“Turning culture into an expensive amusement park” - made me think of Mark Fishers Capitalist Realism essay. He articulated well how capitalism absorbs everything and sells it back to us as a monetizable commodity, only that its version is a replica, it has no soul, only a form. What remains is an aesthetics, looking close enough to the real thing for a person who has actually no idea. Even “counter-culture” is absorbed and emptied of all content to become just another flavor of the “mainstream”.

AI is the perfect tool for capitalism, because it works in a similar way. A kind philosophical zombie, a parrot that can replicate the buzzwords and mannerisms, one that wants to convince the customers they get a certain value or quality, without truly having it. It’s just as real, meaningful and authentic as green- and rainbow- washed marketing campaigns of huge corporations.

In the previous phase, capitalism absorbed our cultures and values and made a corrupted version into a part of itself, and now it tries to absorb the human soul and thought, to sell it back to us as a service.

I’m not against AI as a technology in principle, I’m no luddite. The problem are those who currently control this power, and what they do with it.

Yep, we have this one short and precious life. Should not waste it thinking too much about the eternity of un-being that comes after and rather make the most of the time we have here.

I put them on humus-rich soil

(I’ll show myself out)

Let’s better say what I do accept. I have read Marx and accept his analysis of dynamics of capital as correct, it’s hard not to see that it is spot-on. I accept the general paradigm that the foundation of all such dynamics is the underlying material conditions, i.e. wealth inequality, which leads to power inequality. He however never outlined a clear way out.

I read enough secondary literature about whatever people tried to build on Marx as ways out and have seen enough of evidence against “real existing socialism” and have first-hand family experience from this system. I know all the objections that it was state capitalism or whatever, but I am pessimistic about human nature.

Actual socialism emerging from a revolution and whatever leadership to stay uncorrupted instead of eventually seizing power seems very utopian and unlikely to me, just as utopian and naive as anarchists believe that self-organized structures will not degenerate back to capitalistic tribalism with a few extra steps that will just redistribute the power a little bit and new opportunists to win the next round.

You misunderstood my “European patriotism” (in quotes!), because I never said anything about loving or approving everything done by the organisation you criticize (EU). What I was talking about was the ethos of wanting to protect the least shitty system I see anywhere on earth right now, which is deployed most successfully around Europe-the-continent, the “real existing faulty bureaucratic democracy”.

You seem to be of the opinion that it needs to be dismantled and replaced by something else. The right extremists say the same. The problem is that it’s easy to call for destruction but it’s difficult to build. All I see is “we need to tear it down… And then we’ll somehow magically build something new from scratch”.

I am a software developer by profession. You know how this works? You have to work with shitty systems other people you despise built over decades. I wish I could throw it all into the garbage and just build from scratch. But unlike politics, where talk is cheap, here I can see and quantify how much fucking work it is both technically and socially. It’s just like wanting to “just build a different sky scraper” without understanding anything about engineering. You can try, and probably will end up with another flavor if ugly mess. You also need to (re)educate other developers, you need to convince people, and finally the users need to either not be bothered by your “improvements” and you cannot allow such a long down time or reconstruction phase because the outside world is not waiting for you to get your shit together.

Now, I think politics is exactly the same. Law is the code of society, and developers and users need to buy into different paradigms I.e. accept other values and standards and possibly form of organization. I don’t see any proposed alternative being even close to have a clear realistic path, except of a strong faith that “it somehow will work out”. I doubt that it works that way. History works incrementally, and complex systems become incrementally fucked up, does not matter where you start.

The radical left is losing against the fascists because the fascists learned how to incrementally win mind-share of the people and hide it’s radical nature, while the radical left is continuing to engage in black and white thinking and pushing regular people away.

That leads me to the hypothesis that the only way to fix the system is actually good people low-key moving up in power and tweaking it from the inside, that means the reverse direction of what is happening right now.

Then I believe we need “pro-social propaganda”, working in a subtle way like the capitalistic matrix, which means that you have to win back the media. If you have the media, you can win the hearts and minds of people.

The classic approach of the left only works in a society where the majority is in such distress that they are open to extreme changes and have nothing to lose. But the system we are in is a system of “good enough”.

So I don’t believe in the tactics of the radical left and I don’t believe in the existence of a solid plan, there is at most a “concept of a plan”, in the words of a well-known dictator. I doubt the practical experience and competence of radical left thinkers and intellectuals, who have never worked inside a complex system such as academia or a company and have a simplistic idea of “change management” for social, bureaucratic and technical structures. Being able to organize some demonstration or violent resistance to break something does not necessarily correlate with the ability to build something better in its place and might not justify possible damage done in between.

So what is the way forward? I have no idea. But that is why I hope for some genuine and smartly executed “reformist” movement and would not expect any good outcomes from naive “revolutionary” ambitions. The revolutionary left is ultimately also a collection of populist movements, in the sense of promising simple answers to complex problems.

What does that make me ideologically? No idea. I don’t care about labels. Call it “pragmatic realistic left” or whatever.

By the way, nice username. I got some of these recently.

Are you one of those “tankies” everyone is talking about here on Lemmy?

And how do you know whether I read “some books” or not? Could it maybe just be that I just don’t accept their conclusions, question the suggested alternative or the way to get there?

Do you think that either you become enlightened by reading them, or you must be dumb or the enemy?

And maybe that does say more about you thank about me?

Good Points in general. But where did you read about me wanting to destroy something? The only thing I actively think we need to destroy is fascism and imbalance of power, which is slowly corrupting everything like mold.

Pluralistic democracy in that regard is a more abstract concept than a concrete agenda and it is hard to unite people for such an abstract value. This value should only be a proxy value for other concrete outcomes/values, ideally. But let’s turn it around. Only because it’s free and democratic does not guarantee it is effective and doing good. But without it, there will be no chance for good outcomes.

I agree with your general message, it probably would be better to have a cause “for” something good and not against something bad. Only sadly it seems that in practice people are easier to unite against something or out of fear of something.

Oh je… Naja, der hat bei der Wahl auch seiner Basis versprochen keine neuen Schulden zu machen, man kann ja hoffen, das mit den Windrädern war jetzt auch nicht so gemeint. Muss man schon verstehen, da war halt Wahlkampf, und man sagt so ein paar wilde Dinge einfach mal, wie wird man denn sonst Kanzler ?

By authority of the central bank and the state? Checks out.

Are you mixing up some things? The only person who publicly said something about dismantling is the crazy lady from the AfD. I don’t like Merz, but I’ve not heard anything about him shitting on wind energy directly.

However you are right that our new government will probably suck pretty much. The only option that was possible without involving fascists, sadly.

How I wish our societies could get there. Agree on a humane and empathy driven system, as you say. Maybe imperfect, but practically feasible and pragmatic. Idealistic in spirit, but not naive. Friendly, but with teeth if provoked. Something that can survive in this world and still be a good place for everyone, without illusions but also without cynicism and hypocrisy.

Yeah I also believe that good communication is key. Communication with everyone we might even strongly disagree with, as long as they are not actually beyond that in their beliefs and are just mislead or uninformed etc., but well-meaning. Such people need to be somehow included and heard and not pushed away into the arms of the extremists…

Yeah you can’t argue with logic and reason of the other side does not accept this language and is always acting in bad faith. Engaging fascists civilly is always helping them gain ground. But not engaging with them becomes more difficult the more mind share they gain. How should not engaging look in practice? All of politics and media would need to stop giving them a platform at once. And again this is something we regular people don’t really have in our hands at all.

Nobody is really trying to stop the oligarchs and their lobbies, it’s the only real political taboo that remains. People watch the right rising and it’s being shown as if that was coming out of nowhere and too unregulated capitalism wasn’t the main driver of the issue. The occasional article points out that billionaires should not have so much power or even exist, but these are drowned in the noise of the media.

Haha nice bait, which I took to get some actually interesting statistics, well executed !

Here is your comment, you deserve it. Now your post made it to “average”! You’re welcome.

(Was there any correlation between upvote count and the comment-based metrics? That could also be pretty interesting)

My maybe unpopular opinion is that it sucks that my meds, which are like my “glasses” correcting focus, motivation and emotional self-regulation, which are much safer than any antidepressants and at high dosage have about the same side effects as too much coffee, are being framed as dangerous stimulants and abused by idiots who snort them in their noses, and have to be so heavily regulated.

I got late diagnosed and since I got my meds I overcame my overthinking and anxiety issues, have no more of what I thought to be depressive episodes (caused by severe under stimulation and the burn-out of chronically forcing myself to do stuff against the strong child tantrum-like inner resistance with raw will power as you ADHD “expert” and all of my family suggested all of my life), and finally can feel and function like an adult and at the same time am much more zen and balanced.

Yes, having some symptoms does not qualify. Just as being sad sometimes does not qualify for depression. But every mental disorder is a matter of severity. You cannot feel how things feel to others. If a diagnosis and meds help a person, why would you not want them to get that help? It’s like saying that people who are short-sighted should just try harder and train their eyes and do not need glasses.

Level 2 of these people: learn regex and try to parse something non-regular like XML or C++ templates with it.

Same people who did not pay attention and hated the “useless” formal languages lecture in university and who have no clue about proper data structures and algorithms for their problem, just hack together some half-working solution and ship it. Fix bugs with extra if statements instead of solving the real issue. Not writing unit tests.

Soo many people in software development who really should not be there.

A beautiful answer, our trajectory was pretty similar, only that we were together and building it for over 10 years before we finally got married last year :)

My wife is my home, my constant, my safe harbor, the anchor of my sanity and peace of mind.

Two planets orbiting each other - I could not have said it better. We’re a unit that is greater than its sum and we grew and continue to grow together as individuals and into each other.

Tochter aus Elyyyysium

Ah good point, totally forgot the early times, I was too young back then I guess. Okay then the impact of Steam is kind of mixed then. From practical experience it is more up to the game developers to enforce or not enforce it and often in practice especially indie games are DRM free or it is easy to circumvent. Steam at least does not install some surveillance rootkit on your system. And I’d claim that it plays about the same role in the indie game ecosystem as Bandcamp plays for music and GitHub plays for open source software, at least that is my impression.

And contra Bandcamp is of course, they recently sold out i.e. got bought by some larger fish with totally different but music legal stuff related business and Bandcamp lost a lot of employees. But at least for now I don’t see drastic enshittification ot Bandcamp yet.

I guess ultimately there is no perfect saint company, they are entities that must generate profit, and only sometimes it really means making customers happy, but more often than not it doesn’t - that’s just capitalism, how it works everywhere.