier. And that’s the problem with a lot of economic research claims, while it is helpful to examine historical patterns and learn from them, it isn’t easy to isolate the confounding factors and get to some general law. I feel it’s closer to history than physics (despite the aspirations of some economists), you can learn from the past, but current society will be different in significant ways that might make things play out quite differently.


  • Funny meme, and natural part of human nature. But, while disregarding information that doesn’t agree with your worldview can be bad, the reason it’s a intrinsic bias is because most people are right about most things in their everyday life. If a stranger tells you that you owe them 20$, you’re probably going to trust your gut that you don’t, rather than start looking for evidence. Obviously, that breaks down when it’s about anything abstract or complex, and there when we get science involved.

    But if you’re somewhat experienced and well read in a scientific area, you develop the same confidence in your understanding that leads you to dismiss some findings as unlikely. This can be bad, and one of things slowing scientific progress (see Planck’s principle), but it’s also a useful heuristic. If you’ve read enough economics papers, you develop a reasonable bullshit detector. Not that the research on the wealth tax you referred to is necessarily bad, but it’s going to be using a model or drawing conclusions from some related data, in ways that (I suspect) would not convince me if I read it. Once you’ve read 30 articles showing that raising minimal wage cuts real spending power vs 30 that show it doesn’t, you see how ‘good economic research practice’ can lead people to very different conclusions.





  • I like games where I name the main character, often the main character has a title or nickname that npcs use as well (the Dragonborn, the Avatar) but if I know they have a name in the story then it’s feels a bit weird to change it. So, Link is Link. But when I player Chrono Trigger for the first time recently I had (somehow) not heard much about it, so I renamed Crono (also it’s a horrible misspelling and kinda dull name, so happy to change it).



  • There’s lots of architectural guidance, building codes, etc. normally linked to number of people in the household. But it’s all pretty damn relative, both culturally and individually.

    When I lived in the city, I was pretty comfortable with a small appartment, because I spent a lot of time out of my home in cultural spaces. Now I live in the country, and in city-terms our house is gigantic for just the two of us. Netherthless, we’re continuing to convert old out buildings into more space because the demands on our home are much higher and we have lots of unused space.

    Not only do we live there, but we’ve got jobs that involve a lot of remote working, and it’s also a building site/workshop as we renovate and make our own fixtures and furniture. Plus, because it’s more remote, we want guest bedrooms and extra space so that guests can come and stay for a while without feeling cramped. Then we’ve got animals, who bring their own clutter, and we also want to create a guesthouse that we can rent to tourists. Even without those extra requirements, we choose to sleep in adjacent, but seperate, bedrooms because we have sleep issues. And I know that is a crazy luxury that we wouldn’t have been able to afford in the city, but when space is cheap, there’s no real reason not to.

    I know that my example is pretty extreme, but everyone’s needs are different. I have friends who basically live in one room and love that, because everything is within easy reach and they don’t want to have guests. But I know it would be depressing and claustrophobic for others. Sharing an apartment with four adult strangers is a different experience from a family home with four children.

    I think there can be rules (you can’t claim something is a bedroom if it’s smaller than 6sqm) but there isn’t a one size fits all solution.



  • I think your absolutely right that people shouldn’t call a question stupid in c/nostupidquestions. But they can and should criticise a question for being a rant disguised as a question (eg. “Why are X people so stupid?”). More borderline is a questions that maybe meant in good faith but seems to have so many problematic assumptions built-in, that it’s difficult to even engage with fairly. It might not be a stupid question, but it’s been phrased in a way that makes so many wrong assumptions, that answering it becomes an unnecessarily difficult chore.

    I saw your question about veganism, and I can imagine some people took it as way of poking vegans. Vegans get a lot of hassle online, and are often asked to justify this or that, so asking “why don’t they eat roadkill” (in so many words) could be seen as not coming from a genuine place of curiosity. I’m not saying your question wasn’t genuine, but I can imagine that other people thought so.

    I do think your question falls into the “too many dumb assumptions”. There were responses along the lines of “vegans don’t eat meat, so of course they don’t eat meat that has died naturally”. And you responded with “I meant the philosophy not the diet”. If that’s true, then it was a “badly phrased” question, not a “stupid” one.

    Nostupidquestions is meant to be a place to ask questions that you feel like you should know, or everyone else seems to know. If you ask confusing or misleading questions, it’s reasonable for people to respond with “that’s not what veganism means” or whatever. But I do 100% think people shouldn’t say it’s a stupid question (although, having read through the thread I don’t see anyone saying that to you…)




  • I don’t think I’d feel like I lost a part of me if I my account got banned. But I could imagine feeling pretty angry if it was unfair, and frustration at losing access to save post or conversations with that I still reference.

    But I do think an account is a ‘face’, just like in real life. I talk differently at work than with my friend, I speak differently to my boss and my students, and even different friend groups have different ways of talking or humour they enjoy. In that sense my lemmy account talks about some stuff I wouldn’t bring up with certain people, and there’s some stuff I wouldnt post on here.


  • If you’re trying to blame “stupid consumers” or “evil companies” you’re not thinking about things systemically. Of course, under our current economic system, companies are going to end up exploiting, because there’s lots of pressure to maximise profits, and minimal pressure to avoid decisions that make money but harm society. And consumers are going to make bad decisions, because they live in a society where they are constantly bombarded by advertising and social values that encourage spending and don’t punish buying unnecessary shit.

    The naïve (or self-serving) status quo view is “but consumers should know what they can afford, and not waste money. And customers should take their business elsewhere if a company does bad things”. If that’s really what you want to happen, then create a system that incentivizes that - have strict rules on credit and loans, so that people can’t buy takeaway food on credit, enforce strict anti-monopoly measures so that there lots of genuine alternatives for consumers to turn to, have requirements for news media to inform the public about all the actions that companies take that are harmful to the environment, their workers, or the general population (and make clear who are their competitors, and only those alternatives that aren’t owned by the same conglomerate), and so on…

    If someone promotes a system that relies on “personal responsibility” but doesn’t promote tools that facilitiate that responsibility, then they are being disingenuous.




  • I’m not sure if they’re what you’re looking for, but their are various little mental exercises you can do depending on what your trying to achieve.

    Relaxing visualisations - if I’m trying to sleep and I’m too worked up about something to relax, I close my eyes and visualise a peaceful scene, e.g. being on a warm tropical beach, the heat of the sun lulling me to sleep, the gentle lapping of the ocean… It doesn’t always put me immediately to sleep, but it helps get my brain out of the problem-solving stress mode.

    Sensory engagement - if I’m feeling anxious and getting stuck in a panicky loop, I try to engage my senses. Notice four things around you that you can see, three you can hear, two that you can smell, and a texture you can touch (a stone wall, your jacket’s fabric). This works well because when I’m stressed my brain doesn’t want to be told to “calm down”, it’s trying to warn me of danger. So instead of forcing some relaxation, I engage my senses, checking my surroundings, and generally there is no danger, just the hubub of normal life. This reminds my lizard brain that although being worried about missing a deadline is stressful, I’m not in immediate physical danger and should calm tf down.

    Sense of perspective - when we are in an emergency our sense of time shrinks so we only focus on the immediate problem. As we relax, we become better able to consider the larger future. This is great in a crisis, but also leads to dumb overreactions. So, if something goes wrong, and in the grand scheme of things it’s actually not a big deal, but to me right now it feels like the worst, I use this technique. I visualise my surroundings and then begin zooming out, viewing my self from above, seing the room and then the building, the pulling out like a map tool, seeing the area, the country, the globe. I sometimes continue, visualising the solar system and the milky way. After that, it feels a lot easier to shrug and accept that whatever embaressment or frustration felt like it was going to ruin my day is, in fact, just not that important.