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> This is another theme I notice in this same cohort: It is not permissible to even suggest that they’re doing anything wrong.

Not taking a side in this particular discussion, but this specific sentence looks like a self-fulfilling statement: if people disagree with you, you take it as proof that they are unable to evaluate your claim fairly.

> This is another theme I notice in this same cohort

> Personally I find the erasure of individual thought in this model to be demeaning.

The fact that you are describing a behavior that you believe to be shared among a sizable group of people seems to contradict your claim that their beliefs are due to individual failings rather than some broader social forces that caused them to believe these things, no?

Both can be true.

The historical left/marxist view is essentially: look at someone's social context and where their money comes from, and you'll know how they probably think. The American ideology is: everyone is an individual and a tramp can be a philosopher.

The second is much more appealing to us as individuals, and to our sense of self-determination and independence. And people do have agency---some people succumb to despair, others don't; some work hard, some don't; some rebound from setbacks, some don't.

But if you look at large groups of people, the first one starts to have strong explanatory power. Look at US coverage of foreign elections, and that second view is almost all you see.

What do you mean about US coverage of foreign elections? (Was "second view" a mistake for "first view" in that sentence?)

“Probably” is key and doing some heavy lifting: both views are true.

> rather than some broader social forces

I think GP pretty clearly states it's due to broader social forces:

> They’ve been trained, usually by a social media niche

I don't think that was a complicated point, but maybe you think you were asking something else, while trying to still blame whatever "social forces" TikTok has told you to blame.

Lol, I don’t use (have never used) TikTok; I generally think I have arrived at my current belief mostly through reading books.

I’m responding primarily to this sentiment:

> At some point we have to admit that people’s thoughts and actions are their own.

I generally find that placing blame on individuals for views that one believes are wrong is not constructive. Clearly there are reasons that they believe the things that they do, and this is especially true when you disagree not with an individual but with an entire group.

Of course anyone is free to get angry at anyone else for their individual beliefs, and I believe that individually people’s minds can be changed. But blaming individuals _who you have never met_ for behaviors that you are stereotyping from an entire group seems wholly unproductive. This is not going to change the group’s minds, and is only going to make you bitter.

When discussing group behavior, it only makes sense to discuss things that influence the whole group.

People are still responsible for their own opinions. Hiding behind "social forces" doesn't absolve them from that responsibility.

Sure, individuals can have wrong beliefs. Of course. So what? Should we consider people who have beliefs that we believe the be wrong bad people and disassociate from them? Or should we try to understand their point of view and why they believe the things that they do so we can either reevaluate our own beliefs or change theirs?

You engage in confessions as accusations when ignoring the possibility, it could be you who is wrong.

The problem isn't "corporations", it's capitalism. The economic system forces corporations to behave in anti-social ways.

Similar goes with the trope you peddle, individuals were to blame. They're not. The system they live in, and never had any say in shaping, forces them to engage in behaviors short term that ultimately run counter to their own interests long term.

Contributing to open source software or commons like Wikipedia definitely is questionable. Those contributions get monopolized and their benefits privatized. That's not a "belief".

What do you mean capitalism? As in the system of private ownership, free exchange, and due process, spanning back to the dawn of agriculture?

Which bits do you object to? The idea that people should be able to form going concerns that outlive any individuals (e.g. investing in the construction of a fishing boat)? That several individuals should be able to share in the risk and profit of such a venture (e.g. a group investing in the construction, and receiving shares of the profit of each catch)? Or that they should be able to hire others on a free market for a wage or share of profits (e.g. hiring a crew for the boat)? Or that if they should have a dispute, there should be a formal, legal, process to resolve it?

The trouble is that there is no human system in which the agents who distribute the resources are perfectly aligned with the agents to whom resources are distributed. This is nowhere more obvious than in the staggering planning, execution, and communication, failures of the Soviet Union. This is a general case of the alignment problem, which is fundamentally unsolved. I would argue that it's un-solvable as long as your agents are living organisms competing in an ecosystem.

As long as niches exist, they will be exploited. Resenting that is akin to resenting the biggest fish in the pond for being so damn aggressive - it's pointless. We live in a pond. We should focus on maintaining the nonviolent and often ecosystem-benefitting nature of our exploitation (since it is hard-won and precarious), rather than resent the inescapable reality of its existence.

> As in the system of private ownership, free exchange, and due process, spanning back to the dawn of agriculture?

As far as I can tell none of these things existed before modern times. Mostly people were under authoritarian rule.

The weird thing to me is anthropomorphizing corporations as a "thing" - it's just a bunch of people too!

Corporations are literally people, not just made up of people. So shouldn't be too weird.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

...In the context of corporate law.

Yes, the law even anthropomorphizes them.