• 0 Posts
  • 10 Comments
Joined 4 months ago
cake
Cake day: June 23rd, 2025

help-circle
  • People already know that people aren’t equal in skills or talents or abilities. You’re not really saying anything new there. But you are saying that people should be treated inequally by virtue of undefined criteria, and that necessarily requires someone to make a judgment call as to what is valuable and what is not. You’re not following your assertions through to their logical conclusions. Hypotheticals are useful for evaluating proposals to see if the proposals are practical or humane or achievable. If you aren’t sure how your proposal would play out, you’re admitting you haven’t thought it through enough. There isn’t much value in a raw concept with no feasibility.


  • you being better at math will make you favored for the accounting job

    This isn’t always the way it shakes out because there are more factors than skill or merit that determine who has what position. You might be better at math, but you’re also better at cooking, so you get a job as a chef and someone who is worse at math is your accountant, but since it’s their job, they know the accounting laws that apply to your business better.

    There isn’t some grand artificial intelligence with a universal database that has categorized all people and their skillsets such that we could easily identify who is better than anyone else at something and equitably apportion those people to those positions and doing so would violate individual freedoms.

    What if you’re better at math, but you find being an accountant sucks and you become an artist instead? Should you be treated worse just because you didn’t choose to be an accountant?

    Many determinations of “better” will be highly subjective, so it’ll just come down to what the people currently in charge think is of value, and that’s a recipe for unethical discrimination. Sure, we can determine who can run faster, but there’s not an easy measurement for who is a more deserving person if there are limited resources to apportion.




  • Is there a particular declaration of equality that you’re arguing against? I don’t know that I encounter a lot of people who would disagree with your assertion that we’re not equal in ability or traits. That likely seems obvious to a lot of people. When equality is spoken of, I usually find that it’s addressed as an ideal relating to treatment and opportunity. Some people espouse that society should treat all people equally, in the idea that we all have the same human rights, that we all have the most commons needs, we’re all born and die, etc. And treating each other equally is a generally straightforward way to navigate human relationships.

    If you focus on the idea that we’re all different as the basis for a value system rather than a factual observation that informs your perceptions, that might lead to some people arguing that being different in some ways means you’re “better” as a person and should be treated better and have more rights or privileges or freedoms over other people.

    If we’re categorizing people based on their top speed, yes, an Olympic athlete is likely “better” in that category than an obese guy who doesn’t get much or any exercise. But that category may not be relevant to many people outside of sports and athletic competitions and being better in that category doesn’t make you a better person in general. A fast runner could also beat their spouse or murder people or kick puppies or just generally be a sociopath. And an obese person who doesn’t get much exercise could be a volunteer worker at a children’s cancer ward. So “better” in some categories doesn’t mean “better” over all or in categories that others might value.

    Have you read Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut? It’s a dystopian short story about a future in which the government attempts to make everyone equal by handicapping people with above average abilities. There’s also a decent movie adaptation called 2081.

    https://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html

    https://www.teaching2081.org/

    It’s a good story, but it’s arguing against something that as a society, we don’t seem even close to being in danger of. We have large swaths of the population who don’t want people to be equal or perceived as equal and they’re actively pursuing policies that treat people inequally, especially in regard to civil and human rights.


  • Avoiding difficult conversations just leads to more conflict and difficulties later. Unless you’re planning on moving far away, he likely knows enough about you to find you eventually, so you’re just delaying the conversation and making it worse by hurting him. His disinclination to accept you breaking up with him is frankly his issue to deal with, but the break up is your issue to deal with. Taking “the easy way out” won’t actually make it easier.


  • You should definitely remove this when you get a chance because you don’t want him to allege that you’re releasing his information since the screenshot does contain identifying information.

    But that said, I would confirm that he’s previously provided everything listed under ORS 652.610 because that’s what he’s legally required to provide for each paystub. If he hasn’t, then he’s been in violation of the law and you may be able to pursue the private right of action listed in the statute. But you’ll want to consult with the Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industries and possibly a lawyer.

    One thing that is especially odd, beyond the dubious claim of having spoken to a lawyer, is that he claims to have already compiled the documentation. Why would he spend 8.8 hours doing the work of compiling documentation if he isn’t already certain you’re going to pay him the $1232? That’s not logical. He likely hasn’t done the work and if it actually did take that long, it would be due to his choice of poor document management. If he had digital records, it definitely wouldn’t take that long and it’s his choice on how he managements his documents.


  • I’m not reading that link the same way you are. It seems like from the summary of the bill, that is just calling for more transparency in paystub information. But the employer is already required to provide a significant number of fields on a paystub under ORS 652.610. So from my reading of the OP’s account, their boss hadn’t provided all of what is listed under ORS 652.610 and there is a private right of action on that statute.


  • If nothing else, not capitalizing first letters and proper nouns will just look weird to many readers. If there’s no capitalization in a sentence, I’m inclined to assume the writer accidentally mistyped an incomplete sentence or phrase. Not capitalizing proper nouns will create significant confusion since some proper nouns are also general terms.

    “after friday, land is out.”

    Is that a reference to land as in earth or is it a reference to someone whose last name is Land?

    Making communication more difficult by requiring your reader to spend more effort to parse your intended message might not be a good idea.


  • You tout science, but you’ve cited an NPR interview where the conclusion you call “most likely” is described by issuing agencies as “low confidence.” That doesn’t make it seem “most likely” at all. What is most likely is that we don’t have enough information to draw a definitive conclusion, so being judgemental about it might be hasty and hypocritical. The NPR interview also states that we don’t know where the intelligence is coming from, so criticizing China for not being transparent but ignoring the secrecy of the intelligence agencies is a double standard.

    The other source is a video from Ken LaCorte, who is a former Fox News executive who killed a legitimate Trump and Stormy Daniels story that turned out to be true, so his credibility is questionable on top of the fact he ran competing US political partisan websites and hired Macedonian teenagers to write the content to stir up contention.

    You claim to never trust the media, but you’re trusting a known manipulative media executive.

    A better question is why the origin story matters so much to you. Does it change the need for masking or quarantines or vaccines in your opinion? If China came out and said it was a lab leak, how would it affect your life in a fundamental way?

    People get banned on social media for legitimate and illegitimate reasons every day. This is a weird hill to die on.