I have a problem with this so-called trolley problem problem

David Roberts, one of the best people to follow on Twitter, says he hates the trolley problem (for reasons he doesn't explain) and tweets with approval this AEON essay which criticises "thought experiments" in ethics.

Curiously, I don't think the article actually goes on to explain much about the issue the author has with the actual trolley problem.  Instead, he gives examples of other thought experiments which have, I think, some obvious problems.

And at the end of the article he says:

Overall, ethical thought experiments are, at best, fallible ways of constructing simplified models that map rather imperfectly onto the world as we experience it, and can distort as much as they illuminate. So should we give up on them as sources of ethical insight?

and answers that with (in my paraphrase) "no, we just have to be careful how we use them."

Well, that's kind of obvious, isn't it?   

A question about the executive order

I haven't seen much about Trump's attempt to scare Twitter into not fact checking him, but I don't understand this:   if Trump wants social media companies to be at risk of being sued for content as a publisher, doesn't that make it more likely that said companies should delete his tweets due to things like the defamatory rubbish about Joe Scarborough?   Otherwise they are at risk of being joined into any defamation action that the defamed may take.

And anyone honest can see that it's the American Right that is living in a bigger conspiracy fantasy world than the Left, by far, and so many of the conspiracy claims are potentially defamatory.   Any change in the law is therefore more likely to hurt the Right than the Left.

Am I wrong in my understanding of this?  I will have to wait for more on line commentary to be able to tell.

Update:   I see that, no, I wasn't wrong about this.   Someone writing at National Review (found via one S Davidson*, posting something useful for a change) writes:

Stripping Twitter and other social media of liability protections is likely to make them more inclined to censor speech, not permit it. Either these companies will have to pass a “neutrality” test imposed by the government, or they’ll simply take down as much controversial content as possible. 

I mean, isn't this obvious??  Yet you have "must make my boss happy no matter the logic" AG Barr standing next to Trump pretending giving effect to the Order would have the opposite effect.

I also recommend reading Allahpundit's lengthy and hot take down of the executive order.  He really hates Trump, and it would seem from comments at Hot Air that 95% of its readership hates him for hating Trump:

.... this is a glimpse at an ugly authoritarian soul fantasizing openly about using government power to censor a critic. Not even a critic, as Twitter’s let him run wild on their platform for a decade. All they did to piss him off was append a note to two of his tweets that slightly complicated his scheme to scapegoat voting-by-mail for his possible defeat in November. Two days later we have the president ranting in the Oval Office next to the Attorney General about closing down a prominent media company that’s used by millions to communicate.  

The post notes that there are some within the White House strongly opposed to Trump's and Barr's little revenge fantasy.   Chances are, nothing concrete will come of it.  But making futile executive orders makes you look weak and impotent, no matter how much cultists will think the order is still the best thing since poisonous kool-aid. 

Update:  yeah, here's Jennifier Rubin at the WAPO arguing that it would be good for Twitter to not have legal protection for content published:

Well, the argument goes, how would Twitter decide which of Trump’s tweets to block or which user to banish? Let’s not overthink this. Let Twitter operate by the same rules as traditional media. No more protection from lawsuits. Let Twitter figure out which tweets it wants to be legally responsible for and which will leave it open to legal attack.

* his link was useful, his take on the matter pretty stupid.  He thinks Twitter made a big mistake by provoking Trump.   How does he figure that when he's quoting a guy saying that the whole idea behind the Order would backfire on Trump - not to mention my last point in this post that an ineffectual Order that doesn't go anywhere makes Trump look weak.

This is going to go over well

Trump, even by his own appallingly low standards, seems to gone into a tailspin in the last couple of weeks, so much so that even Andrew Bolt and a few of the old commenters at Catallaxy are calling him out over the Joe Scarborough murder tweets.   (Catallaxy remains the Australian home of the true Trump cultists, though.  I'm waiting for the Steve Kates "whataboutism" post which explains that everyone needs to forgive Trump for conspiracy based defamation because of how he is was so horribly victimised by the Russiagate media coverage.)

Anyway, with Trump saying that he'll do something about social media not treating him fairly, and then this news:

it looks like he hasn't bottomed out of the tailspin yet.

This is going to backfire massively.

Update:  human/alien hybrid Zuckerberg isn't going to risk Trump hurting his multi billion dollar business model, so he's out with the pre-emptive "suck up to the President my platform helped Russia elect" interview already:

Zuckerberg Says Twitter Is Wrong to Fact-Check Trump

Update 2:  this made me laugh:

Trailer theory confirmed

I see that the new Netflix series Space Force, for which a lot of people had high hopes due to the heavy involvement of Steve Carrell, amongst others, has received very lukewarm reviews.

This would seem to confirm what I've been saying lately about trailers for movies and series, as I had not been impressed by the one that came out for this show a few weeks ago:  if you can't make an appealing trailer out of an entire movie (or, even more so, series), it's a bad sign, given the amount of material they have to work with.  Even bad movies are usually capable of getting a decent enough trailer. 

To put this more succinctly:   a good trailer is not a guarantee of a good movie/TV show, but a dull trailer is a likely indicator of a dull or disappointing movie or show.  

The Church does things differently in Germany

I had no idea that Germany would have Catholic Churches funded this way.  From the Catholic Herald, in a story headed Record numbers leave Church in Munich archdiocese:

The Munich statistical office told CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner, on May 26 that 10,744 Catholics formally withdrew from the Church in 2019. It noted that this was a fifth higher than in 2018, when 8,995 people left.

Statisticians said this was the first time that annual departures had surpassed the 10,000 mark since records began. Previously, the highest figure was 9,010, set in 1992.

In March, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Bavaria’s public-service broadcaster, reported that people gave a variety of reasons for leaving, including a desire to stop paying church tax, the clerical abuse scandal and the position of women within the Church.

The Church in Germany is largely funded through a tax collected by the government. If an individual is registered as a Catholic then 8-9% of their income tax goes to the Church. The only way they can stop paying the tax is to make an official declaration renouncing their membership of the Church. They are no longer allowed to receive the sacraments or a Catholic burial.

While the number of Catholics abandoning the faith has increased steadily since the 1960s, the Church’s income has risen. In 2018, the Church’s income rose to 6.64 billion euros, while 216,078 people left the Church, according to a report by the German bishops’ conference.

I find that all rather surprising...

The amoral President

Allahpundit at Hot Air makes a couple of good points about Trump continuing to vomit up "maybe he's a murderer?  Maybe not?" conspiracy smears against Joe Scarborough. 

First, on how Twitter should deal with it (as Allahpundit thinks they must, in some fashion):

Are they sure they don’t want to try to just ride this out? He’ll tweet something even more obnoxious soon enough, likely at a less sympathetic target than the Klausutis family, and we’ll forget all about this. The nice thing about showing that you’re unfit for office every day is that your critics never have time to dwell on yesterday’s evidence. All Twitter needs him to do is provide a new shiny object that’s not quite so uncomfortable to handle. Give him a few hours.

And secondly (and more importantly), he notes how Trumps further tweets about it show what a complete amoral asshat he is:

I’ll leave you with a point I saw made on Twitter that’s jarring but also eminently true: Trump would be just fine with the idea of Scarborough having killed an aide if “Morning Joe” was still in the pro-Trump camp. The president practically admitted it in his tweets today, claiming that he’d heard the smears against Scarborough for years and never ruled them out when they were on friendly terms — but went on being friendly with him anyway. And why not? Trump’s idea of morals is purely transactional: There’s no sin he won’t happily overlook so long as you’re on his side. You could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn’t lose his vote of confidence in you — until you start badmouthing him. That’s what offends Trump about Scarborough, not his non-murder of a former aide.

The lawyers have got to him

That's the most likely explanation for this:

Nothing would be more delightful than to see Fox News facing a mega class action for all the parents and grandparents who died prematurely.

Of course, we must now all watch out for the Trump reaction.

A scandal that it's only now a scandal

The ABC reports:

An Australian SAS operator is under investigation for killing an Afghan man his comrades say was an unarmed and intellectually disabled civilian, the ABC can reveal.

The 2012 shooting is known as "the village idiot killing" among the special forces.

The ABC can also reveal the SAS soldier under investigation for this killing is the same man shown shooting dead a different unarmed Afghan man in video footage aired by Four Corners earlier this year.

Known as "Soldier C", he was stood down after the program and is now under investigation by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) for both of the killings. 

ABC Investigations has spoken to two SAS patrol members, witnesses to the newly uncovered killing, who say the disabled man was shot in the back of the head as he was trying to "limp" away.

"Choppers have landed, this guy's ran. Fair enough. We were pretty intimidating," said one patrol member.

"He was obviously intellectually disabled. [Soldier C's] shot this f***er through the back of the head. And I remember it so clearly because his brain literally hit the ground before he did. It was just so unnecessary."

Why isn't it more of a scandal than it seems to be that it has taken 8 YEARS for investigation into a serving SAS member who his fellow SAS members considered  a murderous war criminal??

The worst takes

As you might expect, the absolutely worst takes on a viral Twitter dispute between a woman and a black man would come from Catallaxy; the only question being which of these two favourite targets (for misogyny and racism respectively) they would end up favouring. 

The most remarkable comments, to me, come from one S Davidson, whose sentiments are all against the black man for being a "busy body".  

Seeing his view on victimhood doesn't seem to extend to a black man being the subject of a white woman saying  "I'm going to tell them there's an African American man threatening my life" when he 100% clearly isn't,  and then carrying out the threat in (eventually) hysterical voice, all I can say is that he should never be let anywhere near jury service, ever.   "Just too gormless" they should write against the name.  

What a threshold

Parts of India routinely get ridiculously hot.  The news today:

NEW DELHI: Heatwave conditions intensified in most of the northern states of India on Monday, with Churu in Rajasthan scorching at 47.5 degrees Celsius and the mercury breaching the 46-degree mark in parts of the national capital.

And look at the rather extraordinarily high threshold they seem to set there for calling it a heatwave:

In England, by comparison, you get the impression it's something like two days above 28 degrees.

I would still like to know what happens to the death rate in India during its heat waves.  I mean, surely it must increase substantially, but you never hear about this.  (Unlike when you have a heat wave in Europe or Russia.)

Update:  yes, there is research about this, and I think I might have even linked to this paper before.  But the numbers cited for increased deaths always sound too low to me.

Another nice sounding, almost vegan, recipe

I get so surprised when I see a vegan-ish recipe that I think would taste good, I like to record it here.  (I think the last one I noted was from the Washington Post too, and I still haven't cooked it).

Anyway, here it is - a curried chickpea salad.   It contains a lot of things I like.

Being a perpetually outraged loudmouth for a living means never having to be consistent

Moat swimming popular in Japan

A Japanese man was arrested in Tokyo on Monday after swimming across the Imperial Palace's moat to scale an outer wall, entering off-limits parts of the grounds, police said.

They said the man appeared to be in his 40s and was arrested mid-morning after emerging on palace grounds shortly before Emperor Naruhito was scheduled to conduct a rice planting ceremony elsewhere on the imperial property.

The report goes on to note the recent history of other men who have swum across the moat.    

In America, I suspect they would die in a hail of gun fire.

Don't tell your paranoid friend...

A paper that has recently appeared in Science Advances doesn't seem to yet have had the publicity in the media that I thought it might get:

Remote, brain region–specific control of choice behavior with ultrasonic waves

The abstract:

The ability to modulate neural activity in specific brain circuits remotely and systematically could revolutionize studies of brain function and treatments of brain disorders. Sound waves of high frequencies (ultrasound) have shown promise in this respect, combining the ability to modulate neuronal activity with sharp spatial focus. Here, we show that the approach can have potent effects on choice behavior. Brief, low-intensity ultrasound pulses delivered noninvasively into specific brain regions of macaque monkeys influenced their decisions regarding which target to choose. The effects were substantial, leading to around a 2:1 bias in choices compared to the default balanced proportion. The effect presence and polarity was controlled by the specific target region. These results represent a critical step towards the ability to influence choice behavior noninvasively, enabling systematic investigations and treatments of brain circuits underlying disorders of choice.

Brit Hume is a lost cause

I think he used to have a reputation as one of Fox News's moderates.  Now he's just a Trump defending moron:

Sinclair Davidson's moderation skills on display again

Sure, Clementine Ford is an annoying version of a feminist who thinks she can joke about men not dying fast enough while (presumably) being upset about men (like Alan Jones) making violence suggestive language about women. 

Personally, I have long thought she is best ignored, but it's fair enough that people complain about her getting grants to continue doing whatever she does. 

So, of course, the quality of Catallaxy comments about her is going to be great (that's sarcasm), and include argument over whether she is attractive or not.  Because that matters in a debate about what she said.  This comment struck me as particularly unpleasant, though:

Why has no journalist in the country ever challenged this academic for what he allows and doesn't allow at a blog he can moderate? 

Miranda Devine - expert on black America

What lulz.  Miranda Devine turns up in the New York Post, saying that Biden has lost blacks because of his "you ain't black" statement last week:

“Ain’t black” is Biden’s “deplorables” moment. Yet his supporters seem oblivious to the lethal blow it has delivered to his prospects, just as Hillary Clinton didn’t comprehend the catastrophe of her “basket of deplorables” insult to half of America in 2016.

Biden confirmed what Candace Owens’ “Blexit” movement is all about, the exit by black Americans from a Democratic Party that takes their vote for granted and traps them in a victim narrative.

Candace Owens!  The last time I clicked on something by her, a couple of weeks ago (via Twitter) she was arguing that people shouldn't get so hung up (pardon the pun) on the history of American lynchings.  There were "only" 3,500 blacks lynched over the entire American history, so yeah, it was bad, but let's not get carried away about its significance.  (I paraphrase ever so slightly.)

A sad story about the movie business

Of course, this would have happened thousands of time before, but it's still sad reading about how a guy who, at the age of 62, finally sold a script for a movie, but had the idea taken over by someone famous, who then made dubious claims about the lack of influence of the original work.

The quasi villain is Richard Curtis, who I personally would have liked to see retire from creative writing 30 years ago.  (I think that allows for his TV work, but kills off all of his movies - especially Love Actually.)

A close examination of COVID-19 spread

Interesting story at Science, about how a South African hospital was able to do a very careful trace of how COVID-19 spread through it:

On 9 March, a patient who had recently traveled to Europe and had symptoms of COVID-19 visited the emergency department of St Augustine’s, a private hospital in Durban, South Africa. Eight weeks later, 39 patients and 80 staff linked to the hospital had been infected, and 15 patients had died—fully half the death toll in KwaZulu-Natal province at that time.

Now, scientists at the University of KwaZulu-Natal have published a detailed reconstruction of how the virus spread from ward to ward and between patients, doctors, and nurses, based on floor maps of the hospital, analyses of staff and patient movements, and viral genomes. Their 37-page analysis, posted on the university’s website on 22 May, is the most extensive study of any hospital outbreak of COVID-19 so far. It suggests all of the cases originated from a single introduction, and that patients rarely infected other patients. Instead, the virus was mostly carried around the hospital by staff and on the surfaces of medical equipment.....

The report, which reads like a detective novel, tracks the virus’s spread through five hospital wards, including neurology, surgery, and intensive care units (ICUs), as well as to a nearby nursing home and dialysis center. Remarkably, no staff infections seem to have taken place in the hospital’s COVID-19 ICU, arguably the riskiest area of the hospital. That may be because patients are less infectious by the time they are admitted to intensive care, or because staff there are more diligent about preventing infection, the authors note.

The first patient, who sought help for coronavirus symptoms, only spent a few hours at the hospital, but likely transmitted the virus to an elderly patient admitted the same day for a stroke. The pair were in the hospital’s emergency department at the same time; the first patient was kept separate in a triage area, but that room was reached through the main resuscitation bay, where the stroke patient occupied a bed. (The emergency department was closed in April and opened again this month with an altered layout to improve infection control.) The two were also seen by the same medical officer.

The stroke patient, who developed a fever on 13 March, probably infected the first staff case, a nurse caring for her who developed symptoms on 17 March. A further four patients may have caught the virus from the stroke patient, including a 46-year-old woman admitted for severe asthma who had a bed opposite hers. Both she and the stroke patient died.

But on the whole, patients infected few other patients directly. Instead staff members spread the disease from patient to patient and from department to department—perhaps sometimes without becoming infected themselves. “We think in the main it’s likely to have been from [staff] hands and shared patient care items like thermometers, blood pressure cuffs, and stethoscopes,” says Richard Lessells, an infectious disease specialist at the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform and one of the study leaders. He and the other authors found no evidence that aerosol transmission contributed to the outbreak.

 There is more at the link above.

COVID-19 problems in India

I can't embed this, but there's a short video report on CNA about how the Right wing in India is using COVID-19 to spread ill will towards Muslims.   (Apparently, social media is being used to spread claims such as one that Muslims are spitting on food they sell so as to ensure the spread of the virus.) 

Once again, as example of the way social media can be a dangerous menace.