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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: May 1st, 2024

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  • Are you saying you perform zero mental calculus to determine these sorts of things? You do not consider laws, social norms, or even morals? Where do you draw the line? If there is a literal community fruit tree at a park near your house, would you take all the fruits until people ask you to leave some for them? If you are driving home and you see a house with a beautiful garden, would you stop and steal some of the plants because the resident should tell you not to? Would you practice your guitar at 3am with an amp because, who knows, maybe your neighbors actually enjoy it or maybe they sleep with earplugs and since you had a great musical idea at 3am, you should “be bold” and “take what’s yours” and they should tell you 3am is a stupid time to play guitar with an amp?

    Did you also say you live in a homogeneous community of somewhat assholes and you think you’re being bold by also being an asshole?




  • It’s pretty interesting to think about how our embodied experience changes inside a vehicle. We move faster but are more limited in other ways. All of language is traded for a horn — no more complex grammar and vocabulary, just “beep beep.”

    It would be interesting to see brain studies and brain scans that show whether our brain is in fact working in a more primitive level when inside a vehicle, reflected by the restricted use of language.

    On the other hand, I wonder how brain activity would look for a pilot navigating an extremely complex vehicle using a complex dashboard.





  • Exactly. Our ability to use language, create culture, abstract ideas and concepts and step outside of them are the ingredients that allow us to transcend our evolutionary instincts and urges, and that’s exactly what we should do when building a society and culture.




  • That’s an interesting point.

    Upon further reflection, I discovered I don’t fully understand the nuances. So I tried to think it through.

    I think it goes as follows:

    • Nihilism says there is no meaning so any pursuit whatsoever is futile. (Not goal based.)
    • Existentialism says there is no universal meaning but it is the individual who creates meaning. So we project our meaning into the world and live in it and therefore live in a meaningful world. We should search for our personal meaning. (Goal based.)
    • Absurdism says there is no universal meaning and if there is, we’ll never understand it. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy transient pseudo-meanings, though. In fact, we SHOULD enjoy them. But we should be aware that they’re not eternal and not objective. (Not goal based.)

    So, on second thought, I think the meme does a great a job at capturing absurdism. Still, the difference between existentialism and absurdism is subtle.

    What do you all think? Is that kinda the idea?

    I wonder if Existentialists or Absurdists consider our biological reality and needs when developing the ideas. For instance, we need food, shelter, social acceptance, and so forth. What does this say about “meaning” and pursuits like fashion and style (as it relates to social acceptance?). How does Maslow’s hierarchy of needs fit in with these philosophies?




  • Hammocks4All@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlBacon tho
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    1 month ago

    I appreciate the humor but I think your initial comparison is pretty bad.

    Wild pigs don’t depend on waste from humans. They’re invasive to the Americas, sure, but there is a huge difference between hunting an invasive species that is wreaking havoc in the ecosystem (and possibly going through your “waste”) versus raising domesticated pigs in abysmal conditions — and all other associated negative consequences — for a market with inflated demand.

    Also, the issue with H1N1 is, again, mostly due to farming.

    So, no, pigs inherently aren’t “almost parasites” and although they can get diseases, like all animals, the threat of transmitting those diseases to humans come from farming practices.

    Mosquitoes are consequential and our relationship with pigs is largely voluntary. The difference is enormous.





  • Yes. That wasn’t the best word choice; maybe “group” would have been better. I meant groups of people who are willing to take some level of risk. Imagine the categories are “low risk takers”, “medium risk takers”, and “high risk takers”.

    Compared to A paying out $40, if you make B $50-n you’ll only get the high risk takers choosing B. If you make it $70-n you’ll get high and medium risk takers. If you make it $120-n you’ll get almost everybody.

    If risk taking is a value between 0 and 1, the categories are groups of people inside certain intervals. For example, low could be [0, 1/3), medium could be [1/3, 2/3), and high could be [2/3, 1].


  • Hammocks4All@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlJust one more lane
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    4 months ago

    I once heard of an experiment in economics that offers insight into this.

    Say you have 100 people. You give each of them one of two choices:

    A : you get $40 unconditionally B: you get $70 - n, where n is the number of people who choose B

    You end up getting, on average across experiments, n = 30.

    If you move the numbers around (i.e, the $40 and the $70), you keep getting, on average, a number of people choosing B so that B pays out the same as A.

    I think the interpretation is that people can be categorized by the amount of risk they’re willing to take. If you make B less risky, you’ll get a new category of people. If you make it more risky, you’ll lose categories.

    Applied to traffic, opening up a new lane brings in new categories of people who are willing to risk the traffic.

    Or something. Sorry I don’t remember it better and am too lazy to look it up. Pretty pretty cool though.