This is kind of inspired by the whole GTA VI controversy where they're selling an ultimate edition of the game for $100 and the base price is $80. The game took the company like a decade to create. It's expected to give you hundreds of hours of entertainment while telling a (hopefully) wonderful story and doing it in an artistic way. Folks will easily spend $10-15 on a movie ticket today for 3 hrs max of entertainment. I feel like it makes sense to pay several times that for several times the amount of entertainment you get out of it.

Some might argue it sets a bad precedent for companies that make games that aren't worth that price to then set unfair prices. But I also think you need to be a responsible consumer there and know that you shouldn't spend more than $60 on, for example, a Ubisoft game until you know it is worth it.

It sucks more people can't afford a pricier game like this. Don't get me wrong there. Wages haven't kept up with consumer inflation anywhere else in the (United States) economy. But I think these AAA titles are more or less worth the increase in price, especially given the rising costs of game development, too.

EDIT: Also adding on this comment from Mestoph because they raise a great point:

"You also miss a major point in argument for increased prices. They haven't risen noticeably in like 30 years. Which means that in order to be profitable they have to put out a shittier product or sell an astronomical number of copies."

Does anyone ever see his supporters saying… “Man, we’re truly thriving under Trump, thanks his policies on economy, healthcare and education! Prices for gas, groceries, bills and rent went down exponentially!” I think they are perfectly fine with watching people suffer, as long as they are leftists, minorities, women, LGBTQ… etc. Do you ever think that they stop to think “Hey, I want what’s best for my fellow Americans, I want everybody to have access to affordable healthcare and a job that pays well.” I think the 3 main categories of Trump voters are A. Hardcore cult followers who will support him on whatever he says, B. Flat out stupid, or C. Straight up evil and enjoy watching others suffer. Because as I recall, Trump policies for the country have been straight up disastrous.

Today, the AI backlash is intense against large companies and individuals alike. I can see the argument for backlashing against large and profitable companies; frequently they are eliminating jobs, cutting corners, and making rich people richer.

However, AI has given independent creators the chance to actually prototype big ideas in a way that was formerly reserved only for those who were already rich and well-resourced.

As an example, an independent board game designer comes up with an idea for a boardgame and sketches it out, uses lego minifigs as placeholder pieces, and comes up with something really great.

But he wants to take it further into existence, ultimately to attract crowdfunding or investors and finish the project with a real team. However, as an independent creator who is moonlighting, he can't afford an illustrator at that moment. On Reddit, I've seen this situation met with vitriol - a mob yelling at him that he doesn't deserve to continue his project because he can't pay an artist at that exact moment.

I don't see what's wrong with a scrappy creative using Midjourney to create prototype art so that his cards can look as close as possible to the final product for playtesting. Or using an AI tool to create 3D models of his minifigs that he'll 3D print for his prototype.

"Theres No effort!" is simply wrong. The person has the vision, and has put time, effort, money, and expertise into pushing the AI to create the assets he needs. It's not effortless to get coherence out of an AI support tool, and it take a lot of persistence and tweaking, assembly, learning models, experimentation, iteration.

Even they were to use an LLM to help punch up some of the writing to combine with the art, shouldn't the quality of the end product be what they is judged on?

If they end up with assets that look like slop ChatGPT advertisements, or clunky AI slop writing, that should be the measure of whether or not their product should be condemned, in my opinion.

But if they are capable enough with writing and aesthetics to create a high-quality experience, why would that person be worthy of condemnation? This is doubly-so if the person ultimately wants to hire an illustrator but simply can't afford it at that time.

Stomping out this person's endeavor will leave us in a situation where only those with the money and resources have the freedom to pursue big, interesting ideas.

I want to start this post by emphasizing that I actually want my view changed here. This is NOT just another astrology bashing post. If your answer is "it's a belief system, you either believe in it or not" this is not what I am looking for.

I am a very rational thinker. A little too rational sometimes. If in any social context, the topic of astrology arises, I almost instinctively roll my eyes at the very least mentally and stop listening to anything my conversation partner has to say about this topic.

I want this to change. I think this is in fact quite a**hole-ish behavior even if I don't share the same belief system. And what always has helped me find the common ground and actually try to understand what people are actually trying to communicate through the lens of a certain "system" was at least a little bit of scientific backing.

Now I doubt that there is a science paper that empirically shows that cancers are a great romantic match with capricorns.

But what WOULD make sense to me is that maybe there are certain personality traits predominantly present in people born during certain seasons of the year. Or heck, maybe even moon phases. Sure, rationally and logically, I am aware that the affect the moons forces have on an individual are so miniscule that they are probably less than a rounding error in the grand scheme of things. But the process of billions of "butterfly effects" that occur when you are born and still have tremendous effects on a person's entire life is still absolutely a thing and I am pretty sure we are far away from a conclusive statement what actually meaningfully affects us and what doesn't.

Now, me personally, I don't believe for a second that the phase of the moon or constellation of the stars has any affect on anybody and even the seasons probably barely make a dent in our development especially now that we have be came in-doors creatures with air conditioning. (So maybe astrology used to have more "science" behind it that slowly tapered out of our "habitat"?)

But it isn't completely unheard of that certain seasonal effects have statistical bearing. The classic example is the birth months of hockey player (though that is more likely to be a systemic effect rather than an actual seasonal one, so even this one is probably correlation, but still)

So yeah. Does anybody have a more rational take on astrology? Are there any hints for some scientific grounding or even some empirical data that might help me have a conversation about astrology without mentally shutting off completely? Or is it in fact all bs?

Why would I ever care about somebodies birth sign even in the slightest?

I’m a 35 year old guy and I still haven’t had any success with the opposite sex. In my teen years I was quite good looking and used to get some attention but I was too scared to act on it.

I began losing my hair at 17 and by 19 I had to shave it all which completely ruined my looks, I looked like shit and I could tell from the complete lack of attention I used to get that it had negative affected people’s perception of me. And it didn’t help that I’m also very short, I’m from an undesirable race and I have a small speech impediment.

After years and years of rejection and humiliation, I called it quits on trying to date months ago. I’ll never know what it’s like to kiss someone and be intimate with someone who’s actually attracted to you sexually and doesn’t just think you’re ugly and hideous.

Perhaps I made the wrong move, but the mental toll of being so behind is too damaging that I don’t care anymore. I missed out on so much and I’ll never have those exciting experiences. So giving up was the right move, I think.

Because it wasn't done on purpose to one particular group, to wipe them out and the amount of death was too small,

True genocide would be something like the Holocaust. (To be clear, I'm not condoning their actions, many of them were horrible atrocious).

The most commonly used definition of genocide in international law is probably that used in the Rome Statute, which is substantively identical to the one used in the (earlier) Genocide Convention.

The Rome Statute provides:

the purpose of this Statute, "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group;

(b)

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d)

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The Genocide Convention essentially adopts an simmler test:

Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

If anyone can present any evidence and historical knowledge too the disprove me I'd be happy to discuss it

I'm interested in whether there were particular events or campaigns during the history of the British Empire that consider to have constituted genocide. I'm not asking whether the British Empire as a whole was genocidal," but if there are specific examples where its actions have been described as genocide.

lspecifically genocide not other forms of colonial violence, such as forced displacement, forced labour, cultural destruction, or deaths resulting from Migration...

I could be completely wrong though, this is just based of what I know so far

I know psychopathy isn't in the DSM, but it is often used in psychological research as well as in legal proceedings, so I'm going to use it here. But for clarification, what I mean by a true psychopath is someone with a biological incapacity for empathy. Note here that I am not talking about people who have reduced empathy or people who have lost their empathy due to trauma, or people who just have no emotions at all.

The reason I think true psychopaths should not be allowed to participate in society is because they are dangerous to everyone around them and do not care whether or not they harm others. Attempts to cure psychopathy have backfired and instead taught them how to get away with their behavior and how to better manipulate the emotions of others. Additionally, while it is true that psychopaths can learn to participate within the legal bounds of society, that does not mean that they should. Many CEOs and politicians are expected to be psychopaths—leadership roles are the last places where someone who does not have empathy should be.

Now, as far as the actual procedure for in what way people should be evaluated and how they should be removed from society, I'm unsure about.

“By destroying the states' right to secession, Abraham Lincoln opened the door to the kind of unconstrained and arrogant government we have today”

― Walter E. Williams

“The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal it's desire for economic control of the Southern states.”

― Charles Dickens

-----------------------------

In May 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, beneath a banner reading "Mission Accomplished." The choice of this carrier's name was no coincidence; it was a veiled message: that the United States continues Lincoln's march in imposing its will by force, and that it derives its legitimacy from the legacy of the man who expanded presidential and federal authority to previously unknown limits.

Many know, including Lincoln himself, that slavery could, over time have been peacefully abolished (like what happened in many countries) without the need for a civil war in which hundreds of thousands of Americans died.

However, because the fool named John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln from behind in a treacherous manner, it bestowed upon Lincoln an aura of sanctity as the liberator of the enslaved who died defending his cause.

What Lincoln did was not limited to the Civil War. He laid the foundations for a political system that recognizes no limits on federal power.

The core idea articulated by Seward, and endorsed by Lincoln, was that America could not live isolated on its continent, and that its destiny was global dominance. This idea, which seemed utopian in the 1860s, became the official doctrine of the White House in the twentieth century: William McKinley, who led the Spanish-American War, and Woodrow Wilson, who led America into World War I, drew on Lincoln's spirit in imposing world order by force. Harry Truman, who dropped the two atomic bombs, drew on Lincoln's spirit in making fateful decisions without effective parliamentary oversight. Johnson and Nixon, who expanded the Vietnam War; H.W. Bush, who devastated Iraq; and Bush Jr., who devastated Iraq and Afghanistan—all followed the same path.

-----------------------------

I personally respect Mr. Abe Lincoln and I'm open to change my view in this post.

Yes, literally morally wrong.

I am not saying that donating is just a commendable practice, or that reducing animal products makes you a little bit of a better person.

My view is that if you face no serious financial hardships, health limitations, or equally important obligations, and you can make these sacrifices at little cost yet refuse to do so, you are doing something morally wrong.

These are the two things I believe are morally required for the financially comfortable:

1. Donate some reasonable portion of their income to effective causes
2. Reduce their consumption of animal products, particularly those produced through intensive animal agriculture or factory farming

To clarify my position, I am NOT arguing you must donate everything you possibly can, nor am I arguing that everyone must become vegan.

I am also not arguing that morality requires you to maximize total welfare as much as possible every second of your life.

I am arguing there is definitely a moral minimum above zero, and a big reason why this doesn't feel obvious to many people is because modern society makes the suffering caused or preventable by our choices extremely easy to keep out of your mind.

Here is the principle behind my view:

If you can prevent or substantially reduce serious suffering at relatively little cost to yourself, and you have the means to do it, and doing so does not require sacrificing something of comparable importance, then completely refusing to help is morally wrong.

Again, to clarify my position, I am not saying that if one action produces more welfare than another action then choosing the lesser one is immoral. I reject that.

Suppose one person donates $1000 and another donates $1100. The first person did not do something wrong just because another $100 could have produced more good.

My claim is that there is some minimum level below which your refusal to make even a small sacrifice becomes morally wrong.

I am not claiming to know where this threshold lies, but moral concepts can have fuzzy boundaries while still containing obvious cases. There is no precise number of hairs on your head at which you become bald, however, that does not mean that baldness does not exist.

Likewise, I don't think we need to calculate the exact percent of someone's income at which they are no longer morally wrong for not donating to believe that 0% is clearly too little for someone with substantial disposable income.

Donation

Consider a thought experiment:

Every morning on your way to work, you walk past a child with malaria

Suppose that you know with certainty that handing over $7 will save the child's life

You have $80,000 in your pocket every morning on the walk

You walk past, and the child dies

The next morning, there is another child with malaria, and $7 would save them.

You walk past

Another child the following morning

You keep your $7

You continue to do this day after day

I think almost everyone would stop describing your behavior as just "It would have been nicer if you helped."

Almost everyone would agree there is something seriously morally wrong with repeatedly allowing children to die in order to maintain a trivial amount of money.

Now change one fact:

Instead of the child being ten feet away, the child is 5,000 miles away, and instead of physically handing the child $7, you can do so at the press of a button on your phone.

Why does that change the child's moral value?

Of course, the real world is more complicated than the thought experiment. $7 does not reliably save one child. Here are the actual numbers:

UNICEF estimates that 4.9 million children died before reaching age five in 2024, and says that most of these deaths are preventable through proven, relatively low-cost interventions and access to quality healthcare (UNICEF)

GiveWell estimates that roughly $7 can provide a child with a full course of preventative malaria medication through a malaria season. Its models for its top charities during 2022-2024 estimate around $3500-5500 per life saved on average, though it can vary heavily on a case-by-case basis and is not a guarantee (GiveWell)

Another thought experiment:

Consider someone making $80,000 who is financially secure.

They spend hundreds or thousands of dollars each year on things like:

restaurants, subscriptions, new electronics, alcohol, vacations, unused clothes, upgrades for items that already work, dozens of other marginal luxuries

I am not saying that enjoying these things is immoral, however, if that person were to tell me that giving even 1% of their income (which would be $67 per month) is something morality has no right to ask of them, I find that extraordinarily difficult to defend.

We're comparing small improvements in the lifestyle of someone who is already comfortable against interventions for malaria, childhood disease, malnutrition, and extreme poverty.

Again, I find it extremely hard to defend that preserving every dollar of consumption outweighs the expected benefit produced by even a modest donation.

"If that's true, why don't I have to donate everything?"

This is the most obvious objection, and I don't think it defeats my position.

I am not claiming whenever $1 benefits someone more than it benefits you, you must give it away. That would require giving until you're severely impoverished, since there is always someone who could benefit from money more than you could, and your flourishing has moral weight too.

My claim concerns situations where the cost to you is small relative to the suffering you can expect it to reduce. You are certainly permitted morally to save for retirement, provide for your children, help your parents, have hobbies, travel, and build a life you want to live. However, "my life matters too" does not imply "therefore every additional dollar I could spend on myself matters enough to justify giving literally nothing to someone facing vastly more suffering." That is an enormous leap.

Someone living paycheck to paycheck is not the target of my argument. I am talking about people for whom donating a modest percentage would have very little effect on their flourishing.

Animal Products

More than 80 billion land animals are slaughtered for meat globally every year. FAO data put the reported total at approximately 83 billion in 2022.

That doesn't include fish or the countless other deaths associated with production systems. (Our World in Data)

Livestock accounts for ~80% of global agriculture land use, once grazing land and cropland used for animal feed are included.

However, meat, dairy, and farmed fish account for only 17% of global calories and 38% of global protein... (Our World in Data)

FAO estimates livestock emissions at 4.3 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent in 2023, which is the largest component of global agrifood-system emissions in its dataset. A separate FAO life-cycle assessment estimated livestock systems at ~12% of total human-caused greenhouse-gas emission. (FAOHome)

WHO also identifies the heavy use of antibiotics in food-producing animals, particularly intensive animal production, as contributing to antimicrobial resistance and recommends reducing medically important antibiotic use in food-producing animals (World Health Organization)

All things considered, this is an industry with consequences for tens of billions of sentient animals, land use, greenhouse-gas emissions, biodiversity and ecosystems, and human health.

And for many financially comfortable people, reducing their contributions requires something astonishingly mundane:

Eat some different meals...

Not starve, sacrifice your health, or never taste meat again. Maybe instead of eating animal products every meal of the day 7 days a week, substantially reduce them. Learn some different recipes, perhaps order something else occasionally, replace some meals. That is the level of sacrifice we're discussing.

Consider another thought experiment:

Suppose there are two restaurants.

At restaurant A, you order pork. You never see where it comes from, and twenty minutes, a delicious pork dish appears on your plate.

At restaurant B, the supply chain is exactly the same, however, the wall behind the kitchen is transparent.

When you order pork, you watch the pig being brought out, and you watch it panic in fear for its life.

You watch the animal being killed and butchered.

Suppose you watch its throat being cut and watch it bleed out, twitching after its death, then they prepare part of its body and place it on your plate. The same delicious pork dish.

I suspect the vast majority of us would find restaurant B horrifying..

Some would even refuse to eat.

Some might even tell the butcher to stop.

My question is, what morally relevant question did the wall change? The pig didn't suffer any more because you watched. It didn't suffer less because you didn't. The only thing that changed was your psychological experience. It didn't change the experience of the animal.

Modern food systems put huge walls between consumers and production, which explains why we might feel differently about the two restaurants, however, it doesn't make the underlying suffering disappear.

Another thought experiment:

Suppose someone takes your dog.

They kill him in front of you, butcher him, cooke him, and say, "don't worry, I really enjoy the taste and dog meat is a vital part of my diet."

Most people would regard this as a serious moral wrongdoing.

Change one variable: Instead of a dog, it's a pig or a chicken or a cow. Why has the moral calculation suddenly changed? I don't think saying "dogs are pets" solves the problem.

Of course you might have a stronger personal relationship with your dog, we all care about our families and those close to us more than strangers, however, special attachment doesn't eliminate the moral status of everyone outside of that attachment.

If someone said, "of course torturing your child is wrong, but this is a child I don't have a relationship with" we would immediately recognize that they have confused attachment with exclusive moral worth.

And if you think the wrongness comes only from the fact that it's your dog, replace your dog with a healthy stray dog you have never met. Is breeding, killing, and eating that dog for taste now morally insignificant?

So what does the dog possess that these other animals lack? Capacity to suffer? Fear? Social relationships? Intelligence? Preference to not experience pain? Other animals do not lack any of these.

If someone can identify a morally relevant difference that explains why inflicting severe suffering on one species for minor pleasure is unacceptable while doing something similar to another species is morally insignificant, I'm all for it, but saying "one is a dog and one is a pig" is not an argument.

"But I didn't personally kill the pig"

Correct. Buying meat is not the same as slaughtering an animal. The question is, what responsibility do you have when knowingly purchasing products whose production predictably requires animals to be bred and killed when reducing my demand would cost you comparatively little?

A consumer is further back in the causal chain, but "I paid someone else and didn't watch what happened" doesn't make the participation morally neutral.

Imagine I love fur coats, and producing the coats I like requires someone to severely abuse animals. It would be very weird to say "I didn't hurt them, I only created the demand and paid the people who did"

Being causally indirect can reduce responsibility, but it definitely doesn't reduce it to zero.

"One person eating less meat changes nothing"

This is a common and very frustrating obkection

Of course skipping one chicken sandwich doesn't cause a farmer somewhere to raise exactly one fewer chicken, farms are not like vending machines. They respond to aggregate demand. That means while the effect of one person's consumption is probabilistic and tiny, it does not mean the expected effect is literally zero.

If large numbers of consumers reduce demand, production responds, and enormous baseline numbers mean even partial reductions can have enormous welfare consequences.

With more than 80 billion land animals slaughtered yearly, we don't need universal veganism before reductions become significant.

"But plant agriculture kills animals too"

Yes. Of course no lifestyle produces literally zero harm. That doesn't mean all choices produce equal harm.

Also, land-use numbers are important here. Livestock requires grazing land AND enormous quanitities of crops grown as animal feed. Globally livestock uses ~80% of agricultural land while supplying a minority of calories. (Our World in Data)

So the fact that plant agriculture itself has environmental and animal costs is not an argument for ignoring the additional costs of feeding crops to animals then consuming the animals.

"Nothing is perfectly harmless" ≠ "therefore reducing harm is meaningless"

"There are thousands of other good things I could do"

True, you could volunteer, give blood, support family, reduce your emissions, mentor children, work in a valuable career, and do many other worthwhile things, but the existence of one moral obligation doesn't normally erase unrelated obligations.

If I tell you "You shouldn't abuse your dog" it isn't an answer to say "Well, I actually volunteer at a homeless shelter." Good actions aren't really moral credits that make other harms permissible. There can obviously be cases where someone's existing obligations consume so much of their resources that an additional demand is no longer "small" but for the ordinary financially comfortable person, I don't see how other possible good deeds establish that these obligations become zero.

Closing Remarks

Normality is not morality

Eating meat is normal, and spending all of your money on yourself, even when that amount is very high, is normal. Therefore, neither feels like wrongdoing.

However, history is full of socially ordinary behaviors that later generations regarded as morally indefensible.

I am not claiming that factory farming is equivalent to any particular historical atrocity, but what I am claiming is that the prevalence of a behavior is evidence about social norms, not that the behavior is morally justified. If billions of people participate in something, that might make it easier to participate, but that does not answer the moral question

Distance and invisibility

This is what bothers me the most. Put the malaria-stricken child directly in front of someone and make the cost trivial, and suddenly most would agree that failing to help is a huge moral failure.

Move the child thousands of miles away, turn them into a statistic, and now helping becomes above and beyond

Put a cow in someone's backyard, make them watch it suffer and die before dinner, and many would become horrified.

Move the pig into an industrial facility that they will never see or think about, put the meat into a neat package, and suddenly it's morally irrelevant.

However, distance does not make the suffering hurt less, neither does invisibility. These things change how strongly we perceive the suffering, but they certainly do no change how strongly the experience is for the victim. I do not think morality should just track the limitations of human empathy.

So here is exactly what I believe

If you are financially comfortable enough that giving away a modest fraction of your income would not undermine your security, responsibilities or flourishing, I think donating nothing to effective causes is morally wrong.

Not just unkind, but wrong.

If you consume substantial quantities of animal products, have other practical and healthy alternatives available, and could reduce your consumption at relatively little cost to your wellbeing, refusing to make any reduction is morally wrong.

Again, not just less ethical than veganism, but wrong.

I don't believe morality requires perfection, self-destruction, or donating every spare dollar, but I also reject the opposite extreme that morality somehow requires literally zero sacrifice from comfortable people when tiny sacrifices can prevent or reduce suffering that SIGNIFICANTLY outweighs the inconvenience imposed on them.

What would change my view

I would change my view if someone can give a reason why severe but distant suffering creates no obligation even when the personal cost of helping is small, why knowingly contributing to animal suffering through consumer demand creates no obligation to reduce that contribution when there are available-yet-mildly-inconvenient substitutes, or why my general low-cost/high-benefit principle fails

CMV