The Trolley Problem
This is a classical ethics problem posed to grade school ethics or social studies. Essentially it comes down to this:
Effectively, you see a trolley, or freight train coming down the tracks. If it continues on it's course it will kill a dozen workers ahead. If you take action by moving a switch that trolley or train will shunt to another track and kill only 3 workers.
Do you throw the switch?
Variations of it include - throwing the switch to save the workers but killing your child, etcetera, etcetera. You can go on. Do you make the sacrifice for the greater good?
We're seeing it play out now. This is how it's going. The Orange haired switch master and the freight train is on fire, packed chock full of dynamite heading into the busiest, fullest train station in the world at rush hour. The Switch master has taken the microphone and begun pitching quack cures to the people waiting in the station.
This is fucking incredible. And signing into existence a "Space Force" and giving out rights to mine on the moon. Wow. This is progress. This is the end. Even "Idiocracy" didn't foresee this...
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Ozarks - Season 2
Finished Season 2. This is the bleakest fucking show ever. No kidding. There is no light whatsoever.
Still a little thick on the stereotypes, one imagines casting: "Skid #47 ...", "redneck #3", "preacher hillbilly #248", "Wal-Mart Clerk #12", "crazy-ass-chick #4", "Mexican Killer #22", "Dumb-ass #11", "Freaky Guy #2", "impulsive sociopath #2", "come-back-as-a-ghost #1", "junkie", film literate in the worst of all ways, still, I'm sucking it all up, the real world looks cheery by comparison, even right now. It manages to trivialize the Quarantine, can't imagine things getting worse? Immerse yourself in this, here it is...
Overall, too many despicable people doing despicable things, the taint of drug money permeating every layer of society, the characters, every one of them too wrapped up in self-interest to effectively give a damn about anyone else, Bleak lives, bleak furniture, the American nightmare, and this was before the virus...
The plotting, a little transparent, the game is afoot, did she poison his tea, will it take effect before he can stab her? The plot reveals itself before ... but - "cyanide in your coffee from ground up cherry pits..."....Yeah. No. Maybe the foreshadowing is too effectual, or - ? WTF? And Darlene? Who hasn't dated Darlene, or some version thereof?
The Plot Twists are never that twisted, or they are, but the too frequent twists become anticipated, ...
It's no "Breaking Bad", by which I mean Vince Gilligan was a genius, and wrote the show on a number of levels, this, a similar message, - populist, now, even, to the point where every time a character "bites it" you're like "Finally!!!", and never, ever like a character as that's an sign they'll soon be dead, each smallest speck of decency is too quickly extinguished, even the forces of "good" are unilaterally bad, "Agent Petty", the name says it all...
2 seasons, I don't think I can do another. Kudo's though to Jason Bateman for producing/directing it.
In the end it could be a tale of redemption, but I doubt it, I'm cutting my losses.
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The Einstellung Effect
I'm pretty sure I'm guilty of this in ways I can't imagine:
in brief: "The Einstellung effect is a cognitive trap that prevents us from seeing better or simpler solutions to problems we're trying to solve."
more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstellung_effect
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Covid-19 in America
Pretty sure the Chinese were lying, having underreported by a factor of 40X, but the Americans? Well, always America has got to be #1. I don't count stats in Turkey, Russia, where dictators control the results, or the poorer or corrupt countries of Asia and Africa, South America, or even the UK which despite it's "neo-liberal" worldview is really just another haven for late stage capitalism that makes feudalism look like the golden age.
Nope, this is America.
Today's stats from https://ncov2019.live/data :
| TOTAL | 435,128 | ↑ 201 (0.04%) | 14,795 | ↑ 7 (0.04%) | 26,544 | 6,760 |
I mean, they're so off base they're not even wrong. They've stopped reporting, days ago it seems, to keep the panic under control, a nut-job might think this was a ploy, conspiracy, to create the one-world government, but that is the kindest of theories.
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