Who the hell has time or mental capacity to do any of that when you're just trying to scrape by or make it to the end of the day though?
1b. Some are of course. Many are legitimately scraping by, but many others are scraping by because they're in a lifestyle prison of their own making, and could easily have complete financial security by consuming less. For them it's an excuse, not an explanation.
2. A lifestyle that has you "making it to the end of the day" is an unhealthy lifestyle, and, yes, you've got to do work on yourself --- take charge of your free time, leave the bad job, leave the bad relationship, strike out alone, etc --- before you can work on making the world better. So there are some dependencies before you're gonna do anything important, but that doesn't mean you can't be on the path.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.
Political representation was an idea from back in the days when one had to travel to have a discussion. The traveling was rather complicated too.
For a while now we can have a discussion globally with millions simultaneously.
This produces way to many opinions that are way to fuzzy to compile into a single plan so we end up with representation again.
I think it is worthy to have your mind blown by what these large language models can do in this context.
Our representation atm is unable to read our opinions, there is just to much opinion, it is clueless about what we think or want.
But the puzzle is kinda solved now isn't it?
You don't need a brain implant or even a vote if everyone's influence is limited to such extend that they cant look beyond their self interest - voting is not required.
Direct democracy might be to much of a leap but we may take note of what people think and what ideas and proposals are out there.
You have ideas, you could write them down properly with sources and everything. Who is going to read it? What if you have 20 ideas? What would be the point in doing that? If it is pointless you should stop having ideas. There are countless fun, useful and interesting things to do that all have a point.
Say we all start writing down our poorly thought out ideas. Share our collective political ignorance with the void. If that could be aggregated and combined into something perhaps agreeable or just refutable, then we could at least debunk it and at best consider it.
Everyone can come up with a list of pro's and cons for any topic but if many do we can have the full list and may address the [perceived] misconceptions.
Not use LLM as a middle man (that would put it in charge) but as an aggregator. To construct the questions and answers for a poll for example.
If it works it will become worth having ideas, perhaps even good ideas, perhaps the feedback loop has to run for a while for the good ideas to happen.
Anything is better than pretending to know what the public wants while the public doesn't bother to want anything.
There is also the way we blame the representative for doing the wrong thing. They cant take positions on anything without offending some of their voters. We pretend everything is their idea.
I might be hallucinating, either way it is quite an enjoyable thought.
Of course I know no one will go along with anything until civilization implodes again.
A good slogan I’ve heard repeated in more activist circles: “If not us, then who? If not now, then when?”
:הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי. וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתָי
He [also] used to say: If I am not for myself, who is for me? But if I am for my own self [only], what am I? And if not now, when?
https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.1.14?lang=bi&lookup=%3A&...
Money insulates you from the worst effects of regressive policy, and warps your incentives toward assholeness.
Education isn't producing many savvy, media literate critical thinkers. My class rocked a D average in Civics, and it was pretty basic stuff. We didn't have any media study. We never looked at how ads work, or where money really comes from, or where it's concentrated.
'STEM' and 'politically savvy' almost seem poles apart; no offense y'all. I don't agree that things ought to be this way, but can you deny it?
Anyway, I suspect media literate critical thinkers without much money do exist on HN - but they're elusive.
If you want useful political discourse, try Scandinavia. Might learn Norwegian myself.
See "How Civil Wars Start" by Barbara F. Walter.
> You find professionals like lawyers leading revolutionary movements, not farm hands
Yes, but also students (who have the time and education, but not money nor power).
They are also indicative of two other key predictive factors: elite over production and a demographic youth bulge.
Their lack of success is perhaps the power issue. If they waited a few years to become army officers, administrators, judiciary and such they could be much more successful than doing another sit-in!
The two notable rebellions in the US were by land / slave owners. Students are limited to basically SDS / The Weather Underground that didn't go very far.
I rephrased (1b) a bit to make that more clear.
I don't have to like it but it seems that is what the answer would look like.
In a way people are allowed to just barely sustain themselves because they are so annoying when they cant.
Stop using things made mega corporations. It’s probably include many of the companies you’re currently working for.
Note I said that it was simple, not easy.
But the reversal of consunerism has to be important enough to you to overcome the pleasurable sensation you get from using these products.
It is another push the blame on the individual thing like carbon footprint or identity theft.