To Imane, pt 48

"what percent of families in lebanon own a car"

"what percent of families in china own a car"

"if Greta posts another image on Instagram about Lebanon without sharing the idea, it means that if Maya is interested in me, then I'm not interested in Greta"

This is the Maya who used to control the Chirp Club account @Mayyish, before she deleted it ~6 years ago.

The reasoning is simple. Greta posting images about Lebanon makes people think she cares about Lebanon. But if she knows about the idea, then she is not doing something that would help Lebanon. It suggests that she's dishonest. Since Maya is definitely from Lebanon, as she posted a picture of herself with a rifle on her back, which means she lived there, it's reasonable to think she does care about Lebanon and a thousand people there being killed.

The percent of families owning a car is evidence for Lebanon's general level of wealth. It's easier to understand that wealthy people would benefit from this idea than poor people: diminishing marginal utility of money. People joke about rich people sleeping on money and so on. (Or eating hamburgers with gold flakes, which is an actual product.)

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Update 23 Mar 2026, 14:28

Quick explanation: it doesn't really matter if wealthy people work or not. It's what people think that you SHOULD do: should people who have a lot of money still work hard? It might be hard to get people to answer this question, because they probably don't care what happens to people with a lot of money; they don't believe those people are working hard anyway, and so they are just as likely to give a dishonest answer which implies that what they believe rich people are doing is morally correct, as to give an honest answer which implies that they think rich people act immorally.

So the correct way to ask about this would be to ask divide people into a large number of real income categories (not percentile categories). Maybe even acknowledge gender differences. (Consider the poll that you never created, "you have to pick one gender to be treated worse. Which gender do you pick?") "How many hours do you think males aged 20 to 50 who have the following incomes should work per week?" $0 to $250k in increments of $10k.

The current belief is that people with high incomes should still work just as hard. The fact that they often do still work just as hard, despite the diminishing marginal utility of money, can be seen as a consequence of these societal (distinct from 'social', which could imply locality) attitudes: the increased time utility from working less is balanced by the social penalty that people impose on rich people who work less. So instead people work hard and buy expensive sports cars: at least somebody had to get paid to make those sports cars, right?