You’re right and it depends largely on the framing. In a different setting I’d probably be for such a system of trust, in an Ivy League school my cynical view of it just seems more realistic to me.

The people who are studying at Princeton get told they are supposed to be the better than the others, are under constant pressure to perform and in an overall highly competitive environment. This is not an environment that builds trust, in my experience it builds distrust between competitors.

Trust to me should ideally be fostered in a system that encourages a collaborative environment, in which the students don’t surveil each other, but work together to achieve their goal of learning.

Short answer: yes!

This is all new to me and fascinating. If someone knows more, please correct me.

The way I understand it the system relies on students swearing on their honor not to cheat and then a system of self supervision (aka snitching). There is an honor committee that consists of students who make sure no one cheats, and who investigate cases where it is suspected. Additionally there seems to be a culture of snitching on each other, should anybody break code.

I guess this presupposes a culture of immens pressure and a zero sum game where collaboration between students is unthinkable because your peers are made out to be your direct competitors… sounds toxic as hell to me.

I recently read „The death of Ivan Iljych“ by Tolstoy. He asks the same questions about life that you do. Doesn’t really pose any concrete answer of course, I’d be shocked if there was an universal one, but maybe you can find something that helps you find your own in there.

I know a guy who works for Apple. Quite high up too. He has dreamed of working there all his life and just because Tim Cook decided to crawl up trumps ass he did not change his views one bit. He gets payed incredibly well, builds products that he is excited about and gets a lot of additional benefits. From his point of view I don’t really see any reason for doubt. He does exactly what he always wanted to be doing. I assume it’ll be like that for many of the guys working there.

The result is similar, but a casino will definitely care if you keep winning, because then their profit margins go down. If you keep winning at Roulette or always bet on the right horse the house will cut you off. Prediction markets don’t care. They make the same money wether you lose or win all of your bets, cause your winnings don’t come out of the pot that the house manages, they come directly out of the pocket of the people who took you up on your bet. At least that’s what they say…

There are rumors that polymarket etc also act like the house sometimes and take bets that no one wants to take. But atm I think those are not confirmed.

Wait until you hear that Trumps son (idk which of the shit gremlins) is working in an advisory role for Kalshi and Polimarket at the same time, making sure they will not get any issues with the government. It’s all fucked to hell.

Yeah, that’s the gist.

Watch this or that if you are interested to learn about the risks and financial fundamentals behind it all.

I get where you’re coming from, but the only ones that lose here are the suckers that think this is a fair game.

Predictionmarkets don’t work like a casino or sports betting. They are not the classic „house“ that you bet against in a casino, it’s more like a broker selling you futures on commodities. They earn their money via transaction fees for facilitating bets between people. So they win, no matter if the wager is rigged or not. This means that they probably don’t really care about it, or any other rigged bets at all. I would guess they might even like it, because every time there is a big article about some rigged bet like this, they get free press exposure.

Edited for clarity

So you have some kinda body guards on your „solo“ trip? Sounds wild

Mac Miller was probably the worst one… I’m a little younger than him and watching his career from early on felt like watching an older brother develop and making it big. He made the soundtrack to most of my youth.

Definitely a tragic one. RIP Danya

I think you’re onto something here, and I think it’s a feature, not a bug. The US have been at war the entire time since WW2, but they usually don’t have a draft. So they need to rely on different methods to motivate young men into becoming soldiers. An integral part of being a soldier is the use of violence to solve problems, usually to the point where you might be expected to kill. If your society sees violence and killing unacceptable you’re gonna have a hard time finding people who wanna sign up to do the killing for you. So you honor your veterans more than any other part of your population, you make movies and games about valiant soldiers fighting for the good cause and step by step you slowly manufacture a cultural climate that says killing and violence are legit means of achieving a goal, sometimes even necessary.

It‘s not one singular factor, like education or better mental health care or the group of people who own them. Sure, those are all important, but they only in part tackle the main underlying issue why people do these things. Young men (and nearly all mass shooters are young men) in american society are told that they are supposed to be achievers, they are supposed to get rich, be cool, have many friends, get a girl, get a house, get a fancy car and all the other status symbols. But most of them don’t see a way of achieving this, since it’s pretty unrealistic with how things are in capitalism. This tension between the life they want and some think deserve, and the life they actually lead is pretty tough to handle.

Most adjust their goals, or get into political activism, or hustle culture, or drugs or do whatever else to get over this perception of a stolen future. But a tiny group can’t get over it and they are angry at society for taking what they think is their rightful life from them. They usually find other people with similar resentments online, radicalise further, and at the end you have a tragedy. Guns aren’t even necessary, they just make it easier to hurt a lot of people in a short time span.

Now Switzerland isn’t socialist heaven, but there is in general a higher standard of living, better education, better mental health care and less demands for young men to become as rich as possible. There are also more strict checks when issuing guns than there are in some us states and strict rules about storage. So a 17 years old will be less likely to develop the toxic ideology needed to want to do something like a mass shooting, have a better safety net to deradicalise him and have a harder time getting the needed equipment.

This is obviously generalising a lot, so don’t take it as a universal answer, because there isn’t.

If I understand what you’re saying correctly we are largely on the same page about this… class mobility upward is almost impossible. Classes are usually discriminatory against other classes (sometimes even towards higher classes). This makes actual class mobility very hard. People have to mask as having always belonged to a certain class by acquiring the correct signifiers.

What I am not sure I agree with, or maybe I just don’t understand it, is the point about dimensions of class. People are more than just the job they do. An aristocrat who is living off inheritance has about the same amount of actual working experience that a low class individual who can’t get a job has. They both don’t work, but since the aristocrat has a bunch of capital which the low class person doesn’t have they are on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Idk why you were getting those downvotes. I’ll check out Fussel if I get the chance.

Not saying caste system is better, both are terrible. We should strive to abolish both.

But to your point about class mobility: You can always move down in class, up is neigh impossible. Thinking that money will help you move up is only a carrot that the upper class dangles in front of the poor. Class is not only determined by wealth, it is determined by capital. Capital encompasses not only financial and economic capital, but also social capital, intellectual capital, cultural capital, etc. To move up in class you will have to acquire enough of all of these, just money isn’t enough. If you don’t have the same manners, vocabulary, friends, status symbols and don’t consume the the same media you will never be accepted and only be considered a nouveau rich and a gaudy buffoon. Your lifestyle will be better than that of the rest of your class, but the higher class will never accept you as one of their own. Your kids might be able to move up, if you put them in the right school so they can absorb some of that social capital and learn the language, acquire the correct manners and make the right friends. But you will very likely be forever stuck in the same class that you were born in, unless you move down.

There is a Philosopher called Hanno Sauer who wrote a book about this. I don’t agree with his conclusion that we cannot overcome class, but he does make some good points about its nature.

Happy birthday haha

The article doesn’t call the dead woman the client of her boyfriend, it calls the boyfriend the client of the defence attorney.

Shit will basically work by itself, we just gotta give it a little push.

The Sacklers handled the opioids already and China is supplying plenty of fentanyl… Even the bio-warfare is bound to be more effective than before with all the antivaxxers over there.

Fair enough, those are good points. In principle I agree with both of you. I just think that all of these factors are secondary to the right geographical and meteorological conditions. There are plenty of countries that have the capacity to invest, but don’t care about medals at the Winter Olympics because they don’t have a culture in winter sports because they don’t have proper winters.

I also think the example of Italy vs Spain was not ideally chosen to make the argument.

We’re splitting hairs here… infrastructure will obviously only be where good winter conditions are. If no one considers your conditions good for winter sports they won’t come/invest so there will be less infrastructure.

Also, if you’ve never seen real ice outside, you’re less likely to get really into hockey or skating or bobsledding.

You are correct that there are also factors like culture, heritage in winter sports, infrastructure, financial backing, etc. But those are all dependent on having good mountains and winters in the first place. Northern Italy has them, Spain not so much.

Edit: To make a better case for your argument you could have picked a Caucasus Nation. Azerbaijan have great mountains with lots of snow, but are way less successful because of lack in funding, infrastructure and a culture around winter sports.