How could it be possible for anyone to accurately reflect on the mechanisms shaping their emotional reaction to a specific situation when they were 4 years old? It should be transparently obvious that this is unknowable. First, by the time we begin to form memories, these influences have already been shaping us for months to years. Second, even if at 4 years old you remembered every moment from birth to now, you still wouldn't have the ability to actually reflect on all that data. Most adults aren't even capable of reflecting accurately on the influences affecting their current decisions!
I have other memories when I was 4, and talked about them with my parents years later. Another significant one is I wandered away and got lost in London, and some cops noticed me and picked me up and took me to the station.
My parents filled in some details, some of which I did not remember.
I don't doubt that you have memories from when you were 4, I have memories from that time too. And I'm sure you felt the shame you described. But I know that it's impossible for a 4-year-old to accurately decipher why they feel shame when they do!
You disagreed with sevenzero when they claimed that concepts like violence and right and wrong are actively taught by parents instead of being innate to children. Assuming you read all three lines of sevenzero's comment before disagreeing: the perspective of your 4-year-old self is not a reliable source, because 4-year-old children cannot accurately differentiate between innate or taught feelings.
I would certainly agree that one gets taught more refined and nuanced notions of right and wrong, but those are innate feelings. At least for me.
I recall seeing a TV show where they studied very young people by putting them in right and wrong situations, and they definitely knew what was right and wrong.
> I would certainly agree that one gets taught more refined and nuanced notions of right and wrong, but those are innate feelings. At least for me.
How could a person who was taught social concepts of right and wrong since birth ever hope to reliably determine which parts of said concepts in their own mind are innate, and which aren't? Human minds are infamous for being terrible at introspecting their own mechanisms at the best of times.
> I recall seeing a TV show where they studied very young people by putting them in right and wrong situations, and they definitely knew what was right and wrong.
Unless said very young people were raised by wolves, chances are that they've been taught these concepts since birth as well. You can't determine the innateness by only looking at people who share this bias.
Note that the article only measures violations of child labor laws, i.e. there are (presumably many times more) children working without violating the laws. Why are people deliberately employing lousy workers? Why are business owners lobbying to allow these lousy workers to work more hours?
What if my grandmother was a bicycle? None of these change the fact that voting for a system to move resources from others to yourself is self serving.
You can debate whether it's justifiable or not, but it is self serving by definition.
Oh, I fully agree! Unfortunately many people reduce other people's inner thoughts to the boolean decision "if someone has below-average resources, their decision must be motivated by moving resources from others to themselves", because they assume the "homo economicus" model to apply to most individuals.
As my examples show, such a model breaks down for trivial cases. In the real world, people have much more complicated and layered reasons motivating their vote for any system. Though I'd like to ask anyone subscribing to the homo economicus view - what do you think about the position of people with above-average wealth who would vote for capitalism? Their choice is equally as self-serving, no?
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Btw, it's a bit rude to pattern-match a thought-terminating cliche followed by declaring your point of view to be objectively true.
You seem to be missing the point. The person you originally replied to said that those who vote for communism for their own personal gain are self serving. Let's call those people Group A.
You then listed a bunch of people who might vote for it for some non-self-serving reason, let's call them Group B.
Your comment implies that the existence of Group B makes Group A not-self-serving, when in fact it is as irrelevant to Group A's motives as my grandmother being a bicycle.
> Btw, it's a bit rude to pattern-match a thought-terminating cliche followed by declaring your point of view to be objectively true.
> If "assigning resources to everyone" is a net gain (IE the voter doesn't have resources), then yes it is self serving.
It is not possible to state more clearly that:
Voter has below-average resources -> voting for communism must be self-serving.
I have explained that this is wrong. To stick with your example, when you choose group A based on factor X and then broadly assign motivation Y to everyone in the group, you're creating a false narrative, because group A is a superset of the people you've described.
It's laughably naive to think that any significant number of people who vote for a system they think will personally benefit them are in fact doing so purely out of principle, and not at all because it will benefit them. However, as long as one such person exists, Group A is indeed a superset of self-serving people, and you are therefore correct in the most technical and irrelevant sense. Congratulations.
Man what the hell are you even talking about? Nearly every one of your comments in this thread has been some sort of non-sequitur or is replying to an argument that nobody made. Your only fully coherent comment was the one with the superset idea, which boils down to "you can't say people who vote for communism and stand to gain from it are self-serving, because one of them might happen to be a saint whose only concern is the common good".
I'm getting tired of having to direct the conversation back to the actual topic. It's okay to just bow out when you're wrong, you don't have to continuously derail a conversation with bullshit just because you're out of your depth. You're not fooling anyone with it.
Your only contribution to a conversation you admit to not understanding has been to stick your fingers into your ears and tell me how meaningless my point is. That's not "directing the conversation back to the actual topic" in any way.
It's fine to disagree with my position! But that's not what you're doing, you're declaring my thoughts meaningless and trying to push me out of the conversation. So why don't you just move on?
I said irrelevant, because your argument does not contradict the point that was being made. Your first comment was a list of scenarios that literally had nothing do with what you were replying to. And your "superset" comment was trying to shoot down a general observation about human behavior by pointing out that it isn't a mathematically rigorous model, as if it was ever intended or claimed to be. It is not my fault that nonsense and pedantry are irrelevant, but I'm sorry to inform you that they are.
> a conversation you admit to not understanding
I understand perfectly what you're saying. The source of my confusion is your insistence that it matters. It's like I told you that apples are edible and you keep insisting that they categorically aren't because some people don't like them, and also occasionally one of them might have a worm in it.
> trying to push me out of the conversation
My brother in Christ, all I want is for you to just stay in the conversation for once.
Anyway, this is pretty firmly in "playing chess with a pigeon" territory now. Have a good one.
First: How do you know that every system is corruptible and exploitable?
And second: What if other systems are less corruptible and exploitable? How do you know whether all systems have the same potential for corruption and exploitation?
Capitalism is a system that explicitly rewards greed, and that gives the most power to the people with the most to gain from exploiting said power. Why is it unreasonable to believe that other systems are likely better on these fronts?
How do I know that a system maintained by people is exploitable by people? IDK, that's a real thinker, isn't it. That all systems are exploitable, in absence of human influence, isn't the argument I'm making. It's tautologically true that systems that humans design and implement and depend on the behavior of humans to continue to run would be exploitable by humans. You cannot design a system dependent on human action that is also immune to human nature.
As for the second, the more in control of the system humans are, the more they can exploit it. Your return on exploitation, which I think is really what you're getting at, is based on how diffuse the control and power is at the point that you exploit it. But the more diffuse control and power, the less responsive and effective the system is when working at full tilt. It's two sides of the same coin.
Capitalism is a system of decentralized resource allocation. Decentralized systems have their pros and cons, and other systems that would rely on centrally planned economies have pros and cons. Capitalism isn't the issue, unfettered capitalism is the issue.
After that opener I'm guessing this will be a waste of effort... yes, it might be a real thinker, because AFAICS the two statements don't form a tautology. Is this based on actual findings by research in game theory, or did you just decide that this must be the case?
Funnily enough, in my eyes it's obvious that capitalism in a globalized world must inevitably lead to unfettered capitalism, since the gravity effect of money along with competition between countries for their investments (with tax breaks etc. ) inevitably allows the capitalists to change the laws in their favor more and more. So I would ask for an objective measure of "how much in control humans are". I don't think it's a single dimension like you're implying, and I don't think capitalism is near any optimum due to the aforementioned effect.
Governments have power, not private companies. Private companies can influence the powerful, of course (as can you or I) but you're complaining about second order or third order power without caring about first order power.
Unfortunately this naive view breaks down as soon as lobbying is introduced, since it is a direct channel for private companies to influence governments.
> Unfortunately this naive view breaks down as soon as lobbying is introduced, since it is a direct channel for private companies to influence governments.
The naive view is to think that lobbying is automatically bad. Policymakers can choose who they talk to. If you're worried about corrupt policymakers, you've correctly identified where power resides: in government.
Is the alternative is to give the power directly to the powerful? Not only will they hold the guns, but they decide what the markets will bear - often-enough with food for the poor becoming optional, if history has any lessons.
Which non-capitalist system does not ultimately concentrate wealth and power even further? And, if nation-states are organisms, and survival of the fittest is a law, which of those systems can survive in the real world? Excepting perhaps those propped up by a disproportionate natural wealth and homogeneous culture, where it is easier for people to continue to believe in "our good" when hard times come.
Capitalism is the only system that pretends to respect human nature - gives us a lever that says, "want more stuff? provide more value." It gives the self-interested a healthy outlet that the other systems lack. It must be managed, though, by power, and when the two collude you get fascism. So, I guess maybe I share your view, that lobbying breaks the system.
Globally active/influential social systems are still very young. In the couple hundred years such systems have been able to form, we've only attempted a minority of realistically possible systems, and most of this data was collected under very specific sets of circumstances which most likely only cover a tiny subset of realistically possible circumstances.
IMO it's not possible to justify your claims without taking a whole tower of (IMO likely false) assumptions for granted. I'd love to go into detail on each assumption I see, but I've had similar comments regarding flaws of capitalist systems get derailed too many times by very angry commenters who insist that such thoughts are not worth discussing and MUST NOT be discussed.
Excuse you? What I originally said was "I don't understand your comment". They posted a clarification, and the clarification still doesn't make sense. No, I haven't read the download numbers. How is that going "well akshually"?
No, it doesn't. If the claim is just that download numbers are not consistently trending upwards, they should have just said that. I would have no trouble understanding that. What they actually said is "Libreoffice didn't say the numbers were going up, they claimed a specific record." Well, so what? Nobody said Libreoffice said that! The OP said that, because if it's true, then it's not surprising that the latest stat (release or not) is the highest ever. Nobody in the thread so far has said anything that contradicts "the numbers were going up anyway, therefore the record might not be to do with the AI policy".
The numbers graph is spiky and I can imagine you could argue either way that they are generally trending up or not. But that's irrelevant!
This objection is completely meaningless unless the download numbers follow a consistent upwards trend. You are simplifying the new record to a boolean, but most people still find meaning in extraordinary events happening, even if they follow a general trend.
So I fail to see this discussion as anything but sophistry until anyone demonstrates that the download numbers are totally ordinary. It's typical HN contrarianism without any value, because it's enough to argue for the possibility of something, even when the data for checking it is easily accessible.
I think the confusion is that robrain somehow understood smokel's objection as being "all-time total downloads obviously increase over time, so this is meaningless", rather than what smokel actually said which was "the number of weekly downloads has simply been increasing over time". Which is why robrain quoted LibreOffice's "This is the highest number of downloads in the first week”, to counter the idea (which nobody suggested) that the record was just about all-time cumulative downloads going up.
That's then what tempfile was questioning how it contradicted smokel's claim (because it doesn't, just an imagined claim). Your points, that if the number of weekly downloads isn't actually consistently increasing then this could still be meaningful, are valid - but irrelevant to tempfile who was wasn't arguing that this is meaningless; you should argue that to smokel instead.
This whole discussion is about evidence. That's not proof and it is not certain, but it is evidence pointing into the direction that OpenAI might be doing something that they're strongly incentivized to do. What kind of "evidence" do you see as necessary?
The people on the left who are "enthusiastically pro illegal immigration" are a tiny minority of all leftists. The majority does think that illegal immigrants shouldn't be mistreated deliberately, which conservative media outlets condense into "enthusiastically pro illegal immigration".
I see all those topics brought up, both here (though usually flagged) and on the Fediverse.
Why wouldn't the tech companies, rich capitalists and current US government use these services to drum up support? I mean hell, why wouldn't they use the product they're building for this purpose? They have every incentive to.
The CDU has been trying to adopt more AfD positions and talking points, in the hopes of getting their votes. Meanwhile this keeps only strengthening the AfD, but the CDU would rather see the fascists in power than govern with anyone left of center.
I am unfamiliar with the details of German politics but if what you say is true, I am not surprised at all. I do not think that one can "win" against those parties by using their methods or adopting their positions. Because they are genuine at it. While the others would only fake it.
If the voters have a choice between a fake populist and a genuine populist, they would, in my opinion, naturally pick the genuine one.
I think that one of the reasons is that the "fakeness" is not very appealing to anyone. So they prefer the "real deal".
The research I've seen points to a different, but closely related causal chain - when the mainstream party adopts positions by the extreme party, some view it as a confirmation that the extreme party was right on this point, and might be right on others.
I'd like to note the highly biased nature of this comment.
> There was a lot of hope when the current German government was elected. The current chancellor did his campaign saying the leftist-green ideological politics would be over and he is going to drastically reduce the government spending and cut bureaucracy and lift up the economy. People believed him and majority voted for a center right government.
The current chancellor is from the CDU, the same party that led the government 16 out of the last 20 years (and the majority of Germany's existence), and they offered nothing but populist non-solutions. Now they're implementing them, and it turns out they're just pushing Germany deeper into the hole the CDU dug for us.
> However, as soon as he came to power, he broke the promise of fiscal discipline and cutting spending and the first thing he did was passed a bill to burrow more than half a trillion Euros under the votes of old parliament even changing the constitution.
This is a non-argument, since it's just pointing at a Euro amount without arguing why it's not fiscally responsible or how it doesn't align with their campaign promises. I actually agree that it's fiscally irresponsible, but it definitely aligns with Merz's campaign promises. When you vote for a party that promises both fiscal responsibility AND to funnel lots of money to the rich, you're gonna break one of them no matter what - but that's on the voters for believing in both.
> Also because of the firewall they have imposed to AfD, for him the only coalition partner was SPD( which is more of a left leaning party) and they formed a government and since then it has been internal conflicts to pass the important legislations to get the country back on track.
For the record, the SPD lost >80% of their voters because they have been the CDU's little lapdog for more than a decade, and are actively pushing against non-centrist policies. The "important legislations to get the country back on track" are things like "allowing employers to demand 8 additional hours of work each week" or "allowing employers to force employees to get a sick note on the first day AND no longer paying for single sick days, WHILE ALSO banning sick notes over video appointments AND no longer reimbursing physicians for 'open hours', so if you can't get that sick note, sucks to be you".
In comparison, the party FDP (who literally let the richest capitalists directly participate in their decisions) actually blocked a bunch of agreed-upon things in the only recent left-of-center government. After the coalition fell apart, investigative journalism revealed that they literally planned on entering the government with the intention of blocking as much as possible before blowing up the coalition.
> After the coalition fell apart, investigative journalism revealed that they literally planned on entering the government with the intention of blocking as much as possible before blowing up the coalition.
Can you share the link or source for this? This is the first time I’m hearing this
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