EthicalAI Now • 100%
Yeah I mean, these are the stories you only hear on the self selecting sample of the internet. My physician has done thousands and claims to have never had a compilation. Pick someone who does it for a living, and you’ll be fine.
EthicalAI Now • 100%
That’s a pretty good deal, I forget what I paid
EthicalAI Now • 100%
Based comment
EthicalAI Now • 100%
Someone’s gotta live through it, give them a fighting chance.
EthicalAI Now • 100%
I’m an engineer too, and I don’t think capitalism works from an engineering perspective very well. It naturally leads to monopolies, it’s just inevitable, which have the same natural ailments as centrally planned economies, but with unelected people at the top. A decentralized economy needs to be engineered to be as such, culturally and legally, on purpose. Up till now it was just a technological fact that economies were decentralized, not true anymore. And with automated production, labor should no longer be the basis of the right to live, especially as labor decreases on the limit to 0 with increased AI.
UBI is not a good solution in that it doesn’t change the power structure, we still are controlled at the government and in our jobs by the rich, which do not have any mandate from the people.
Just an anecdote, between engineers, depending on your age, my experience is the older I get in engineering, the more I realize how totally un-meritocratic managers are, and how much they suppress us. Buisness and government use scientists and engineers to achieve poorly designed goals for dumb or evil ideas, like war or profit. Be wary.
EthicalAI Now • 100%
I mean, maybe we can make an Ai that uses reason to uncover these biases in the future from this starting point. We are only at the beginning.
EthicalAI Now • 100%
One of the first things I looked up on this involves someone wanting us to dismantle the hierarchy of gravity… maybe a bit too much woo for me.
EthicalAI Now • 100%
Property right theory is a bit complicated, you have to understand a few things.
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Property rights are a state derived system. That’s why we have weird things like corporate personhood, LLCs, land ownership, mineral rights, airspace, etc. Indigenous peoples did not have property rights. Monarchies had different property relations. Etc.
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Property rights can be divided into 3 fundamental rights, the right to use (usus), the right to the fruit of use (profit, fructus), the right to abuse (abusus) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usufruct
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There is a historical lineage of the owning class, from monarchy, to mercantilism and slave societies, to modern capitalism, etc.
I’d say that the reason there’s not a system to demonstrate these ideas is not because they aren’t pragmatic ideas, it’s because power begets power.
The reason I say it’s easy to imagine life outside of capitalism is not because it’d be easy to get there, just that it’s easy to formulate.
Anyway to your points, capitalism is not “when people own things”. It’s when those who do the work (usus) do not get the profit (fructus). Usually this is justified through investment and usury (interest) or even permanent ownership by outside investors (stock). However investment can exist in other ways, through credit unions owned by communities who bank there, or even from government grants. Not to defend the soviets, but they had great science, and most of our own science is done through gov grants.
When you enforce the rule that only people who are doing the work may own stock, and then you grow your economy through democratic investment strategies, you are on your way to socialism.
Edit: In old religions usury was considered immoral, if usury is immoral how much more immoral is our current system of investing? I think we should go back to interest based business loans and grants and cut out this ownership class.
Abusus should also be democratically controlled under eco socialism. Because we have so much trash these days and the destruction of so many good things under justification of ownership. That’s another talk altogether.
EthicalAI Now • 100%
AI creates a strong incentive for a planned economy, because the goal of markets was always that planned economies were “impossible”, but now they are not. Read the peoples republic of Walmart for more info. Or this YouTube video https://youtu.be/xuBrGaVhjcI
Remember too that like 3 hedge funds own every company in America, and the stock market is run by AI, we already live under an inefficient planned economy.
As for climate change, what you are suggesting when the public owns the natural resources, is socialism.
EthicalAI Now • 100%
I also think that mutualism is the best theory. My Marxist friend would tell you that capitalism will just incorporate your work into its superstructure though.
EthicalAI Now • 100%
I volunteer with DSA some, should I volunteer a lot, a little? Is electoralism a good avenue, is mutual aid? Does it matter if my comrades have other ideas, or is big tent prefered? Should we organize under the banner of socialism, or should we use a less tainted word? Should you try to be a social democrat instead just out of defeatism? Or maybe I just go off and be a good person, be charitable. Or maybe I start a commune.
EthicalAI Now • 100%
I think you’re lost then, this is the socialism sublemmy.
I used to think like you, but then I realized capitalism is not synonymous with markets or being paid, it’s synonymous with a class of people who do not work extracting value from those who do. It’s very simple to not have capitalism, simply have national credit unions instead of banks, and coops for buisnesses. This replaces CEOs and Bankers with democratic governance and isn’t authoritarian.
So I’m all on board with that level of socialism, there are two problems:
- Getting from here to there involves going THROUGH the ruling class, the capitalists, as they control the government, media, and war machine.
- We are about to reach AI and Climate Change tipping points, and planned economies are about to become a must because of these things (inevitably). How do we make this planned economy non authoritarian? Can we do it in any kind of open source anarchic sort of way, or does it demand state violence?
EthicalAI Now • 100%
Glad to see others that don’t buy the idea that we should destroy the existing system without an alternative vision. When I read that, and we discussed it, I thought it was crazy. Sometimes I feel kinda gaslit by other socialists lol, like surely you don’t believe we should destroy without replacing.
EthicalAI Now • 100%
Sure, but I guess I want two practical outcomes:
- A theory of action, that can then be put into practice.
- A level of commitment to that theory of action.
So, like, I could put 100% of myself into something I think will definitely work, or I could put 5% of myself into something I think likely won’t work but I’ll try anyway, or anything in between.
Not just for internet debates or something.
Also I’d like to be able to effectively share my vision for the world and answer common criticisms.
I’ve just finished a Marxist book club reading series, including Lenin and Marx and Rosa and several others. My original studies were on anarchism. Graeber, Chomsky, lots of Anarchist Library articles. My new studies are Postmodernists. Foucoult, Derrida, Marcusa, etc. First things first: 1. I think Marxists are way too proud of themselves and what they call science. I find Marxism useful but little more than a nice to discuss academic theory. I find serious flaws with it, and am annoyed that so many people seem to identify so strongly with it. In that way im very much in agreement with anarchists and postmodernists. The other thing is that Marxist-Leninism was infiltrated and defeated by capitalism many many times now, and sometimes even without its defeat it led to dystopia. I’m just not excited about this ideology at all, and I think it’s become a bit cringe to continue down this path. Capitalism and state is stronger today than it’s ever been. I think this has lived past its valid era. 2. I think anarchism has a lot more truth and wisdom, but is not very powerful. I am unsure how to bring about this kind of society, which is true communism. It seems it will always devolve into a retelling of Marxist stages of history, feudalism, monarchism, capitalism. However I do think there are ways to prevent this if people are mass educated and localities are armed to prevent domination. But also, we live in a day of nukes, and I’ve never read an anarchist treaties on how to manage the nuclear arsenal anarchically. The more you organize anarchism though, the less it’s anarchism. I also worry about how much this turns into vigilantism and mob violence. 3. I agree a lot with postmodernists, the concept of truth and morality since learning all the atheist rhetoric in my 20s are very vague to me. Understanding cultural truth, media power, the disparity of grand narratives, the collusion of the Everyman with the system (rather than it being purely a class duality) is “true” to me. However, even more so than #1 or #2 this very much lacks a revolutionary theory. Then there’s the infighting. When you read the literature everyone “proves” each other wrong and shows how their “revolutionary vision” is impossible and not worth doing. People in socialist theory argue so strongly about such vague ideas. People really think that they are looking to achieve a thing called socialism, but I don’t think they will ever be satisfied with any system they find themselves in. They set impossible goals and then yell at the clouds that it hasn’t been obtained. Sorry that’s my rant, I also am yelling at the clouds at my own intellectual defeat. I kinda feel like the best we can do is a kind of nihilism and intentional community.
EthicalAI Now • 100%
War is usually a war between STATES that has very little to do with its people. People are just the cannon fodder of the state interest.
In cases like Gaza one side actually does have PEOPLE involved, Gazans, vs a STATE. It makes it much more clear who is in the wrong.
EthicalAI Now • 50%
I’ll just say (on the issue) I agree that everything possible to implement on a daemon running parallel to the instance should be implemented as such. That way the instance stays small and focused, and the dev team doesn’t get flooded with requests.
EthicalAI Now • 100%
Wait why can’t you do this? People definitely live in their gas stations / offices / whatever. It’s just not zoned for that, meaning it wasn’t made for that purpose, it’ll be suboptimal. But like, I don’t think the cops are out to look for your sleeping bag.
EthicalAI Now • 100%
“Trains Are Too Expensive And Would Take Years To Build“ - guy who remembers the interstate being built.
I've tried a lot of diets, and I have a lot of trouble committing and maintaining structure. I eat out every day. I don't exercise much. I'm having trouble with willpower fasting. Still I think the most "ADHD friendly" way of dieting is likely fasting. It requires little practical restructuring of ones life, just commitment and willpower. Do you all have anything better? Any advice?
I was looking through papers that combine LLMs and RL and this was pretty fascinating and the citations are perfect for continuing my search.
I’m a socialist now, but I’d say I came to a lot of my conclusions through economics and science as well as labor. I believe in abolishing landlords, and I think that would be a boon to housing. However, I think half measures like rent control actually might hurt instead of help. It’s basically applying the philosophy of landlord abolition within a capitalist system, and without government housing assistance or at least better homeownership funding programs. The whole idea of landlord abolition is to make the price of housing go down because it’s no longer an investment medium for those who have lots of money to hoard it, and then to make the barriers to acquiring a mortgage, more similar to those of what it used to be to acquire a rental agreement. Under this system builders get paid, owner occupants get paid, landlords do not. Under rent control, we simply make landlord’s lives a little more inconvenient in a system that still expects them to exist. Unless we rent control all the way down to the price of a mortgage payment, which should eliminate landlords, and which I would support, simply inconveniencing landlords is just going to lower housing supply, because currently the housing development chain depends on landlords as middleman. Currently a bank will not give kids with no credit a mortgage, even if they can afford rent. So builders will not get paid without landlords. Also, unfortunately, what I’m proposing would cause a major economic recession. Housing is currently an investment medium. Owner occupants pay mortgage based on what their house was worth when they bought it. If we tank the housing market, we need government to step in and make it OK on average working people. Also people fear subprime mortgages because of 2008, but again that was really caused by housing being used as an investment medium rather than a human need. Anyway, I think housing under the current system is way too complex for simple solutions like rent control. The data does not look good on rent control, it reduces housing. I think the best near term solution without true housing socialism is increasing funding to section 8 by a ton. I also think we should eliminate property taxes completely on occupied primary single-family homes, and raise property taxes on second-homes by a lot. Lastly, we should have the federal reserve issue subprime mortgages, and fund the risk directly with taxpayer money, so it doesn’t impact the markets, just like we subsidize farms and medical research. THEN we can rent control landlords out of the market.
I think that the biggest issue with Reddit, Lemmy, link aggregators in general is someone has to post the links. I want people to determine the sorting of the links, I want the system to facilitate commenting and engagement, but if I have to use an RSS reader AND Lemmy to get news, I’ll just use the RSS reader. So my idea is, an instance which has communities which themselves subscribe to RSS feeds which auto populate the community. People then can subscribe to this from their lemmy instances, cross post, upvote, etc. idk how rss feeds would be voted on or added, but it’s just a concept. Any ideas? Interest?
Will this finally wake up the “average” American to the seriousness of climate change and mobilize a wartime effort? I’ll believe it when I see it. But eventually the personal affects have to hit most Americans and wake them up right?
I have a question about prevailing ideas on socialism. I am a software developer. Say I start a company and I am the sole employee and I write some code that is profitable. Then I decide to leave, I transfer the business to someone else or a group of people. The buisnesses is still running, under other workers, but I still have productive code in the pipelines. Do I get to “own” a share of this business for the rest of my life like a capitalist? Similarly, let’s say I’m an artist who wrote a book. I write the book and want to distribute it. Do I get to own a permanent share in the distribution profit, even if my work is complete, in perpetuity? I guess both are examples of intellectual property, which I’m usually against, but assume a libertarian socialist society not a society where markets are eliminated or welfare is plentiful, just one where capitalists no longer own the means of production. I suppose the ethical anti capitalist solution is to sell your rights to the production workers. Or maybe to cap potential profits off a work (but that would require government intervention id assume?)
Either for theory or for news, US primarily?
I think I’m having a bit of an autistic burnout moment over politics. I’m moving a lot more left over the years but just don’t feel like I can do anything. I have 2 years left on a work contract and it would be killer to lose that job, but also I want to help people in ways where quitting might be the best option. I want to learn about politics and history more, but I also don’t want to stress about it because I don’t feel like it changes things that much. Id like a community that talks about these feelings and I feel like this should be that community for me. Let’s just chat about it.
www.start.coop
This is just one good resource. I’d recommend the social.coop mastodon instance for more!
openai.com
This could replace langchain for me.
www.ajc.com
Charges expected to drop in August
www.ign.com
Actually, all my dragons are unlocatable, but in particular I’m trying to find dinraal. Of note, I’m in the late game after you get all sages, so a specific castle quest has opened up for me. Does that block their spawn? Has anyone encountered this?
www.theverge.com
Dude this article gives me work PTSD. I hate working for CEOs and stupid fucking managers. Open source forever.
I remember this being a kinda niche alternative to activity pub, and I always liked it because it had the ability to be local and P2P, with federated instances really just being repeaters. I didn’t like that it was immutable, but that was just the cost. Also you had to install something, which made it not as simple as just browser stuff. I see on Google there are SS to ActivityPub adapters too.