[flagged]
> Social media + recommendation algorithms = echo chambers.
In actual tests, non-algorithmic feeds become similarly extremist: https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/08/study-social-media-p...
How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
241–250 of 284 posts
Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#242[flagged]
Re: 5
The Jefferson Bible [1] is excellent in this regard. He removes all miracles and most mentions if the supernatural in a cut & paste job of a King James version of the Bible. The result is portraying Jesus as a person, not divine.
Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#243[flagged]
> Read the Bible. Even if you do not believe, Jesus is the most impressive human I've ever learned about. You might also find it edifying to learn about Socrates. His trial and punishment are as compelling as Jesus' and I his existence is more likely to be an historic fact.
I think that Plato's dialogs are well worth reading too.
Also, just so you know, Jesus is as or more historically "likely to be real" than Socrates (three major works written by two people who knew Him, multitudes more written by those who knew those who knew Him, mentions by multiple historians of the period, a thriving cult in spite of vicious persecutions, etc.). Socrates has three contemporaries (Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes) and then the writings of Plato project him beyond his time and into the philosophical context.
But perhaps you mean "the Jesus of the Gospels" as opposed to "Yeshua ben Yoseph min Natzret" when you said "historic" here (there's good arguments for Jesus-of-the-Gospels being Yeshua ben Yoseph too, but one thing at a time).
Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
The phrase/concept "both side ism" is a very clever bait and switch that, so far as I can tell, was designed to marginalize/discredit people who are trying to actually engage with the issues (instead of just toxically emoting), and it was avidly adopted and weaponized as such. By both sides.
No, moderatism or centrism is legitimately a fallacy. The idea or intuition that, given two endpoints, the most correct position is one in the middle, is a fallacy. It depends entirely on the endpoints. For example: the three fifths compromise. Turns out, bad. The correct answer was emancipation all along, and the 'centrist' answer was just bad. Because, well, one of the endpoints was slavery. If you 'halfway' slaver…
So you just did a Mote and Bailey. The initial claim was that "anyone rejecting both extremes is automatically wrong"; I pointed out that this was a weaponized defense being used by both sides to hide their BS, and instead of responding to that, you refuted the similar sounding but unrelated claim (which hadn't been made) that "the truth is somewhere in the middle".
Saying that both sides are peddling absolute bollocks is not, in any way, a claim that we'd be better off with some sort of average of the two. Both sides are mostly full of it, full stop.
Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#245No VPN allowed, why?
Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#246[flagged]
I would replace your number 5 with "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" or "MacBeth" or "Calvin & Hobbes" or maybe even Natsume's "I am a Cat." Also fun fictional books with impressive protagonists. Other than that, your first four points are wonderful.
As an atheist, I do find some use for the Jefferson Bible. (US Founding Father) Thomas Jefferson collected all the best parts of the Gospels, dropped the miracles, some of the stranger allegories, but kept all the sermons (the things Jesus was said to have directly taught). It's about 14 "letter" pages, so almost "pamphlet" sized. As far as I'm concerned it finds most of the baby in the bathwater (IMO, so much bathwater), is an easy read, and says some things much more succinctly that I think a lot of Christians might be surprised to find are core teachings of Jesus in the Bible.
I sometimes wonder what the country would be like if every hotel desk was more likely to have a copy of the Jefferson Bible than the Gideon Bible.
Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#247[flagged]
Re: 5 The Jefferson Bible [1] is excellent in this regard. He removes all miracles and most mentions if the supernatural in a cut & paste job of a King James version of the Bible. The result is portraying Jesus as a person, not divine. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible
Thomas Jefferson knew Greek and Latin (was a "polymath" of the old Enlightenment era sort) and used somewhat more original sources than King James, translating them himself into English. He probably did cross-check the King James Edition for some of the English wording, or at least couldn't entirely escape its orbit/gravitational pull, but it is mostly true the Jefferson Bible was a fresh early-American translation.
Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not at all. The bible is famously allegorical which is known by everyone who practices catholicism, but the historical evidence and written records are quite clear - there was this incredibly charismatic guy who grew a following, helped the poor and got crucified.
> there was this incredibly charismatic guy who grew a following, helped the poor and got crucified. What historical evidence supports that Jesus helped the poor?
There are non-christian references to Jesus in roman/jewish history books written in the same century, which give pretty strong support to the idea he was an actual person and was killed for his charity 'work' that catered to the poor and sick. Obviously no real 'historical evidence' is possible beyond that.
Sorry, I studied this ~30 years ago, and am not really in the mood to dig for more details :)
Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#249I view social media through this lens now.
https://youtu.be/fuFlMtZmvY0?si=Jwtky2w0j41u4zLP
It's less that we are in echo chambers and more of being completly flooded with too many opinions.
Avacados == liberal Steaks == conservative
The point I take is that the only way to prevent this is decrease the amount of information you recieve not increase. If you constantly read extreme opinions everywhere your brain cannot process it and therefore starts dropping everything into really big buckets. The more sides you read the bigger your buckets becomes.
Sure you're less informed but I don't think humans were designed to grok the entire world's information either.
Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was thinking about this while reading the article. 15 years ago I prided myself on actively searching out opposing views and engaging with them. I still do that in the small scale, talking with coworkers or friends who have opposing views, but where the fuck can you find any reasonable conservative commentators these days. What are the most prominent voices? People like Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder? They don't ha…
I'm not familiar with Ben Shapiro or Steven Crowder but what makes you so sure that their point of view is unreasonable? It seems you agree that their viewpoint is opposing, which likely means their premise are different, so isn't it entirely possible that their conclusion is reasonable and logical when one starts from their position? Also, there isn't one source that can represent the "conservative" viewpoint becaus…
How can you speak on this conversation at all if you're not familiar with anything?