Lemvi

In psychology, this is called “learned helplessness”

sleep on it

I keep having to look up acronyms on posts about american politics, it’s only fair if it also works like that the other way around 😉

I am fighting socialism because my father grew up in the FRG and my mother in the GDR, and because I was able to talk to my grandparents on both sides, who lived in the FRG and GDR respectively.

My relatives in the socialist GDR had to work more (more hours per week, less vacation days per year) and could afford less (though technically, affordability wasn’t the issue: they had the money, there was just nothing to buy).

My relatives in the west also had more freedom in where they traveled, which media they consumed, and which opinions they voiced.

Don’t get me wrong, I hate capitalism too. But change needs to come democratically. Otherwise things get worse, not better.

I like helping animals in need. When did we agree that only the most intelligent/fit animals deserve to live?

I don’t intervene however if it is predator vs prey. Helping one would mean harming the other.

Edit: thought about the predator vs prey thing some more. I guess I do tend to help if one seems much more sentient then the other.

I don’t see why it would be. Isn’t ‘copyleft’ basically: “You may modify and redistribute this code for free, but whatever you produce with it has to be copyleft as well”?

Extending that to coding agents trained on copyleft code, I would say that any code that agent writes is also copyleft. How is that anti-ethical?

What’s wrong with copyleft code?

Neither, I think it’s none of my business.

I don’t see why we would want to gatekeep the fediverse. If more people decided to use it over centralized social media, I think that’d be a positive development.

And as you know, the fediverse is far from homogeneous. I expect there will always be some very big general purpose “normie” instances like lemmy.world, and smaller, more niche ones for specific communities.

Normally I prefer oat milk but for porridge I use soy milk, for exactly that reason.

With these things, it often makes sense to ask the opposite question. Would it be possible for one to not affect the other? Legal and illegal markets would have to be completely separated, meaning money used in one couldn’t be used in the other, and entities participating in one couldn’t participate in the other.

That is obviously not true, so yeah, black markets influence the legal economy.

I think there are two separate questions here.

1. Which experiences should not be missed? Those that help you grow. In no particular order: heartbreak, loss, defeat, love, friendship, challenge…
2. How to enjoy your 20s? Well I guess that somewhat depends on your funds, your preferences and your location.

What I’d recommend: Don’t stick to what you know, you have the rest of your life for that. Try new experiences, keep an open mind, meet new people, visit different places, learn things. And chase your dreams before life has got you on your knees.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t fight injustice. And sometimes violence is needed for that. But it does make a difference if violence is the first or the last resort. And it also makes a difference how far you take the violence.

One problem with viewing your opponent as ‘evil’ is that it lowers the threshold for violence. You tend to use it sooner than you have to and take it farther than you have to.

Oh I definitely think there is evil, as in actions that have no other intention than to cause harm.

But first and foremost the concept of evil is a useful tool for storytelling and propaganda. It removes complexity. The other party isn’t morally gray, they are evil, you don’t negotiate with them, you don’t consider their perspective, you fight them. But it doesn’t just stop at the other party. If the other is evil, then we, through fighting it, become good, and it sure does feel good to think of oneself that way. And now we have flipped the moral compass on its head, inflicting suffering, previously evil, is now done in the name of good. And you better believe that children witnessing that suffering will have their own ideas who is evil, thus the cycle of suffering continues.

I have talked to many Albanians telling me how evil Serbs are, and I have talked to Serbs telling me the opposite. It just seems so painfully obvious standing on the outside.

And no, I don’t think I am immune to that. I am just lucky enough to never have been the victim of real violence. But I do believe it is worth asking: is the other party really evil, or does believing that just make my world simpler?

Regarding my stance on refugees I actually agree with you, and I have protested extraditions to the US before. This doesn’t fit into a campist worldmodel, but I think calling the US ‘good’ would miss the point just as much as calling it ‘evil’. I don’t believe in evil or good nations. Just states with more or less legitimate governments and populations prone to propaganda.

If you believe any nation is ‘cartoonishly evil’, you have probably fallen victim to propaganda as well.

I do wonder what your stance on refugees from Cuba is. Do you agree with racists wanting to send them back, just with a different kind of reasoning (i.e. ‘it’s for their own good, Cuba is better actually’)?

Thanks, now I have that acronym in my search history

Fixed

I would argue that every species alive today evidently found a strategy that works, otherwise they wouldn’t be here.

Perhaps some mushrooms actually rely on being eaten somehow. Or perhaps being poisonous comes with downsides, so it isn’t purely an advantage.

The development of Grok is quite interesting to me. Musk has two competing goals:

1. Make Grok smart
2. Make Grok agree with Musk

Musk seems to be choosing some kind of middle ground. If you look at trackingai.org Grok falls into the bottom left quadrant, like every LLM. Of all LLMs however, it leans the most towards the bottom right.

Believing something and knowing something is not the same.

I don’t believe in god, my father does, we both admit that we don’t know if there is a god.

There are varying degrees of religiosity as well. Some are absolutely convinced, others just don’t want to think that their loved ones completely disappear when they die. I personally know many people who believe in some kind of god or afterlife, who just make that their personal business and don’t bother anyone with it.

I also never said atheists are idiots. I think people who harass others for their beliefs, while not being able to prove that theirs is any more correct, are.