I don't remember where I read this quote originally and I can only paraphrase it, but observing people living in a capitalist society and concluding that human nature is self-centeredness and greed is equivalent to observing workers in a factory that is poisoning their lungs and concluding that human nature is to cough.
That's a nice quote, thank you. I looked into it. It's by Andrew Collier:
To look at people in capitalist society and conclude that human nature is egoism, is like looking at people in a factory where pollution is destroying their lungs and saying that it is human nature to cough.
Primary goal is to survive in the environment you are in, how many might have a desire to escape that environment but lack the ability to do so? Leave it all behind and live in a cabin in the woods isn't exactly an unheard of idea.
The issue, as I see it, is that most people struggle to envision a society beyond capitalism. Capitalist ideology is embedded in every aspect of our lives. It appears in our mindset, in books, movies, and even in children's television shows. The narrative that anyone can succeed if they work hard enough, and that poverty is simply the result of laziness, is both powerful and pervasive.
The idea that everyone should live in isolated cabins is neither a realistic vision nor a desirable goal for society.
I think “good” and “bad” are hard terms to apply to people objectively, but I do believe that most people value social coherence and are willing to do (the minimum amount of) something to maintain it. If you can’t believe at least that it means that all of those thin blue line people are right, and I’m just not willing to believe that’s true.
I would say most people are good. However, the human brain is pretty shit and easy to manipulate. It's easy to make people view other people as not human or other to them, or to not think about them at all. Maybe that is "not good" in some definitions though. When face-to-face, I will bet every time on someone treating someone well. I'll lose the bet occasionally, but I'll be right more than wrong.
Karma - there are way too many shitty people who just continue to be shitty because nothing ever comes back to bite them. Meanwhile, people who actually try to help are kicked around the most.
Anyway, if they were so benevolent and so much smarter than us, why would they impose their will, and especially if interference might make our extinction more rapid?
If you want to show there are infinitely many primes, one way is to first note that every integer greater than 1 has a prime factor. This is because if an integer n is prime, n is a prime factor of itself, and if n is not prime then it must have a smaller factor m other than 1, 1< m < n. If m is also not prime, it too must have a smaller factor other than 1, and you can keep playing this game but there are only so many integers between 1 and n so eventually you'll get to a factor of n that has no smaller factors of its own other than 1, which means it is prime.
Let's now suppose there is only a finite number of primes, we'll try to show that this assumption leads to nonsense so can't be possible.
We can multiply any finite number of integers together to get a new integer. Let's multiply all of the primes together to get a new number M. Then M + 1 gives a remainder of 1 when you divide by any prime number. Since dividing by a factor will always give a remainder of 0, none of the prime numbers can be a factor of M + 1. So M + 1 is an integer bigger than 1 with no prime factors. This is impossible, so there must be a mistake somewhere in this argument.
The only thing we said that we're not 100% sure is true was that there are a finite number of primes, so that has to be our mistake. So there must be infinitely many prime numbers.
Religion, mythology and probably anything mystical. It's very easy why people believe in them, they're so alluring and genuinely wish they had truth to them. Unfortunately the only truth to be found is ancient wisdom, and even that can be very iffy sometimes.
I'll do some reading, any recommendations would be appreciated!
Religion to me has always seemed as a way to create order in a seemingly orderless world, rationality set aside. I like philosophy for this reason, although it can be very pretentious.
I've spent my entire life believing that facts don't care about feelings. That scientific truth doesn't require your belief in it in order to be true. That at the end of the day, reasoning will beat emotion...
By far the most dis-heartening thing about the last few years (to me) has been accepting the idea they "facts" are "whatever is shouted the loudest".
It, more than anything else, makes me feel helpless. If the enemy isn't even playing with the same fact-sheet... How do you even begin to fight that?
Reincarnation - I’d like to believe I’ve met others before, maybe even many times. It would explain some stuff like why you’re irrationally drawn or repelled by certain people.
The thing that's always gotten me about reincarnation is the lack of memory of past lives. Even if it were true and some small part of a person lives on, is it functionally different than a permanent death if they retain nothing from their past lives?
@CapriciousDay one of the most common misunderstandings about "razor principles" is that one should completely discard hypothesis that does not pass the razor. The thing is, razor principles is a priority-sorting mechanism, not discarding. The simpliest explanation for everything is God of The Gaps (and that's how Occam's Razor should had work in Occam's reasonings), but we understand that God is not enough.
Same goes for Hanlon's Razor. If stupidity is not enough, you should go with the next hypothesis - malevolent supidity.
I found a wallet on the ground by a truck outside a store recently that had a lot of cash in it. I looked at the license and while I was heading in to see if they could call the owner I saw the guy rushing back out of the store looking panicked. I gave him his wallet back and he acted like I was the one that took it from him. If I was gonna steal from you I'd have cleaned it out and tossed it asshole. Then later when I mentioned that id found a wallet and returned my coworkers were all giving me shit for not just stealing his money. Not one person out of 8 had any opinion other than just steal it. I already don't have a great opinion of people but that really reinforced my opinion.
I definitely don’t want to believe in God, because if there were one then that would mean a sadistic narcissistic monster is at the helm of all of this. I prefer an indifferent universe.
I know it's a statistical impossibility that we're the only life out there. I just don't believe they've ever been here. Since we haven't been either conquered or uplifted yet.
There is a gospel passage about how much will be expected of those whom have been given much. I've always heard this interpreted as how church leaders will be judged harshly in the afterlife. I wish this and hell were true, just for the sheer shock and disbelief of all the hypocritical religious leaders who've done so many terrible things and continued to preach hate.
I'll admit, my disbelief in afterlife really doesn't make me fear death because while it's boring, it's only boring for everyone else. For the person dead it's nothing. Boring is a sensation, and death has none of that either. It's neither good nor bad, just nothing.
LOL. This is great! A few weeks ago the illuminati was some sort of boogeyman. Today, things are so bad @[email protected] is praying for boogeyman to be real. There are some genuinely great answers here but I really identify with this one, personally.
A thing beyond our understanding on this world, I wish that thoses humans on top of the world would understand at least once that they can't control everything, and that the world stays full of wonder.
I would have said also yōkais, but i actually believe in them so it doesn't count i suppose.
@ParlaMint cryptids. Fun thing is, that makes me extra-sceptical on such sort of things. I'm so willling to believe, that I have to double-check, triple-check any evidence I get just to be sure it is really the thing, not just me wishful-thinking.
Free will. I want to believe I can do as I please and am making decisions that could go either way. But I think it more likely that time is just unwinding, every action a result of some previous actions, all the way back to the big bang and it's impossible to step out of this stream.
Most people at their core are good people
I don't remember where I read this quote originally and I can only paraphrase it, but observing people living in a capitalist society and concluding that human nature is self-centeredness and greed is equivalent to observing workers in a factory that is poisoning their lungs and concluding that human nature is to cough.
That's a nice quote, thank you. I looked into it. It's by Andrew Collier:
Primary goal is to survive in the environment you are in, how many might have a desire to escape that environment but lack the ability to do so? Leave it all behind and live in a cabin in the woods isn't exactly an unheard of idea.
The issue, as I see it, is that most people struggle to envision a society beyond capitalism. Capitalist ideology is embedded in every aspect of our lives. It appears in our mindset, in books, movies, and even in children's television shows. The narrative that anyone can succeed if they work hard enough, and that poverty is simply the result of laziness, is both powerful and pervasive.
The idea that everyone should live in isolated cabins is neither a realistic vision nor a desirable goal for society.
Not everyone thinks "society" is a goal.
You mean like a hermit? I think that's a rare fantasy. But if you want to do it, sure, go for it. Isn't there a lot of space and wilderness in Canada?
That's confusing cause and effect
Damn, ya beat me. I'm not good people to so I know from first hand experience.
Don't worry, people can change.
Trust me, I used to be a huge piece of shit
No one can stop you ordering a huge steak and a glass of water.
I think “good” and “bad” are hard terms to apply to people objectively, but I do believe that most people value social coherence and are willing to do (the minimum amount of) something to maintain it. If you can’t believe at least that it means that all of those thin blue line people are right, and I’m just not willing to believe that’s true.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humankind:_A_Hopeful_History
Thank you, I’ll have to read it.
I was gonna go with "most people give a damn", but I think you phrased it a bit more positively.
I would say most people are good. However, the human brain is pretty shit and easy to manipulate. It's easy to make people view other people as not human or other to them, or to not think about them at all. Maybe that is "not good" in some definitions though. When face-to-face, I will bet every time on someone treating someone well. I'll lose the bet occasionally, but I'll be right more than wrong.
I used to think the Anne Frank quote was inspiring. Now I just see it as bitterly ironic.
Karma - there are way too many shitty people who just continue to be shitty because nothing ever comes back to bite them. Meanwhile, people who actually try to help are kicked around the most.
Karma doesn’t always ripen in this life, but upon reincarnation.
That's not the point of karma. And thoughts count, so what you wish for others comes back.
That humans can survive the climate disaster they created.
It's ok the earth will survive.
Gosh I hope not. I don’t dislike you, I dislike humanity. I’m sorry you got caught up in this mess, but you gotta go.
Some will
That our benevolent alien overlords are gonna show up aaaaaany minute now...
Fucking seriously... I wish there were aliens that could save us from ourselves, but it's just oligarchs all the way down...
Don't worry, the aliens will come, and they'll be oligarchs in their society too.
Epic of Gilgamesh.
Anyway, if they were so benevolent and so much smarter than us, why would they impose their will, and especially if interference might make our extinction more rapid?
Our benefactors.
Showing people irrefutable proof of something will change their minds.
There are only finitely many prime numbers and I will not hear otherwise.
And your irrefutable proof is...?
If you want to show there are infinitely many primes, one way is to first note that every integer greater than 1 has a prime factor. This is because if an integer n is prime, n is a prime factor of itself, and if n is not prime then it must have a smaller factor m other than 1, 1< m < n. If m is also not prime, it too must have a smaller factor other than 1, and you can keep playing this game but there are only so many integers between 1 and n so eventually you'll get to a factor of n that has no smaller factors of its own other than 1, which means it is prime.
Let's now suppose there is only a finite number of primes, we'll try to show that this assumption leads to nonsense so can't be possible.
We can multiply any finite number of integers together to get a new integer. Let's multiply all of the primes together to get a new number M. Then M + 1 gives a remainder of 1 when you divide by any prime number. Since dividing by a factor will always give a remainder of 0, none of the prime numbers can be a factor of M + 1. So M + 1 is an integer bigger than 1 with no prime factors. This is impossible, so there must be a mistake somewhere in this argument.
The only thing we said that we're not 100% sure is true was that there are a finite number of primes, so that has to be our mistake. So there must be infinitely many prime numbers.
Religion, mythology and probably anything mystical. It's very easy why people believe in them, they're so alluring and genuinely wish they had truth to them. Unfortunately the only truth to be found is ancient wisdom, and even that can be very iffy sometimes.
you may be interested in mysticism then.
I've always held that the true purpose of religion is to create atheists, and not in the modern edge lord I reject your god way.
I'll do some reading, any recommendations would be appreciated!
Religion to me has always seemed as a way to create order in a seemingly orderless world, rationality set aside. I like philosophy for this reason, although it can be very pretentious.
Hermetic/ kabbalah
Karma and dharma
Esoterica channel on YouTube is pretty neat.
This was one of the first times I kind of put everything together
https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/on-mysticism-ego-suffering-love
They have some reading recommendations I never seem to get around to.
U.S. democracy
The notion that "facts matter".
I've spent my entire life believing that facts don't care about feelings. That scientific truth doesn't require your belief in it in order to be true. That at the end of the day, reasoning will beat emotion...
By far the most dis-heartening thing about the last few years (to me) has been accepting the idea they "facts" are "whatever is shouted the loudest".
It, more than anything else, makes me feel helpless. If the enemy isn't even playing with the same fact-sheet... How do you even begin to fight that?
I recommend reading False Witnesses and following it up with Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of "Brainwashing." People license themselves to believe what's convenient, not what's true.
Trickle-down economics.
Reincarnation - I’d like to believe I’ve met others before, maybe even many times. It would explain some stuff like why you’re irrationally drawn or repelled by certain people.
The thing that's always gotten me about reincarnation is the lack of memory of past lives. Even if it were true and some small part of a person lives on, is it functionally different than a permanent death if they retain nothing from their past lives?
The average person having empathy
The 'common' part of 'common sense'
The falseness of it has been well theorized by Antonio Gramsci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony
The Fascism of Common Sense
Also the sense part. Common no-sense..
The world will recognize the good deeds you do
@CapriciousDay one of the most common misunderstandings about "razor principles" is that one should completely discard hypothesis that does not pass the razor. The thing is, razor principles is a priority-sorting mechanism, not discarding. The simpliest explanation for everything is God of The Gaps (and that's how Occam's Razor should had work in Occam's reasonings), but we understand that God is not enough.
Same goes for Hanlon's Razor. If stupidity is not enough, you should go with the next hypothesis - malevolent supidity.
@ParlaMint
That people are inherently good. This not being the case is reinforced near daily by people's behaviors.
I found a wallet on the ground by a truck outside a store recently that had a lot of cash in it. I looked at the license and while I was heading in to see if they could call the owner I saw the guy rushing back out of the store looking panicked. I gave him his wallet back and he acted like I was the one that took it from him. If I was gonna steal from you I'd have cleaned it out and tossed it asshole. Then later when I mentioned that id found a wallet and returned my coworkers were all giving me shit for not just stealing his money. Not one person out of 8 had any opinion other than just steal it. I already don't have a great opinion of people but that really reinforced my opinion.
God
I definitely don’t want to believe in God, because if there were one then that would mean a sadistic narcissistic monster is at the helm of all of this. I prefer an indifferent universe.
Oh, I would want to believe in a god that isn’t based on the Bible and doesn’t demand worship
— Mägo de Oz - La Cantata del Diablo
Justice
And karma
Magic
That rational and empirical evidence would cause people to reconsider their intuitive perspectives and lead into constructive conversation.
Aliens visiting Earth.
I know it's a statistical impossibility that we're the only life out there. I just don't believe they've ever been here. Since we haven't been either conquered or uplifted yet.
That there's a place for the hopeless sinners who've betrayed all mankind just to serve their own beliefs.
That life is fair.
There is a gospel passage about how much will be expected of those whom have been given much. I've always heard this interpreted as how church leaders will be judged harshly in the afterlife. I wish this and hell were true, just for the sheer shock and disbelief of all the hypocritical religious leaders who've done so many terrible things and continued to preach hate.
@ParlaMint Afterlife.
Death is boring and awful. I don't want it. Nobody really wants it. If you think you do, a) get help and b) you really don't.
I'll admit, my disbelief in afterlife really doesn't make me fear death because while it's boring, it's only boring for everyone else. For the person dead it's nothing. Boring is a sensation, and death has none of that either. It's neither good nor bad, just nothing.
diskworld. I specially like the city watch
The world was ruled by the Illuminati and they were compassionate about it. Because what we are ruled by is a bunch of assholes.
LOL. This is great! A few weeks ago the illuminati was some sort of boogeyman. Today, things are so bad @[email protected] is praying for boogeyman to be real. There are some genuinely great answers here but I really identify with this one, personally.
A thing beyond our understanding on this world, I wish that thoses humans on top of the world would understand at least once that they can't control everything, and that the world stays full of wonder.
I would have said also yōkais, but i actually believe in them so it doesn't count i suppose.
Spirits.
It'd be cool.
@ParlaMint cryptids. Fun thing is, that makes me extra-sceptical on such sort of things. I'm so willling to believe, that I have to double-check, triple-check any evidence I get just to be sure it is really the thing, not just me wishful-thinking.
Wishes
Free will. I want to believe I can do as I please and am making decisions that could go either way. But I think it more likely that time is just unwinding, every action a result of some previous actions, all the way back to the big bang and it's impossible to step out of this stream.
Love. People just use each other.