381–390 of 412 posts
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You are citing some dickheads with Ferraris as evidence that greed is a virtue now but disregarding the fact that people had similar gross displays of wealth in the past as evidence of the same.
But was it regarded as virtuous?
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> Appeal to authority does not constitute an argument. Your response continues to emphasize the perceived lack of a logical core in fascism, while also pointing out that this perspective is supported by a consensus among those who have studied the ideology. Appeal to authority is only a fallacy when the authority is arbitrary, not when they are experts on the topic. In any case, this has gone on long enough. I have n…
Throughout this conversation, I have repeatedly requested specific arguments or evidence regarding the logical structure of fascism. These requests were made in the spirit of understanding and critically examining your viewpoint. Despite these requests, you have not provided concrete arguments or examples that directly address the logical structure of fascism, which was the core issue at hand. > Appeal to authority i…
So you basically want to converse with ChatGPT?
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But the same applies to caring, don't you think? You and all the others (not me tho ;]) can - and indeed do - care about anything. Caring, I believe, is just as ephemeral and easily manipulated and to some degree the result of emotions and input. Emotions on drugs are always a wonderful example, and people who keep going back to that guy who always has cocaine, which is of course, meant literally and figuratively. Ch…
> Chaplin always reminds me of myself and those days when I wonder how it is, that people prefer the comfort of some culture or crowd vs. becoming an individual and unique being. I used to grind my teeth into this until hierarchies and pointers started to make sense to me. Can you explain how they started to make sense to you, and what sense they make?
I always liked this version with music added: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WibmcsEGLKo I remember sharing a jail cell with a 19-year-old Mexican kid once and we were talking about the guards being assholes and he said "they're like machine men"; and I said "with machine minds and machine hearts?" and he was like "YES! You know it?!" -- it was a good moment, we spent the next few days trying to remember the whole s…
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> he said what people wanted to hear after losing WWI In other words, they believed it. It wasn’t a false manipulation.
They believed the "stabbed in the back" narrative like the US establishment believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Irak. It was a motivated belief, thoroughly uninformed by rational thought, and maintaining and spreading that belief took no small amount of blatant lies and cynicism.
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Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Here's my attempt at a substantive and low flame bait comment on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38680523 I'd be interested in whether this meets the bar but once again you've got 5 million other users to see to so if you don't have the time you don't have the time.
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> Chaplin always reminds me of myself and those days when I wonder how it is, that people prefer the comfort of some culture or crowd vs. becoming an individual and unique being. I used to grind my teeth into this until hierarchies and pointers started to make sense to me. Can you explain how they started to make sense to you, and what sense they make?
The essence of it would be something like "life is easier when you know your place" within the structure that you are living in. You have people to look up to and people that remind you about what your work and lifestyle was and is worth. And whatever function you fulfill, there are reliable ways to get to you and your peers and no crisis, conflict, change of leadership or cultural shift can change that.
It's a very interesting perspective and after rereading your comment:
> I believe what Chaplin hoped to achieve was to give some outliers a way to integrate themselves into the crowd
thanks to your explanation I now realize it reminds me of Anomia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie which is thought to be caused by a divergence between personal standards and group standards.
I first had trouble following your original comment but it was intriguing, yet now with your clarifications and after rereading the wikipedia article I see your view as an extremely insightful!!
Do you believe that "We think too much and feel too little" was meant to help those who suffer from this divergence?
I would love to know your thoughts on all this, and how you weights the pros and cons of being a follower vs an innovator.
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So voting for the 'correct' local politician and driving an eco-friendly car are more important than being nice and helping others less fortunate? How very blue.
> So voting for the 'correct' local politician and driving an eco-friendly car are more important than being nice and helping others less fortunate? if you do some calculations before jumping to your prejudgment, you may find that it is more important, and people are less fortunate because someone burns too much gasoline and votes for 'wrong' politicians. But it was simplified example, privileged people utilize more…
I get that you're trying to say that voting for the wrong local politician might lead to more 'less fortunates' -- principled individuals could argue this one either way, for either side of the political divide, about who the 'wrong' politicians are -- but how exactly does burning excess gasoline, and at what exchange rate? Perhaps we are talking about the impact on future generations? Is there a discount rate on future lives over present? Have you perhaps gotten rid of your car long ago and just walk everywhere selflessly slashing tires while trying your best to barely convert oxygen to carbon dioxide?
At least I suppose the idea that being nice to the people around you is less important than voting for the right colors or driving the right cars or holding the right ideological opinions certainly does explain a whole lot about the current social climate. It is a shame people seem to have such a hard time with the idea of doing all of the above, and just seem to pick one or the other.
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> So voting for the 'correct' local politician and driving an eco-friendly car are more important than being nice and helping others less fortunate? if you do some calculations before jumping to your prejudgment, you may find that it is more important, and people are less fortunate because someone burns too much gasoline and votes for 'wrong' politicians. But it was simplified example, privileged people utilize more…
Please, help me with this calculation, since I clearly lack the proper exchange rate -- how many gallons of excess gasoline or votes for the wrong 'local' (rather than national or state) politician equals being nice to people for a lifetime or helping those less fortunate? I get that you're trying to say that voting for the wrong local politician might lead to more 'less fortunates' -- principled individuals could ar…
I meant to say blindly voting for local politician going for state/national office just because he is local regardless of policies.
> but how exactly does burning excess gasoline, and at what exchange rate?
few hints how to build estimations:
- check how much money Western countries paid to autocratic regimes for oil/gas. Check estimates how many people were killed/jailed/displaced internally and as results of conflicts initiated by those regimes
- there are reports available about long term material damage from global warming. You can divide it by gasoline consumed for personal transportation by westerners and multiply by some calibration multipler to offset other factors (0.2 will be reasonable first estimation)
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> Humans find it very hard not to be corrupted by power. I will say yes, and also anarchists would argue that corruption of power is basically a simple function of the system. A ruler living in the capital will be unable to make appropriate decisions for rural farmers or urban factory workers. That those people should decide for themselves how best to operate, and they should do so by vote or elected and re-callable…
Yes and sometimes I think “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried” is especially true in providing voters a put option. That is - we are pretty good at removing bad governments. I don't think I would argue that democracies produce the best candidates, political class and leaders. However it provides voters the ability to remove candidates at the polls every X years,…
What anarchists want is a world where every day people are regularly voting on important issues affecting their collective, and nominating delegates to vote on their behalf when voting in federation-wide issues. Notably delegates are typically understood to only vote as already agreed upon by a collective and they are recallable at any time.
This is a super rough description but the point is I don’t think it’s meaningful to talk about “democracy” as a monolith. I think anarchism is democracy too and I think it’s a much more effective form of democracy than the type we have most commonly today.