tycho-newman

Robert Sapolsky has a fantastic discussion of depression as a form of learned helplessness. We see it in abused animals: https://youtu.be/NOAgplgTxfc?is=YnnSt1292XjiGbEE

You are not much different from any other animal at some level. With enough conditioning you will believe that you have no agency over your own life, and you’ll just sit there and take the shocks hoping it ends soon. Or worse, you’ll lose perspective and imagine the only solution to your current (likely temporary) circumstance is to (definitely very permanently) end your own life.

Years ago I had a little token that printed auth codes. They were everywhere. I had it on my keychain. I recall thinking it was nifty.

I think the consensus sought here is narrow enough.

Parliament can make any law.

We only tolerate totalitarianism in the private sector!

Lots of Americans live on that right now. It would go further in India.

It sounds like you object to the exploitation rather than to the H1-B.

Nothing. American workers will rarely consider offshoring themselves. Which is a shame.

Maybe we should let people work wherever they want?

The tech companies will just offshore the jobs they’d otherwise use for visas. India is a cool place. Lots of Americans would do well to live and work there. They’d probably even be a bit happier. But they can’t because of visas.

For most of human history, you were free to decamp to greener pastures. Cultural chauvinism still existed and thrived in this more porous world. Why do we accept limitations on our freedom of movement?

Simpson Tide predicted this.

Writing probably arose from reading animal tracks in soft mud.

QM is so platonic though. Reality consists, ultimately, of forms that can only be described mathematically. It just happens that the math returns (what we see) as a probability distribution/wave function.

I’ve never quite understood what a quantum theory of gravity would be though. QM involves the observer but gravity engages spacetime - the place where you are observing things. A quantum field theory of gravity seems like a contradiction in terms to me. Unless quantum gravity is really about the Big Bang?

The snark is part of the vibe. The world is full of people still working through their inferiority/superiority complex. Many of them convene in the Halls of Power. The Economist reminds them all that they are still mortal.

Facts.

In "On Love", bell hooks points out just how screwed children are by their circumstance and their lack of agency/autonomy. Highly recommend reading her.

Indeed. For me, being aware of those complexities is what gives me hope that there’s a new emerging paradigm.

I get why you see this as me having an inflexible black and white rule. I see it differently.

I see respecting individual autonomy as the best way to respond to the shades of grey in life.

This respect for autonomy goes all the way to the ultimate act of choosing if and when to end your own life.

Even if that decision is a mistake, I believe individuals are free to make fatal mistakes.

That's all valid, but I'm going to stick to my autonomy rule. People are free to make fatal mistakes.

I did nazi this coming …

Altruism, trust, and cooperation often emerge from acts and choices that seem completely self-interested.

Heck, cooperation is a survival strategy that came out of evolution. It exists outside of humans. It doesn’t need to come from human intent.

It feels weird to me that people think they can intelligently design cooperative societies and groups. You can try, but there’s always going to be trade offs between individuals and the group.

In this moment, individuals are in a place where they can avoid many of those trade offs and costs. I think this is generally positive considering my own experience of costly kinship groups. But I can see why others disagree.

I don’t make the distinction between asking and forcing. To me, you can ask why someone wants to die. But stopping them? Or asking them to stop? Eh, not up to me.

“On their own” is in air quotes because it’s a vast simplification.

In kinship group days, and especially before vaccines, children simply didn’t survive. They died by the millions.

Today, a child has a viable alternative to the abusive or neglectful kinship group. Very often it is The State, but still. An alternative!

No one should ask a suicidal person not to kill themselves.

If you believe in autonomy, every human has the right to decide when and how to end their lives. Slavery denies human autonomy by taking all control away.

Even when you think their decision is a bad one, it’s their life and their decision.

Communities, like all living things, are subject to the whims of extinction events.

When a mountain falls out of the sky, it’s no one’s fault (not even the bad people) that the community failed.

Sure. That said, the nation state is often little more than regional elites legalizing their control over workers and capital.

If your local elites are generally better than the alternative people tend to stick around

Life has a 100 percent fatality rate

People fight for communities they want to preserve. There’s no guarantees that fight will be successful.

But when they don’t fight? Maybe it’s because they can’t. Or don’t want to. No one should ask them or force them to.

It's not lost, just no longer necessary for survival.

Also, bad communities fail. They should be allowed to fail.

Until recently, individuals needed to be part of some sort of kinship group to get their needs met and to survive. To communicate with anyone in near real time you had to be close by.

We have managed to engineer a society where individuals can survive "on their own" - basically outside their kinship groups. This is possible thanks to globe-spanning networks of communication and trade.

Kinship groups are great, but many of them have painful costs. Some 60 percent of Americans, for example, suffered an adverse childhood experience in kinship groups. Some of these could not be avoided - like a loved one's untimely death. Most of these negative experiences were intent or neglect by kinship group members.

If your early experiences of kinship groups are negative, you are less likely to seek out other human connection. You have learned that your kinship group is not reliable. If people genetically close to you cannot be relied on, then why should it be different for strangers?

The connections you do find tend to be focused on your interests, and those people don't need to be nearby for you to have a strong connection. But you still have your prior experiences keeping you skeptical of human reliability.

Personally, I sympathize with everyone who is sad about communities becoming fragmented.

I think, though, that if these communities were as supportive, inclusive, or beneficial as they imagine themselves to be this would not be a problem.

Bad communities should be allowed to fail. That is probably what is happening here.

I am comfortable branching out.

Back in MY day, we didn't even have wheels!

Gotta stick to your convictions!