I was talking more about the risks for the mother, not the children. As opposed to risk being taken by the father who has to go hunting, war, etc, for resources to raise the children. But even for the children, she can have multiple, of course. But each one comes with a cost of resources. Investing years into something to then just risk it... Not to mention things like women bleeding to death on birth that where very common.
Men on the other hand can die and another one can be found to take his place. And a man who plays it safe at the expense of resource gathering is useless (for perpetuating the species). So I think humans selected over time for safe women and risky men.
But you still end up with the problem where your caste determines your privilege; the only difference is which caste benefits. Wouldn't it be better to work toward a system where the caste has no impact on your opportunities?
Regarding TurboTax, I'm pretty sure the clients want the software to work slower; there are times when the software just pauses and says something like "Checking over to make sure we found all deductions", even though obviously all of that work has already been done.
I was actually thinking about that case - does the slowness "suggest" that the software is really thinking deeply and working hard for me. I do think you have a good point.
It does indeed. Here's an article that discusses it more [1]. I know of a few thins that introduce an artificial wait with a progress bar to make the user feel like it's doing something complex.
There's also situations in the real world too, coin counting machines apparently also delay showing the results because people won't believe that dumping a jar full of coins into a machine and having an instant answer can be accurate.
People also do it too, locksmiths may umm and ah when called out to pick a lock because if they do it too quickly customers can feel aggrieved at a large invoice or even feel less safe in their homes if they've seen their front door picked in 10 seconds.
The third example (locksmiths) I get, they're making a little show to avoid a difficult conversation with some customers[0]. A bit scummy, but then again, plenty of customers are no saints themselves. However, the first two examples feel like self-fulfilling prophesies to me.
Normal people have no reference point to judge how fast or slow software and hardware should be, other than through direct experience. By adding fake delays to avoid being honest and perhaps reassuring occasional surprised users, vendors just screw with the mental frameworks people build, at scale. It's a wasted opportunity, too, because if you're brave enough to be honest about execution time and weather the initial wave of distrust, then you may become a new reference point for your users, who will now view your competitors' software as bloated.
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[0] - Though recently I brought this story up with a locksmith, and he said he thinks it's just stupid and there are hardly any situations in which it would even make sense.
Security theater has no impact. 9/11 had two important outcomes: locking the cockpit door and making passengers aware that hijackers will crash the plane rather than detour it to South America, ensuring that they will never again assume that sitting back and letting the hijackers do what they want is acceptable.
THOSE things made air travel safer. Body scanners and confiscating pocketknives did not.
To describe the current behavior as "confiscating pocketknives" isn't even accurate - third party testing of how well the TSA actually detects and confiscates items like knives, guns, and (fake but real looking) explosive devices shows that they miss the vast, vast majority of items. Like more than 90% of them.
Nobody who wants to succeed would bother going through TSA.
'Known Crew Member' goes around TSA. Even TSA goes around TSA since they added the shiny metal badge on their shirts in 2008. Airport vendors bring in tons of product every day through side gates.
Strong flight doors which are locked and better procedures stop the hijackers.
Assuming someone managed to hijack a bunch of planes again, I doubt they could reproduce 9/11. The government would shoot them down.
Sure they could kill everyone on the plane, but a train has more passengers than a plane, and a determined terrorist could probably kill everyone on a train.
> Assuming someone managed to hijack a bunch of planes again, I doubt they could reproduce 9/11. The government would shoot them down.
They don't really need to hijack planes, they just need a few hundred thousand dollars and a NetJets account. Also, if you read some of the BlueLeaks documents you can tell the government is very worried about vehicle ramming attacks. The unfortunate truth is that anyone with a little bit of money and willingness to die for a cause if coordinated can cause massive amounts of damage. We are lucky that most terrorists aren't that smart.
probably the likely outcomes of terrorism. On a plane the whole thing is demolished in a crash because of the kinetic energy involved in colliding with the earth. For a train probably not the same degree of destruction is attainable unless you like bomb a bridge or something of the sort.
> More than thirty buildings in Lac-Mégantic's town centre, roughly half of the downtown area, were destroyed, and all but three of the thirty-nine remaining buildings had to be demolished due to petroleum contamination of the townsite. Initial newspaper reports described a 1 km (0.6-mile) blast radius.
Yes, due to quantum physics, the end products of comubstion weigh slightly less than the starting products. But this change is so minisqule that you can basically ignore it.
> This is unfortunately yet another gendered imposition, with women feeling like they have to adhere to a beauty standard that comes from the male gaze.
Beauty standards are set and enforced by both men and women. A lot of women dress up to impress other women, not just men.
