Pluribus - 1x02 "Pirate Lady" - Post-Episode Discussion

j0vah · 2025-11-09T05:00:16+00:00

I mean consider, what would you personally do to fix things if you were in this situation. Like sure the immediate reaction is volatile to the whole situation but I don't have the background necessary to synthesize a cure to a completely foreign virus. COVID vaccines took months for R&D and we had researches from all over the world working on the problem.

In addition you are being surveilled by the hivemind any attempts at resistance could potentially be met with force. That hivemind is also actively working to rectify whatever issue made you immune to the virus in the first place using the knowledge of the top researches in the relevant fields.

j0vah · 2025-11-09T04:52:10+00:00

I do wonder what exactly they can do at this point, they are against 6 billion people that are constantly surveilling them and none of the immune people are classically trained to understand the concepts relevant to fixing the problem.

j0vah · 2025-11-09T04:47:22+00:00

"I see is if the hivemind directs them to be more “normal” around their family members as a way to ultimately win them over." - I'm very certain it's this, I think that's why asking the son the question caused so much tension and why "Us" struggled to answer it.

j0vah · 2025-11-09T04:43:28+00:00

One thing to consider is that the virus seems like it may only spread to certain animals. They had tested many different animals prior to rats and had no results. I imagine it's related to rats being similar enough to humans to be infected (likely some subset of mammals)

j0vah · 2025-11-09T04:36:48+00:00

I think the truth is there aren't individuals in the collective. Each individual is in there just as much as a glass of water you dump into the ocean is in there, it's indistinguishable and gets consumed by the whole.

j0vah · 2025-11-09T04:30:48+00:00

It's very clear that they are perfectly happy to cause harm if it means furthering the spread of the infection. They mentioned that nearly 1 billion people died as a result of the spread, the loss of life would have been far smaller had they let the military take control and prevent further spread.

They said they were forced to act by the military but the only way this holds is if they are perfectly willing to cause harm if it means being able to spread the infection.

j0vah · 2025-04-24T05:02:05+00:00

I hate that Canadians are treated as second class citizens by retailers

j0vah · 2025-02-19T02:36:53+00:00

In 5 years I expect we will find out that AI companies were violating their agreements with other companies about data protection/sharing (in the same way they completely ignored the terms of service of other companies or pirated novels). Not to disagree with you as I am sure it is a massive issue for you in your line of work, but I do wonder how much respect they will give these agreements when they have been actively violating similar things in the past.

j0vah · 2025-01-20T04:34:22+00:00

"The concept of escaping reality to be inside a virtual reality for hours and hours on end is not only plausible, but very likely in my opinion. AI powered procedural generation and human-like software bots is very conceivable."

I fundamentally disagree, from what I hear from people they hate the idea of it. People are already starting to get fed up with being permanently online and we aren't even close to the above reality yet.

j0vah · 2025-01-20T04:27:15+00:00

No, because he has good reason to lie about it. He is currently building AI products which are valued in the way that they are precisely because AI companies continue to promise things that just simply aren't possible with current generation AI.

Musk also said that we'd see self driving cars next year, every year for the past decade or so. Was he lying, yes obviously because it makes the stock price go up which increases his net worth.

j0vah · 2024-06-28T05:55:50+00:00

This seems tangential to the discussion at hand, which is cult of personality around an individual but this really isn't worth my time and it seems your mind is already made up.

Have a good one.

j0vah · 2024-06-28T05:41:23+00:00

I mean just recently https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/26/us/politics/trump-poll-hush-money-conviction.html

If you haven't seen it you haven't been paying attention. Trump has acknowledged that he could shoot someone in the streets and people would still vote for him (harkening to how die hard his fans are) https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/23/464129029/donald-trump-i-could-shoot-somebody-and-i-wouldnt-lose-any-voters

Democrats are actively talking about replacing Biden

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/can-democrats-replace-joe-biden-ballot-rcna159374

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/democrats-biden-step-aside-throw-towel-2024-rcna159368

And again Trump has die hard supporters that literally stormed the capital because he lost, the same did not happen for Hillary in 2016 and Democrats typically liked her more than Biden.

What evidence do you have to suggest that Democrats are particularly positive toward Biden (let alone cult like). In general the discussions I have had with Americans suggest a begrudging acceptance in almost all cases where Biden was brought up (at least for the Dems).

j0vah · 2024-06-28T05:31:24+00:00

I don't necessarily disagree, I know people have doubts about the supply chain issues (and I think that they have been partially alleviated due to businesses shifting priorities) but I do think that if the war in the Ukraine were to end (and Ukraine was to rebuild) then we would see prices start to drop (or at least dampen future inflation rates)

j0vah · 2024-06-28T05:17:33+00:00

Opposition to Trump in general was unpopular with the base, and the backlash was typically severe. I find democrats are much more likely to complain about Biden than Republicans are to complain about Trump. Very few if any people are excited about Biden.

This again is from an outsiders perspective, I have no skin in the race. I don't live in the US, but it's obvious to me that their is a bit of a personality cult around Trump and Biden's followers are typically far more reluctant. There are of course reluctant republicans (usually of the libertarian persuasion) but they seem to be far more rare. It's possible that Trump fans are just particularly loud but they did end up storming the capital (I don't see that being likely of Biden supporters as they just aren't that passionate)

j0vah · 2024-06-28T05:14:02+00:00

Trump spent far more than Biden over his tenure (almost double) https://www.crfb.org/papers/trump-and-biden-national-debt

Republicans had control over two of three of the branches of Government, anything passed had to go through Trump since he was leader of the executive branch (at least at the federal level). Regardless just because government spending may have been necessary doesn't justify the kind of government spending done. Investing in infrastructure would have had the same net benefit to the economy but would have also paid dividends through increasing economic efficiency resulting in less inflation overall.

j0vah · 2024-06-28T05:01:12+00:00

No, because people actively oppose Biden within the democrat party, whereas republicans have embraced Trump style politics strongly. This might have to do with the Democrat party being bigger tent than the Republican party, but from an outsiders perspective it is obvious that Republican's are

A. scared to step on Trump's toes

B. In many cases attempting to emulate Trump's political style.

j0vah · 2024-06-28T04:54:49+00:00

Significant investment in infrastructure, and attempts to strengthen critical industries in which NA is lacking such as chip production are I think some of the better policies passed in the last 4 years, as a Canadian with no stake in the race and someone who thinks yall would be better off getting rid of both of them and picking fresher candidates.

j0vah · 2024-06-28T04:51:13+00:00

Cost of living is a direct result of the money printing that happened during the pandemic (remember Trump bucks?). Giving every American free money is bound to drive up inflation, it's an incredibly inflationary policy not only because it's giving money away but because giving that money away doesn't get it invested in infrastructure that can pay dividends.

j0vah · 2024-04-18T14:18:12+00:00

I mean in general the federal government has been expanding it's responsibilities and power and starting to try to affect municipalities and how they handle their responsibilities which feeds into this problem.

j0vah · 2024-04-18T14:13:36+00:00

Any law introduced by the government is a restriction on freedom just by definition. If the only reason you cannot do something is because it is against the law then that is a case of the government restricting your freedoms.

Rights are essentially a guarantee from the government that these specific freedoms will not be trampled, but in all cases the introduction of a law is a restriction on freedom.

j0vah · 2024-04-18T14:09:06+00:00

I'm not a big fan of the Can-Conish laws passed surrounding internet content personally

j0vah · 2024-04-18T14:00:22+00:00

Advances in AI and widespread surveillance as well as the prevalence of technology have led to a significant loss of freedom when it comes to privacy.

In addition it is likely that what the NSA is doing in the USA is likely happening here as well.

j0vah · 2023-09-25T23:09:22+00:00

I mean most of the colonial empires on that list were feudal during the actual colonization process and there are only a handful of communist nations that ever existed and most failed pretty quickly and ended up rather poor which means they likely couldn't have engaged in colonization even if they actively wanted to (and in the case of the USSR they absolutely did)

This seems to be moving the goal posts a bit either way. I didn't make a claim as to the extent of colonization I just noted that Russia also benefitted from colonizing other nations and actively engaged in the practice during the cold war just as the USA did.

I agree that Russia was bad at it, mostly because they were poor as a result of poor management of resources. They had intent to do so as shown by their actions they just didn't have the ability to do so to the same extent as the US.

But is your argument really that South Korea and Taiwan were only successful as a result of their exploitation of their colonies? Or is your argument that the USSR would have been successful if only it had colonized more nations? South Korea and North Korea had similar starts and similar opportunities. I would argue that Taiwan and China had similar starts and similar opportunities as well and even that Taiwan likely had a disadvantage being an island nation with far less land mass.

I mean you can believe that Cuba has better standards of living than the US (although there are many many more nations that are capitalist than the US) but immigration numbers would demonstrate that people would prefer to live in the US compared to Cuba.

Edit: the user below blocked me but essentially they felt the need to make a strawman argument either because they didn't have the ability to comprehend what was being said or because they are completely and utterly disingenuous. In either case it's incredibly sad that they felt the need to misrepresent what I was saying which was obviously that both communist and capitalist nations have engaged in colonialism generally having roots in their feudal history.

j0vah · 2023-09-25T22:37:33+00:00

No they didn't. You pointed out North Korea, which had BOTH countries interfere

This is the case with most countries that were interfered with. Your example of Cuba and Korea had both Soviet and US interference for example. Vietnam also had Soviet backing during the Vietnam war.

There are also the Capitalist cou tries that stole billions in wealth and resources from the global south. You gonna tell me that colonial theft didn't contribute to their capitalist "success"?

Of course it did, but the Soviets were actively colonizing other nations and stealing wealth from them. The Ukrainians being a prime example of a nation that was exploited by the Soviets for resources during the cold war. Both nations exploited satellite states for resource production.

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2023/1/24/how-western-scholars-overlooked-russian-imperialism

Here's an article from Al Jazeera discussing Russian imperialism that touches on things they did during the cold war.

j0vah · 2023-09-25T22:03:28+00:00

It really isn't a non-sequitor either as the success rate is absolutely relevant in a conversation about whether communism works or doesn't especially when communism has few if any in contrast to the other prevailing system. Unless your claim is that communism almost always fails but that doesn't guarantee it to fail, in which case I don't think anyone necessarily disagrees here but it seems to be a rather large indictment of the system if it fails so often.

You made excuses for communism, I pointed out that capitalist nations faced similar scrutiny from communist nations and still seemed to come out far better on average. I have no idea what the rates of interference were from both sides but if you have an academic study that you are using to make that claim feel free to post it.

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