Alien intelligence is not required to follow human reasoning.

The Lords of Alpha Centauri could run a long-term social engineering program on Earth because they believe capitalism, conflict and social darwinism are objectively Good for You and we need to be purged of the folly of humanistic ideology before we can be allowed to join the galactic civilization market.

Or because they find our struggles entertaining.

What I can tell you is that no rational spacefaring civilization would need to resort to social engineering if they just want to kill us. Just toss a bit (or a lot) of spare delta v on a sufficiently large asteroid (or five) and humanity goes the way of the dinosaur.

(Different story if they want us dead, but want to make it look like suicide because of the space police.)

Good to know, thanks.

I genuinely can’t parse this argument.

Criminalizing the victims of human trafficking makes said crime easier, because it creates hurdles for it’s victims to report it.

To cut back on the hyperbole that you’re receiving for your comment: Even badly managed oversight would be better than none at all.

Amazon warehouse workers are being exploited brutally in a system that needs fixing, but there’s much less trafficking and violent coercion involved.

There is no way to save those people without destroying privacy.

I disagree. Legalizing prostitution and fighting the social stigma would prevent many of those crimes.

If you criminalize a service that will always be in demand, you won’t kill the market - you’ll just turn it into an unregulated black market run by criminals, who are much less inhibited than legal employers to use any means at their disposal (even threats and violence) to maximize their profit.

The exact same thing happened during the prohibition.

But if you have a legalized market… using threats and violence to force people to perform i.e. call center work is much less common.

Cheating on taxes is a crime, but in certain circles it’s nit stigmatized.

The same goes for ignoring the speed limit in other circles.

A desperate mother shoplifting to feed her child would probably get compassion from many.

On a side note, it is also possible for something to be a crime and not be punished. It is a way for a society to condemn something, but acknowledge that is just necessary under certain conditions.

(Some countries use this trick for contentious topics like abortion and, yes, prostitution.)

Nah, I’d argue that you’re both partially correct.

The romanticized ideal of starting a family/marriage on the basis of “true love” has been around forever.

Reality has been more of a mixed bag throughout large patches of human history. Accidental pregnancies, dynastic politics and plain economical necessities were probably foundations for many more marriages than actual love.

(There’s also that whole can of worms of whether “True Love at First Sight™” even is a good foundation for marriage, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Whatsapp is encrypted. The problem is the Metadata they want - i.e. your whole address book.

I do not agree to Facebook having my phone number, but if you use WA and have my number, they have it, too - even if I don’t use WA myself.

If you can convince your family to switch, use Signal or Matrix.

Otherwise, use Shelter on your phone with a limited, WA-ony address book.

The superposition principle says “no”.

My father was uninvited from the yearly family reunion due to him not joining the anti-transgender circle jerk that formed there.

Ironically though I still get emails asking me to come, for the record I am my father’s transgender daughter.

I might be misreading your situation, but just from this limited context, your father seems to have his priorities straight. Feel free to tell him that a random internet stranger thinks good of him.

Office buildings would like a word with you.

It’s the reason so many large corporations a talking about RTO, office real estate prices are set to plummet if everyone’s keeping to WFH.

Sadly, that’s only tangentially related to housing (although I believe to have read something about new subsidies for landlords converting office space into appartments).

The only situation here in Europe where I hear individual cars is when I’m a pedestrian on a fairly empty road or when they’re obnoxiously loud.

Otherwise, I mostly hear my own car due to modern soundproofing and maybe the overall din of all the cars combined.

The former situation is actually addressed legislatively for really quiet cars (like EVs): They’re required to have a minimum noise level. If they drive slow enough to be really quiet, they have to generate an artificial sound.

(Edit: I do hear motorcycles, because they tend to have a unique, loud sound.)

There is a plausible economic incentive to do this:

Reputation.

This happens less in markets with few, big sellers and lots of customers locked into long-term contracts (like ISPs), but it does happen occasionally in high competition markets where customers can take their business elsewhere easily.

Restaurants are a good example - where I live, a host might hand out a round of after-meal shots on the house to encourage a big table of uncomplicated guests to come again.