Well, you asked if I was arguing against improving safety when compared to fatality rates for any activity.

But for me to have made that argument, I’d have to have said that there is no rate of fatality that would justify improving safety. So, I was asking if you think that’s true:

Does no threshold for the rate of any cause of death justify improving safety?

But I sucked at wording it clearly. That’s on me.

In short, no, I’m not arguing that. Really, I was just clarifying what the person you responded to was saying. I’m not making an argument either way.

Does no threshold for the rate of any cause of death justify improving safety?

Well, nothing is 100% safe, and we allow plenty of things that are demonstrably unsafe to continue. So if you compare bike-car collisions against say, firearm suicides in the US, you’ll see that bike-car collisions aren’t that bad.

The fundamental argument is that nothing is totally safe, but some things are safer than others.

More like if you contextualize the incidents of bicycles and pedestrians with cars, you might realize they’re safer than you think. This is absolutely false for cars and pedestrians though in America at least.

Every answer so far is wrong.

It can be used for good purposes, though I’m not sure if characterize creating a personalized Jarvis as good per se. But, more broadly, capitalist inventions do not need to be used only by capitalists for capital ends.

There’s a few ways in practice.

1. Court decisions are binding broadly. The conservative capture of the Supreme Court is political genius, honestly. They tend to have the final say regarding policy.

2. Federal agency rules are also broadly binding. EPA rules that limit greenhouse gas emissions, for example, apply everywhere in the country.

3. State legislatures are often less polarized, which facilitates a more productive legislature.

4. State agencies, like a state environmental department, mirrors its federal counterpart but is more localized.

5. Non-state organizations can get things done, though their interests are often limited and not necessarily in the interests of the broad public as state and federal institutions are.

6. International institutions can ‘set the tone’. They may not have any power to actually do anything within a specific jurisdiction, but people within those jurisdictions can draw policy inspiration from international organizations and try for something locally binding.

Exactly

What’s particularly strange about it is that it doesn’t really serve any purpose for a vast majority of people aside from a government-approved official statement that someone finds their in-laws unbearable.

That’s a pretty good purpose. Everybody can save face by taking part in bureaucracy. That sounds like I’m being facetious, but I’m serious. Think about the alternative: avoiding them awkwardly all the time or telling them to screw themselves directly, which will engender negative feelings. At least with the bureaucracy, the sentiment gets filtered through a impartial, uncaring medium.

I use a computer frequently. So I take the time to learn hot keys and shortcuts. The two minutes it takes to learn them is quickly made up for in productivity.

I don’t have the skills

I don’t really have any advice for anything else you said, except this bit. You don’t have the skills now, but you can develop them. Everybody was a beginner that tried and tried again.

I have an iPhone for work and it’s unintuitive.

…but how?

Human beings are social animals. The only way that other people wouldn’t be able to hurt me non-physically is if I were to cut myself off from my humanity.

…why would anyone want to do this?

Mmm nah I hate it.

That’s not exactly wrong, but it’s not the only reason. I’ve never been particularly interested LGBTQ+ issues, and Contrapoints’s transition first was kinda like, “K, I’m glad I’m learning about this stuff, I guess, but I have other interests.” After all, what drew me to both in the first place were their philosophical analyses and how they applied it to social issues. They were important to me for how they showed me how philosophy can be used, as opposed to DarkMatter5555 (I think that’s his name. Also, add him to the list), who I also used to watch, but that dude never grew out of the same stale template of animating god and the angel and regurgitating the most basic atheistic ideas.

So, my purpose in watching them was to learn how to apply principles to reality with a little learning along the way. But when they started focusing in on their transition, I just dropped off.

Yes. As a black man, America has produced a long very involved legacy of which I’m proud being my heritage.

Sure, it was absolutely founded on treating people like as sub-human, and there are people today that are trying to return me to that state, but fuck them as they’ve been fucked for the last century and a half. I’ll be damned if I let them represent America.

Contrapoints and PhilosophyTube were two big ones. I’d still watch Carlos Maza if he produced anything, but he hasn’t in like two years, so…I’ll include him, too.

The “solutions” to this are called theodicy and are definitely a fascinating rabbit hole. They’re all unsatisfying, but philosophically interesting

I’d probably fail

Huge fan of water, personally. I drink literally a gallon of it every day. Usually more.