Ashwin Mahadevan

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

I used to use em dashes all the time and now I've had to totally stop :(

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@warnerelliott60 @allie__voss Because you’re a medical professional??? The median female psychotherapist almost certainly knows more about how my penis works medically than I do; all I know is what it’s like to have one.

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@thenanyu Weirdly the reason is *because* it’s so unused. When the apps were created, you were almost certainly copying plaintext, so if you did have markup, you probably intended for it to be there.

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@BOENSAW This is the first “I’ve come up with a new fallacy” claim that I actually support, because like 90% of the other replies are making that exact mistake

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@typesfast Using these situations to support the dumbest policies in the world is absolutely a thing that happens here in Oakland, I just don’t see it happening in this article.

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@typesfast The article seems pretty mild tbh, the business owners all understand that this is a good thing for society. It’s an interesting situation as a pure economics case study; it’s only bad if they’re using it to argue for pro-crime policies.

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@trefinedAura @hecubian_devil Basically just vibes! I don’t know much about them and quick research didn’t come up with anything… I’d love to be shown to be wrong here if you have more info!

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@sebsharl Le Mans kinda already does this, they still have actual qualifying but for the race the drivers start outside their cars and literally sprint to get into them, so you have the same effect of “running faster = starting ahead”

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@hecubian_devil @trefinedAura American slavery was uniquely terrible in history, but is the same true of our prison systems? Like they’re really bad, but surely the gulags et al. were worse? If this is the explanation why isn’t prison abolition a thing in the former Soviet states?

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@dekabri91046268 @mattyglesias They’re actually not that rare, it’s almost cliché to put up a façade of intelligence by throwing diacritics into loan words that originally used them. Honestly, I think it’s pretty naïve of them.

This was pretty fun to write lol

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@intentionalisms My point is that the act of voting demonstrates caring about suffrage.

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@intentionalisms Voter turnout hovers ~50% in the US, do you think half of Americans are philosophers? Clearly at least half of Americans care about suffrage, even if they've never thought about the concept or heard the term.

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@intentionalisms Like yeah most people who *actively thought* about suffrage were philosophers, but the idea that most people who *cared* about suffrage were philosophers is so out of left field that I don't know how to respond.

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@intentionalisms I acknowledge that the historical record disagrees with me, but the collective historical record is organized primarily by historians and philosophers. These are two groups much more likely to think about a principled justification for voting than the average person. 2/

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@intentionalisms Sorry for being flippant -- we actually do have an interesting disagreement; I was expecting a normal Twitter interaction.

I don't think that a relevant fraction of people throughout history believe in voting because of their principles more than their outcomes. 1/

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@intentionalisms The existence of peaceful autocracies doesn’t mean voting isn’t a proxy for violence. It means that autocracy is an alternative to voting as a proxy for violence.

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@intentionalisms Your point that people used violence to obtain suffrage *supports* the idea that voting is a proxy for violence! They used violence until they were able to vote!

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@intentionalisms You’re right about it having nothing to do with suffrage, but voting absolutely is a proxy for violence; this is not debated among historians. It becomes way more obvious if you phrase it “political violence happens when people don’t believe that their vote matters”.

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@slayabidesd0tl @ANNVYSHINSKY I’m super down to redirect resources from prisons into better systems! But you can’t pretend murders wouldn’t still happen.

[Ashwin Mahadevan @shwin_m]

@slayabidesd0tl @ANNVYSHINSKY You’re going exactly what she did; “abolishing prisons would mean less murders” doesn’t answer the question “ok but what if someone still gets murdered?” unless you’re implying that there would be *literally zero* murders, which is equally stupid.