Friday, August 11, 2023

Trouble in Ohio



A diesel truck fills up in 58 minutes and drives 1200 miles. An EV truck takes 8 to 10 hours to charge and goes 250 miles.

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The estimate is that there are about 20 times more free-floating worlds in our Milky Way than stars, with Earth-mass planets 180 times more common than rogue Jupiters.

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We have 9x more information going from body to brain, than brain to body. Logic and language were the last frontiers of human evolution, and they will never win over emotion. This is good to keep in mind during an argument when you’re trying to speak logic to feeling; it doesn’t work. Feeling is pre-verbal and needs validation. To resolve an argument, begin by saying “I can see why you…” which is a way to make the conversation about feeling rather than facts.


Trouble in Ohio

The recent vote in Ohio on the management of state constitutional amendments was revealing. The debate was whether to change the vote necessary to amend the constitution from 50% to 66% majority. On the surface, it looks like a vote on the direct vs more distant democracy, on the Madisonian caution of the possible emotional and bullying risk of the majority. And it is. This shows indifference to--or misunderstanding of--the significance of that caution.

So, philosophically, that is a real defeat, a bad reading on the civics barometer. But it is worse. Behind the vote was the dreaded abortion question. Pro-life groups planned to make the abortion question less of a practical political question by putting it beyond easy amendment structure. Pro-abortion groups want to extend abortion up to 9 months. Making the constitution easy to amend will allow looser abortion restrictions.

These events endorse more direct democracy vs the country's traditional republic philosophy. And I can't explain the social significance of nine-month abortion.

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