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Some people literally are like that I think. It probably gets real decacent with who can boast the bigger yacht or mansion or sports car at rich people parties.
I think some traits are inherently genetic. Some people are extremely prone to addiction. Same way some people are consumed by wanting to have more than someone else. Or what about the pathology of narcissism, where you view yourself as inherently better than literally everyone else and can't even fathom the notion of someone being more skilled than you. Psychopathy is a real thing and most of them are probably undiagnosed because they know how to be unnoticed yet are able to hide in plain sight by saturating their exploitative behaviors with (barel) legal frameworks they find they can cope with.
Don't fall into the trap of: "I can see myself as knowing how to not be greedy, why can't literally everyone else?", because that's a dangerous confirmation bias to have.
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On April 27 2020 22:05 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2020 22:02 Sent. wrote:
Do you seriously think billionaires are real life Scrooge McDucks who pursue more wealth for no other reason than to have a bigger pile of money they can dive into when they're bored? They don't? When I was a child and saw that, I knew what my goal was in life. A pool of money and to dive. In it. That's not a real thing?
Of course not, diving into hard coins is dangerous! Real life equivalent is this:
+ Show Spoiler +
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On April 27 2020 19:45 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2020 19:38 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 27 2020 18:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 27 2020 17:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 27 2020 15:56 Salazarz wrote:
I find it pretty hilarious when people use the 'communism / socialism always failed in the past, just look at North Korea / Venezuela / USSR' argument. Imagine if French people at the end of 18th century said, 'well you know what, just look at what happened to Oliver Cromwell or the Ambrosian Republic, this whole anti-monarchist stuff is never gonna work.'
Same for the 'human nature' arguments. Shit like 'it's human nature that some are bound to be masters, and some will be slaves' has been perpetuated for centuries, there is absolutely no reason to believe that class divide based on wealth is any more 'natural' than class divide based on what family you were born into or the color of your skin.
Now, I don't think that Marxist communism is some ideal to aspire towards -- it's quite detached from reality and likely unrealistic; but if we are to ever evolve into a true post-scarcity society, there's going to have to be some serious changes in the way we do things. Most developed nations are already productive enough to make that step, but our society needs to catch up to technology. Prioritizing economic growth above all else makes sense in a society where food and shelter are still important issues that need solving; prioritizing economic growth above all else in a society that can take care of all its' members biological needs and still have plenty to go around, however, is rather counter-intuitive. Well. French revolutionaries inspired themselves enormously from classical era examples. In particular Athens, but also the roman republic. Ignoring the lessons from the fiasco of marxist experiments (which are a 100% occurence and whose consequences have more often than not been millions of deaths) is madness at that point. It doesn't mean we have to stop thinking and it doesn't mean that a mire equalitarian society is not possible, but I think anyone with a bit of common sense would agree that forced collectivization through revolution is quite a fucking horrible idea. Certainly not my preference. Not worse than the millions already dying and that will die/be displaced by ecological collapse under the status quo though. Well, socialist (communist) societies of the 20th century have an absolutely abysmal record on environmental issues. In fact the countries doing the best in that regard have consistently been the places where individual and economic freedom have gone hand to hand with a very strong idea of common good, namely social democracies. So long as you ignore that those social democracies are fully aware that their current plan leads to complete ecological collapse. When considering collectivist vs individualist frameworks it is quite irrefutably collectivism that exclusively provides the required underpinning for the necessary global effort to minimize the ecological fallout of our status quo.
Well as I said, historical records of last century give a horrible picture of how collectivist societies have done with the environment. And any large scale problem really.
I know you don't do nuances, but meanwhile, the countries that do best to preserve the environment are in that order, according to the EPI:
Finland
Iceland
Sweden
Denmark
I am fully aware that you will answer me that your imaginary society would do soooo much better than all of those, with zero fact to support it and history books against you, and that you will consider that those nations are part of the problem because they don't do enough.
See I am learning 
By the way do you know the joke of the economist who says : "Yes it's great in practice and everything, BUT does it work in theory?"
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On April 27 2020 23:32 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2020 19:45 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 27 2020 19:38 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 27 2020 18:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 27 2020 17:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 27 2020 15:56 Salazarz wrote:
I find it pretty hilarious when people use the 'communism / socialism always failed in the past, just look at North Korea / Venezuela / USSR' argument. Imagine if French people at the end of 18th century said, 'well you know what, just look at what happened to Oliver Cromwell or the Ambrosian Republic, this whole anti-monarchist stuff is never gonna work.'
Same for the 'human nature' arguments. Shit like 'it's human nature that some are bound to be masters, and some will be slaves' has been perpetuated for centuries, there is absolutely no reason to believe that class divide based on wealth is any more 'natural' than class divide based on what family you were born into or the color of your skin.
Now, I don't think that Marxist communism is some ideal to aspire towards -- it's quite detached from reality and likely unrealistic; but if we are to ever evolve into a true post-scarcity society, there's going to have to be some serious changes in the way we do things. Most developed nations are already productive enough to make that step, but our society needs to catch up to technology. Prioritizing economic growth above all else makes sense in a society where food and shelter are still important issues that need solving; prioritizing economic growth above all else in a society that can take care of all its' members biological needs and still have plenty to go around, however, is rather counter-intuitive. Well. French revolutionaries inspired themselves enormously from classical era examples. In particular Athens, but also the roman republic. Ignoring the lessons from the fiasco of marxist experiments (which are a 100% occurence and whose consequences have more often than not been millions of deaths) is madness at that point. It doesn't mean we have to stop thinking and it doesn't mean that a mire equalitarian society is not possible, but I think anyone with a bit of common sense would agree that forced collectivization through revolution is quite a fucking horrible idea. Certainly not my preference. Not worse than the millions already dying and that will die/be displaced by ecological collapse under the status quo though. Well, socialist (communist) societies of the 20th century have an absolutely abysmal record on environmental issues. In fact the countries doing the best in that regard have consistently been the places where individual and economic freedom have gone hand to hand with a very strong idea of common good, namely social democracies. So long as you ignore that those social democracies are fully aware that their current plan leads to complete ecological collapse. When considering collectivist vs individualist frameworks it is quite irrefutably collectivism that exclusively provides the required underpinning for the necessary global effort to minimize the ecological fallout of our status quo. Well as I said, historical records of last century give a horrible picture of how collectivist societies have done with the environment. And any large scale problem really. I know you don't do nuances, but meanwhile, the countries that do best to preserve the environment are in that order, according to the EPI: Finland Iceland Sweden Denmark I am fully aware that you will answer me that your imaginary society would do soooo much better than all of those, with zero fact to support it and history books against you, and that you will consider that those nations are part of the problem because they don't do enough. See I am learning By the way do you know the joke of the economist who says : "Yes it's great in practice and everything, BUT does it work in theory?"
Thanks for this post. I was wondering why I was so annoyed with your extremely performative surprise at the idea that someone could be an anticapitalist yesterday, but now I see what was bugging me.
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On April 27 2020 23:39 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2020 23:32 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 27 2020 19:45 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 27 2020 19:38 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 27 2020 18:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 27 2020 17:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 27 2020 15:56 Salazarz wrote:
I find it pretty hilarious when people use the 'communism / socialism always failed in the past, just look at North Korea / Venezuela / USSR' argument. Imagine if French people at the end of 18th century said, 'well you know what, just look at what happened to Oliver Cromwell or the Ambrosian Republic, this whole anti-monarchist stuff is never gonna work.'
Same for the 'human nature' arguments. Shit like 'it's human nature that some are bound to be masters, and some will be slaves' has been perpetuated for centuries, there is absolutely no reason to believe that class divide based on wealth is any more 'natural' than class divide based on what family you were born into or the color of your skin.
Now, I don't think that Marxist communism is some ideal to aspire towards -- it's quite detached from reality and likely unrealistic; but if we are to ever evolve into a true post-scarcity society, there's going to have to be some serious changes in the way we do things. Most developed nations are already productive enough to make that step, but our society needs to catch up to technology. Prioritizing economic growth above all else makes sense in a society where food and shelter are still important issues that need solving; prioritizing economic growth above all else in a society that can take care of all its' members biological needs and still have plenty to go around, however, is rather counter-intuitive. Well. French revolutionaries inspired themselves enormously from classical era examples. In particular Athens, but also the roman republic. Ignoring the lessons from the fiasco of marxist experiments (which are a 100% occurence and whose consequences have more often than not been millions of deaths) is madness at that point. It doesn't mean we have to stop thinking and it doesn't mean that a mire equalitarian society is not possible, but I think anyone with a bit of common sense would agree that forced collectivization through revolution is quite a fucking horrible idea. Certainly not my preference. Not worse than the millions already dying and that will die/be displaced by ecological collapse under the status quo though. Well, socialist (communist) societies of the 20th century have an absolutely abysmal record on environmental issues. In fact the countries doing the best in that regard have consistently been the places where individual and economic freedom have gone hand to hand with a very strong idea of common good, namely social democracies. So long as you ignore that those social democracies are fully aware that their current plan leads to complete ecological collapse. When considering collectivist vs individualist frameworks it is quite irrefutably collectivism that exclusively provides the required underpinning for the necessary global effort to minimize the ecological fallout of our status quo. Well as I said, historical records of last century give a horrible picture of how collectivist societies have done with the environment. And any large scale problem really. I know you don't do nuances, but meanwhile, the countries that do best to preserve the environment are in that order, according to the EPI: Finland Iceland Sweden Denmark I am fully aware that you will answer me that your imaginary society would do soooo much better than all of those, with zero fact to support it and history books against you, and that you will consider that those nations are part of the problem because they don't do enough. See I am learning By the way do you know the joke of the economist who says : "Yes it's great in practice and everything, BUT does it work in theory?" Thanks for this post. I was wondering why I was so annoyed with your extremely performative surprise at the idea that someone could be an anticapitalist yesterday, but now I see what was bugging me.
I have no problem with you or anyone being anticapitalist, until you started to talk like Vladimir Lenin. Then I got worried.
Although to be fair to Lenin, he realized in 1924 that forbidding people to own a coffee shop was a bit much, and he started his NEP policy.
So nothing performative, I genuinely find your line of reasoning extremely shocking, on top of being disconnected to the extreme - and exposing a complete lack of experience - from what it is to start or own a small business. Meanwhile, is there anything factually wrong with my post, or why is it so enlightening?
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On April 28 2020 00:38 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2020 23:39 Nebuchad wrote:On April 27 2020 23:32 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 27 2020 19:45 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 27 2020 19:38 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 27 2020 18:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 27 2020 17:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 27 2020 15:56 Salazarz wrote:
I find it pretty hilarious when people use the 'communism / socialism always failed in the past, just look at North Korea / Venezuela / USSR' argument. Imagine if French people at the end of 18th century said, 'well you know what, just look at what happened to Oliver Cromwell or the Ambrosian Republic, this whole anti-monarchist stuff is never gonna work.'
Same for the 'human nature' arguments. Shit like 'it's human nature that some are bound to be masters, and some will be slaves' has been perpetuated for centuries, there is absolutely no reason to believe that class divide based on wealth is any more 'natural' than class divide based on what family you were born into or the color of your skin.
Now, I don't think that Marxist communism is some ideal to aspire towards -- it's quite detached from reality and likely unrealistic; but if we are to ever evolve into a true post-scarcity society, there's going to have to be some serious changes in the way we do things. Most developed nations are already productive enough to make that step, but our society needs to catch up to technology. Prioritizing economic growth above all else makes sense in a society where food and shelter are still important issues that need solving; prioritizing economic growth above all else in a society that can take care of all its' members biological needs and still have plenty to go around, however, is rather counter-intuitive. Well. French revolutionaries inspired themselves enormously from classical era examples. In particular Athens, but also the roman republic. Ignoring the lessons from the fiasco of marxist experiments (which are a 100% occurence and whose consequences have more often than not been millions of deaths) is madness at that point. It doesn't mean we have to stop thinking and it doesn't mean that a mire equalitarian society is not possible, but I think anyone with a bit of common sense would agree that forced collectivization through revolution is quite a fucking horrible idea. Certainly not my preference. Not worse than the millions already dying and that will die/be displaced by ecological collapse under the status quo though. Well, socialist (communist) societies of the 20th century have an absolutely abysmal record on environmental issues. In fact the countries doing the best in that regard have consistently been the places where individual and economic freedom have gone hand to hand with a very strong idea of common good, namely social democracies. So long as you ignore that those social democracies are fully aware that their current plan leads to complete ecological collapse. When considering collectivist vs individualist frameworks it is quite irrefutably collectivism that exclusively provides the required underpinning for the necessary global effort to minimize the ecological fallout of our status quo. Well as I said, historical records of last century give a horrible picture of how collectivist societies have done with the environment. And any large scale problem really. I know you don't do nuances, but meanwhile, the countries that do best to preserve the environment are in that order, according to the EPI: Finland Iceland Sweden Denmark I am fully aware that you will answer me that your imaginary society would do soooo much better than all of those, with zero fact to support it and history books against you, and that you will consider that those nations are part of the problem because they don't do enough. See I am learning By the way do you know the joke of the economist who says : "Yes it's great in practice and everything, BUT does it work in theory?" Thanks for this post. I was wondering why I was so annoyed with your extremely performative surprise at the idea that someone could be an anticapitalist yesterday, but now I see what was bugging me. I have no problem with you or anyone being anticapitalist, until you started to talk like Vladimir Lenin. Then I got worried.
"I have no problem with you or anyone being anticapitalist, until you voiced opposition to people doing capitalism. Then I randomly brought up Lenin and got worried."
Lol.
On April 28 2020 00:38 Biff The Understudy wrote:
So nothing performative, I genuinely find your line of reasoning extremely shocking, on top of being disconnected to the extreme - and exposing a complete lack of experience - from what it is to start or own a small business. Meanwhile, is there anything factually wrong with my post, or why is it so enlightening?
I don't think there's anything wrong with your post at first glance, no. It doesn't concern me enough that I would want to make sure that it's right.
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On April 27 2020 22:02 Sent. wrote:
Do you seriously think billionaires are real life Scrooge McDucks who pursue more wealth for no other reason than to have a bigger pile of money they can dive into when they're bored?
I think this is the case. I don't think we'd have such a problem with wealth inequality if billionaires weren't misers.
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On April 28 2020 01:08 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2020 00:38 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 27 2020 23:39 Nebuchad wrote:On April 27 2020 23:32 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 27 2020 19:45 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 27 2020 19:38 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 27 2020 18:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 27 2020 17:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 27 2020 15:56 Salazarz wrote:
I find it pretty hilarious when people use the 'communism / socialism always failed in the past, just look at North Korea / Venezuela / USSR' argument. Imagine if French people at the end of 18th century said, 'well you know what, just look at what happened to Oliver Cromwell or the Ambrosian Republic, this whole anti-monarchist stuff is never gonna work.'
Same for the 'human nature' arguments. Shit like 'it's human nature that some are bound to be masters, and some will be slaves' has been perpetuated for centuries, there is absolutely no reason to believe that class divide based on wealth is any more 'natural' than class divide based on what family you were born into or the color of your skin.
Now, I don't think that Marxist communism is some ideal to aspire towards -- it's quite detached from reality and likely unrealistic; but if we are to ever evolve into a true post-scarcity society, there's going to have to be some serious changes in the way we do things. Most developed nations are already productive enough to make that step, but our society needs to catch up to technology. Prioritizing economic growth above all else makes sense in a society where food and shelter are still important issues that need solving; prioritizing economic growth above all else in a society that can take care of all its' members biological needs and still have plenty to go around, however, is rather counter-intuitive. Well. French revolutionaries inspired themselves enormously from classical era examples. In particular Athens, but also the roman republic. Ignoring the lessons from the fiasco of marxist experiments (which are a 100% occurence and whose consequences have more often than not been millions of deaths) is madness at that point. It doesn't mean we have to stop thinking and it doesn't mean that a mire equalitarian society is not possible, but I think anyone with a bit of common sense would agree that forced collectivization through revolution is quite a fucking horrible idea. Certainly not my preference. Not worse than the millions already dying and that will die/be displaced by ecological collapse under the status quo though. Well, socialist (communist) societies of the 20th century have an absolutely abysmal record on environmental issues. In fact the countries doing the best in that regard have consistently been the places where individual and economic freedom have gone hand to hand with a very strong idea of common good, namely social democracies. So long as you ignore that those social democracies are fully aware that their current plan leads to complete ecological collapse. When considering collectivist vs individualist frameworks it is quite irrefutably collectivism that exclusively provides the required underpinning for the necessary global effort to minimize the ecological fallout of our status quo. Well as I said, historical records of last century give a horrible picture of how collectivist societies have done with the environment. And any large scale problem really. I know you don't do nuances, but meanwhile, the countries that do best to preserve the environment are in that order, according to the EPI: Finland Iceland Sweden Denmark I am fully aware that you will answer me that your imaginary society would do soooo much better than all of those, with zero fact to support it and history books against you, and that you will consider that those nations are part of the problem because they don't do enough. See I am learning By the way do you know the joke of the economist who says : "Yes it's great in practice and everything, BUT does it work in theory?" Thanks for this post. I was wondering why I was so annoyed with your extremely performative surprise at the idea that someone could be an anticapitalist yesterday, but now I see what was bugging me. I have no problem with you or anyone being anticapitalist, until you started to talk like Vladimir Lenin. Then I got worried. "I have no problem with you or anyone being anticapitalist, until you voiced opposition to people doing capitalism. Then I randomly brought up Lenin and got worried." Lol. Show nested quote +On April 28 2020 00:38 Biff The Understudy wrote:
So nothing performative, I genuinely find your line of reasoning extremely shocking, on top of being disconnected to the extreme - and exposing a complete lack of experience - from what it is to start or own a small business. Meanwhile, is there anything factually wrong with my post, or why is it so enlightening? I don't think there's anything wrong with your post at first glance, no. It doesn't concern me enough that I would want to make sure that it's right.
If you don't have anything substantial to say you don't need to answer.
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On April 28 2020 01:42 JimmiC wrote:
What is currently stopping you from starting a co-op of your own? There are no rules against it, you know that the people will work harder because they will share in the wealth. Then if there are issues you can see them and try to fix them. Like a pilot project. There are existing co-op's you can look to for guidance. There is no requirement of bloody revolution, you can simply out compete the capitalist class. And then you can use that wealth to move the political needle.
Why are you so infatuated with the concept of bloody revolution?
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Could you argue that states opening up early is a net positive since it makes vote by mail 100x more likely?
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On April 27 2020 07:55 Slaughter wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2020 07:41 maybenexttime wrote:On April 27 2020 04:22 Slaughter wrote:On April 27 2020 03:29 maybenexttime wrote:On April 27 2020 01:02 Slaughter wrote:On April 26 2020 21:12 maybenexttime wrote:On April 26 2020 08:30 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 26 2020 08:24 Stratos_speAr wrote:
At a certain point, playing semantics becomes useless.
"But that isn't truly [insert system in question]!" Is used by every side of the political debate to try to trivialize the historical failures of their preferred system. Communists, libertarians, socialists, capitalists, you name it.
These discussions invariably fail to take into account human behavior and how it will warp a given system. It isn't a "but that isn't truly" situation nor are the wholly unscientific appeals to human nature/behavior appropriate or convincing to anyone who isn't already a devout adherent of capitalism. Calling the concept of human nature "wholly unscientific" just makes you look incredibly ignorant. I suggest you read "Human Universals" by Donald Brown. He compiled an extensive list of features of human culture, behavior, language and modes of thinking that are common for all peoples studied by science thus far. Here are some excerpts from Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct" which discuss the book: + Show Spoiler +Value placed on articulateness. Gossip. Lying. Misleading. Verbal humor. Humorous insults. Poetic and rhetorical speech forms. Narrative and storytelling. Metaphor. Poetry with repetition of linguistic elements and three-second lines separated by pauses. Words for days, months, seasons, years, past, present, future, body parts, inner states (emotions, sensations, thoughts), behavioral propensities, flora, fauna, weather, tools, space, motion, speed, location, spatial dimensions, physical properties, giving, lending, affecting things and people, numbers (at the very least "one," "two," and "more than two"), proper names, possession. Distinctions between mother and father. Kinship categories, defined in terms of mother, father, son, daughter, and age sequence. Binary distinctions, including male and female, black and white, natural and cultural, good and bad. Measures. Logical relations including "not," "and," "same," "equivalent," "opposite," general versus particular, part versus whole. Conjectural reasoning (inferring the presence of absent and invisible entities from their perceptible traces).
Nonlinguistic vocal communication such as cries and squeals. Interpreting intention from behavior. Recognized facial expressions of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, and contempt. Use of smiles as a friendly greeting. Crying. Coy flirtation with the eyes. Masking, modifying, and mimicking facial expressions. Displays of affection."
"Sense of self versus other, responsibility, voluntary versus involuntary behavior, intention, private inner life, normal versus abnormal mental states. Empathy. Sexual attraction. Powerful sexual jealousy. Childhood fears, especially of loud noises, and, at the end of the first year, strangers. Fear of snakes. "Oedipal" feelings (possessiveness of mother, coolness toward her consort). Face recognition. Adornment of bodies and arrangement of hair. Sexual attractiveness, based in part on signs of health and, in women, youth. Hygiene. Dance. Music. Play, including play fighting."
"Manufacture of, and dependence upon, many kinds of tools, many of them permanent, made according to culturally transmitted motifs, including cutters, pounders, containers, string, levers, spears. Use of fire to cook food and for other purposes. Drugs, both medicinal and recreational. Shelter. Decoration of artifacts.
A standard pattern and time for weaning. Living in groups, which claim a territory and have a sense of being a distinct people. Families built around a mother and children, usually the biological mother, and one or more men. Institutionalized marriage, in the sense of publicly recognized right of sexual access to a woman eligible for childbearing. Socialization of children (including toilet training) by senior kin. Children copying their elders. Distinguishing of close kin from distant kin, and favoring of close kin. Avoidance of incest between mothers and sons. Great interest in the topic of sex."
"Status and prestige, both assigned (by kinship, age, sex) and achieved. Some degree of economic inequality. Division of labor by sex and age. More child care by women. More aggression and violence by men. Acknowledgment of differences between male and female natures. Domination by men in the public political sphere. Exchange of labor, goods, and services. Reciprocity, including retaliation. Gifts. Social reasoning. Coalitions. Government, in the sense of binding collective decisions about public affairs. Leaders, almost always nondictatorial, perhaps ephemeral. Laws, rights, and obligations, including laws against violence, rape, and murder. Punishment. Conflict, which is deplored. Rape. Seeking of redress for wrongs. Mediation. In-group/out-group conflicts. Property. Inheritance of property. Sense of right and wrong. Envy.
Etiquette. Hospitality. Feasting. Diurnality. Standards of sexual modesty. Sex generally in private. Fondness for sweets. Food taboos. Discreetness in elimination of body wastes. Supernatural beliefs. Magic to sustain and increase life, and to attract the opposite sex. Theories of fortune and misfortune. Explanations of disease and death. Medicine. Rituals, including rites of passage. Mourning the dead. Dreaming, interpreting dreams. Many of these are found in other primates (or even more generally mammals in some cases), which would suggest they have an evolutionary origin. A sense of fair exchange is part of that. So is a drive to improve your own condition and that of your kin/your in-group. There is no indication that you could socially engineer people to be motivated to selflessly work for some greater good as long as their basic needs are met. I wouldn't cite an heavily old and outdated book and the guy who quoted that book heavily in his own as a core of your argument mate. Especially when even Pinker or people who lean more strongly towards the "nature" side wouldn't defend such a vague and broad term as human nature. Sure, it's an old book, but outdated how? There is plenty of evidence supporting it. Have you read Pinker's "The Blank Slate"? Because in it he's explicitly referring to several scientific disciplines like neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics and such as sciences of human nature. An example of a trait that seems to have a biological foundation is gender identity. The fact that gender dysphoria exists or that boys who had their penises accidentally removed and were raised as girls do not identify as such clearly shows that we are not blank slates in that regard. There are more examples. There is also evidence of the opposite so what is your point? It is not settled science in any way shape or form and consensus is more toward "its both but we don't know exactly how much of one or the other and on what aspects of humanity". One thing that contradicts your gender identity assertion that is....many groups of people have literally had more then two genders as part of their society through time. The Biological should not be neglected but really only older (stubborn) researchers come down firmly on Nature or Nurture side. The science has just moved past that debate, which is why I brought up the age of the book. Behavioral genetics and both evolutionary psychology have also been heavily criticized for flawed methodologies and at times over reaching conclusions. Evolutionary Psychology in particular is a rather young theoretical approach and is still finding its way in some respects. Do you even know what my position is on the topic? Because it's not that nurture is irrelevant. My position is that the blank slate hypothesis is outright wrong. I agree that it's both and that it is to be determined to what extent nature and nurture are involved in whichever aspect of humanity. The evidence for the opposite would be evidence for humans being, in fact, blank slates. There is no such evidence. If that were the case, gender dysphoria couldn't possibly exist. If gender were merely a social construct, how could those mutilated boys not grow up to consider themselves women, if they were socialized that way? As for there being more "genders" in certain cultures, I think you're confusing labels we ascribe to certain things with what is actually beneath the surface. Whether we consider gay men a third gender or simply homosexual men doesn't change the reality of things. Pinker tackles this issue when discussing emotions in different cultures. There may be variability in triggers and responses, but the inner workings in the brain seem to be universal. Overall, he likens human nature to Chomsky's universal grammar and I think he's on point. My point was that your response to GH's post implied you thought that there was an inherent human nature of some dubious course, Of which the science is still puzzling out what is going on. You also seemed to have only read Pinker's work and was greatly convinced by it and stopped learning about the subject. Your last point uh No. Gay is not a gender, it is a sexuality. Whatever castrated boys not growing up to think they are women study you like to hang your hat on doesn't invalidate gender as a social construct concept. Its more about how societies shape and influence norms on who should be assigned to what gender, hoq many there are, and jow thoae genders should act. Anything universal theory when it comes to humans have been consistently shown to not work in the end. Universal Grammar itself is not without its valid criticisms. And this isn't just humanities but human biologists as well. Pinker has essentially jumped the gun in his work. Or rather you can say a lot of his work is arguing against a proposed theory that already lost most of its support long ago. In a sense it was of a book you would have expected to come out 20 years earlier when the nature v nurture debate was happening but has become more irrelevant.
I made a claim that Marxism is built on rejection of human nature. That is a fact. Marx and the architects of communist countries were open proponents of the blank slate. GH rebutted that the concept of human nature is a wholly unscientific myth. That is flatly wrong. In the discussion I have provided a number of examples of traits that have largely biological underpinnings, such as sexuality (men sexually attracted to other men exist in every society regardless of how it treats homosexuality and socializes its men), gender identity (the existence of gender dysphoria or mutilated boys raised as girls never considering themselves as such), emotions (quite well understood in terms of brain activity/chemistry), propensity to play (with sexual divergence, observed in primates in general), and so on. Whether you use the term human nature to describe the entirety of such traits/behaviors is a secondary matter.
Funny that for someone who is so well-read you seem unaware of the fact that many cultures that recognize more than two genders use the term third gender for gay men. Some have an additional category for lesbians. Others use third and fourth genders for effeminate men and masculine women. Yet others use that term for intersex people. There are heterosexual men and women. There are homosexual and bisexual men and women. There are effeminate men and masculine women. And there are intersex people, transsexuals etc. How cultures categorize all of this is arbitrary to some extent, but that doesn't change the fact that those traits seem to have an underlying biological foundation that is universal for all cultures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity#Non-binary_gender_identities
Whether universal grammar is correct has no bearing on whether the idea is a suitable analogy for what I'm talking about.
And to say that Pinker published his book long after the matter had been settled in the scientific community misses the point. That's like saying Dawkins shouldn't publish books in opposition to creationism because the matter had been settled for over a hundred years. The blank slate hypothesis is very much alive in many circles. Progressivism is largely founded on that idea.
My problem with Progressivism is that to many progressives the truth doesn't matter. What matters is the political expediency of a claim. They will reject the idea of human nature wholesale and claim that gender is a purely social construct. Only to then claim that human nature actually does exist and transsexual people are born that way. Or that homosexuality is natural and can't be treated.
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On April 28 2020 03:10 Mohdoo wrote:
Could you argue that states opening up early is a net positive since it makes vote by mail 100x more likely?
Only if the USPS is funded and there are enough people to count all ballots. I'd say the time would be ripe for a better app based voting system, if we are back on isolation by the time election rolls around.
But mail-in voting could happen. Just not sure on how reliable it would be and how you'd manage the various counting methods.
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On April 28 2020 03:14 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2020 07:55 Slaughter wrote:On April 27 2020 07:41 maybenexttime wrote:On April 27 2020 04:22 Slaughter wrote:On April 27 2020 03:29 maybenexttime wrote:On April 27 2020 01:02 Slaughter wrote:On April 26 2020 21:12 maybenexttime wrote:On April 26 2020 08:30 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 26 2020 08:24 Stratos_speAr wrote:
At a certain point, playing semantics becomes useless.
"But that isn't truly [insert system in question]!" Is used by every side of the political debate to try to trivialize the historical failures of their preferred system. Communists, libertarians, socialists, capitalists, you name it.
These discussions invariably fail to take into account human behavior and how it will warp a given system. It isn't a "but that isn't truly" situation nor are the wholly unscientific appeals to human nature/behavior appropriate or convincing to anyone who isn't already a devout adherent of capitalism. Calling the concept of human nature "wholly unscientific" just makes you look incredibly ignorant. I suggest you read "Human Universals" by Donald Brown. He compiled an extensive list of features of human culture, behavior, language and modes of thinking that are common for all peoples studied by science thus far. Here are some excerpts from Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct" which discuss the book: + Show Spoiler +Value placed on articulateness. Gossip. Lying. Misleading. Verbal humor. Humorous insults. Poetic and rhetorical speech forms. Narrative and storytelling. Metaphor. Poetry with repetition of linguistic elements and three-second lines separated by pauses. Words for days, months, seasons, years, past, present, future, body parts, inner states (emotions, sensations, thoughts), behavioral propensities, flora, fauna, weather, tools, space, motion, speed, location, spatial dimensions, physical properties, giving, lending, affecting things and people, numbers (at the very least "one," "two," and "more than two"), proper names, possession. Distinctions between mother and father. Kinship categories, defined in terms of mother, father, son, daughter, and age sequence. Binary distinctions, including male and female, black and white, natural and cultural, good and bad. Measures. Logical relations including "not," "and," "same," "equivalent," "opposite," general versus particular, part versus whole. Conjectural reasoning (inferring the presence of absent and invisible entities from their perceptible traces).
Nonlinguistic vocal communication such as cries and squeals. Interpreting intention from behavior. Recognized facial expressions of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, and contempt. Use of smiles as a friendly greeting. Crying. Coy flirtation with the eyes. Masking, modifying, and mimicking facial expressions. Displays of affection."
"Sense of self versus other, responsibility, voluntary versus involuntary behavior, intention, private inner life, normal versus abnormal mental states. Empathy. Sexual attraction. Powerful sexual jealousy. Childhood fears, especially of loud noises, and, at the end of the first year, strangers. Fear of snakes. "Oedipal" feelings (possessiveness of mother, coolness toward her consort). Face recognition. Adornment of bodies and arrangement of hair. Sexual attractiveness, based in part on signs of health and, in women, youth. Hygiene. Dance. Music. Play, including play fighting."
"Manufacture of, and dependence upon, many kinds of tools, many of them permanent, made according to culturally transmitted motifs, including cutters, pounders, containers, string, levers, spears. Use of fire to cook food and for other purposes. Drugs, both medicinal and recreational. Shelter. Decoration of artifacts.
A standard pattern and time for weaning. Living in groups, which claim a territory and have a sense of being a distinct people. Families built around a mother and children, usually the biological mother, and one or more men. Institutionalized marriage, in the sense of publicly recognized right of sexual access to a woman eligible for childbearing. Socialization of children (including toilet training) by senior kin. Children copying their elders. Distinguishing of close kin from distant kin, and favoring of close kin. Avoidance of incest between mothers and sons. Great interest in the topic of sex."
"Status and prestige, both assigned (by kinship, age, sex) and achieved. Some degree of economic inequality. Division of labor by sex and age. More child care by women. More aggression and violence by men. Acknowledgment of differences between male and female natures. Domination by men in the public political sphere. Exchange of labor, goods, and services. Reciprocity, including retaliation. Gifts. Social reasoning. Coalitions. Government, in the sense of binding collective decisions about public affairs. Leaders, almost always nondictatorial, perhaps ephemeral. Laws, rights, and obligations, including laws against violence, rape, and murder. Punishment. Conflict, which is deplored. Rape. Seeking of redress for wrongs. Mediation. In-group/out-group conflicts. Property. Inheritance of property. Sense of right and wrong. Envy.
Etiquette. Hospitality. Feasting. Diurnality. Standards of sexual modesty. Sex generally in private. Fondness for sweets. Food taboos. Discreetness in elimination of body wastes. Supernatural beliefs. Magic to sustain and increase life, and to attract the opposite sex. Theories of fortune and misfortune. Explanations of disease and death. Medicine. Rituals, including rites of passage. Mourning the dead. Dreaming, interpreting dreams. Many of these are found in other primates (or even more generally mammals in some cases), which would suggest they have an evolutionary origin. A sense of fair exchange is part of that. So is a drive to improve your own condition and that of your kin/your in-group. There is no indication that you could socially engineer people to be motivated to selflessly work for some greater good as long as their basic needs are met. I wouldn't cite an heavily old and outdated book and the guy who quoted that book heavily in his own as a core of your argument mate. Especially when even Pinker or people who lean more strongly towards the "nature" side wouldn't defend such a vague and broad term as human nature. Sure, it's an old book, but outdated how? There is plenty of evidence supporting it. Have you read Pinker's "The Blank Slate"? Because in it he's explicitly referring to several scientific disciplines like neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics and such as sciences of human nature. An example of a trait that seems to have a biological foundation is gender identity. The fact that gender dysphoria exists or that boys who had their penises accidentally removed and were raised as girls do not identify as such clearly shows that we are not blank slates in that regard. There are more examples. There is also evidence of the opposite so what is your point? It is not settled science in any way shape or form and consensus is more toward "its both but we don't know exactly how much of one or the other and on what aspects of humanity". One thing that contradicts your gender identity assertion that is....many groups of people have literally had more then two genders as part of their society through time. The Biological should not be neglected but really only older (stubborn) researchers come down firmly on Nature or Nurture side. The science has just moved past that debate, which is why I brought up the age of the book. Behavioral genetics and both evolutionary psychology have also been heavily criticized for flawed methodologies and at times over reaching conclusions. Evolutionary Psychology in particular is a rather young theoretical approach and is still finding its way in some respects. Do you even know what my position is on the topic? Because it's not that nurture is irrelevant. My position is that the blank slate hypothesis is outright wrong. I agree that it's both and that it is to be determined to what extent nature and nurture are involved in whichever aspect of humanity. The evidence for the opposite would be evidence for humans being, in fact, blank slates. There is no such evidence. If that were the case, gender dysphoria couldn't possibly exist. If gender were merely a social construct, how could those mutilated boys not grow up to consider themselves women, if they were socialized that way? As for there being more "genders" in certain cultures, I think you're confusing labels we ascribe to certain things with what is actually beneath the surface. Whether we consider gay men a third gender or simply homosexual men doesn't change the reality of things. Pinker tackles this issue when discussing emotions in different cultures. There may be variability in triggers and responses, but the inner workings in the brain seem to be universal. Overall, he likens human nature to Chomsky's universal grammar and I think he's on point. My point was that your response to GH's post implied you thought that there was an inherent human nature of some dubious course, Of which the science is still puzzling out what is going on. You also seemed to have only read Pinker's work and was greatly convinced by it and stopped learning about the subject. Your last point uh No. Gay is not a gender, it is a sexuality. Whatever castrated boys not growing up to think they are women study you like to hang your hat on doesn't invalidate gender as a social construct concept. Its more about how societies shape and influence norms on who should be assigned to what gender, hoq many there are, and jow thoae genders should act. Anything universal theory when it comes to humans have been consistently shown to not work in the end. Universal Grammar itself is not without its valid criticisms. And this isn't just humanities but human biologists as well. Pinker has essentially jumped the gun in his work. Or rather you can say a lot of his work is arguing against a proposed theory that already lost most of its support long ago. In a sense it was of a book you would have expected to come out 20 years earlier when the nature v nurture debate was happening but has become more irrelevant. I made a claim that Marxism is built on rejection of human nature. That is a fact. Marx and the architects of communist countries were open proponents of the blank slate. GH rebutted that the concept of human nature is a wholly unscientific myth. That is flatly wrong. In the discussion I have provided a number of examples of traits that have largely biological underpinnings, such as sexuality (men sexually attracted to other men exist in every society regardless of how it treats homosexuality and socializes its men), gender identity (the existence of gender dysphoria or mutilated boys raised as girls never considering themselves as such), emotions (quite well understood in terms of brain activity/chemistry), propensity to play (with sexual divergence, observed in primates in general), and so on. Whether you use the term human nature to describe the entirety of such traits/behaviors is a secondary matter. Funny that for someone who is so well-read you seem unaware of the fact that many cultures that recognize more than two genders use the term third gender for gay men. Some have an additional category for lesbians. Others use third and fourth genders for effeminate men and masculine women. Yet others use that term for intersex people. There are heterosexual men and women. There are homosexual and bisexual men and women. There are effeminate men and masculine women. And there are intersex people, transsexuals etc. How cultures categorize all of this is arbitrary to some extent, but that doesn't change the fact that those traits seem to have an underlying biological foundation that is universal for all cultures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity#Non-binary_gender_identitiesWhether universal grammar is correct has no bearing on whether the idea is a suitable analogy for what I'm talking about. And to say that Pinker published his book long after the matter had been settled in the scientific community misses the point. That's like saying Dawkins shouldn't publish books in opposition to creationism because the matter had been settled for over a hundred years. The blank slate hypothesis is very much alive in many circles. Progressivism is largely founded on that idea. My problem with Progressivism is that to many progressives the truth doesn't matter. What matters is the political expediency of a claim. They will reject the idea of human nature wholesale and claim that gender is a purely social construct. Only to then claim that human nature actually does exist and transsexual people are born that way. Or that homosexuality is natural and can't be treated.
I don't know what circles you have encountered but in progressive academic circles no one really believes in blank slate. They would argue that socialization is more powerful for sure but blank slate? Like I said barely anyone in academia thinks in such binary terms anymore which is why Pinker was "late" in terms of the science but he tends to write for more lay people.
If there are people out there outside of academia still peddling it then *shrug*. Concepts and theories are used and thought of differently outside and inside academia and the lay public often behind the curve and often end up using things differently from their intent.
And to your point about gender identities. Their sexuality is not the sole description of those. Sexuality and Gender are very different things, even if they are related.
I only initially commented because it seemed you had come down on a more biological deterministic bent and I don't think what GH generally dismisses with human nature arguments isn't objectionable because generally they are more broad arguments that give way to much power to biology, especially in relation to behavior which still is very muddled in how things are related to each other to produce that behavior. Studies linking certain behaviors to certain genes for example have often not held up under peer review.
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On April 27 2020 22:06 Simberto wrote:
Why? There are people who have more money than they could possibly spend in a lifetime, and they still try to make more money.
They could instead pay their employees more. But they choose that they want more money.
What people are you talking about? People like Trump who built themselves golden toilets? Because they're idiots. People like Bezos or Gates or Buffett, however, tend to allocate resources back to their firms to grow them long term, which actually is a better idea than to flat-out give people more money, because discounting the future is a pretty bad idea.
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On April 28 2020 04:21 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2020 22:06 Simberto wrote:
Why? There are people who have more money than they could possibly spend in a lifetime, and they still try to make more money.
They could instead pay their employees more. But they choose that they want more money. What people are you talking about? People like Trump who built themselves golden toilets? Because they're idiots. People like Bezos or Gates or Buffett, however, tend to allocate resources back to their firms to grow them long term, which actually is a better idea than to flat-out give people more money, because discounting the future is a pretty bad idea.
Also, those types of people tend to have a lot of pies going at once. So Bezos gives employees more money. They're just gonna spend it at amazon anyway. So he's going to always make money.
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Yes, Nyxisto, let those Amazon employees get by on minimum wage jobs and stressing out making the cut of the day while he builds his empire further, for a brighter tomorrow!
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Norway28892 Posts
Fun fact I learned yesterday!
One of the 'fathers of norwegian social democracy' - Martin Tranmæl, was pretty damn radical during his formative years. He had a speech where kind of advocated for laying dynamite traps for mining strikebreakers, and the conservative party (not fully without reason) blamed him for a strikebreaker shooting and killing a striking worker during an altercation due to his aggressive language.
That's not that interesting, although highlighting that even the peaceful norwegian social democracy had a period of pretty aggressive class struggle has some merit.
The funny thing was seeing this picture : ![[image loading]](https://scontent.fosl3-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/95138618_10157770649601281_8294798252033703936_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&_nc_sid=1480c5&_nc_ohc=sS-Xo585EToAX9MjCCg&_nc_ht=scontent.fosl3-1.fna&oh=4ef86d473326f07ba36d5e6c99a384d6&oe=5ECD75AE)
First half of that sheet of paper is a description of worker sabotage (including dynamite in the drill holes) and an aggressive and resolute fight against the capitalistic system.
The second half is LENIN distancing himself from the methods mentioned by the norwegian comrades, considering for example the aforementioned sabotage 'inexpedient'.
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EPT
