Talkin’ about a Revolution • Hacker News Board

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#191

Post by code_for_monkey » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 3:31 PM UTC

mardifoufs wrote: post #43

belter wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the genocide contributed to bringing Trump to power Only because folks who refused to vote for Kamala said they could not stand her support of Israel policies :-) Like poor voters in the Midwest, you can always count on a certain electorate, to vote against their own interests and what they care about...

How is not voting for the administration that enabled and did absolutely nothing to stop the genocide of their relatives or community in Gaza voting against their self interest? You realize that the deaths that happened in Gaza are probably more important than whatever grievances you have against Trump for some people? We are talking about tens of thousands of deaths, directly enabled by the previous administration (…

youre right and theyll hate for it

Biden was in charge the entire time if he wanted people to think his party was better on Gaza he shouldve been better on Gaza. They dealt with a massive protest wave in blue staes and they told everyone who cared about Gazans to get fucked, then they lost. Its not hard to understand.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#192

Post by potato3732842 » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 3:31 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #171

nozzlegear wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no comment on what your professor said, but reading the replies here just confirms to me that cynicism, pessimism and doomerism are certainly the mood of the current zeitgeist. Optimistic outlooks are too often met with a kind of reflexive dismissal or despair in a "I feel like things are really bad right now, have never been this bad before, and thus can never improve" diatribe. There's a pervasive sense in o…

Meh. It's not really cynicism. It's just that people today only care about the next 20 or 30 years. They don't really care if, over the course of the next 200 years, two nations can rebuild from annihilating each other in a nuclear exchange. The nuclear exchange is a lot more pressing concern for them.

Peace and prosperity in 200yr won't help my retirement in 30.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#193

Post by WillAdams » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 3:31 PM UTC

fransje26 wrote: post #71

graemep wrote: post #19

The world gets both better and worse. it is something that I regularly get voted down for saying here, but IMO the west is unduly pessimist because it had a golden age from winning the cold war until the late 2000s, took an overly optimistic view of the future and the inevitability of progress (remember "the end of history") and cannot cope with things going back to normal. Things get better, sometimes they get worse…

> and cannot cope with things going back to normal. I would argue that we worked our way to the post cold-war golden age, and then destroyed it with greed, which led to financial pain, which led to political nonsense, which led to the rubbish we are in right now. So the period we are in right now is not the "back to normal" phase, but an actual decrease of human evolution. Not dissimilar to things that happened in th…

Yeah, we need a better take on society and education --- see the discussion of Ursula K. LeGuin's essay "The Child and the Shadow":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43525079

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#194

Post by andrewflnr » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 3:43 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #162

davedx wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People do not change all that much morally This is debatable. In fact, the US culture war is absolutely about what American "morality" should be. It's what a lot of the Project 2025 Manifesto is about: "The document spans a wide range of policy areas, but when it comes to culture, family, and morality, it emphasizes a return to traditional values, a rollback of progressive social policies, and an assertive use of f…

Honestly, the way I see it: The people behind the 2025 stuff etc have been on the "losing" side of the culture war since 1969. And they're sick of it, they're desperate, and now are just laying their cards on the table. I grew up in an evangelical church in the 80s-- albeit in Canada -- attending "Focus on the Family" events, Bible studies, etc. that promulgated heavy socially conservative ethos -- so I feel like I h…

As someone who grew up in an evangelical environment, this is exactly my read as well. The problem is they might still be able to "win" via a sufficient application of violence, aka state power, despite being wrong and in the minority.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#195

Post by absolutelastone » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 3:55 PM UTC

worldsayshi wrote: post #6

> frightened into rationality An oxymoron if I ever heard one. To become rational means letting go of fears (to a large extent). I fear that one reason we fail to act is that we are guided by fear. Fear makes us focus on the wrong things. And I fear that in a civilized society fear becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Fear makes us obsess about the problem and how to avoid it in the very narrow and short term. It does…

I'd argue we evolved to think rationally in order to specifically advance our instinctive drives, rather than the "Triume brain" view of the neocortex and lizard brain fighting for dominance. Immediate and extreme danger enforces a realistic and calculating view of reality, when otherwise people tend to avoid thinking about or dealing with a danger.

Courage is the ability to choose an alternative besides first choice of fear. But it isn't necessarily rational either, more likely a different instinctive motivation winning out. A completely emotionless person, meanwhile, would probably be completely nonfunctional.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#196

Post by alabastervlog » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #117

rongrobert wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't agree with any of this. This is a difficult time compared to what? The black plague? WW1? This is the easiest time ever to be alive. I would say on a 200 year time line though, the way the black plague broke the power of the Catholic Church, the internet has broke democracy. The idea democracy is ascendant is pretty delusional IMO. This professor is still living in the unipolar moment that has passed.

The great news is we can break the internet if needed. It will be torn down and chopped up into moderated walled gardens, it's inevitable. Algorithmic rage bait and echo chambers are incompatible with a functioning society.

> It will be torn down and chopped up into moderated walled gardens, it's inevitable. Algorithmic rage bait and echo chambers are incompatible with a functioning society.

I've reckoned a free global Internet's incompatible with functioning democracy (or most other forms of government) for about a decade now.

I figure our "great firewall" will be in the form of cryptographically origin-attributed routing, and making proxying while stripping that info illegal in most circumstances. Won't cut it to zero, but will make mass anonymous propaganda campaigns a hell of a lot harder. The protocols are already under development, as I understand it.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#197

Post by wormlord » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 4:06 PM UTC

code_for_monkey wrote: post #181

wormlord wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you mean leftists you mean liberals. Leftists ostensibly have a materialist understanding of the world, not idealist. Of course many immigrants are right-wing, the US exported counter-revolution globally during the 20th century. I went to eat out at a Guatemalan restaurant the other day and they had a poster for a right-wing ultranationalist paramilitary group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mano_Blanca…

I would appreciate a broader examination of how this site politics function because no one here seems to understand the difference between liberals and leftists.

This site is mostly wealthy and older who have benefitted from the neoliberal status quo. It's why many commenters can shrug off the insane shit happening like opaque deportations of random people to a fucking concentration camp in El Salvador, it only affects people on the margins who they think they are very far removed from.

In wealthy urban areas there are a lot of liberals who don't have a materialist basis for their views and are hypocritical, so the more reactionary on this site think that these pearl-clutching libs are the end all be all of left-wing politics. Meanwhile actual leftists dont really differentiate between ethnic supremacists and YIMBY liberals because they both ultimately support the same outcomes.

I am also from a petit bourgeois background but being younger I think it was very clear that the direction we were heading in was not sustainable. There is no path that allows for me to have stable finances (enough money to buy a house and pay for my parents retirement) and also be spiritually fulfilled. The only way I can save up the money to take care of the people around me is to sell my mind, body, and soul to the machine (even then who says the current administration wont tank the stock market and erase all my savings). I think even for Gen X'ers this was the case, it was just easier to keep their heads down since the polycrisis was still a few decades out and would not yet seem "real".

Even as a relatively successful zoomer I have to walk a fine line of grinding away at my day job, and doing the community-oriented work that fulfills me spiritually. The market signals that stuff like home ownership and having a family is not "efficient", so I don't bother.

Anyways, there's a real disconnect and I'm not sure what it would take for the older and wealthier folks on here to open their eyes. If history is anything to go by they most likely never will.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#198

Post by NoImmatureAdHom » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 4:07 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #150

davedx wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that makes sense to me; how do society's moral rules change (slowly) but peoples' moral rules don't/change little? I mean I can think of some isolated examples like pirating video content, but generally a society's moral rules reflect its constituents; where else do those rules come from, if not its people?

Culture. Humans have pretty stable moral intuitions about the basics - fairness, reciprocity, value of life; AFAIK they're consistent throughout time and space as far as history goes[0], and form a common base from which more complex morality stems. In short: "theft is bad" is something people are born with[1]; "pirating media is bad" isn't; the former will be universal wherever you go, the latter depends strongly on…

"AFAIK they're consistent throughout time and space as far as history goes[0], and form a common base from which more complex morality stems."

Not even close! Universalized morality (e.g., "stealing is wrong") is a product of the last couple thousand years, and it's only present in some modern humans. It is the foundation of WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) psychology.

If you're curious about what other kinds of human experience can be like, I recommend checking out some ethnographies. Here's a summary of one: https://peacefulsocieties.uncg.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/1...

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#199

Post by MisterTea » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 4:10 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #185

MisterTea wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed. A lot of the Latinos I know in NYC voted Trump. A few were Democrat voters who grew tired of being insulted by Democrats who casually lump Latinos into a big "left loving Latino pool" when they are Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Chileans, Ecuadorians, etc; Individuals with distinct cultures and backgrounds. Latinos are also heavily religious which is very influential as well.

Just Google Latino voting 2024. This isn't hidden information.

It's a record low for 2024 which is not insignificant. Next election will be interesting.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#200

Post by nradov » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 4:23 PM UTC

alabastervlog wrote: post #175

TeMPOraL wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Culture. Humans have pretty stable moral intuitions about the basics - fairness, reciprocity, value of life; AFAIK they're consistent throughout time and space as far as history goes[0], and form a common base from which more complex morality stems. In short: "theft is bad" is something people are born with[1]; "pirating media is bad" isn't; the former will be universal wherever you go, the latter depends strongly on…

My experience is there's also a fundamentally inborn notion of "fair price" and "fair pay" that people are born with, that they have to be educated out of to operate successfully in the modern economy. It's one way in which our system is kinda anti-human—it assumes a kind of game-playing that's seen as wrong by people, naturally, and you have to play that game or you can't succeed. "What the market will bear" doesn't…

Price is just a symptom or manifestation. People naturally see it as unfair to take advantage of someone based on a power imbalance or information asymmetry. So charging an excessive price or paying a starvation wage is just one way to take advantage, but there are other non-monetary ways as well. Attempts to impose "fair" price or wage controls by legislative fiat or cultural norms are doomed to fail because they don't resolve the underlying cause.