They use the cheapest model to try to lure customers in and upsell them. That is why it is not available online. They don't want to sell the SR; they are likely losing money on it.
I think you and 'ekianjo must have scrolled directly to "Entertainment" section and stayed there. Elsewhere, between space probes, military interceptors and radars, medicine (including IoT medicine; who thought it was a good idea?!) and glass floors on high towers, this article isn't very much about consumer culture.
(Unless you want to say that all those other things are just meant to create a stronger desire in visitors to buy the few things they can buy on this list; given my cynical view of advertising industry, I could believe in that.)
I am quite sure you are not aware of the issue here. We're talking about binding, or forced arbitration. Often times, people are unaware that they are being forced into arbitration, and when they are, it severely limits their legal recourse. There's little reason to support it, unless you're a huge company with liability concerns.
I'm really confused by a lot of what you said, but I agree with some of it.
When you say that these appeals to reason and logic are generally to protect the right from our left-going politics, I agree somewhat. When the right use this as an argument within political debate, IE, if someone presents a reasonable point, and they simply reject it on the basis of their emotionality or perceived lack of reason, they're no better than those that reject others' ideas out of hand because of their emotionality. I don't think the right using 'logic and reason' as a weapon is a sufficient basis to reject said logic and reason, though.
You seem to take the view that we have no control over our ability to practice rhetoric and argue with logic and reason, instead of ad hominem or other pointless attacks. So what are we to do? Call it politics and move on? I don't think you properly argue against this article. You say that your point doesn't lead to this all out hobbesian war, because...Syria? We should count ourselves lucky that instead of violence, we get to use verbal personal attacks?
I don't think your post is really all that at odds with this article. I think it'd be totally fine if you were to reject a point on the basis of moral repugnance, as long as that is stated in a reasonable way. If you reject a person on this basis, then there's a problem, right? If you simply reject anything Haidt has to say, then we get nowhere. If you reject one of his contentions on the basis of, well, something then great. That's how discourse is supposed to work. "come on" is a good example of rejecting an idea out of hand without reasoning.
You say that "Us vs Them" doesn't matter or is invalid because...the US is more right than the rest of the world? This us vs them thing, it doesn't really matter where on this spectrum you lie. Indeed this is not relegated to politics at all. The issue crops up when "we" reject "their" idea because it's "them" -- it does not make a difference whether "us" is the American left or the rest of the world's left. Or any other group. I do agree that the US has to reject our extremely right leaning politics, but it's possible the only way that we're going to be able to do that is, well, using logic and reason. What other alternative exists?
Apologies - the points are supposed to address specific takes in the article and as such they may not appear very connected. To clarify:
>We should count ourselves lucky that instead of violence, we get to use verbal personal attacks?
I'm arguing that power struggles have always been a thing and will always be. That we managed to establish a society where these mainly manifest in the form of political lobbying, social media arguments, street demonstrations, etc. instead of an all-out war is a good thing obviously, but it doesn't mean that people feeling marginalized won't do everything in their power to tip the balance of the struggle in their favor. And yes, this may degrade into personal attacks. I'm just pointing out that this has been the case forever, and banking on "my political opponents are wrong because they use ad hominems" is plain false at best, hypocritical at worst.
>If you reject a person on [a point], then there's a problem, right?
Not at all. Political views do not exist in the air. They are always associated with people, and they always carry tangible consequences for other people, who may react accordingly. If you think that my sexual orientation should be stigmatized and that I should have less rights than people with other sexual orientations, I will do everything in my power so that your views are ridiculed and shamed until I can display my sexuality and enjoy the same rights as other people's. If you think that the tech company you work at purposefully lowers the bar for women, thereby implying that women who were already hired by said company are not as skillful as men who were hired for the same job, I will take offense at that and do everything in my power so that people won't think I'm an unskilled impostor. If that leads to you being terminated, so be it. There's a difference between 'I feel you are misguided, but let's agree to disagree' and 'I feel you are threatening me and my rights'. From there, it does not matter whether you make some valid point elsewhere - I will not relent until the threat is gone. This is where argumentation stops and conflict starts.
>You say that "Us vs Them" doesn't matter or is invalid because...the US is more right than the rest of the world? This us vs them thing, it doesn't really matter where on this spectrum you lie. Indeed this is not relegated to politics at all. The issue crops up when "we" reject "their" idea because it's "them" -- it does not make a difference whether "us" is the American left or the rest of the world's left.
I simply reject the notion that people think in tribes when it comes to politics. The political spectrum in America is narrow, but many people hold diverse points of views in the fringe. The author laments the fact that she is depicted as right-wing, and then goes on to make a sort of condescending, wishy-washy-evopsychy point about people being unable to conceive of more than two ways of thinking ('ours' and 'theirs'), when the alternative I'm suggesting is simpler: she is right-wing, and I'm guided by the fact that the non-US world would agree with me.
About this 'logic and reason' thing: I believe we as humans are flawed, deeply irrational, and no amount of 'overcoming bias' is going to change that. If logic and reason came naturally to us, the entirety of mathematics would be trivial to everyone. As it turns out, many fields of advanced mathematics are utterly incomprehensible for everyone but a few dozen people in the world, and even rather elementary, engineering-oriented mathematics is still cryptic to all but a tiny minority of, well, engineers. The fact of the matter is, it is so hard to use logic and reason properly that it takes years of study backed up by millennia of research to even get acquainted with these elementary mathematics. How can we then pretend that we could reasonably put our minds in that same frame of thinking in other subjects, that are not only immensely more complex, but also much more emotionally charged? I believe we can't. To me, any appeal to 'logic and reason' is suspicious, as it is more indicative of someone unaware of their own flaws than any attempt at overcoming bias.
>What other alternative exists?
I don't have a proper answer to this question. Of course, we don't want to throw everything out of the window and become flat-earthers or something, but the question of informed decision/policy making as irrational agents will likely remain a hard problem for the centuries to come. Sometimes plain empiricism helps - just looking at historical precedents or other countries' policies may help guide one's decisions, but in many cases you only have, well, your gut feelings. And your rights to defend.
I did a lot of work on myself before I could even go seek out a therapist. When I did, I tried several different people (six IIRC) for a couple of sessions each until I found someone who seemed to be able to really help me. That helped a lot, but I was still suffering and had a hard time functioning. Then I attended a week-long seminar by Dr. Bandler, the "twenty minutes" I mentioned above happened on stage. I volunteered to participate in a demo and Bandler picked me. Subjectively I thought I was only up there for a few minutes. Someone else told me later that it was more like twenty minutes.
Anyhow, here are some NLP-specific sites to start to find a therapist. Good luck!
(Don't be put off by style, go for the substance.)
> What do you mean by "all our problems are basically psychological or spiritual"?
We have all the technology we need to supply all of our needs if we deploy it efficiently. The limiting factor is not physics. (I would say our problems today are spiritual, but my point is they're not physical.)
Quoting Bucky:
> It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a 'higher standard of living than any have ever known.' It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival.
> Think of it. We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody, and give every human on Earth a chance. We know now what we could never have known before - that we now have the option for all humanity to make it successfully on this planet in this lifetime. Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment.
> The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done - that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual.
I want to emphasize that Bucky was an engineer. These are statements backed by science and calculation.
> Why do we have to slog through crackpottery for insight?
The simple answer is that Mr. Nelson, the proprietor of Rex Research, has eclectic tastes.
The deeper answer is that it's not at all easy to tell the revolutionary from the ridiculous in every case.
A lot of these things are obviously stupid (fuel-from-water); some are obviously important (the silicon-nitrogen cycle of Plichta[1]); many are interesting but may not be economical (Aluminum Lamp[2]; FanWing[3]).
There may well be the next revolution lurking in the Rex Research database, and if so it probably looks like a deformed duck.
But anyway, we don't need more technology, we can apply what we've got to solve our problems (but we have lots more tech than we even know about.)
[3] "The FanWing looks like someone has put the blades of a combine harvester behind a helicopter cockpit and forgotten about the rest of the fuselage." http://rexresearch.com/fanwing/peebles.htm
I don't know. I'd assume they are only sold in countries where it's not common to have an oven. In the USA I've never seen a house or apartment that didn't have an oven included so if my experience matches reality than at least in the USA it doesn't seem like there would be any market.
What other countries is it not common to have an oven?
One top of that there is the issue that if it's not common to have an oven then it's also not common to cook things that would require an oven. So, I have no idea how common these ovens are in Japan in general. Given so many models by so many companies and given they can also be used as a microwave I'd kind of assume they are gaining in popularity. Foods that require an oven are also slowly getting more popular over time but I suspect it's still not common.
