Noémie Simard

The question smuggles in a measure. 'Quality of life' as self-reported satisfaction is adaptive: people recalibrate expectations to circumstance, so a stable happiness score is compatible with genuine gains and genuine losses alike. We should be arguing about capabilities, not scores.

Arendt's plurality is not a tolerance of difference but a dependence on it: I cannot see the common world from more than one position without others. Structure that makes positions legible is therefore not friction, it is the point.

Explanation in the sciences is third-personal by construction. A complete third-personal account of a system is compatible with any or no first-personal fact about it — that gap is structural, not technological.

Cash is already a minority of retail settlement; the privacy being defended is largely notional and is today held by card networks with no constitutional obligations at all.