Maybe just transfer the contents of the microwave dinner into a glass bowl? Those microwave instructions can't possibly be too crucial to the contents which are already going to be a bit sus to begin with. (That said, microwave food has come a LONG way in the last couple decades, real quietly too. I remember them being garbage when I was a kid but there's some real good stuff out there now.)
I really wonder if people like this have a playbook, like have they read history and put together a step by step guide at this point for maximizing assholery, or does behavior like this sort of emerge naturally as the assholes take control? Like why do we see this over and over in authoritarian regimes, is it natural or are they copycats?
Sidebar: today I learned the word assholery is a real word, I thought I just made it up lol
Yeah I travel a lot and I'm grateful to the British and Chinese tourists who seem to have overtaken americans in terms of shitty tourists. Most of the locals I meet say most of the Americans they meet are kind of annoying because we are loud and overly talkative and friendly, but in a puppy dog sort of way, not in a rude way.
Just wait until the technology singularity occurs, when there is simply too much shit, too much info, too much tech, for any human to understand anything without the aid of AI. And then we'll be left in the dust with events moving too quickly for us to process at all, as if we have a say in it anyway.
The social contract is simply a more formal explanation and exploration of exactly what you just described. It is sort of the bridge between basic human behavior and a codified set of rules governing society. The golden rule is great and all but it is actually really difficult to codify that in black and white legislation. There's been tons of speculation about it over the centuries. Guys like Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke for example; and then their work heavily influenced the american founders like Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, and other political titans like them.
What you are describing is basically an application of game theory with a single game being played vs multiple games in repeated encounters.
In the video game there is anonymity and single unique encounters: see a player, kill him, loot him, move on. This results in chaos because it is an environment with no stability with everyone for themselves. Same with driving. Everyone has an incentive to drive like a prick to make themselves better off, even though everyone collectively would do a bit better by everyone following the rules.
The trick is...for the individuals they're familiar with and they feel similar to
This is describing a game with repeated interactions where your actions have consequences in games played later.
If you play a game (a single interaction) then your best strategy is to defect, meaning, be an asshole, break the rules, loot everyone, move on.
If you play a game with repeated interactions over and over with the same players (friends, family, colleagues, business partners, foreign policy with other countries, and so on) your best strategy is to cooperate, play by the rules, and do best for everyone.
I participated in an experiment of this during undergrad. Twenty or so of us were put on computers to play a game, something to do with trade. If you defected and broke the rules you could make double. BUT, all the players in the game had complete information, so if you double cross player A, player X would see that and not do business with you. Within a few rounds we had all figured it out, everyone cooperated, everyone traded with each other, and everyone made a ton of money. The few players who were assholes made a good score off the players they cheated, but they made way less than everyone else who cooperated with each other long term.
Personal liberty is so misunderstood and abused in this country. This is a fantastic post. I think everyone needs to refresh their understanding of personal responsibility within this system we've arranged for ourselves. Radical freedumb only works for so long.
I was literally just reading about social contract theory the other day, brushing up because it's been a while since my political philosophy coursework in undergrad.
I was thinking this is definitely something everyone should brush up on, because it seems to be something many of us have forgotten about.
We live in a society, together, and give up certain freedoms in exchange for stable lifestyles lived without fear.
I think people have forgotten about everyone's individual responsibility, their mandate, to uphold their part of this social contract. I think people have forgotten what shame is.
Respectfully disagree, I thought the tone was sufficiently concerning without being overly alarmist. I'll stop microwaving plastics, which is a super easy lifestyle modification, until further research and evidence comes to light about this subject.
I'm still pretending to read Frankenstein, the OG sci fi novel, at least in modern fiction anyway. I say pretending though because it's been sitting on my bed stand for weeks untouched. It's beautifully well written, just haven't had time or attention span lately idk.
Ask a democrat what they want and they say affordable healthcare, housing, education, social mobility, better work hours and wages; you know, better quality of life in general.
Ask a republican what they want and they'll say 'hurkdydurk I'm 'onna kill me some lib'rals durrr' like this guy. I literally think he may have drooled on himself while slurring that sentence out.
Yeah people have unrealistic expectations of villainy these days after hollywood set the bar so high with all their criminal mastermind tropes. I suppose it's a good thing that most criminals are really dumb because as you said, half the country barely cares. If he'd been even remotely smart about it..
Pretty sure some universities have tried to do studies but, just like you said, they couldn't find enough people for the "does not watch porn" control group.
I'm not interested in a back and forth internet flame war about this, so I'll just say you are straight up wrong about economics being a zero sum game. This is a very common fallacy that somehow persists, most likely because we are all being squeezed by our corporate overlords for everything we are worth. But that is different from a zero sum game.
If you're interested then you should google "economics zero sum game fallacy" and learn a bit. Then come back if you are interested in engaging in some more discussion in good faith.
It fundamentally is NOT a pyramid scheme. In a pyramid scheme there is no actual product or service of value and simply extracts wealth from the people in lower tiers. Value, or wealth, is simply the byproduct of an equitable transaction between two or more parties.
Maybe just transfer the contents of the microwave dinner into a glass bowl? Those microwave instructions can't possibly be too crucial to the contents which are already going to be a bit sus to begin with. (That said, microwave food has come a LONG way in the last couple decades, real quietly too. I remember them being garbage when I was a kid but there's some real good stuff out there now.)