#Discount Rate

[jadagul]

jadagul The uncertainty is one of the standard arguments given for time discounting: we should down weight benefits to future people because fuck if we know what they're going to want.

loki-zen @jadagul yeah although it’s weird to me that it’s phrased like this and not ‘we literally don’t know if the people we’re positing will ever exist.’ Plus. Whatever discount they use they can invent scenarios where the number of imaginary hypothetical people is so large that it overcomes the effects of discounting

Oh I meant in way more mundane situations. Like, why does public policy treat a hundred dollars now now as more valuable than 110 (real) dollars in 2040? It's not because people now are More Valuable than 2040 people. But zero discounting is kind of dysfunctional so clearly not a good idea.

And one justification is basically "you could take the $100, invest it in the stock market or something, and have more than 110 in 2040" and that sort of works but gets weaker as the time gap gets larger and also you're not literally gonna invest it in the stock market.

So two other arguments float around. One is that 2040 people will be richer than we are, so $110 is less valuable to them than 100 is to us. That argument always seemed sketchy to me, because "people get richer" isn't a literal law of nature or anything, and has only really been generally true for the past 200 years or so.

And the other is that, hey, the world in 2040 is more uncertain than the world now, so that $110 benefit in 2040 is intrinsically a little questionable. And this mostly happens in contexts where we mostly have a reasonable degree of certainty; demographic predictions have a pretty good track record. (Sure, if the AI god wakes up in 2030 these projections are all off, but eh.) But there's still a little bit of uncertainty, and that partly justifies discounting benefits to the future because we don't know for sure who'll be there or what they'll want.

my posish on the longtermism thing is pretty much like max’s;

intuitively future people don’t have moral weight to me, but when I examine that, the problem is really that they’re hypothetical. We do not even know if these people will exist, nevermind in what circumstances. Short of absolute gimmes like ‘if the current only known habitable planet for our species became less habitable, that would probably be bad’, trying to plan for these folk is just guesswork.

If you go on to add shit like ‘yeah, but there will be way more of them than people who are alive now, due to population growth and space colonisation and uploading, so we have to spend a lot of time and effort on this because of The Numbers*’ is… well, if I didn’t know EAs better**, I’d think it was pure Cope to justify spending time on abstract intellectual endeavours that people enjoy over the depressing messy business of trying to help people in real life. Warm Fuzzies in a ‘Shut up and multiply’ t-shirt.

*that I just made up. If you posit a sufficiently sci-fi means of there being simply loads and loads of people one day, you can overcome any factor of uncertainty as to whether you can meaningfully do anything about it with the sheer weight of the numbers that, to reiterate, you made up.

**not that I know them particularly well! I mostly know Ozy these days. But what is true of them and - I gather, largely from them - many/most longtermist EAs is that longtermist cause areas are not their sole focus. They are therefore still more serious about actually helping people in the real world than the majority of people who engage with or work for charities.

[vigilskeep]

six THOUSAND gold

[thingsthatresemblewords]

Part of me can't believe I've been reading fanfiction for more than a decade but have never written any before. The other part of me is excited to finally have a series that inspired me to write something. It's not much, but here's my contribution to the Deep Space Discounts fandom.

Imme took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

"Hey Vee? I just wanted to check on you, you've been in there for a while and I thought I heard a *crash* a little while ago and..."

The door to the employee bathroom whooshed open before Imme could finish her sentence. Her eyes immediately went past Vee and fell on the wreckage behind her.

"Oh. Oh God. Vee, is that..."

"A destroyed receipt printer? Yep. Sure is. They don't want us to have access to anything that could be used as a weapon while we're here, but Kip figured out that, if he "disassembled" a printer, the sharp edge that is used to cut the receipts could be used as a knife."

DeeDee's face lit up on Vee's wrist. "Attention [VEE]! You have added [THREE HOURS] to your sentence for [DESTRUCTION OF DEEP SPACE DISCOUNTS PROPERTY]!"

Vee shrugged. "Worth it."

Imme stood rooted to the ground with shock. "*Why* was it worth it?" she asked. Her eyes drifted up to Vee's scraggly bangs, now somewhat scragglier than before. The penny dropped. "Oooooh. ...Do you want some help with that?"

Vee's grin turned a little sheepish. "Yes please?"

Imme stepped into the bathroom and took the blade from Vee's hand. "Here. Why don't you... sit down and we'll get this taken care of. Do you want the back any shorter?"

Vee nodded. "Might as well, it's all getting a bit longer than I'd like it to be."

Vee parked herself on the floor in front of the toilet while Imme seated herself on the closed lid behind her. "Okay, I haven't *exactly* cut hair before, but it should still turn out better when you're not trying to do this yourself." Imme paused and adjusted her grip on the printer blade. "You know you could have asked me for help, right?"

Vee blushed. "I didn't want to... bother you... with something so silly. I've managed okay on my own before."

Imme's fingers combed through Vee's hair, and she pulled the first section taut so that she could run the blade through it. It slipped through with almost no difficulty; clearly space technology was so far ahead of Earth's that even the shoddy, cheap stuff was precise and well-made. Imme shook off her shock at this discovery and continued working. Another small pinch of hair fell to the floor.

"You *really* don't need to worry about that. Whether it's handling customers or haircuts, I've got your back."

They fell silent for a while, and the only sound was the smooth *shhk* of the printer blade through hair. Imme lost herself to the silky, familiar-yet-different feel of Vee's hair and the quiet rhythm of the work. At length she realized that she was out of hair in the back to trim.

"Okay, I think I've got the hang of this enough to try the bangs. Turn around for me?"

Vee scooted around until they were face to face.

Imme took a deep breath and looked Vee in the eyes. "You ready?"

Vee smiled reassuringly. "Absolutely."

Imme leaned in and gently took the first section of Vee's bangs between her fingers and ran the blade through it. She was so intensely focused on doing that it wasn't until she had finished that she realized that they were very, very close. Her eyes met Vee's and for a long moment they just looked at each other, both subconsciously holding their breath as the moment hung suspended in time.

They might have stayed there longer if they weren't startled apart by a loud bang on the door and the muffled but unmistakable sound of Kip yelling. "Quit making out in there, I need to pee!"

Imme blushed hard and lept up from where she was sitting, and she stammered back, "Sorry, I- we weren't- I just-"

"Shut up Kip!" Vee shouted back. She and Imme tumbled through the door and back into the break room, flustered and embarrassed. "Sorry about that, Imme, I-"

"No, *I'm* sorry, you don't need to-"

They cut eachother off, and then paused. Vee broke the silence first. "So, did it turn out okay? How do I look?"

Imme's blush somehow got darker. "It's good. You look... you look really good." She turned away and started back towards the floor. "I'm gonna go see if Clayre wants me to cover a break, I'll talk to you later."

Vee stood for a moment and watched Imme leave. Finally she sighed and turned to look in the mirror. She brushed her fingers through her newly evened-out bangs and remembered the feeling of Imme's soft, measured breathing against her forehead. Distantly, she registered a furious, muffled shout of "Why is there HAIR EVERYWHERE!"

[tj-crochets]

Hey internet etiquette question for y'all

If I want to make a plushie inspired by art I've seen, and it is not for commercial use, I'm not selling it or sharing the pattern, should I still contact the artist first? Or just tag them in the post with the finished plushie and link back to the specific art I based it on? (or reblog their post with the photo of the plushie?) If you were the artist, which would you prefer? Or would you prefer something else? edited to add: I did used to always message the artist first but then sometimes by the time they responded I'd have moved on to the next thing and then I'd feel bad for not making their plushie? It's completely understandable for them to not reply to messages immediately, I also don't always respond quickly, I just felt guilty for not making their plushies after I'd asked about it and it stopped me sewing plushies based on art entirely for a while

[jaderavenarts]

Opening commissions is always terrifying for me bc I don't really know how to price my work... I don't want to undercut my friends and peers but I'm also not exactly an "in demand" artist, I just feel like a random guy (gender neutral) with a few lucky posts... but I try to do a good job either way!

[teawiththespleen]

when a family acquaintance mentions MDR in relation to banking and you realise severance is actually based on corporate work culture

[faeriegirl]

Commission 💛🩵

[cookinguptales]

ooooh love that 4 am chronic illness venting

sometimes I think the worst part about having a chronic illness is accepting that, in many ways, it will never be as good as it is now. I can be in awful pain, I can be exhausted, I can be barely functional at work and I still know things are only going to get worse. like. god. if I'm this bad at 34 how the fuck am I going to be when I'm 50?

I couldn't even get through one film festival. my hormones have been acting up since I got back to Philly, probably brought on by all the travel and stress about work, and I spent a solid two weeks with my ribs and hips dislocating and the first three days at the festival were just me being in so much pain that I would go to the restroom and cry between movies.

that's what having a good time apparently looks like these days!

and then my ribs start calming down just in time for a heat wave. 85 degrees. god knows I can't go out in that anymore, because this body can't do fucking anything right. okay, fine, whatever. then my period finally comes a week early, seems about par for the course with whatever the fuck is going on this month, and the endometriosis is so bad that I could barely get out of bed yesterday, much less make it to center city.

so in the end, I have so far made it to 4 of the 10 days of the festival, and I don't have much hope about the last two. I have to come to terms with the fact, now, that maybe I can't even handle film festivals anymore. I can't handle going into the city and sitting in a dark room for a week now???

I feel like I've wasted all this money on something I was really excited about, because I used to really love going to the film festival. but have we devolved to the point where I can't even do this anymore?

like I know that this month is irregular, for several reasons, but I can never depend on a month to be regular anymore! I can't plan a trip three months in advance because I don't even know how I'm going to be three days in advance anymore! do I just give up on making plans in the future? do I give up on looking forward to fucking anything anymore?

and I know that the mood swings are part and parcel of having pmdd (I had ~three~ panic attacks yesterday) but also like. god. at a certain point how can you handle balancing work and trying to have fun while your rib is literally sticking out of your fucking back. you can feel it! when you touch! my back!

and at what point does a mental breakdown become inevitable, dealing with that kind of pain? when you're also dealing with about five different work deadlines and you still want to make art but you have no time for it and when you finally have time, nothing you write is any good.

all that and I'm supposed to have fun, too? I feel like every time I carve out the least little bit of fun for myself this october, the month I am supposed to enjoy the most, I spend the next three days paying for it.

I feel like I just. I'm at the point now where I physically cannot leave the house ten days in a row anymore. I can barely handle three days in a row. I'm not even doing anything. I'm just sitting there, but apparently the act of taking a bus to a building and sitting in that building is too much for me now.

I know I've been kind of irritating to be around for the past few weeks, but I am just exhausted. and today I'm finally clearing the joint pain, I'm finally clearing the nausea and inability to eat (which of course makes me sicker), and I'm just. I'm so fucking tired. I can't even enjoy not being in (as much) pain for a few days.

and of course trying to scrape all this together, I haven't been able to clean the house, so it looks like shit and I feel like shit about that, too.

I don't know. some days when you have an incurable illness that you know is just going to get worse over time it's just. I don't know. it's hard to have any hope at all. I feel like I'm going to die alone in a filthy house because I don't have the energy to be a real person anymore.

like I go visit my parents and I'm always so glad to get home because I love them but I also need my space but there's always that realization that like. oh right, living alone is really fucking hard. some days I can barely even feed myself. I feel so useless.

I know that withdrawing from my friends is probably the opposite of what I should be doing right now, but it's also. I don't know, sometimes I feel almost ashamed to let them see me when I can't even pretend that I have my life together. like usually I can at least pretend that my body isn't weighing me down too much. letting people see me when it's very, very clear that I am hanging on by a thread feels far too vulnerable.

I guess some piece of me feels like if I let people see the awful underbelly of what it's like to actually be disabled, they'll be disgusted with me. like. sometimes disability is just we have to walk a little more slowly at the museum or I can only eat certain foods when we go out or I get way too chatty because I'm exhausted and I lose my filter when I'm exhausted. but sometimes disability is not showering for a week and a living room that's covered in garbage and unpacked suitcases and sitting in your bed and crying for hours. like. there's nothing glamorous about it.

I feel like I have to work so hard and pretend so much to even reach "tolerable" to other people but I'm not even tolerable to myself right now. even on my best days, when I can go out and hang out with people and pretend that I'm okay, I know that I will be going home to a messy house that I will never invite people to because it's embarrassing to admit that I live like that, not because I want to, but because I have to.

but I can't even do that anymore, I can't even go out for a few hours and pretend that I'm normal and well-adjusted and not at all a burden to my friends and my family and my community.

I don't know. I don't know. I'll be okay. I always end up okay. but I feel like having a chronic illness means mourning a thousand different opportunities you had to give up because you were home puking or whatever, and right now I'm mourning a film festival.

or at least the me that could go to film festivals.

[leondxs]

mini rant

I like how I give shitty client's a major discount for some reason and then they just expect that same rate every time despite me making it abundantly clear that it was a one-time thing

[snow-system-wol]

(btw, FC members come first and that'll take a while, but any mutuals can probably score a discounted gearset (should be same as the IL for the time-gated new raid stuff) off me via like, Oceania trade or something since I feel like most people aren't EU server)

[sesshy380]

Got an interview in about 3 hours (last job I interviewed for I thought it went well, but apparently it didn't go well enough 😞).

Honestly not looking forward to this one, because it's for shitty pay and probably equally shitty hours. And unfortunately with my current situation, if they decide to hire me I'll have to take it.

I've lost count of how many hours I've spent submitting applications and resumes, and out of the vast number I've submitted (including for fucking Walmart, which I swore I would never go back), so far only this place has called (and it was on a Saturday which really threw me, because who calls on a Saturday during a busy holiday weekend?)

[xx-amphibian-puke-xx]

Veterans of this blog will remember when this was a One Punch Man blog...

Anyways, saw the new announcement on the movie and uh... how bad was the original script to where you had to get the cocreator of Rick and Morty to rewrite it for you???

[senversum]

Please Help (Urgent Commission)

im opening an urgent commission for 2-3 slots (you could dm me here or visit my ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/senversum)

My chubby cat (Meng2) has not been well for the past few weeks, he has high temperature (did he caught a cold or something? Im not really sure), He barely move around lately coz he got no energy and he could only sleep or lying down the whole day, lately he tend to cough and puke daily, he also got a diarrhea, he lost his voice and lately i could barely hear his meowing, he already lost a lot of weight.. im afraid of him getting any worse and i wanna bring him to a professional/doctor for some medical care but im basically penniless, i dunno what happened to him.. he is a cat i got from my late mother whom just passed away in 30th April, i dont wanna see him suffer any longer.

Please help me give him the medical help he needs ಥ‿ಥ.. thank you.

[orcelito]

2nd choice property (the big duplex with more questionable quality) the property management texted me yesterday asking when I'd be looking to move. And I answered around the start of June (tho technically I don't *have* to move until July)

They took over a day to reply with This...

Call me petty but this certainly lowered the appeal of the place to me

[jethroq]

stressful situation at work got me thinking about opening a tattoo studio

[abyssmalice]

"Selling pocky! 10 credits or 500 mora for a single pack - otherwise, 100 credits or 1000 mora for five packs in a discount! Only selling at these rates today!!"