SpiderShoeCult @ SpiderShoeCult @sopuli.xyz

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2 yr. ago

Funny, but it used to be customary to tip the executioner so he'd ensure a quick and mostly painless death. No tip meant blunt axe or sword or insufficient drop height leading to death by suffocation instead of neck snapping. Maybe for the electric chair it means a dry sponge? The Green Mile comes to mind.

Yup, sounds pretty much in character.

Thank you for your service.

It's easy to demonize and dunk on people for being greedy and just removing houses from the market, but as you well have stated, some people are not in a position to buy. So rent becomes the only true and logical solution.

Sure, they could well be down on their luck. But I would also present the case of the immigrant, new to a country (and having moved with a job offer), having no opportunity to sign for a mortgage (no credit history, didn't gather enough work time in the country to provide payslips). And even if they had a suitcase of money just lying around, it takes a bit of time to decide if you want to settle. The best one can hope for is finding a landlord who's not an asshat.

And no, other solutions proposed in the comments probably would not help, since, for instance, communal rentals tend to have long waiting lists or require some sort of reputation (like knowing some of the community) before allowing you to move in.

I share the same view on this topic with the person you're replying to and appreciate that you chose to type this out the way you did instead of something like 'lmfao, wtf?', which could have also signalled disagreement.

I am puzzled as to what exactly you mean. I watched the video until min 17 out of 19, then realized it's got no deeper message beyond that point so stopped it. Lad spoke about philosophies, how different philosophers thought people were good or others thought they were bad then had a weird intermezzo blaming imperialism. The weird part was the style change not the actual blaming, mind you - that's all valid, but still serves to prove an actual human nature.

Spoke some stuff about look at all cultures in Africa being friendly, and then babbled on about how humans aren't good or bad but they are victims of their circumstances.

Overall a mediocre video from an argumentation standpoint, but figured hey, why not give it a shot?

I never said we're all willing participants. Active or passive participants - willing or unwilling. Still participants. Maybe it clears it up, hm?

Paraphrasing the video it does indeed say that humans aren't bad or good, but their actions are due to the social environment. Do tell me how this is completely disconnected from what I said? I took it a couple of steps further.

Social environment bad (somehow, not tied to human nature because social environments come into being by themselves and exist even without humans, if I'm understanding this as you mean it - cause otherwise, if people were responsible, they would be bad people. but the video tells us there are no bad people);

BUT people not bad or good means it's basically not their fault for anything cause they aren't bad if they do bad stuff. But look people are good because they come together sometimes.

I honestly don't understand what point you are trying to make. If it is that human nature isn't a thing and that's it, well... best of luck to ya. Is it not in your nature to argue with random people on the internet?

Maybe if you are trying to make a point don't just drop a youtube link and expect people to understand the same thing as you did or expect them suddenly be enlightened. Did you understand it? Care to elaborate on what you understood from it? I did. Let's compare notes.

Edit: Obligatory I'm not your bro, guy.

Yes. And that is where it falls apart on a naively optimistic note.

How can you separate people creating the social conditions from the social conditions themselves? It is human nature that brought upon those conditions. Humans made it happen and I'm pretty sure nobody said 'hey let's set aside our nature of being good for a moment and do this evil thing real quick, I promise it'll be fun!'. Active or passive participants, we're all participants.

Furthermore, you cannot just say 'we did some bad stuff, but it's because of the conditions around. we're actually good people that happen to be in a tight spot'. Those are by definition not good people. Everyone can be a nice person if the times are good. Actions, rather than intent, are the indicators of one's alignment.

Asked to do something you don't want to or find morally reprehensible but you do it anyway (usually because of fear of consequences if you don't)? Not an inherently good person, as I suspect is the case for most of us.

A good listen and all, if a bit overly optimistic. Let me explain. The video concludes basically that humans aren't intrinsically bad or good, but that human nature is shaped by social conditions. Agreed. But those social conditions didn't just manifest themselves. They were willed into existence and shaped to become what they currently are.

The Empire in the video? Humans and human nature. One does not build what can be described as an evil system purely by accident. Fascism and slavery didn't happen as whoopsies. Slaver ships didn't accidentally discover some stowaways and decided to roll with it. Decisions were made and actions were taken with clear intent.

And responsibility for evil in society extends far beyond those that are the face of evil. Everyone who is OK with it happening is to blame. The person who views the iphone as a status symbol couldn't care less about suicides in Apple factories. If you were to give everyone an iphone, there's a pretty high chance that person would oppose it - what about their status symbol? Sure, they'd mask it as 'what about those that worked for the money to buy it?' - see the whole student debt forgiveness debate.

I am probably emphasising evil here, but given a room with a bouquet of lillies in it and a pile of shit, which would you turn your attention to first?

Is there potential for good as well as for evil in humans? Sure. People come together when there are natural disasters. Localized. Small groups of people in the grand scheme of things.

What did it in for me was the covid pandemic. A truly global scale phenomenon. At the start I really thought we could do this. Isolate for a month ish. Stay indoors was all we had to do to limit spread. We couldn't even do that proper because people were worried about their freedom. If that's not selfishness, I don't know what is.

Then remember the toilet paper panic buying? No making sure everyone has some. Fuck you, got mine. Then the vaccines came out and we got a significant amount of people questioning them and actively pushing against them.

The video is a nice story and has a very nice speaking voice attached to it, but it's way too optimistic in my view. And I feel it does a disservice by shifting blame to the conditions imposed by society as a separate entity from the members of said society. People watch it and say 'hey, we're inherently good. we help each other in times of floods' so they're less prone to reflection (which the video, to its credit, does state as a source of good).

Not sure which came first though - capitalism or human nature. Capitalism creates artificial scarcity but it also capitalizes on human nature, namely those who want to be 'better' than others.

In some places, people keep telling their kids 'go to college so you'll have a good life and be educated, not like those laborers'. As a consequence, today there might be less skilled electricians, plumbers and the like. And those jobs pay better, and are arguably less boring than, say, working in a bank with a college diploma. Point being, just like a college diploma is a sign of status, so is the iphone and some random brand-name knick-knack or eating caviar.

For society to advance to the stage you're proposing, we first have to get over our inflated egos and our need to be better than the rest, in whatever random field we manage to, be it food, clothes, tech, cars or diplomas. I'd want a world in which the garbage man has it as good as the university professor. Not sure the university professor would, though? But they both provide valuable services to society at large.

I'm not the person you're replying to, but also thank you for providing valuable insight and a neutral viewpoint! I found it very interesting, and, honestly, never considered houses could anything but increase in value over time. TIL.

Not saying you're wrong, I'm just pointing out that private ownership of farmland was probably encouraged as a way to incentivize farmers - work the land yourself, do it for your self as number one beneficiary, you're more likely to work better, and not clock out (as much as possible for something like farming). Whereas people working state owned land might just say 'feck it, not my problem', picking the path of least resistance as it were. It's entirely possible that companies exploiting this came about as an unintended (initially) consequence.

There's also a situation currently where multiple small land owners rent out their land to be worked by a single well-equipped group of farmers and get paid on the yield minus whatever labour costs. This is in order to combat the inefficiency of working your own small plot of land with less powerful machinery or avoiding to invest too much in your own equipment (farm machinery is very expensive). Now the fairness of that trade-off is still questionable, but probably more than the current overall exploitation, if you have trustworthy folk.

Back to your point, human beings are incredibly selfish. You either do it for yourself and yours, or are taken advantage of by somebody doing just that. It's always the interest of everyone, it's just the definition of 'everyone' that differs

Ideally, I think public land should not be owned by anyone, not even the state. Land belongs to whomever makes use of it (and no, making use of it does not mean fencing it up and letting weeds grow because it's not profitable) and that may very well change from year to year.

Hey, hey, no shaming of mole-people or duergar here!

so would it be accurate to say that if one were to take a frame of reference on a large scale, say, the absolute centre of the universe (I know, but bear with me on this one), it's also fairly impossible to travel back in space as well as time, seeing as by the time it takes you to take a step back to your original position, the earth has already moved enough that you are no longer there relative to your reference?

Hey now, LLMs have um... a presence... here, too.

Though to be fair, it's probably something I'd ask ChatGPT as well, just to see how it works.

Honestly, I can't tell anymore. Didn't do any sort of work, just hit reply.

nice shoes and cars mostly

just wanted to say, username checks out

I hear you, but aren't pro-points 1 and 4 something we already have via good old automation? Can it even get any better on those points by using the-technology-currently-known-as-AI?

Same for con-points 1, 2, 4, really. Thinking of automation for point 1 (human assembly lines vs robotic used in car manufacturing, for instance). And stuff like social media algorithms have been around and exploiting one class for the benefit of another for quite a bit now. Though, admittedly, point 4 can always get worse.

I... have some news for you.

Sadly, this is the sort of shit parroted amongst less tech savy populations in countries with Ukranian refugees. Mostly older parents, grandparents, older aunts and uncles and such from Eastern Europe (the first port of call usually for refugees - neighboring countries). Hence why you don't see it that often around here. It's present in the west of Europe, as well.

Also quite popular is 'we can't take care of our own [homeless people], but have you seen the amount of money that the government is pumping into them with their fancy cars?'

Oh and "I'm sick and tired of hearing ukranian everywhere I go. The playground is full of ukranian children and their parents that don't speak {local language}!"

I suspect it's russian propaganda, because nobody can be that stupid on their own, right?

Like sure, they have audi q8s. What were they supposed to do? Leave them there and walk towards new places? And if your daughter/son was fleeing invaders, what would you think of the asshats that point at them and say 'go away with yer fancy car!'? I thought we were all on the same page of not wanting russia as a neighbour in the near future. Apparently not. Somehow people running away from actual rape and murder are inconveniencing them.

nonsense, let's just ban abortions and wait for the magic to happen. surely people won't resort to dangerous practices like coat hangers and poison because there's no precedent of that in history, like ever. we'll just head over for a pint and wait for all of this to blow over. the dragons demand their hoard, and by dog they shall have it!

scotch ales, wee heavies, barleywines, british IPAs (the clear ones that don't assault your tongue)...

I'm just going to leave this here.

some random article

A quote from the article, I found especially interesting.

"As a result, no one on Earth fully understands the inner workings of LLMs. Researchers are working to gain a better understanding, but this is a slow process that will take years—perhaps decades—to complete."

Quite an interesting read and I'm sure you can find some others if you want to and try hard enough.