mahiwaga

It was quite shocking to learn that Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead.

It is not surprising that the GOP has vowed to reject any replacement that President Obama nominates

It definitely makes this election even more critical to the future of the U.S.

Naturally, there is a lot of tone-policing going on. Scalia was a very divisive figure, and his decisions have directly harmed minorities, so it’s not particularly surprising that his demise was met in various quarters with glee and celebration.

It’s an honest response to the death of someone who has deliberately working against you, and I don’t begrudge that of anyone.

It is unseemly to ask the people who are actively harmed by someone’s ideas to just meekly accept and be kind to people who voice those harmful ideas and to not fight and stand up for themselves. #‎PureApplesauce

Differences of opinions can and will cause (hopefully merely verbal) fights, and people will be (hopefully only emotionally) hurt #‎DemocracyIsMessy but tone policing is unhelpful at best and can actively support injustice and oppression.¹

If you don’t want people to talk crap about you when you’re dead, perhaps consider being less of a jerk when you’re still alive. #‎jiggerypokery²

Don’t tell me not to speak ill of the dead if you regularly speak ill of the still living³

Antonin Scalia was no angel⁴

But I get it. People are complex. No one is wholly evil or utterly good. But doing normal decent things that many civilized human beings would do certainly doesn’t negate the things you did that significantly harmed other people. #‎MysticalAphorismsOfTheFortuneCookie⁵

But right out of the gate, the GOP is demanding that President Obama not name a successor so that the next POTUS can do it.

There are 337 days until Inauguration Day.

The longest delay between nomination of a candidate for SCOTUS justice and a vote was 125 days, 100 years ago.

The longest vacancy was 835 days, during John Tyler’s presidency. Tyler was William Henry Harrison’s VP, running on the Whig party ticket. After Harrison died after catching pneumonia shortly after Inauguration Day, Tyler became president and tried to eviscerate his own party, with his cabinet eventually resigning, Tyler eventually getting thrown out of the Whig Party, and Congress trying to impeach him.

I’m not sure it’s valid to compare a popular two-term president with a guy who became president without ever being elected whom his own party hated.⁶

7 Things To Know About Presidential Appointments To The Supreme Court • 2016 Feb 14 • Domenico Montanaro • NPR

The GOP wanting to keep Scalia’s spot vacant until inauguration day is bullshit, but at least an eight justice court that can split 4-4 will end up working against them⁷

2016 Feb 16 • Tierney Sneed • Talking Points Memo

2016 Feb 14 • Michael Hiltzik • Los Angeles Times

Tim Cook refuses to build a backdoor in iOS for the FBI.

A Message to Our Customers • 2016 Feb 16 • Tim Cook • Apple

The thing is, a backdoor like this wouldn’t just help law enforcement. It would help whoever got their hands on the modified OS.

While I’m sure they would take extreme precautions to keep that from happening, I would not be surprised if it got out in the wild, leaving all our personal data wide open to unscrupulous forces.

Apple Opposes Judge’s Order To Help FBI Unlock San Bernardino Shooter’s Phone • 2016 Feb 17 • Marie Andrusewicz • NPR

While Ayn Rand’s writing is an exercise in sophistry trying to justify utter, base selflessness as the highest virtue, it is not only morally abhorrent, but it goes against what we know of human behavior.

This is what happens when you take Ayn Rand seriously • 2016 Feb 16 • Denise Cummins • PBS Newshour

Economists alternately find alarming and amusing a large body of results from experimental studies showing that people don’t behave according to the tenets of rational choice theory. We are far more cooperative and willing to trust than is predicted by the theory, and we retaliate vehemently when others behave selfishly. In fact, we are willing to pay a penalty for an opportunity to punish people who appear to be breaking implicit rules of fairness in economic transactions.

When the theory does not fit the evidence, do we (1) discard the theory or (2) discard the evidence? Randian Objectivism’s disregard for empirical evidence is an epistemological black hole from which the mind cannot escape.¹

If you reward assholery, then of course assholery will proliferate. Unfortunately, if you have too many assholes on board, it will destroy your company or your civilization or whatever collective endeavor you are futilely trying to run with a bunch of narcissists and sociopaths.²

We know from studies of human behavior that people generally don’t think very far ahead, and that they generally prefer immediate reward instead long-term reward.

Babies exhibit prosocial behavior.

People perform acts of altruism that kill them and do not benefit their kin.

So I am more inclined to believe that we are prewired to behave altruistically/prosocially and that most of us aren’t really calculating that far ahead.

Although I suppose one could still argue that the dopamine and oxytocin hit from doing something altruistically/prosocially is still selfish self-interest.³