#Immediate Gratification

[ceevee5]

[omegaphilosophia]

The Relationship Between Temporal Discounting and Ethics

Temporal discounting is a cognitive phenomenon where people tend to value immediate rewards more highly than future ones. This tendency to devalue rewards as they move further into the future has significant implications for decision-making, especially in the context of ethical behavior and moral reasoning. Understanding how temporal discounting influences ethical choices can shed light on why individuals might prioritize short-term gains over long-term ethical principles and the broader impact on society.

Understanding Temporal Discounting

Temporal discounting is the preference for smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed ones. It is a well-documented phenomenon in psychology and behavioral economics, reflecting how individuals often struggle with self-control and long-term planning. The degree to which individuals discount future rewards can vary, with some showing a stronger preference for immediacy than others.

Ethics and Temporal Discounting

Immediate Gratification vs. Long-term Consequences: Ethical decisions often involve weighing immediate benefits against long-term consequences. For instance, cheating on a test may provide immediate academic success but can undermine personal integrity and trust in the long run. Temporal discounting can lead individuals to prioritize immediate gratification, ignoring the ethical implications of their actions over time.

Environmental Ethics: Temporal discounting significantly impacts environmental ethics. Decisions that favor short-term economic benefits, such as overfishing or deforestation, can have devastating long-term environmental consequences. Ethical considerations require valuing the future health of the planet and the well-being of future generations, which temporal discounting can undermine.

Financial Ethics: In financial contexts, temporal discounting can explain why individuals might engage in unethical behaviors like fraud or embezzlement to gain immediate financial rewards. These actions can lead to severe long-term repercussions, including legal consequences and damaged reputations, highlighting the ethical tension between short-term gains and long-term integrity.

Health and Well-being: Health-related decisions are also influenced by temporal discounting. For example, indulging in unhealthy behaviors for immediate pleasure can lead to long-term health problems. Ethical decision-making in this context involves recognizing and valuing the future health consequences of present actions.

Public Policy and Governance: Policymakers often face ethical dilemmas where short-term political gains are weighed against long-term societal benefits. Temporal discounting can lead to policies that favor immediate results, such as tax cuts or deregulation, while neglecting the long-term ethical considerations of economic stability and social welfare.

Addressing Temporal Discounting in Ethical Decision-Making

Education and Awareness: Increasing awareness about the effects of temporal discounting can help individuals recognize their biases and make more informed ethical decisions. Education programs that highlight the long-term consequences of actions can encourage a more future-oriented perspective.

Incentive Structures: Designing incentive structures that reward long-term ethical behavior can counteract the effects of temporal discounting. For example, offering financial incentives for sustainable practices or long-term health goals can align immediate rewards with ethical principles.

Cognitive Behavioral Strategies: Techniques such as mindfulness and cognitive behavioral strategies can help individuals manage impulsive tendencies and consider long-term consequences more effectively. These strategies can support ethical decision-making by reducing the impact of temporal discounting.

Policy Interventions: Governments and organizations can implement policies that promote long-term ethical behavior. For example, regulations that enforce environmental protections or corporate governance standards can help mitigate the influence of temporal discounting on unethical practices.

The relationship between temporal discounting and ethics underscores the challenges individuals face in balancing immediate desires with long-term ethical principles. By understanding this cognitive bias and its implications, we can develop strategies to promote ethical decision-making that values future consequences. Whether through education, incentive structures, cognitive strategies, or policy interventions, addressing temporal discounting is crucial for fostering a more ethically responsible society.

[daylerogers]

There's Wisdom In Waiting

Rain had been threatening most of the day, and as the temperature dropped, the wind picked up. The wedding ceremony was planned for an outdoor venue, covered by a roof with the sides open to all of surrounding nature. As the bride walked down the aisle, her veil blew around her, like a cloud framing her beauty. Those watching shivered in the wind, but the bride and groom were focused only on…

[kdmiller55]

The Grass Is Always Greener…

1 Now the people of Reuben and the people of Gad had a very great number of livestock. And they saw the land of Jazer and the land of Gilead, and behold, the place was a place for livestock. 2 So the people of Gad and the people of Reuben came and said to Moses and to Eleazar the priest and to the chiefs of the congregation, 3 “Ataroth, Dibon, Jazer, Nimrah, Heshbon, Elealeh, Sebam, Nebo, and…

[hinamie]

noir

[ask-whitepearl-and-steven]

When exactly will we see Lapis and Peridot again?

You'll see them on 2025, August 21st, 6:03PM PST exactly.

[leverage-ot3]

[catwyk]

i need some silt body horror to draw and the only thing i can think of is the miracle of the sailors from season 1 (ty possum for putting this in my head weeks ago) but i think drawing a boat would kill me

[girlsdads]

i hate looking at the big picture i want good things for daniel nowwwwww [stomps feet]

[i-still-mask-because]

i still mask because i am immunocompromised and i want to live. i have been through so much in my life that the trauma never gives me a moment of peace, ive been suicidal for as long as i can remember, my future is bleak and uncertain even now, and i still want to live. i still value my disabled life even if nobody else does. there is love, joy, pleasure, kindness, and creation still left out there for me to find and i intend to find it. there is a better world still possible and i want to be here to help build it.

i still mask because masking my face allows me to unmask as an autistic person! i no longer have to constantly police myself to make sure i make the right facial expressions, especially at work and places where it might endanger me. unless it's too hot i like to choose creative designs to wear over my N95, and in that way i get to choose the face i show to the world. it soothes my dysphoria and gives me control over how i am perceived. i get to escape from technological surveillance in a way that others around me don't know they can too.

and masking allows me to be a safe person to other people whose lives depend on it too. every time i lock eyes with the only other person masking in any given room, i feel hope and relief, and i hope they feel it too even if we never speak or see each other again. we can't always save each other but we can try, and in doing so we can be a reminder to each other that all our lives have value, we all deserve so much more, and we're not alone in our loneliness. regardless of the outcome, we embrace each other's humanity by acting in kindness and solidarity.

masking empowers and frees me to move through the world in a way that honors the value of my own life and the lives of others, and opens up new possibilities of self-expression and self-defense for me. it's one of the bricks we can lay to build that better world. it's not easy but i am proud to do it.

😷

[pigeon-sponge]

wife sketchdump

[radlymona]

The thing I find fascinating about Rhaenyra this episode is that the more caged she is, the bolder she becomes - in kissing Mysaria and flying out to meet Seasmoke. It’s funny that it’s this episode’s Rhaenyra that feels the most like early season 1 Rhaenyra, as this is the first time in over a decade that she doesn’t enjoy a comparatively higher level of freedom than other noble woman. I think while ruling as Princess of Dragonstone, she was able to “ignore” her secondary status as a woman. The war made her remember and that makes her feel like the young girl stuck in the Red Keep who resorts to sneaking out into Flea Bottom to see what the world is really like

[headspacedad]

AI and the Red Delicious Apple

If you’re reading this you’re pretty much already on the anti-AI bandwagon when it comes to its promise to steal our written works and then regurgitate them in strung-together, passably readable form in order to replace us.  You’ve seen the same, very valid, arguments against letting this happen that I have and the same, also very valid, warnings.  There is no human reason a computer should be doing something humanity has done with pleasure and without prompting, for enjoyment alone, all the way back to the beginning dusty start of time - unless you want to strip the humans out of the equation and make a profit that way, which is what this is about.  I’m preaching to the choir when I say this is far and away beyond the Bad of a Bad Idea.  What I haven’t seen mentioned though is how this is going to effect the other side of the equation.  Not the creators of art -

the receivers of it.

Once upon a time, not that long ago, in the 1880s, a farmer had a rouge plant pop up in his apple orchard.  He uprooted it but the next year it was back.  He got rid of it again and, again, it came back.  Finally, he did the sensible thing and just let the plant grow.  Sure enough, it popped out apples after a time and he entered those apples in a tasting contest - because.... those were a thing back in Ye Olden Times apparently.  Anyway, wham bam thank you ma’am! They won the contest and the taste buds of the judges.  In short order the Apples, known as Stark Delicious, hit the stores and became an overwhelming favorite across the US.  They lived up to their name for sure and soon became known as Red Delicious Apples.  Farmers everywhere focused in on one type of apple and one type of apple alone as the demand for them surged.  Everyone wanted Red Delicious and so that’s what everyone planted.  Here’s the thing though.  Uniformity is king in situations like this and, instead of more Red Delicious apple trees leading to more variety, it actually led to more uniformity.  The ‘off parts’ of the apples were bred out, unattractive yellow streaks in their color, the thin skin that let them bruise easier during shipping, all the unattractive parts were left by the wayside.  Red Delicious apples soon looked as good as they tasted.  

Except - they didn’t really taste that good anymore. 

It turns out that in breeding them for uniformity and looks dropped the factors that gave them their flavor as well.  In time, every apple was a carbon copy of the apple before it and the end result was mushy flavorless thick skinned, albeit pretty, looking apples.  These days, consumers hardly touch them and farmers have started uprooting their Red Delicious in favor of Gala and the like.  Nobody liked Red Delicious anymore because there’s nothing left of what once made them delicious.

AI regurgitates what its been fed.  When its fed variety it regurgitates, to some extent, variety.  It’s intended to put the human oddities out of business, so to speak and take its place.  To turn out polished, pretty things to appeal to people’s tastes.  And, after a while, when humanity is out of the picture, it will only have other AIs to feed off of.  In time, the variety in its cannibalization will continue to narrow down as the stories become more and more alike as nothing new gets put in, as it simply tells the same ten stories, then the same five stories, than the same three over and over again.  Until its just the same words, strung together differently, with the same theme, the same character, the same half-nonsense story.  Until the inside of that story, that piece of art, that movie are all the same mealy, uninteresting mush that every other one is.  The yellow streaks and the thin skin of humanity phased out along with any hint of flavor.  The profitability will dry up as even the most spoon-fed, computer worshipers demand better.  Humanity will pick up where it left off, figuring out how to tell its own stories, paint its own art, sing its own songs and entertain its neighbors again.  Art is intrinsic to humans.  We always find our way back to it.

But the damage to the creative world in the meantime will be like a nuclear winter.  And who knows how long it will take generations raised on ‘Red Delicious’ apples to realize there are better flavors out there.

PS - nobody pushing for AI art right now cares that its not long term sustainable or that it won’t always be profitable.  It will make them money now.  The future they ruin will be someone else’s problem.  They know that.  

They’ve always known that.

[carnationhes]

a little (extremely unfinished) piece of smth that I’ve been working on! I lov tennis

[squwhims]

Guys idk I feel like so much of the album is not going to be a surprise to me (since I already know Šta Bih Ja, Carpe Diem, Bluza, Everybody's Waiting, and technically Sonce from that one instagram post (But I only listened to that once and don't remember it well). I wanted more surprise from the album.

[leverage-ot3]

okay I’ve seen a lot of posts about sterling just being crowley and. guys. the implications just hear me out 😭😭😭

bending lore slightly here BUT let’s say crowley’s body was once inhabited by a human and crowley is possessing the body (maybe he kills the initial inhabitant bc he doesn’t care)

but he still has the guy’s memories. he doesn’t bother keeping up appearances with his ‘ex wife’ because he is too busy building up his hell empire. BUT for some reason he can’t quite identify, he still feels something towards his ‘daughter’. he lets the divorce happen and doesn’t feel the need (or desire) to fight for custody, but he can never quite forget her, to cast her out of his mind for good

some hijinks ensue with the leverage team. it’s mostly because even a grind culture demon wants some off time every once in a while, and for him the insurance investigator stuff is more of a hobby. interacting with the leverage crew is very low stakes for him, and honestly, quite amusing. they aren’t on his level power-wise, but that ford character gives him the mental exercise he hasn’t experienced in, well, he can’t even remember

he can feel their frustration and anger when they learn he has become employed by interpol and feeds off it. it’s great, and relaxing in a way he is never able to achieve while conducting hell-related business

one year he gets wind that olivia is in a really bad situation associated with his ‘ex wife’s’ new husband. he’s selling vital hardware to terrorists, and while that might actually be the kind of chaos he would normally support or be entertained by as the king of hell, something feels wrong about letting olivia stay anywhere near that man

he calls upon the body’s adversaries. he wouldn’t admit it, even under duress, BUT he feels slightly fond of them. nate for the three dimensional chess they play, sophie for her ability to charm and disguise, parker for her chaos and slightly unsettling nature (it’s the autism swag and being bad with human interaction but he doesn’t know that lol), hardison for his unapologetic intelligence and eliot for his hardened violent past and take-no-shit persona (he’s fun to tease)

they perform exactly as he expected, right into his carefully crafted plan. and then olivia is under his care and things get more complicated. he keeps her FAR, FAR away from anything related to the supernatural (heh). no one can find out about her, ESPECIALLY not those imbecile hunter brothers (if for nothing else than the embarrassment in revealing he has a weak spot)

not sure how to work it into this post but I also want to add that somewhere along the way he develops feelings for nate and sophie. the frame up job is near and dear to my heart and you can’t convince me that isn’t fighting as flirting behavior. his interpol persona is more of a side hustle so to speak, but he finds it fun (relaxing, even) to fill that role. there aren’t any obligations of other demons, bothersome hunters, or anything like that. nate and sophie are low stakes, except, they aren’t, really. they make him feel things he can’t ever really remember feeling. his heart beats fast when sophie sat in his lap and cradled his face, his hands sweat when nate gives him that certain smug look. he’s exasperated by the way they can run circles around him like no one else has ever before. they annoy him and get under his skin in a way no one else can and it’s infuriating. but also not, at the same time. maybe he likes it

and then the long goodbye job happens

hear me out and suspend your belief here for a second, because I can’t remember if crowley supernaturally knows when ppl die/are dead or not.

so nate is in interpol custody and the interviewer is obviously out of her depth. (most people are, when it comes to nathan ford.) he walks in and pours the man a drink, but he’s fuming. somewhere along the way he came to care about the team. hell and suffering is literally in his (official) job description, but he can admit (only to himself) that he admires what they do. it’s not for him, not anything close to where his passions and interests lie, but he respects their drive and purpose. he is also aware enough to acknowledge that they are a family, a group of misfits that never belonged quite anywhere except to each other.

and nate fucking blew it up, ruined it, because his vice is being so obsessed with the end game that he is apparently willing to let his team, his family, the people that anchor him to reality, die because the ends supposedly justify the means.

not this time. not to sterling crowley

he is enraged. he can admit within the confines of his mind that he cares for nate, for sophie, even for the other three (though nate and sophie have somehow made it a hierarchy where they are more important to him. which he will dissect later in private. maybe.)

nate let them die, he let sophie die, and for what? the black book? hell below, crowley would have made things easier somehow, if he knew that this was where nate’s sights had lied. he would have prevented this somehow. he wants to have prevented this. he doesn’t want any of them dead and is too afraid to check and verify because that would make it real. the idea of sophie (or any of them) somehow making it to hell instead of heaven would probably break something in him he might not be able to reapir fully.

he yells at nate- he’s angry. hellfire burning in his heart because everything is ruined. the deaths aside (however hard it is to set them aside in his mind), nate will not recover from this, not ever. this will be the start of the end, he is sure. a miserable, guilt-ridden existence where he drinks himself to death and nothing will save him. it plays out in crowley’s mind in a thousand different ways that are beyond painful to conceptualize, even in theory.

the story starts to unravel and there is a game afoot. a solemn, miserable, infuriating game because the con is still in session because parker is alive and in the building- which sets another fire alight in his chest. ‘parker even know you got hardison killed?’ he rages for her grief when she finds out. he knows it will double when she finds out eliot has perished, too, because he isn’t fucking blind.

but nate is a brilliant man, lest he forget too quickly. they are all alive, and somehow still the entire crew slips through his fingers. he’s not even angry (he never would have been- he doesn’t actually try too hard to catch them. it’s about the game, not the consequences). he lets them keep the black book because he’s fucking exhausted and honestly, they more than earned it.

‘now we’re even. tell sophie to drive carefully’. they will never be even, not really. crowley would never admit or agree that being human is the superior state of being, but that have made him feel human in a way he doesn’t actually mind. they keep him on his toes and match him in a way unique to them, they remind him that there are other things than the realm of hell. not necessarily bigger than hell, but maybe just as important in a different sense.

watching the van drive away, something inside him settles. when he walked into the interrogation room that day he thought this was the beginning of the end. it’s not the end at all, not an end to anything. it’s a continuation of their story. maybe, he thinks, a beginning to a new era in it