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some of us refuse to let this real meaning be dictated by any entity other than oneself. not to say the meaning is subjective, just to reject all except our own appreciation of this meaning.

what I'm trying to say is that, sure, there is a real meaning beyond our own subjective experience AND that I reject any state, authority, ideology, and/or science which would try to tell me what this real objective meaning is or how I can access it.

> everyone's life has some vestige of real meaning.

maybe my life has just a vestige (a faint remnant) of meaning to you, but I think that for me, my own life has full 100% of possible meaning (and it should be the same for your own life's meaning). that is, unless you let this experience of meaning come to you from some institution or some ideological belief, then your own life will only be vestigially meaningful to yourself.

there's too much science "up in the air" (to refer to the stuff that hasn't made it down to the text books)

it bothers me but I cannot do anything about it (other than be bothered by it)

> I have seen the false perception a few times that a PhD is mainly about sitting down and thinking deeply for a long time without talking to anyone and then getting an eureka moment and writing it all up.

also, a big part of the complaint from the linked and removed original blogpost is precisely the lack of being able to find people with whom to discuss. His advisors are not knowledgeable enough, (blog author claims) further, they advised them not to require so much in-depth knowledge in their thesis (!!).

the _pesky_ thing with "meaning" is that a life that seems meaningful (to them who live it) *IS* meaningful (again, to them who live it)

I wanna get on this list but it seems like founding one of these is the most plaussible way to do it.

I feel as though you're just being nitpicky for the sake of missing the point.

the overarching issue is that this " 'End users' are hostages. The real user is the ad-company" is a terrible problem which needs to be addressed, and politicians and other elites are terribly failing to do this in the west.

> Facebook cares about making money. Period.

you misspelled "every modern corporation"

all this to try to highlight how there's a problem here, and there seems to be a failure of society at large in the capability to deal with it.

do you ever worry about being robbed by the police in the USA?

in mexico we do, the police are as likely to rob you as any criminal. though it's not technically a robbery, it's actually extortion; they look to create a scenario in which they can extort a bribe out of you; i.e. they try to get you to bribe them (to the point that if you are willing to waste the rest of your day and go the the 'police station' they often just drop it and let you off with "a warning"). it's essentially same as a robbery but they're wearing uniforms.

why should you be forced to rent for a place to sleep?

> a exceptionally dry and boring subject matter, encumbered by complex mathematic models and obscure economic theory.

by this point, considering the amount of technical understanding around narrative, storytelling, and enganging media production, the fact that these matters are so dry, complex, and such a slog to work through, feels like a choice not to make them any more accessible.

sorry to say, but no. (or at the least, it's very highly unlikely)

it's also important to understand the difference between narcissistic traits, and a narcissistic pathology.

i.e. being narcissistic is not inherently bad nor evil, and unless there are other negative consequences that elevate the traits into pathology, I don't see why should we strive to eradicate narcissism

reminds me of church of euthanasia's "save the planet kill yourself" from the older internet.

the point is that it's the least we can consume, in contrast with a more capitalist friendly "go sit at a cafe to buy a drink" or even a scholarly-ambitious "read a book, or newspaper or learn something, don't just sit there". both of which are much worse.

> I hold unto my right as a mammal to be inefficient and sit drooling looking at trees.

yes, I even like framing this as an environmental conservation activity.

I'm doing nothing at all (only consuming oxygen, no content, no nothing) as a conscious action to save the environment.

but I want my work to be engaging...

it seems like I want this out of an existencial instict; one which the modern world has completely disregarded.

I want it, but I know (and I agree with your stance) that I will not find it in any "industry" work; academic work, on the other hand, does rely on this kind of self-motivated engagement much more than industry but has other problems.

> stop trying to make money off me for one second while I solve this tire crisis.

but if they did, they'd be pretty much wasting money! their stock holders could reasonably sue the board for choosing to not make money for a second.

/half-joking

IMO, economics as a science is all about making up theories to 'scientifically' (but actually, just academically) justify whatever the ruling powers want to do.

In a larger sense, academia and a big chunk of contemporary western "culture" is all about coming up with stories, narratives, explanations, mindsets (frameworks) to ignore the exploitation of humans as a resource for the sake of ill-defined (by design) notions of "the group" or "us all" when in fact the end result is a big hierarchical pyramid with little room at the top which requires lots and lots of desperate people at the bottom (by this point, the bottom is entire countries).

I have no more trust in anything, anything at all, that I read about this kind of stuff on the internet (since the Ukraine stuff started).

I will literally have to fly myself to Shanghai to believe this newsbit.

Maybe it's really that bad, but I trust the news so little by now that I must consider, maybe this is news is also propaganda and Shanghai is doing just fine?

At the same time, for me personally, this newsbit is not directly relevant in any way at all.

unless said neighbor is the current hegemonic nation, in which case you better make sure you buy/sell oil in dollars and that your national bank is independent from your government (you know, just to be safe).

i.e. if the USA invades sovereign nations then it makes sense to be in good terms with them.

have you considered how (not "why?") was google able to give away one gigabyte of email storage to anybody before 2010s?

that was not free either... what I'm trying to get at (and not very eloquently) is that a lot of that work is done by the computers. also, something about how the code is written once and then used by everybody at the same time. sure, writting the code may be expensive at first.

dunno, I doubt better written words will get you to agree with (or see) whatever it is I'm trying to get at.

I cannot get over how many authors that article has.

reddit actively shadowbans comments and all kinds of user created content.

It was really surprising to me that they'd be shadowbanning comments I would make to reply to other people in already buried (controversial) threads.

There's a russian artist who's made a couple of albums about "singing bronze". He plays the bronze plates, they sound a lot like bells.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsZ5RIZrNKw

India and Pakistan are the same people and the same culture. as far as I understand, and from my own far away position (combined with "nearsightedness"), it seems to me like the India-Pakistan division was made up when the english pulled out of there.

I sense something similar to Korean culture being broken up into north and south. of course in all cases there's a local power helping... but the real drive for the split are foreign powers

> What, then, is the core engine of our own civilization, and in what way might it decay? While we lack an incontrovertible answer, the Industrial Revolution appears to be a leading candidate.

I find this historically shallow (or short-term). IMO, at the core of civilization is the concept of "domain" (from the old latin meaning, which is like "realm" or possibly "kingdom")

I like to recall that all the "old and obsolete industrial practices" are more fundamental than the novel and up-to-date "computer networking, artificial intelligence, and other “emerging technologies.”"

and when I say more fundamental, I mean that's it's not possible to have the later without the former.

I hope you're joking. because otherwise, neo-surveillance fascism here we come.

I counter-maintain that to force such an in-depth article down into one key point means pretending it doesn't make another handful of key points.

maybe imagine this article is not one long twitter thread, but at least 8 or 9 topically related long twitter threads.

> Key to Supiot’s legal philosophy is the distinction between government by men—typical of the feudal period, with its personal allegiances and ties of dependence—and government by law

I would frame this using "government by men" speaking words at each other in contrast with "government by laws" i.e. men writing legally between them... i.e. orality vs literacy

This is important because of the relation between literacy and computability

> Bosses may have had a role under Fordism, but modern cognitive workers need them no more

in summary your boss was a man, then it became a written document (laws), and now it's become a computer run algorithm

> Techno-féodalisme argues that the rise of intangibles, usually concentrated at the most profitable points of the global value chain, led to the emergence of four new types of rent

two of them are more difficult to understand (I paraphrase):

innovation rents, which refers to valuable data sets that are the exclusive property of these firms

the technological capabilities to make this non-exclusive is here

and intangibles-differential rents refers to the ability of firms inside a single value chain to scale up their operations

If I understand correctly, this is possible because internet infrastructure is already non-exclusive

At the root of the issue, pretending that "intangibles"" are commodities and thus to enforce that they are treated as exclusive physical artifacts (merchandise) is to waste the potential of the internet (or, more cynically, to make a play to capture it privately)

This issue is even more complicated due to the distinction (or lack of) between "exploiting" and "harvesting" (with the assumption that one harvests what one has sown) digital assets; specifically "co-created" (i.e. aggregated) data of the like that gives facebook and google such a strong position in the "competitive market".

Why should "big tech" be allowed to keep their vast data troves private?

On one hand, there's no real technological limitation to the exclusivity of their intangible data-troves.

On the other hand, there's something to notice about how such exclusive concentration of data/knowledge generates a great amount of social and political power.

IMO, this is the strongest reason behind the drive to keep intangibles as exclusive; the power generated by their exclusivity and the use of such power to capture (privatize) energy and resources.

this is why sometimes I think that all of culture (specially contemporary academic culture) is but an elaborate ploy to rationalize away the grim realities of extractive post-imperialistic societies (states)

Finally, I argue my position that it's now crucial to deeply question old historical positions around the nature of property (and ownership); and hence, of markets and society, based on the magnitude of what the computer revolution truly entails. In my mind (biased by me being a millennial), computers are an innovation on the scale of writing (and thus, of law). The only other innovation I can think of in an even larger scale is that of ownership over land (which I consider as civilization itself).

this is a shallow read of a really in-depth article. your comment does it no justice

because it's exposing a scheme (for the lack of a better word) actively being used to keep (and increase) power/wealth concentration

it really is becoming more like an experimental science than a mathematical science.

it's become easier to make experiments instead of deducting things from first principles... What's really surprising, is that everything about the program is constructed from first principles!

It's kinda like if math became 'math archeology' i.e. imagine if maths were really about trying to understand clay tablets and papyrus writings in order to do calculations.

maybe i'm squinting too hard,

but I see this as related to a more general attitude of imposing our will while disregarding what is already there.

"why would we want to position the building according to where it is? specially when there's an alternative of putting it however we like, and then involving a sophisticated air system which will isolate the building from it's environment (which is going to shit anyways) and also, think of all the jobs, the infrastructure, electricity, generators, coal-mining, ac technicians, etc that come with an AC based building! if the building, just by virtue of where it is, can do without all this then the economy will shrink, we cannot have that."