Idk, people are usually nice in my experience. News, forum opinions and youtube videos are not remotely representative of how things work in real life.
A group of very mentally ill, insecure people with a lot of material wealth control the internet and media.
They get to write the narrative.
We can analyze just one small tool in the belt of narrative control: censoring. If you've been warned or banned on Reddit, you can imagine how this works. If you've said something against the mold of what they allow, you will get censored. With so many people commenting, some subset of people will always say what you want to see. You censor or derank opinions you don't want, and boost opinions you want. This is a defensible form of writing a narrative without actually having to artificially write anything.
Of course with AI, you can now just write anything and seed ideas.
Give such sick people the reigns, and you get a false reality has little connection to what's really happening.
OK, but applying the idea from critical legal theory that "the purpose of the law is the protect status quo power" to mental health to infer that diagnoses must similarly reinforce archetypes with social/economic/political utility for the system - how does that gel with the idea that people capable of aquiring great wealth (a measure of 'system utility') are highly mentally ill?
Aside from that, I'm not saying you're wrong or right about that theory, I'm just wondering how it falls down around that idea.
On this topic of interenet behavior, maybe I'm not really sure or maybe I am, but my view is it's less about some sort of diempowering imposition of external/elite evil upon a innocent and good mass population, but rather about the medium itself enabling latent negativities in the populus to surface. Which doesn't mean the population is itself not good and innocent - it is also multifaceted. Thus, such dynamics might operate in a "Stanford Prison Experiment" kind of "cover and permission" way.
My view of many of these dynamics are its more about emergent self-regulating properties of a system than it is about top-down control. In a sense, that's a lot more liberating and empowering for people, because then they are not cast as victims of some evil from on high, they are the architects of their experience, for good or bad.
The view you espouse, while seeming to empower the downtrodden by taking aim at hidden sources of evil power, I feel in fact disempowers by playing up the fake victim narratives that disempower and confuse people. In other words, your idea, while seemingly edgy and incisive, may in fact be what any such extant "evil elites" would want you to think, if they hope to have control! Haha :)
Anyway, I'm not trying to cut down your idea here in this topic - personally I believe people are very much in charge of their experiences, that's what I've found in my life - but in this kind of mass topic, who knows? Anywa, thanks for responding. Just some food for thought and maybe discussion. Have a good one :)
> diagnoses must similarly reinforce archetypes with social/economic/political utility for the system
Unless extreme wealth is part of the diagnostic criteria, this model says the diagnostic criteria would be designed to reinforce archetypes in the general populace, and that the status quo powerful would simply not receive such diagnoses. That doesn't stop other people from reviewing the checklists and drawing their own conclusions. (I, myself, haven't done this, so I'm not sure whether the "powerful people are diagnosable as mentally ill" conclusion is valid.)
> Thus, such dynamics might operate in a "Stanford Prison Experiment" kind of "cover and permission" way.
The Stanford Prison Experiment is actually a good example: Philip Zimbardo had his thumb very firmly on the scales, and excluded that information from his write-up. The claim that "people are just like that" has been fabricated enough times that I'm deeply suspicious of it.
Fair enough, because it wouldn't apply (as part of the power of the system in this very model), to the powerful themselves, means the criteria would only need to shape the rest, not reinforce the elite traits, such as they may be. In other words it could serve its purpose of protecting their power and hierarchy even if it was only ever applied to everyone but them. Makes sense. Thanks.
Re your point about the SPE, I'm not saying I disbelieve you -- but I don't know -- (seems plausible that a big ticket "objective experiment" was infact non-scientifically reproducible or even used as a psyop to gaslight people into accepting their "original sin" - or whatever) but can you show some evidence of this?
Highly functioning sociopaths. And this diagnosis never goes alone in otherwise perfectly balanced individuals, does it. Most of them have missing/broken father figure syndrome which manifests in various bad and rather unfixable personality traits.
The societies we humans build always allow such persons to rise to the top - it doesn't matter if market democracy or brutal communism, fascism etc. The last type that didn't work well was some sort of feudal kingdom style where power was shared among elite across generations, inherited and rarely claimed by more competent, ambitious and vicious folks from lower ranks. But this is also how we got most of the progress in past 150 years, so its a double-edged sword. I wish I had a solution, maybe some Deus Ex-style of neutral AGI, but who would build such an AGI when everybody competent wants more power and manipulate others to their favor.
Heck, we often celebrate them by looking at their achievements, conveniently ignoring what utter piece of shit they are as humans (Ford is a prime example - a great inspiration for Hitler among others, and musk doesn't go far and look how uncritically he was celebrated also here for a long time and often still is... but the list is very long, basically almost all billionaires and high power folks).
With great power comes great impact even if they don't try, and who doesn't like some ego boost. People imitate them, follow them, subconsciously accept their values more easily. They literally imprint their values on rest of the world and we allow it due to our laziness, convenience and inherent sheepish mentality of masses which we are part of whether we like it or not - just look at how most folks need some form of a role model.
Intresting. I'm not saying (to pick some well-known execs/founders/leaders at random) Jobs, Musk, Zuck, Bezos, Huang, Trump, Xi are "high functioning sociopaths" but Jobs and Bezos both had missing biological fathers. Musk had a violent one. Zuck, not sure - but something seems weird with the dad, it's never spoken of tho. Huang was raised without parents present (only communicating via casette tape shipped on boat - wow!), living overseas from age 9, in a violent type of environment. Trump's dad was a disciplinarian tough on his brother, but Trump found ways to stand up to him. Xi's father was purged/rehabilitated by the Communists and they had to live in caves, farming dust and being bitten by lice, etc for years. I don't know any of them personally and I'm not speaking to their actual stories, as I don't know.
All this tho -- can the mother have no impact? I don't think so. Children are raised by their mothers. Why put the blame on dads, if solely? Seems not fair. A bifurcation in blame in society that can only cause a fracture that leads to greater wrongs later.
Also, while such questions are intriguing -- much of this talk of what's wrong with the internet, points the blame at a few rich people. This seems misguided, and misses the point that the internet is largely "us" - all of us. If we are doing something "wrong" but deflect, we're never going to get better. Even if some bad people are trying to push buttons, we're the ones that have to take responsibility for how we act and to do good.
When I'm chatting online, I'm sure as hell not talking with Bezos - he can't text that much, least of all in the hot-tub. I'm talking with some random. And we each have to take resopnsibility for our behavior. If the rando I'm talking with says, "Why am I bad? Because Jeff Bezos made me this way." It sounds totally ridiculous. And it is, of course. I think the hijacking of a question about "why is the internet negative sometimes" into a 2-minutes-hate on rich-elite is the wrong approach to solutions and understanding.
The internet is basically full of maladjusted people with sad lives. Strong chance that the post you read on HN, Reddit, X, etc is written by someone profoundly unhappy with their lot in life.
Yeah I think when you see that kind of unhinged negativity that's right, sure, it's a projection. But I believe the internet can be really good as well, it's just you have to ignore the stupidity that's visible and sort-of, idk, curate your experience (?) to be good. Seeing and responding to the best possibilities in any situation. :)
And it's not just that those people are more online, they also post a lot more, and don't stop a conversation when they should.
For many years the prevailing notion was that anonymity turns people into dickheads. But they did studies on this, and it turns out it's just that the real-life dickheads just dominate the discussion and the reasonable people post way less
Is that true? Can you post some studies you saw? That's fascinating if true. "The dickheads" post more - because they find an environment to take out their evil desires where they believe there are "no consequences", sounds like it makes sense. But I'd like to see the evidence.
It might have been "The Distorting Prism of Social Media: How Self-Selection and Exposure to Incivility Fuel Online Comment Toxicity" by Jin Woo Kim et al. [1][2]
Not OP and not an expert but seems the aim is outrage which leads to more engagement and more advertising clicks, more followers and so on. Distorting news and social media from reality. I must say I too have found that people are nicer than what news portrays. I had the pleasure of being able to visit New York a few years and the people were just people and pleasant.
That's a good point, that optimization thing. Sort of "algorithmically driven mad" or bad! Ha. Could be happening. It's why it's important to disengage right? From the loops of brain hijacking/hacking. A quieter internet, for a more civilized age.
That reminds me, I'm making a text-based terminal browser. It might achieve that! Haha :)
People have different ideas of what "disabled" means.
Broadening the definition makes it less useful in many ways. I would consider "disabled" to mean one of:
- Unable to ambulate effectively (requires crutches or worse)
- Unable to look after oneself as an adult (for any combination of reasons)
- Unable to use tools and items most people would consider standard - eg. can't hold a pencil, write, type, whatever.
That's a fairly harsh definition of disabled, but all of these people unambiguously require accommodation because of their incapacity. It's also off the top of my head, so I'd happily broaden it if you want to argue the point.
If I can talk to someone for an entire day and not realise or notice they are disabled in some way, I question the definition being used - how helpful is it in deciding how we should allocate additional resources and help in that case?
Modern carmakers might make them complicated, and you're well within your right to avoid those, but in general electronic propulsion is pretty simple. The problem is car manufacturing is a very expensive industry that's extremely difficult to disrupt, so incumbents aren't really worried about staying ahead of hungry competitors.
Go look at small-scale PEVs - ebikes, scooters, unicycles, etc. A huge, huge range of players making every possible variation under the sun, with simple designs and extremely low costs. This is what the car space is missing out on, because of regulations etc owing to their larger size and much higher danger levels that entails. I suspect many places have regulations that largely exclude smaller, simpler cars from being viable as well.
OP did not say they would not travel on electric trains or unicycles or elevators or electric forklifts or electric container ships. They said they don't want an EV. The things that modern carmakers make complicated.
> They said they don't want an EV. The things that modern carmakers make complicated.
It's probably more of a sign of what's coming in the future. There is no need to make EVs difficult/expensive to repair. The change in technology is just an excuse to lock everything down and rake in more money for repairs/new vehicles. They could do the same for ICE vehicles too.
In the well established auto context we're talking about in this thread they are.
> Go look at small-scale PEV
Not relevant to the discussion at hand.
You're right that they shouldn't be, and don't have to be. That doesn't mean that the ones that actually exist in the automotive world actually are, and it's rather egregious to claim that they aren't. Doubly so when you try to substantiate that with devices that regardless of propulsion are drastically simpler, cheaper, and different devices. It's like trying to claim airplanes aren't complicated because a gliders are simple.
Not all of them are as bad as the BMW in the OP, but very few (if any) road legal mass produced EV's are truly simple.
If you read my comment you'll note that I acknowledge that building cars is complicated. I don't think the electric powertrain is complicated (at least, not compared to the explosion-propelled mechanical marvels of legacy ICE - maybe that's because I'm an EE and have a much harder time imagining how a modern ICE works as reliably as it does :D)
I'm aware, I read it. You made the counter-claim "EVs are not complicated." and attempted to justify it by switching the context.
And just like you, I mirrored your comments format with my own when I led with a counterpoint, and then immediately followed it up with the concession that in the context you're describing, they don't have to be.
> have a much harder time imagining how a modern ICE works as reliably as it does
EV is indeed easy. Safe and reliable EV is hard. Vehicle environment is hostile to electric components, where they are exposed to vibration, dirt, and moisture. Even if you get "safe" chemistry in the battery cells of an Alibaba e-bike, it only means the cells themselves are less likely to explode in a chemical fire. It still has enough current to melt metall and set off a regular fire. And in the best case it will just stop working and good luck repairing some random components, which might have been from a short production run and there are no spares in the existence.
Yep. It's a bit like some gas projects when prices spiked due to Russia's attack on Ukraine.
Companies had supply agreements in place but they will find essentially any excuse to "delay" delivery. You might eventually get your product but fat lot of good it does for you while you're mired in court and not getting anything anyway.
The particularly amusing example is a project continuously selling spot LNG while saying it's not yet operational, stiffing the companies with which they'd signed long term contracts with on a technicality.
The question is how much of this consumer memory is selling either. It may well be that not many people are actually buying DRAM right now, given how much prices have spiked.
I also have a lot more luck selling PC hardware on bespoke forums than on ebay etc.
Kind of funny to see manufacturers get screwed by their own opaque pricing policies for once.
All well and good when you're dictating terms with dozens of buyers, but probably not so much when a single buyer is dictating terms to a couple of sellers.
Someone else starts their own mines, everyone goes a little poorer.
except for oil, most countries aren't dependant on other countries just to survive in the near term (food is one of the few things countries will usually attempt to ensure they are selfsufficent in, if it's feasible)
The UK is far from self sufficient in food. You'd think they would have learned from their mistakes after they nearly starved to death due to the Axis blockade during WWII, but apparently not.
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