Environmentalism consists of a set of rules by which we can keep our modern lifestyle and reckless expansion of our population but apply "band-aids" like buying green products, driving Priuses, hampering our industry with regulation, and having turn-out-the-lights days.
Deep ecology says that we have to change how we live, and focus on the big problem, which is land overuse. If 50% of the land out there in every area was wild, we would not have pollution problems at all; nature would absorb our excess.
Instead, however, we have seven or eight billion -- who can count, they keep multiplying so quickly -- humans on Earth, most of which are below 90 IQ points. We are not growing better; we are a dying species reproducing recklessly in a last-ditch bid to save itself.
Regulations tie up industry and make it unable to compete, which then causes it to slow down and eventually die. That will not lead us to safer environmental practices, only a back-and-forth where one side writes a whole bunch of laws, and then the other side undoes them because those laws strangled jobs and communities.
A better way is just to set aside the land, end and reverse immigration, and cut our population back to the 150-200m that America can safely support.
When I first read a similar line in Houellebecq's writing, I was skeptical. Since that time, I have seen that in every profession, humans have invented ways of following procedure instead of doing what is necessary. This rewards the individual humans involved with more money but makes them weak because they spend their time on wastage. This bloat affects all human societies once they reach a certain level of internal division.
If we could break up Microsoft in the 1990s, and AT&T in the 1980s, we should break up these large monopolies who have shown that they act as political organizations and market manipulators as much as service providers.
People use these sites for the "network effects," meaning that if everyone you know is on Facebook, you will use it to be in contact with them. However, the centralized model is not healthy because your data is directly controlled by firms with too much influence, who have shown a willingness to discriminate against non-Leftists.
They very fact that we are having debates about "fake news" and blocking terrorist content on these sites shows that they are dangerous. They have too much power and influence to remain private entities, and are acting more like governments.
Maybe if we break them up, people will stop being glued to their cell phones in a "fear of missing out" fugue of frenzied exploration of vapid drama and ego-promotion that leaves no one feeling good about life. These companies are a net negative for our society, and in self-defense we can remove them.
If you formalize the system, in this case having an accurate clock, people attempt to game the system by thinking they have more time than they do, because people are perpetual optimists.
If you deformalize the system, and have the clock represent an approximate value, they become concerned that they do not have enough time, and rush to get there early so that they will be on time.
It gives them a mandate to remove anything that they think might be likely to get flagged, which means they can remove all the rough stuff and leave nothing but kitty pictures, banal status updates, and pornography.
They can take a look at any content that is off-mainstream and say, "This is likely to generate a 1-hour ban, so we're just going to remove it in advance and kick out the perpetrators," which leaves them with what they have always wanted, which are "safe spaces" where people can project their egos all over the internet without consequences.
Someone from the FANG companies probably spread around a few million of those Zuckbucks to ensure that the EU would go down this ill-advised path. Nothing says that your civilization is failing quite like having to suppress a whole lot of information related to dissent.
At first, they tell us they will crack down on terrorists... but soon, this will expand to include anyone who is a critic of the current System whose views might lead to a need to physically resist the regime. It always does.
It scared the crap out of me, but I came out of my shell with encouragement from some kindly teachers.
It's a rite of passage because in life, we have to be brave about many things. Not just big stuff like warfare and hurricanes, but life choices and eventually confronting mortality (put it off as long as you can).
We need to raise people to overcome their disadvantages, not revel in them. We can be compassionate and help them do so, but they need this ability to be brave and we need them to have it.
Instead of looking for people by race in this country, we tend to identify them by skin color.
Race is not skin color; race is a collection of traits which make people from different groups appear, act, and be constructed slightly differently from those of other groups.
Since we cannot talk about race ("African-American") we identify suspects by description in the news, including skin color. Here's the relevant quotation:
Using "thousands" of photographs from roughly 50 cameras provided by the NYPD, its computer vision system learned from 16,000 points to identify clothing color and other bodily characteristics, in addition to potential threats like unattended packages, people entering off-limits areas, and cars speeding up against the flow of traffic.
You can't have genuine discussion when people are fighting for internet points like at reddit, the difference between reddit and actual forums is the element of psychological attacks via upvote downvote button and mod censorship. For instance, you go against the group mind of a given reddit even though you are posting civil rational discussion you will often find your posts deleted for "not being civil" is code for : Mods don't like your point of view.
The worst part is just mods censoring everything they don't agree with willynilly, it's nothing like slashdot. Slashdot has it's own problems, but reddit is an alternate reality where cretins mod and high five other cretins in a mutual circlejerk to such an extent where finding actual truthful information becomes an exorcise in pointlessness.
All of these ring true. The people who get selected mods at Reddit are those who do not offend the hive mind. I like the "alternate reality" description. The worst part is that, in a community with that many toxic users, if you do not start out as a censor, being a mod for a few weeks will do it to you.
I remember that in the past, "no matter who you are, you can speak your mind and only be judged by your words" was a good thing, but apparently now the trend is neo conservatism (from both the left and the right) and a desire to see the return of noblety (whether blue blooded or academic).
We are nearly at 250 years of the Great Democratic Experiment here in the West, and it has resulted in an apocalyptic debt load, alienated citizens, unhealthy lifestyles, jail-like jobs, constant ethnic and other special interest warfare, and a precarious world situation that threatens to explode into another global conflict. Of course people are looking for ways out.
I like to learn things, and have my opinions challenged in a constructive way. Reddit sucks for that.
It presages the American political landscape in 2018 where if you are not with Blue Team, you are assumed to be Red Team and that's the end of the story: they will censor you, exclude you, defame you, and try to get you fired from your job, depending on level of dissent.
It's the reddit equivalent of "shouting down" dissent. If they don't like what you are saying, they will try to silence you by any means necessary.
That is essential to maintaining the echo chamber.
The point of downvotes is to let the group exclude any troubling reality that peeks into their safe space.
We might consider it the ultimate extension of democracy, where you vote for what you believe will benefit you best at the expense of the group, truth, and civilization.
This is perhaps true, but at the same time this describes most of the conversations on the internet between strangers.
I do not share this bleak goal of humanity. I have pleasant and informative conversations across the net, but find that Reddit and Twitter are somehow the least likely to convey that experience.
Something tells me that any site which attracts people looking for power which they should not have, sort of like shouting FIRE! in a theater, will bring out the absolute worst in humanity.
The reason reddit is so popular because it is a confirmation bias wonderland for people who are not very bright and that is most of our species. So reddit is a wonderland of egoboost for the none too bright and uninformed. It's just 100% drama generating machine between the informed, uninformed, young and old and it has to do with the karma and moderation system. Reddit is just one monkey ego war where opinions no matter how dumb are fought and defended by drive by upvoting and downvoting of whatever subgroup is most dominant on the sub unfortunately for our species .
This is what I have observed: Reddit is class warfare. The unhappy, alienated, lost, etc. have found a site where they can make reality appear as they want it to be, instead of how it is, and have others confirm their bias as positive. It produces truly toxic, badly-behaved users.
Reddit moderators are tasked with enforcing unpopular, biased, and vaguely written rules. For example, if someone gets killed in an article and you reply, "Good job," you are guilty of inciting or glorifying violence. If the moderators do not ban you, their sub gets banned, and all the work they put into it goes out the window.
This is why some have suggested unionizing Reddit moderators. While generally I oppose unions, moderators deserve (1) some compensation and (2) some kind of official appeals process to protect their hard work.
Microsoft has one highly functional business model, which is selling new operating systems with new computers.
If you do not upgrade your computer, they do not sell more product. Most people have not been upgrading because our desktop/laptop tech is stable enough and fast enough that you can keep your iron for a decade.
Solution: force everyone to switch to Windows 10, add crap to it until it runs as slowly as Congress, then watch everyone run out to buy new machines because the old ones are unusable at their vermicular speeds.
Cause/effect logic is a pillar of logic itself, so needs no citation.
I agree Redditors are generally low-IQ Starbucks baristas and Whole Foods checkers, but one of their gambits is a type of concern-trolling where they demand sources inappropriately in order to tire/bother the other party.
If the statement "There are no truths, only interpretations" corresponds to some political orientation on the left or right scale, go ahead and file me as whatever the opposite orientation is.
The original is from Fred Nietzsche, but on the Right, we tend to recognize that there are no universal truths, only some people who understand more than others.
Is that a Yes, you want to force Youtube to host anyone you want them to host, or a No, they can kick off anyone they don't want to serve as long as they're following all relevant state and federal laws?
The two are not the same. A cake shop is a private entity; YouTube however is a shared public space that benefits from public resources (namely, the internet itself). In the same way, I would not support a phone company refusing access to people for their political views.
Slashdot Mirror
Environmentalism consists of a set of rules by which we can keep our modern lifestyle and reckless expansion of our population but apply "band-aids" like buying green products, driving Priuses, hampering our industry with regulation, and having turn-out-the-lights days.
Deep ecology says that we have to change how we live, and focus on the big problem, which is land overuse. If 50% of the land out there in every area was wild, we would not have pollution problems at all; nature would absorb our excess.
Instead, however, we have seven or eight billion -- who can count, they keep multiplying so quickly -- humans on Earth, most of which are below 90 IQ points. We are not growing better; we are a dying species reproducing recklessly in a last-ditch bid to save itself.
Regulations tie up industry and make it unable to compete, which then causes it to slow down and eventually die. That will not lead us to safer environmental practices, only a back-and-forth where one side writes a whole bunch of laws, and then the other side undoes them because those laws strangled jobs and communities.
A better way is just to set aside the land, end and reverse immigration, and cut our population back to the 150-200m that America can safely support.
When I first read a similar line in Houellebecq's writing, I was skeptical. Since that time, I have seen that in every profession, humans have invented ways of following procedure instead of doing what is necessary. This rewards the individual humans involved with more money but makes them weak because they spend their time on wastage. This bloat affects all human societies once they reach a certain level of internal division.
If your cell phone company was kicking you off the service for uttering certain words, you might feel differently!
If we could break up Microsoft in the 1990s, and AT&T in the 1980s, we should break up these large monopolies who have shown that they act as political organizations and market manipulators as much as service providers.
People use these sites for the "network effects," meaning that if everyone you know is on Facebook, you will use it to be in contact with them. However, the centralized model is not healthy because your data is directly controlled by firms with too much influence, who have shown a willingness to discriminate against non-Leftists.
They very fact that we are having debates about "fake news" and blocking terrorist content on these sites shows that they are dangerous. They have too much power and influence to remain private entities, and are acting more like governments.
Maybe if we break them up, people will stop being glued to their cell phones in a "fear of missing out" fugue of frenzied exploration of vapid drama and ego-promotion that leaves no one feeling good about life. These companies are a net negative for our society, and in self-defense we can remove them.
If you formalize the system, in this case having an accurate clock, people attempt to game the system by thinking they have more time than they do, because people are perpetual optimists.
If you deformalize the system, and have the clock represent an approximate value, they become concerned that they do not have enough time, and rush to get there early so that they will be on time.
Not just with standing in front of the class, but with dealing with humanity in general. Or technology, really.
It gives them a mandate to remove anything that they think might be likely to get flagged, which means they can remove all the rough stuff and leave nothing but kitty pictures, banal status updates, and pornography.
They can take a look at any content that is off-mainstream and say, "This is likely to generate a 1-hour ban, so we're just going to remove it in advance and kick out the perpetrators," which leaves them with what they have always wanted, which are "safe spaces" where people can project their egos all over the internet without consequences.
Someone from the FANG companies probably spread around a few million of those Zuckbucks to ensure that the EU would go down this ill-advised path. Nothing says that your civilization is failing quite like having to suppress a whole lot of information related to dissent.
At first, they tell us they will crack down on terrorists... but soon, this will expand to include anyone who is a critic of the current System whose views might lead to a need to physically resist the regime. It always does.
It scared the crap out of me, but I came out of my shell with encouragement from some kindly teachers.
It's a rite of passage because in life, we have to be brave about many things. Not just big stuff like warfare and hurricanes, but life choices and eventually confronting mortality (put it off as long as you can).
We need to raise people to overcome their disadvantages, not revel in them. We can be compassionate and help them do so, but they need this ability to be brave and we need them to have it.
Blood is thicker than politics.
Your ethnic origin is part of your personal identity, at least for 95% of humanity.
The USA has fought two proxy wars against Chinese and killed over a million of them.
If you were Chinese, whose side would you take -- your own, or the global shopping mall the USA?
You're free.
You're equal.
You are tolerated.
Maybe these are not the right things to be hoping for; perhaps we need reality, sanity, and the ability to address glaringly obvious problems instead.
Instead of looking for people by race in this country, we tend to identify them by skin color.
Race is not skin color; race is a collection of traits which make people from different groups appear, act, and be constructed slightly differently from those of other groups.
Since we cannot talk about race ("African-American") we identify suspects by description in the news, including skin color. Here's the relevant quotation:
We are looking at one of the 16,000 point here.
Clean, remote, quiet, and good internet access. Hmm.
This might not be a helpful mentality outside of those sharing those same problems.
You mean, the Right is not actually censored with double-standards and a dogmatic admin team?
All of these ring true. The people who get selected mods at Reddit are those who do not offend the hive mind. I like the "alternate reality" description. The worst part is that, in a community with that many toxic users, if you do not start out as a censor, being a mod for a few weeks will do it to you.
We are nearly at 250 years of the Great Democratic Experiment here in the West, and it has resulted in an apocalyptic debt load, alienated citizens, unhealthy lifestyles, jail-like jobs, constant ethnic and other special interest warfare, and a precarious world situation that threatens to explode into another global conflict. Of course people are looking for ways out.
It presages the American political landscape in 2018 where if you are not with Blue Team, you are assumed to be Red Team and that's the end of the story: they will censor you, exclude you, defame you, and try to get you fired from your job, depending on level of dissent.
The problem with Reddit is the users. Having seen them transplanted to other sites where they immediately begin calling for censorship and violence, I think it is something inherent to that group which makes them so hair-trigger and doctrinaire.
This might explain why they are so quick to make death threats.
That is essential to maintaining the echo chamber.
The point of downvotes is to let the group exclude any troubling reality that peeks into their safe space.
We might consider it the ultimate extension of democracy, where you vote for what you believe will benefit you best at the expense of the group, truth, and civilization.
I do not share this bleak goal of humanity. I have pleasant and informative conversations across the net, but find that Reddit and Twitter are somehow the least likely to convey that experience.
Something tells me that any site which attracts people looking for power which they should not have, sort of like shouting FIRE! in a theater, will bring out the absolute worst in humanity.
This is what I have observed: Reddit is class warfare. The unhappy, alienated, lost, etc. have found a site where they can make reality appear as they want it to be, instead of how it is, and have others confirm their bias as positive. It produces truly toxic, badly-behaved users.
Reddit moderators are tasked with enforcing unpopular, biased, and vaguely written rules. For example, if someone gets killed in an article and you reply, "Good job," you are guilty of inciting or glorifying violence. If the moderators do not ban you, their sub gets banned, and all the work they put into it goes out the window.
This is why some have suggested unionizing Reddit moderators. While generally I oppose unions, moderators deserve (1) some compensation and (2) some kind of official appeals process to protect their hard work.
Microsoft has one highly functional business model, which is selling new operating systems with new computers.
If you do not upgrade your computer, they do not sell more product. Most people have not been upgrading because our desktop/laptop tech is stable enough and fast enough that you can keep your iron for a decade.
Solution: force everyone to switch to Windows 10, add crap to it until it runs as slowly as Congress, then watch everyone run out to buy new machines because the old ones are unusable at their vermicular speeds.
History disagrees. Diversity means constant internal conflict.
Cause/effect logic is a pillar of logic itself, so needs no citation.
I agree Redditors are generally low-IQ Starbucks baristas and Whole Foods checkers, but one of their gambits is a type of concern-trolling where they demand sources inappropriately in order to tire/bother the other party.
The original is from Fred Nietzsche, but on the Right, we tend to recognize that there are no universal truths, only some people who understand more than others.
The two are not the same. A cake shop is a private entity; YouTube however is a shared public space that benefits from public resources (namely, the internet itself). In the same way, I would not support a phone company refusing access to people for their political views.