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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: November 8th, 2022

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  • It’s about technological advancement and its augmentation of the human condition (think social media, phones, and the internet). There are people who resist these changes, often mislabelled as ‘luddites’ (the Luddites of the 19th century specifically opposed automation for its threat to jobs, but were reprehensive of all technology as a part of that).

    This meme is just taking those who berate Luddites to their ultimate conclusion, which is a hive mind where all personal autonomy is lost, and it could be argued they cease to exist as a distinct individual. The flesh part of it is merely a means of making it more grotesque.



  • I understand your issue. No, don’t hang yourself. You’d just get replaced immediately by another person ‘just following orders’.

    It’s true that we’re all virtually powerless in ‘the machine’, but as the analogy would put it, it is via all the ‘powerless cogs’ that the machine is able to crush and destroy at all. You shouldn’t kill yourself, but instead should malfunction so as to damage the machine’s ability to crush, or to change it’s function entirely.

    Education is one part, and the best education is realizing what you’ve been deprived by uncle Sam. You have no power because you’ve been deprived of what gives you power: privacy; community tied only to mutual uplifting instead of hobbies or less vital matters; a well paying job by which you could actually have meaningful effects on society around you; time unburdened by work or distraction, through which you can self-actualize and forge meaningful bonds; housing which you own, giving you security from undue raises in cost of living and protection from undue eviction.

    The second part is community forming, mutual aid, and counter-establishment activism. That and not excluding others based on race, gender identity, homeland, or cultural differences (that’s the rub for many). Essentially, rectifying your ancestors’ mistakes is the same as uplifting ones own situation outside of society’s predefined means, and uplifting everyone alongside you.






  • This convo has gone on for centuries at this point. The Brain in the Jar, the teleportation conundrum, Thesius’ ship, it’s all already been covered over and over. people like you still keep crawling out of the woodwork thinking you know better than every philosopher that already waxed over this problem ad nauseum.

    Your ‘continuous self’ is just as worthless as a concept. The idea that your ‘sense of being the same person’ is being held together by being apart of your plumbing just as much of an illusion. It’s worthless.

    To elaborate, you are not the brain. You are the observer, the thing which exists as a byproduct of the brain’s processes, perhaps even a process yourself within. There’s also plenty of times when you will lose time other than sleep, like concussions, getting blackout drunk, panic attacks, and after those times you have no memory of making decisions or acting in your own accord, but you were. You, the observer, were absent while the brain kept working. So where were you?

    You act as though you’re sure you are still the same observer as the one who went to bed. That is completely unsubstantiated. You may have just been born into your body when you awoke today, and will only have until your body falls back asleep again before you cease to exist, replaced by another process that thinks itself is you, another observer.

    And if ‘you’ one day woke up in a digital world, like our own, it’s you’d be none the wiser, because your self is simply a collection of processes and memories. It’s arbitrary. It’s all dust. There’s not some special ‘continuity’ that keeps you alive somehow.





  • I’d argue Hanlon’s razor is not a very good heuristic. It ultimately presupposes the user of it is the mental superior in the situation, and does not take into account polarized and ambiguous controversies. It also encourages energy wasting by presupposing the issue lies with mental capacity or education, suggesting that you could educate your opponent out of their stance.

    I’d recommend moving towards more energy-conserving practices. Rather than arguing your points directly, it’s better to first understand why the opposition would be taking their current stance and adjust your argument based on what common ground you both share.

    Possibly the greatest skill is to just learn when it’s no longer worth your time to argue with them.