Not sure why you're getting downvoted. I've definitely seen behind-the-front-seats screen ad placement and other weird things in ride shares in the U.S. so this doesn't seem out of the question.

I remember seeing one of these

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galton_board

at the (I think) Boston Science Museum when I was a kid. They have some pretty cool videos on Youtube if you're curious.

A blind person does not have the necessary input (sight data) to make the necessary computation. A car autopilot would.

So no we do not deem a blind person to be unintelligent due to their lack of being able to drive without sight. But we might judge a sighted person as being not generally intelligent if they could not drive with sight.

> "Use cash, and offline tablet or nothing at all,"

Why would I have to use cash if I gave up my smartphone?

Well at the point you give up your phone you are already inches away from having near zero location data brokers can purchase, if you also use cash.

Pretty great privacy win on top of the mental health wins.

> "In some schools of Buddhism, the tradition was to live with only one bowl and one spoon. The practice was to beg daily... "

Interesting. So the practice of (these schools) of Buddhism requires that there be non-Buddists?

It requires that there be people who aren’t monks, as monks are the ones out begging. Lay people can own lots of stuff, such as houses, hence the term “householders” to mean lay people in Buddhist literature.

This assumes that poor people's attention is liquid and can readily be turned to cash whenever they please.

It doesn't matter how much you think my attention is "really worth". If I want the service now, have no cash, but can pay with my attention, I am strictly more enabled than if the service only accepts cash.

I make no assumption there.

The fork between (1), (2) is how much cash their attention is actually turned into.

To put it another way: what's the attention of a poor person really worth, in dollars? Answer is always less than or equal to the amount they can spend.

The comment you were responding to said that the free tiers were a boon for the poor and you responded that they (under the fork of interest) "left poor people poorer".

I mean I supposed every transaction leaves someone poorer of something and richer in something else. I'm not sure of the point though.

I concede that if the ad companies are willing to forgo collecting X dollars in exchange for showing you an ad then it must be worth >=X dollars to the ad company for the person to see the ad.

But it remains true that the poor person has no way to convert their attention directly into X dollars, and all that taking away the free tier does is make it so that someone who would have made a trade (of their attention for a service) cannot do so.

> "Personally, keeping chickens has almost completely put me off empathy with them. Roosters are assholes. Into the pot with you."

What a relief that we don't generally take this policy toward asshole humans.

At any rate, it's one thing to eat one asshole chicken and another to systematically farm asshole chicken to be killed.

What do you mean, in many places around the world we kill people society or state considers assholes, including US.

Then we can discuss where is the cutoff line for enough assholishness to go for a slaughter and where something less severe, but practice is here and not going anywhere.

> " in many places around the world we kill people society or state considers assholes, including US."

Not really the same as systematically bringing into existence a species with behaviors you find objectionable, keeping them in your proximity so you can experience said behaviors, and then slaughtering them with the excuse that they are all assholes is it?

> "Then we can discuss where is the cutoff line for enough assholishness to go for a slaughter"

When you say that roosters cross this line do you mean with respect to their behavior towards you? I'm guessing this can't be that bad since you're much more powerful than they?

Or do you mean towards other chickens? If so, and if it's really that bad, then surely the best thing is to just not bring them into existence in the first place (not systematically breeding them with the intent of slaughtering them)?

Why did you stop freelancing?

I wanted to play the start-a-business lottery. After enough success selling your time, you might feel the urge to try your luck selling other things

I have twice attempted to make a Grubhub account and twice failed to solve their long battery of puzzles.

Tangentially related: I've always wanted to write a hello the address that they show during the opening credits of MST3K. Has anyone tried?