65 karma · joined December 28, 2016
"The more words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?" - Ecclesiastes 6:11
"Let's start from the premise that more information, more empowerment, is fundamentally the correct answer" - Eric Schmidt
One of these two quotes is not like the others...
How does this anecdote prove that it was biology and not the same kind of transgendered cultural preferences?
Born an uncultured male, raised an American boy, prefers life as an American woman.
Born an uncultured male, raised an American girl, prefers life as an American man.
As far as I can tell this only shows that adult gender expressions have very little to do with biology or childhood.
Are babies born gay? You might as well be asking if babies are born doctors or poets!
This study suggests nothing about the impact of culture and society on human individuals.
What do babies have to do with socialized adult behavior?
I'm not saying that biology has no impact on behavior, I'm saying that it barely has any impact when compared to the influence of language and culture.
Your culture and your language are by far much more responsible for your desires and actions. Just look how easily mankind is swayed by mere words to go to war!
His views on contemporary American political discourse are mainly shaped by these interactions on social media.
Unfortunately, the rest of the media is also on social media, so you can't really find a journalist or blogger who is in touch with reality.
Just to clarify, Twitter is as close to reality as World of Warcraft. At least with an MMORPG the players realize it is a game. Funny enough, more people are dying from playing video games like WoW than from alt-right/SJW altercations.
No one can speak meaningfully and reasonably about anything on social media, let alone the politics of racism.
The medium makes the message almost completely devoid of meaning.
Seriously, there is no problem with the operating definition of racism outside of social media.
Every idiot screaming about the alt-right (or their phantasmagorical counter-part, the social justice warrior) is just someone who spends too much time on Twitter.
Might as well be complaining about what policies the Orc players in WoW use to justify who they vote for.
Townes Van Zandt is one of our heroes and he died basically broke and unknown.
Maybe your problem is you're not hanging out with enough poets.
Funny enough, here's a verse from my latest:
Driving in his Mercedes-Benz,
Talking on his Bluetooth headset,
About the national debt.
With his hand-picked best friends,
A past he better damn forget,
That's the winning mindset.
Chorus:
Cuz he knows what to do,
He's just better than you,
He goes to all the right places,
Knows all the right faces,
He only gets what he chases,
He's just better than you.
---
Good luck in the rat race!
While we're at it can we get rid of the FDA so we can go back to a world filled with the "legitimate demand" for laudnum sold as a miracle cure for consumption, hysterics and gout?
Neoliberalism, by mixing ethical relativism with social Darwinism, allows for some rent seeking asshat to sleep well at night because they authorised a marketing campaign featuring a black woman.
Good job, Team Progress! All we need are just a few more empty words and a few more empty products... We're almost there!
It cannot help us explain art, politics, and the nature of existence.
The world is a lot less computable than you seem to believe.
But honestly I think you're just being silly and stubborn while arguing with strangers on a website.
It was a fantastic experience but it made me realize I didn't really like life on the road and that I needed a more secure source of income.
It is incredibly rewarding and gives me a very real sense of participating and contributing to my culture and community.
When I was a social media addict living my life through a screen while theoretically living in San Francisco I was frequently pulled down by bouts of depression.
Ever since I quit social media, got rid of my smartphone, discovered bluegrass and country music and moved to a place where these musical cultures are a fundamental part of society my life has gotten so much more rich and satisfying.
At one time there was live music in every single pub in the country, if only just some drunk playing sing-a-longs on one of the ubiquitous pianos of the era. Nowadays the vast majority of restaurants, bars and private gatherings utilize recorded music instead of a live band.
I am most definitely in direct competition with DJs for wedding gigs, and they have less costs and a greater range of song materials to choose from.
Your posts read like someone who is convinced that technological "progress" never has any negative repercussions.
In the 19th century there was a much higher percentage of people who could play rudimentary musical forms.
The quality of music and choice available to consumers has increased steadily. People would rather hear the best musicians in the world than the best musicians in their household or neighborhood.
There is plenty of historical research on this topic beyond the common sense explanation I'm offering here.
Amendeum:
I assume you live in a media hub like NYC, SF or LA, where there is a concentration of mass media professionals.
If you drive out to a small town you will find a very low number of local musicians. Before mass media there would have been a number of local music groups. Today people living in small towns listen to what the mass media professionals are making for them.
These are the same kind of basic economic principles that lead to any kind of concentrated specialization, and on a global scale, comparative advantage.
There have never been any barriers for creators. Folk art has always been a part of human societies.
There were barriers for mass dissemination of artistic works, but not the process of creation.
Mass media put the local artists out of business. Before the advent of radio and recorded music there were many more musicians and bands. Now everyone has to compete on a global level.
I would argue that in this new global digital attention economy that there is even more competition and even less room for local and alternative voices.
Live music profits are at an all time high but it is all concentrated at the top. The long tail is a fallacy.
You might only just need to go outside and walk around talking to people about their interests.
The world is a wonderful place when you're not being frightened and primed to make unnecessary consumer purchase s.
Absolutely stop thinking there is some technical solution to these problems.
This isn't about people being liable for spreading misinformation, this is about a business model that thrives on misinformation.
The democratic nature of physical reality hasn't led to every publication turning into the National Enquirer.
See, you've put all of your spiritual and ethical eggs in to your technologic worship so you are completely closed off to the notion that smartphones might actually be really horrible. You're basically just defending your own thinly veiled insecurities about how you give your own life meaning.
This article is about the increasing rejection of the flood of digital information.
You're clearly still addicted to your devices.
An increasing number of us are playing acoustic guitars, going camping, playing board games, listening to vinylr records and mainly enjoying each other's company without any intermediary consumer device.
This forum is filled with technocratic mutants who cling to some half-baked theology that the digital revolution will save our souls, so I'm not expecting to change any minds. Hell, this forum is basically designed to halt any notion of discourse and to amplify the pro-tech rhetoric.
Best of luck!
It was a mistake to reengage with this toxic and ignorant community.
However, I still use the internet, just in a restricted manner. I find that removing frictionless sources of information makes for a much more pleasant experience. I use a Chrome plugin called Shut Up that removes all comments. I pay for subscriptions to a number of news sources that hire editors and fact checkers. I redirect all social media sites to 127.0.0.1. I wrote a custom script for YouTube that hides related content.
YouTube, wikipedia, and an RSS reader seem to not trigger the depression I was suffering when I was reading HN, Twitter, Facebook and Reddit.
The election was the final straw as I saw many people fully captured by the illusions of their ever shrinking ideological bubbles which are most definitely caused by social media.
If you twerps dared speak to me the way you talk in these forums I would most definitely start a physical altercation. I can't say I'm ashamed of the asswhoopings I've laid on loose and arrogant lips in the past.
Fortunately for me people have an awareness of the physical repercussions of their actions in meatspace. Reality is what is experienced outside of the world of symbols on a screen!
But yes, again, thank you for reminding me why I need to finally remove the last connection to this hideous forum and trade my smartphone and the $1400/year price tag for a dumb brick and my personal salvation!
1.) You spend too much time online.
2.) You mistake your online sources of knowledge and experiences for reality.
3.) You are endlessly writing science-fiction.
The amount of collective dillusional behavior that has captured the imaginations of participants on social media forums such as this is truly awe inspiring!