81–90 of 129 posts
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> dialectical materialism You keep using that phrase, but I don't think very many other people still do or have any idea what it means. Everyone's moved on to Picketty now.
I’m pretty sure anyone who ever studied Marxist theory even at high school levels knows what that means.
Great author; sadly another terrible keynote choice by the CCC.
Care to elaborate? I think the talk was on topic and a suitable kick-off for the rest of the congress. I found Stross' perspective on predicting the future and AI novel and interesting.
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I’m pretty sure anyone who ever studied Marxist theory even at high school levels knows what that means.
Well, it seems your average American doesn't even know the difference between Socialism and Communism and on top of that uses "Socialism" entirely wrong all the time.
Socialism can’t coexist with Communism its economic theory is not compatible with either the political or economic theories behind communism.
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> dialectical materialism You keep using that phrase, but I don't think very many other people still do or have any idea what it means. Everyone's moved on to Picketty now.
I’m pretty sure anyone who ever studied Marxist theory even at high school levels knows what that means.
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I’m pretty sure anyone who ever studied Marxist theory even at high school levels knows what that means.
Sorry, no idea what this means. Took plenty of history and government in high school. Have a casual interest in the USSR and strong interest in general policy.
Some comments as watching video... Corporation as AI is good analogy. But as with many, he stops short and repeatedly just says corporations. Please, every large group entity - governmental bodies, unions, non-profits - is an AI. And with/in those groups (and corporations) are also competing AIs. Comments about weaponized social media: It is odd that we in the West don't want to acknowledge / know / accept the US gov…
But corporation collections as paperclip maximizers is a bad analogy. Corporations generally produce something large numbers of people want (be it solar panels or cars in his example), whereas a paperclip maximizer AI produces paperclips that only it wants, destroying everything in its path.
It is not that the item or service is useful or not in the short term, but that it will pursue a set goal with a single minded conviction.
Another analogy may well be the Sorcerer's Apprentice.
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Well, it seems your average American doesn't even know the difference between Socialism and Communism and on top of that uses "Socialism" entirely wrong all the time.
Socialism is used wrong also by self proclaimed socialists; modern day social democracies are not exactly pure socialists either. Socialism can’t coexist with Communism its economic theory is not compatible with either the political or economic theories behind communism.
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It is an old argument because communism can mean different things. What you mean with communism I would rather call more precisely real socialism [1] Now those real socialist states had as their goal, or at least said so to achieve communism: "the establishment of the communist society, which is a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, mo…
One can also state, WRT the US, that "real" capitalism hasn't existed and its closest approximation has been in steady decline for the last 125 years. Ergo, if we only tried "real" capitalism things would be so much better.
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Millions fewer than died under centuries of global slavery and imperialism, which I'm sure you're not going to now claim is "not real capitalism".
It just doesn't ring true. Both slavery and imperialism have had a long history before capitalism. Capitalism exists in circumstances with no plausible relationship to slavery or imperialism. It annoys me because this dialectic is so obviously wrong.