archhn

Any bureaucratic environment turns people into antisocial psychopaths. Too many rules and too much competition. Every single thing, no matter how small, like a policy about removing Keurig pods from the machine after using it, becomes fodder for institutional politics.

Great comment. You get what I'm saying.

> What's wrong with women being more submissive and less independent?

The real problem with this, as the social engineers running this country see it, is that less independent women = higher birthrates. They are trying to reduce birthrates and break up the atomic family as part of their plan to make us into a highly atomized workforce, unable to form bonds with eachother. They're trying to engineer a society where there can be no retaliation against the corporate oligarchy that has overthrown the republic.

Am I wrong? Are women not the more submissive sex? Is it not generally accepted that men are more independent than women?

What's your argument against what I said?

Seriously. I mean, it wasn't great, but men had dignity. There's no dignity in getting nuked or mowed down by a machine gun.

I basically said women thrive in different environments than men, and that our current society is better suited for women.

I'll admit that I could have phrased my argument more politely. I could have couched it in all sorts of diplomatic language to make sure no one was offended, but that would have obscured my veiws. And I'm tired of censoring myself for the benefit of hypersensitive people.

My comment wasn't spiteful. As far as I'm concerned, it relayed objective truths confirmed by my experience.

Nope, it didn't. You're straight up lying.

Calling people mentally ill because they have a different worldview than you do is not healthy.

Detain me for dissent?

What is so shocking about my comment?

Look at the suicide rates. It's highest for middle aged white men.

What's going on? And why are you so hostile to dissenting opinions?

Edit: my account seems to have been locked and I can't reply to posts here. My original comment contained some harsh truths about gender, which runs contrary to the present groupthink.

I'm leaving hacker news for good. The last thing I'll say is that if you keep censoring dissenting opinions, you'll end up in a delusional echo chamber. This will take you further and further away from reality until you are completely unadapted to the world as it is and become completely impotent in your attempts to navigate it. Those who oppose you do you a huge service by doing so. If you crush your opposition, you'll also destroy yourself.

The arrow of time only goes one way. We can't go back now.

The idea of corporations dominating the internet is not nebulous at all.

Things used to be more ad hoc. People would create their own websites from scratch. There was less centralization. Every website wasn't a boostrap clone.

The pursuit of profit changed things dramatically. As soon as people started making big money on the internet, things changed. FOMO kicked in and the internet became the new gold rush.

Idk man, it seems like you just weren't there at the beginning.

The internet was a magical place back in the day. We were all super excited to contribute to something so transformative. I remember my father excitedly putting up his 3d gifs on his GeoCites page.

Then the corporations came with their legions of desk jockeys, all competing with each other for promotions dependent upon squeezing the internet of every last drop of value.

The internet became less human, just like modern society. Everything about the almighty dollar. Human creativity and freedom be dammed.

HN posters are mostly corporate workers, or institutionalized in some way. The individual is always wrong in their eyes, institutions are always right.

If an individual goes broke wracking up medical debt, "Too bad. You should have been more economically useful." If the government goes broke, "Uh, it's no problem."

I get it. They were trained to despise individuals and worship institutions. They stop singing this song when they get edged out of the system though. I've met many middle aged programmers that gave up all hope in life because they lost their economic value.

Hope you people aren't one of them.

Some people have no control over their environment. Suddenly getting laid off isn't a mark of "dishonesty."

It is offensive when "unforeseen circumstances" is casted as "dishonesty." This kind of thing is routinely done to criminalize the poor.

It's the "thrift" argument all over again. You're projecting systematic economic problems onto the poor. Wages have been stagnant for many years. Inflation and cost of living is rising incredibly.

Can we at least make the government take a financially literacy class first? It is the biggest debtor in the world.

Such reports say nothing about circumstances. It has nothing to do with your "trustworthiness." It typically reflects economic precariousness. Did you not pay because you lost your job? Or maybe you incurred a huge medical bill which required you to skip out on some bills...etc.

Cold ideological dismissals like this that ignore what is actually happening to people are making me increasingly bitter. It's almost like you're saying "Let them eat cake."

You built something that competes with doctors, not compliments them. If the medical industry was unregulated, you could pair this with a prescription service and make an automated online doctor's office.

You're unfortunately dealing with an unfree market, which is why the psychiatrist tended to her nails instead of shitting her pants when you revealed tech that could potentially make her obsolete.

Yeah, that doesn't sound healthy. They are cheery when angry? Sounds psychopathic.

These chain restaurants have always freaked me out. I know most of the people working there are at the bottom of the barrel, but their job forces them to feign a cheery demeanor. It's like underclass hell--imo.

Have you ever read "Brave New World?" Happiness and all the sundry delusions you mentioned are not good metrics. The fact of the matter is that most people have less control over their lives than ever before. Gigantic entities have seized control over most sectors of human activity.

In the short term, this corporate domination appears like a good thing. The mom and pop stores fell to Amazon and the Walmarts of the world, and consequently things got cheaper. That's a good thing...right? Cheaper goods = better lives...no?

The low cost of goods and immediate boon to our material quality of life came at a structural cost. More and more of us are being converted from independent businesses owners to employees or contractors of large corporations. Nowhere is this more evident than in the agricultural industry. "If you don't go big, you go out," a former AG secretary said of the monopolizing currents in that industry.

Prices for food went down as corporations seized more and more territory from independent farmers, but again...this came at a structural cost. In time, corporate monopolies will own all of food production.

All this translates to power and wealth being concentrated into the hands of the very few.

This means the dream of democracy is over. The average person will not have a say in his government when he is just a cog in a machine owned by the corporate caste.

Sure, the corporate caste will probably usher in a BNW type of society, and most people will be as happy as can be...but they won't really be full human beings. They will be satisfied slaves who love their servitude.

Unfortunately, this is what the common man wants...he just wants to be happy and have a full belly. He doesn't care about having the power to shape his own destiny, nor does he believe in anything higher than himself that would warrant self-sacrifice and prolonged misery.

And so we may have the society you desire--the society of the last man. Almost everyone will be happy, but some men will remain wandering and crying out in the wilderness.

Edit:

I'd also like to add an example from history which demonstrates the misuse of statistics.

Consider the period when Hitler rose to power in Germany. The Nazi regime ushered in what is called the "Economic Miracle." If you looked at the raw statistics of Germany during that period, you would think Hitler was God's gift from heaven. Not only was the economy booming, but many people bought into Hitler's magical rhetoric and became fervently hopeful for their future. It was a period of tremendous optimism and strength. The statistics show this, but they don't show the monsters lurking in the depths beneath.

In order to know the monsters of today, we need to look beyond statistics. We need to look into ourselves, into human nature, and think about what happens when so few control so much.

Pessimists in the sense of complacency? Like, "Oh, things are great as they are. We don't need to change anything. Everything should stay precisely as it is because the status quo os the image of right."?

Excellent description of what's happening.

Just look at all the mentally crippled people who resort to psychoactive drugs in order to quell the raging dissonance within them. They know something is wrong, but they've been conditioned to accept the system...so the only remaining culprit is themselves...and the psychiatric machinery is there to convince them they are sick.

When I was struggling to confront our harsh reality, I just thought I was depressed. Those around me convinced me to go to the doctor and they played along. This scenario is playing out everywhere. People are being told they are sick when it's our society that is sick.

There are essentially two mentalities I've observed in people around me.

1. The Optimist. Believes they live in "the best of all worlds" and everything always works out for the best--Voltare satirizes this idealism in Candide.

2. The Broken Nihilist. Believes everything is bull shit. Everyone is a liar, civilization is a scam, and all human interaction is a power struggle.

The optimist doesn't feel the need to worry about anything because they believe some magic force will make everything right for them. They thus are more susceptible to deception because they believe there can be no bad consequences of their actions...they are living a magical life in the best of all worlds...nothing can go wrong.

The nihilist, as we may suspect, is naturally immune to deception within the bounds of his reasoning capacity. This gives him an advantage over the optimist...and he always looks down upon the optimist as an idiot.

I'm inclined to use the word "terrifying." Some people I know call me "crazy" every time I take a position which contradicts MSM. They fully believe that the T.V. is giving them the unadulterated truth of all matters that should concern them.

Without an avenue of recourse, people tune out.

Eliminate choice and you eliminate thought.

Honestly, it has been this way in US politics for a long time. The government is always doing crazy scandalous things, but most people are busy with the day to day and don't know how to act on such information anyway. We are also, as Vidal said, a nation of amnesia. Most people have the attention span of a goldfish. I'm sure most people lack the historical knowledge to contextualize these government actions. They don't know that an antagonistic relationship exists between the people and government. The numerous historical and contemporary betrayals of governments against their peoples isn't in their mind. Plus, most people think they are living in some fantasy world where nothing bad can happen to them.

It's pretty dark. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

Nope. Usually people take it and take it until they can't take it anymore and go berserk.

Probably due to bureaucratic overhead. Everything needs to pass through ten layers of approval and every bureaucrat plays power politics the whole time.

I was once involved in a small city project, and the town liaison treated the project like we were in charge of the nation's nuclear arsenal. It's mind blowing how something so trivially small can become such a big deal when there are too many cooks in the kitchen.

There's always some truth behind genuine expression, even it happens to be riddled with lies.

The site is an advertisement for his books.

I think he's just old fashioned and believes learning from physical paper books is superior. He even has a link at the bottom of his site that says "Paper book lovers."

I like it. The author is being real. This is what he sincerely thinks. You don't have to agree with everything an author says. I for one appreciate the candor.

It's also a proven fact that many smartphone applications are effectively dispensers of dopamine at regular intervals. People check their social media like smokers take a smoke break. The author is right...albeit a bit terse and dramatic.

"Putin's Oligarchs" ... as if a man from a working class family rose to power without the consent of Russia's oligarchy. Why does western media always obsessively focus on the front man?