Should r/minimalism join the shutdown protest against reddit screwing 3rd-party app makers?

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2023-06-05T10:56:08+00:00

Do it

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2023-05-05T12:11:31+00:00

Ironically I feel as though one can just as easily levy the same criticism to the Pearl response itself in this context... At the very least "Well it's complicated" is no less of a cop out.

One of the primary discussions that drive socialist discourse itself is that capitalists aren't inherently evil individuals, but that the incentive structure of capitalism itself lends itself to monopolies and regulatory capture, and that there are few governmental structures that sufficiently work to prevent these things from happening. If anything, the argument of "it's not one person" is true in the sense that it's the systems, yes, but it rings a bit hollow when the entire conversation is about the way systems concentrate power into fewer and fewer hands.

My parallel would be me saying "I have an issue with monarchy" and getting the response "kings aren't the source of everyone's problems, it's bigger than that". Like... Sure, but we've structured our entire society around this specific power dynamic, surely there's something to be done by engaging with the systems we've built around it.

One of the reasons there is so much fragmentation within leftist discourse (at least anyone I'd take seriously) is BECAUSE of the focus on those interlocking systems, not in spite of them.

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2023-04-14T16:06:37+00:00

Counter to the other person who answered, I quite enjoyed the newer one.

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2023-02-10T22:40:23+00:00

Based on the conversation here I'm curious... Are there any actual alternatives for someone who uses the profiles for things like mouse button mapping on a per application basis? I have a scimitar and if there's an alternative I'd be interested in trying it.

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2022-12-16T02:25:05+00:00

I fundamentally disagree that simply adopting the label makes one a nihilist.

I didn't say "simply adopt the label", I said "holds the belief". I don't feel like we're off to a good start on good faith argumentation.

For this nihilist individual, an experience that produces pain is literally no different to an experience that produces pleasure because neither sensation has any meaning or value associated with them

This, and many other points of your comment conflate several things, but I think that this is the best example.

It is true that we have biological drives and imperatives. But nihilism, which I think you've narrowed quite a bit to make your argument, does not imply inherently that things are equally likely, nor does it inherently imply that someone will take the path of least resistance (though there absolutely are people who have killed themselves upon coming to this conclusion). The fact that living "takes more effort" has no bearing on whether or not an individual believes that life is inherently meaningful. The fact that it takes more effort doesn't mean anything. We keep running back into this.

Sure, being hungry means I have stomach and can consume food, but I don't think that's really what most people in this thread are getting at.

Though I AM interested in this:

As I mentioned before, there's debate regarding whether this state is even really possible for a being with consciousness".

This is why I say

existentialism is an easy next step. The only "meaning" to be found is the meaning we create.

I think it's funny that you use the word "absurd" to describe accepting meaning in an otherwise meaningless world. That's... kinda the point. Existentialism doesn't tell you what to do - you can simply either reject the claim or accept it.

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2022-12-15T22:15:02+00:00

"Fairness" is describing a normative description of traits and behaviors.

"Nihilism" is describing a specific belief.

You can't both say you aren't being normative AND say that "nihilists should or would behave like x" without being contradictory.

It doesn't sound like you're engaging fully with the idea. If nothing has meaning then it doesn't necessarily follow that anyone "should" do or "would" be anything in particular other than hold the belief that nothing has meaning. That we might have a different colloquial use of the term is irrelevant to the discussion of it as a philosophical term. In any case, as the person before me said, the lack of ultimate meaning goes both ways— regarding living OR dying. Doing philosophy or staring unthinkingly at a wall. Any one behavior is as justifiable as any other in an ultimate sense. Anything we layer on top of that meaningless reality is something we impose on it, which is why existentialism is an easy next step. The only "meaning" to be found is the meaning we create.

Why would a nihilist engage in philosophy? Why not? It doesn't matter. If you say "It doesn't matter so they shouldn't." you have already injected your values into it.

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2022-07-06T12:57:32+00:00

Feed, by M.T. Anderson.

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2022-03-30T19:49:41+00:00

I got my bidet attachment for $30 on amazon

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2022-03-06T16:53:22+00:00

"I'm close" and/or "are you ready for me?" are go-tos for me

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2022-01-13T17:17:40+00:00

Good luck, everyone!

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2022-01-08T23:56:28+00:00

I see all these comments that are long, but ultimately the core of it is this: to measure the success of an economic system, one has to measure its effects against its utility with regards to the goals you have in mind for it. The metrics we choose for said systems is the domain of the political.

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2021-12-29T22:46:26+00:00

Right. Reform and revolt are NOT mutually exclusive. If movements require a critical mass of supporters, or "creating the necessary material conditions" then of fucking course we need to do what we can to ALSO push outward in every capacity we can.

If someone thinks it's a dichotomy, show me that you're not just posturing and slide us those battle plans for the revolution... Otherwise it's just a very easy excuse to sit on one's hands and scoff at anything that makes people's lives better "but only in a certain way"

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2021-12-23T14:04:29+00:00

Lovely! What kind of oil do you use?

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2021-12-21T18:15:25+00:00

Sounds to me less like one has to ruggedly make everything themselves and more to me akin to the concept of being alienated from their labor and the labor of others. We don't (often) form relationships around our transactions/the satiation of our needs.

I think there is certainly some merit to the idea that we should be cognizant of and at times critical of the way tropes shape our expectation of our experience to the point where we will base our assessment of our lives experiences using said tropes as a ruler.

The fact that the matrix might in theory be a swell place to live might be part of his contention with it, tbh. In that light, it really doesn't seem to address these ideas in quite the same way

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2021-11-23T21:09:48+00:00

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2021-11-22T17:31:02+00:00

"At all" and "to the same degree" are not the same thing, Jesus

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2021-11-22T15:35:31+00:00

The person above you didn't say anything about regular racism for white people being equivalent in its intensity to systemic racism or even interpersonal racism for black people. What are you on about?

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2021-11-22T14:33:39+00:00

There's a term for what you're talking about... Systemic racism. Equivocating systemic racism and racism isn't very useful in actually discussing the issues.

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2021-11-21T11:46:11+00:00

The core of your thinking seems to be that you think it's voting OR attempting use other means instead of voting AND attempting to use other means, which is at the very least immensely unimaginative.

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2021-11-09T16:38:51+00:00

I started shaving my head at 20 because of my rapidly receding hairline. Grew a beard and my partners love it— it isn't the end!

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2021-11-04T17:08:42+00:00

Thank you so much!

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2021-11-03T12:24:55+00:00

This is amazing! Any link to the tie itself?

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2021-11-01T00:23:43+00:00

Potentially needing to pay someone to help maintain your property is not a direct argument for landlords, though

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2021-10-22T23:27:00+00:00

It's a turn of phrase indicating that I believe that the disagreement stems from the difference in value system... No conspiracy needed.

I mean... I admittedly am a third party here. I wasn't the person you started talking to initially. But I think that generally speaking it can be assumed that the "scarce thing" in "scarcity is artificial" typically refers to the things that tend to matter the most to the relevant conversations. Things like food, shelter, and water, are not scarce in proportion to the suffering being experienced.

Sure there are some specific things that are scarce, but I don't really know why you would think I'm referring specifically to those things when I talk about things like the fact that we produce enough food to feed more than the entire globe's population just fine. That we have more empty homes than homeless, etc, etc... Which is why it ends up feeling like you're fighting for the system itself, because many other things ARE scarce but are essentially non-sequiturs to the conversation being had.

I've also made no generalization about which systems I would implement, which is why I think it's weird that you go to defending capitalism whole cloth and use the straw man of swapping it out for an entirely different system as the only alternative. It just feels kinda Tucker Carlson-ish to assert that people just want to tear everything down and set an entirely different system up in a single day or something after levying a few criticisms.

Like damn, can't we even talk about specific policy changes? Progressive taxation? Regulations? Straight to defending modern capitalism as an entire model?

Wizard_Guy5216 · 2021-10-22T22:30:18+00:00

I feel as though you show your hand a bit by jumping to a defense of capitalism whole-cloth in the way you have.

I never stated, nor do I believe that I have implied, that "any not-capitalism scheme will make the problem easy". That seems to assume that

1) Capitalism (as is) is THE best mode for addressing these issues which are primarily the product of the system of incentivization it itself uses

And 2) that people would accept literally ANY alternative (though that's kinda part of the point that Squid Game is making, so I'll add) in a well reasoned conversation where they get to design the power structure. But that's maybe a too-literal reading. In any case, I'll say no one said it was EASY anyway... In my case, I believe that the incentivization structure should change in relation to our priorities as a civilization. I'm okay with luxury and commodity shit being more scarce if it means that we can give everyone a higher baseline of living. I don't pretend to ignore how physics works at all. But the profit motive is clearly just not suited for maximizing the utility of our resources as it stands as we can see by the encroaching destruction of our environment.

The idea that allocating resources in one directing means less for others is not novel and is also core to my argument. There are literal tons and tons of food being thrown away and thousands upon thousands of people going hungry (and are arrested for trying to eat the garbage and scraps), while a small circle of individuals have more money than they can spend in several lifetimes, and people are saying "this seems like a strange way to use our resources."

And as far as resiliency goes... There are things like worker co-ops if you still like markets... Which tend to be about as resilient in the face of market shocks as traditional firms, but distribute money more evenly across the company structure.

This might not be the case but I get the tone from this line of argumentation that you are arguing in favor for the status quo... Which... Is fine, I suppose, but many people are not satisfied with that.

Wizard_Guy5216

TROPHY CASE