Plans you're not supposed to talk about • Hacker News Board

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#651

Post by nikitaga » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 9:52 AM UTC

dskloet wrote: post #505

nikitaga wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need to imagine. You sit them down and you learn that they inhabit a completely different reality from your own. You try to describe your reality, and they dismiss it because it disagrees with their "reality". You try to anchor them in factual reality by pointing to people you both know who died of covid, but not before infecting others... who then also died of covid, etc., but they always have a way to dismi…

Or you avoid the topic, keep your fingers crossed that they won't get sick, and can at least have a normal conversation about the weather without hating each other.

Sure, but that does not solve anything.

That does not help your relationship, because interpersonal relationships where you can't express your honest feelings and ideas are hollow, fake – worse than useless.

That doesn't help anything about COVID, because they're still acting recklessly based on their delusions.

And that doesn't help their deteriorating mental ability as they succumb to propaganda, because their idiocy is left uncontested, only reinforced by their self-selecting ingroup.

At some point you gotta choose what you actually love about such people – their meat and bones, your nominal connection to them (e.g. blood relation), your past shared experience, their personality and ideas, or something else? Because some of those are unaffected by their progressing stupidity and selfishness, but others are poisoned more and more as time goes on and they sink deeper.

I don't have a solution. I just wish people would stop pretending that this brainwashing can be solved by talking, understanding, or simply by ignoring its existence. Often it can't. As a society we're in deep shit, and it has little to do with COVID. It will stay with us well after the pandemic too.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#652

Post by joejohns » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 2:45 PM UTC

If you have a big plan, you don't need to say it aloud to different people. Do it in silence and let your action speak for it.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#653

Post by weregiraffe » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 4:00 PM UTC

_xnmw wrote: post #481

In religion this is nothing new: it's known as hypocrisy, which is despicable because a hypocrite inevitably ends up exploiting true believers, taking advantage of their trust and goodwill. It's a well-studied phenomenon in religious literature (at least from what I know of Christianity and Islam). Tolstoy wrote much about the hypocrisy of the Orthodox leadership in the Russian Empire, and hypocrisy is a central them…

>Someone who doesn't believe should leave

Which was basically (and in many cases literally and directly) death for most human history.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#654

Post by the_doctah » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #405

the_doctah wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty crazy how every single vaccinated person I know has tested positive for Covid since. I guess I and they must be outliers. If there is some protection from spread, it's garbage protection.

Meanwhile, among the many people I know who have been vaccinated, there's been just a single breakthrough case, and that case was due to catching covid from an unnvaccinated co-worker. Since you seem a bit confused, here's what we know and don't know AFAIK: 1) Vaccination reduces your chance of getting infected. The efficacy depends on the strain of covid and the vaccine, but I have yet to see any science indicating…

Thanks for the assessment, but I'm not "confused" at all. Maybe if the pro-vaccine-mandate crowd wasn't so snide and insufferable people might take you more seriously.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#655

Post by andrewflnr » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

themodelplumber wrote: post #588

andrewflnr wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been in cult leadership Um, wow. Do you want to talk about that, or have you written about it elsewhere? No shade if you don't, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be interested.

I would share more but for now it goes very deep, I was raised in a religious fundamentalist family and trained to be in leadership from childhood. There are soooo many stories and lessons that I'm probably going to have to start putting them in one place so I can link people. Wish I had time to go into it more here.

Very understandable. :)

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#656

Post by ClumsyPilot » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

confidantlake wrote: post #620

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Not a ringing endorsement for central banking, amirite?" Which type of spherical cow free-market economy should i compare it too? No matter what system i pick, from medieval gold based systems to modern floating currency, someone goes "ThaTs NoT Real Free MaRKet!" It's like communism, not real life system was ever the real deal.

You can't, it is a religion.

I really think it is, amits ironic because they are ideologically oppose communists but act in the same way. Horseshoe effect in real life!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory#:~:text=In%....

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#657

Post by webXL » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #351

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Money is created when money is loaned out against collateral. Money is destroyed when the loan is repaid and the collateral returned. It's a natural process." But there is nothing natural about it - the limit on money supply is how easy it is to get a loan. Bank could give out mortgages with 0% deposit, they could give out loans equal to 120% of the house value, and they indeed have done so. What regulates the money…

BTW, this will blow your mind. Let's say you have $300 in your bank checking account. You borrow $1000 from the bank. You bank checking account now has a balance of $1300. Where did the thousand bucks come from? Where was it moved from? Nowhere! The bank just changed the amount in the electronic ledger from 300 to 1300. Crazy, right?

Yes, crazy, but not exactly "nowhere". It "comes from" future earnings and the (projected) demand for US military protection and access to the markets which it enables. The bank (really the government) is helping you shift future consumption to the present, because you didn't save enough in the past. And why should you or anyone else be held personally accountable for not saving in the past? /s Because the US and its allies have god-like firepower, baby!

My mind was actually blown recently learning that fractional reserve banking has turned into a widely believed myth. Banks are still making low-interest loans and there's no reserve requirement!

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#658

Post by greyhair » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

Nice philosophical expressions here, but I'll give you two, short takes.

My wife and I happily lived together before marriage, and discovered that there are a number of legal advantages to just getting a civil marriage that are doable with a bunch of paperwork, but largely untested in court. I won't go into the details, but it particularly convoluted if you want to have children. The legal issues are an exercise left to the reader. Hint: They all hinge on whether you want your significant other at the helm if something bad happens to you, or your family. If your answer there is "my family" you have other issues to think about.

I was born and raised on a family that went to church. As was my wife. I grew up with a bunch of doubts that only increased. Same with my wife. We are atheists now, and have been for some time. We raised our kids as atheists. We don't feel any shame in that, even though some people think we should. My kids are completely comfortable in that as young adults. We talked about it regularly as they grew up, we didn't want to be quite about it.

There, I just talked about it. And not for the first time. And likely not for the last.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#659

Post by _theory_ » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 11:37 PM UTC

This is all a pretty good argument in favor of conservatism, especially the last bit. There are plenty of cultural practices that preserve or promote something valuable in society, and maybe we don't even know why they work. But they do.

Kind of like NNs...sure, maybe if you spent enough time, you could figure out exactly how each one is doing what it's doing. Or, you could accept the general principles and enjoy the results.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#660

Post by WalterBright » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 11:58 PM UTC

enimodas wrote: post #506

WalterBright wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, nobody understands the free market. (This is likely why there's so much interest in socialism, as the mind yearns for order and predictability.) Yet the free market works well despite this lack of understanding, and even contempt, of it.

Work well as long as you don't care about externalities such as polution, congestion; poisoning, maiming and killing consumers and employees

Communist countries have a much worse track record on that.