atomised
1yr ago
some of the culture war fights have sapped a decent amount of people of what I would call life energy
I accept that this may have happened to some, but I doubt it is significant on a population level. The proportion of people who are genuinely 'in the trenches' of the culture wars is not very high. The vast majority of people are either passive consumers of a propaganda outlet of their choice or otherwise are completely grillpilled and let this stuff pass them right by.
atomised
1yr ago
If you think the rules are about tone then you have misunderstood them. The rules have always been about sincerely assuming the best of your ideological opposites, not assuming whatever you like and then applying a varnish of decorum.
atomised
1yr ago
Even if we assume the high-end of your range, and say that for the foreseeable future training a near-state-of-the-art deep learning model from scratch will cost around half a million dollars, that's still cheap enough to be considered fairly democratic. A lot of people and organisations have that sort of money, many of which exist outside of the Cathedral. And as you say, you can do a lot by tuning an existing model, which is feasible for hobbyists.
atomised
1yr ago
A virus that predominantly kills people who are five pension cheques from the grave hardly seems worth the effort to me.
I think the null hypothesis for all discussions relating to media preferences should be stated explicitly: you form your media taste when young from a variety of sources (included but not limited to critics), and then retain them for the rest of your life, slowly become more-and-more alienated by contemporary media and criticism. It's not your fault, it's not their fault, it's just the natural way of things.
'Financial speculator' is a good intuitive descriptor for the more abstract 'commodifier'. The essence of neoliberal capitalism is that it turns every human attribute into a form of capital and every cultural artifact into a commodity. Everywhere it seeks to produce systems of winners and losers, and it desires that everything be packaged up and sold. Are 'financial speculators' in the narrow sense responsible for all this? Not wholly, no, but they serve as a useful synecdoche. The mindset of the forex trader or the rolex flipper is very much the sentient manifestation of neoliberal ideology, just as the mindset of the brutal cop is a sort of sentient fascism.
atomised
1yr ago
Well, you did said it was akin to rdrama's banners, which are consciously chosen. But even if we accept that 4chan slur-users are unwitting or subconscious implementers of an anti-normie immune system, their conscious actions are obviously those of people who enjoy using slurs, so they fall into the contingent originally described in the comment above.
atomised
1yr ago
What the discussion presupposes is not that the EU is inherently malignant, but that joining the EU is undesirable for Poland
I disagree. The clear subtext of the original comment is that the EU is inherently malignant.
One can respond to such a question by saying "you seem to believe that joining the EU would be bad for Poland, but I don't think it is in fact bad for them", and go from there.
Yes, just as one can say: 'actually, we don't all agree that xyz' in response to explicit-style consensus building. The problem is that to do so cuts against the grain of the discourse, requires sticking a shovel into the ground instead of simply building constructively, and so is more arduous and less likely to be well received even if done in good faith.
atomised
1yr ago
If you're a Tory/voted Leave/support Brexit, swipe left
It's baffling to me that this is common in the Rep. of Ireland. Unless you live really near the border, I'm not sure who they're even talking about... Brits on holiday? Or have 'Tory / Brexit voter' somehow come to serve as political categories in a general sense, in a country where (by their literal definitions) virtually no-one is actually either of those things? In which case, why are these imported terms being used instead of indigenous labels ('If you're a Fine Gael voter, swipe left')? Very odd.
atomised
1yr ago
British student debt, which is owed to the government and not private creditors, is unlike virtually any other form of consumer debt. You are only required to make payments towards it if you earn above a certain threshold, and the minimum annual payment is defined as a percentage of earnings above that level: essentially, it functions as a marginal tax. Student debt is not a hugely significant drag factor on middle class quality of life in the UK in the same way it seems to be in America.
atomised
1yr ago
The xkcd Free Speech comic [1] from April 2014 was very influential and memetic - as much so as any Stonetonss comic - on Reddit and Reddit-adjacent parts of the internet back when those websites were much more pro-free-speech than they are today.
atomised
1yr ago
And Bill Clinton was forced to adopt Reagan’s Neoliberalism which is now considered a leftist politicial philosophy.
The fact that it is the predominant economic paradigm in America, with the consequence that it has many adherents within the Democratic party, does not make trickle-down neoliberalism a 'leftist political philosophy'. You would be laughed out of every economics faculty in existence if you claimed such a thing.
atomised
1yr ago
This is really bugging me and I think someone here will know: I'm trying to find an article, I think written by one of the Scotts, which mentioned the existence of an obscure monk who invented the concept of algorithmic runtime complexity in the 1900s and was completely ignored for being way too far ahead of his time. Can anyone link me to it?
Not true. Even if we assume that neoliberal capitalism is unassailably efficient, the inefficiencies induced by a socialist system would in many cases not be very great and could be protected with relatively modest tarriffs. And of course for many (perhaps most) industries, a regulated market is the best solution, as well evidenced by the real world.
Khmer Rouge and Ancapistan are two ends of a very long spectrum.
atomised
1yr ago
On the radio last night they mentioned she had a distinctively Roman accent. Is Rome perceived as a southern or northern city, or is it indeed viewed as its own distinct thing? If the latter, could this aid her efforts to be a unifying figure?
atomised
1yr ago
I'm pretty sure the only reason she's not openly euroskeptic is because the failure (perceived or actual) of Brexit has poisoned the well of euroskepticism for mainstream politicians on the continent. Perhaps also because she feels she will be able to find ideological allies within the EU (namely Duda and Orbán). In the abstract, euroskepticism should be a very natural corollary of her fundamental beliefs: anti-globalist, anti-liberal, pro-nation-state.
atomised
1yr ago
Yeah, it's the part of the law I have the most problem with. I've nearly done myself serious damage a couple of times (ab)using non-locking knives.
atomised
1yr ago
I don't think GMO is bad, but I think there are some principled reasons to be opposed to it. You know how tomatoes are worse than they used to be because they optimised for redness? I feel like GMO makes that sort of trap easier to fall into.
atomised
1yr ago
Whatever you think of her character, I can't imagine anyone thinking she's a 'famehunting fake tanned slag', since she was already quite famous, is obviously not fake tanned, and is undeniably elegant and attractive - a world away from the stereotypical Essex sambuca girl.
atomised
1yr ago
This is a fair point. Let me amend my grievance: many posts here take it as a given that progressives are intent on enforcing their worldview not on altruistic grounds of morality, but rather out of a self-serving desire to further their own prospects and those of their in-group, composited with a wanton and nihilistic urge to destroy tradition and structure.
atomised
1yr ago
One thing that occurs to me is anti-GMO / anti-vaccine discussion, which has historically been equally if not more left-coded than right-coded, however is extremely taboo outside of quite fringe subreddits.
The idea that it is impossible to discern the personally held feelings of posters here towards progressivism because everyone's so level-headed and decorous is frankly risible.
Mainstream news media takes its foreign policy cues from the Government as a matter of state cohesion and security. If you want to call that a psyop then fine, but it's also the way the world has worked for centuries.
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