Valakas_

What a narrow minded way of looking at things. Just because a word doesn't fit 100%, doesn't mean we shouldn't use it if the main idea is there.

"You’re not compelled to offer your services to any particular employer." But you are compelled to offer your services to an employer, whose ways of working are almost all similar to each other. And it's not like you have infinite choice.

Is it really a choice to move alone somewhere else just to find a decent employer, but sacrifice friends, family, and so on?

Is it really a choice not to work and become homeless, a social outcast?

Is it really a choice to be an entrepreneur, in such a competitive environment that most startups fail, and you need considerable savings to sustain yourself in case of bad times?

Is it really a choice to find such a unicorn of employer that fits a modern day humans needs for privacy, sense of autonomy, sense of progression, good work-life-balance, good compensation, good responsible manager who doesn't micromanage (...), when most employers (have to) follow the same corporativistic mindset to get as most profits as possible out of employees in order to survive in an extremely competitive enviornment?

Is there really a choice when you have children to take care of, a mortgage and are just too tired or barely have any time whatsoever to look for jobs or invest time into your own startup?

Should I continue?

Where is the choice? Where is it?

People are not bound by physical means with the threat of death. Sure. But if you can't see other more subtle and equally powerful binds, then you're blind.

So yes, this is the modern equivalent slavery, in short - modern slavery - and please you stop.

Russia is a like an abusive man with PTSD - always expecting an attack that doesn't come and victimizing himself while abusing others.

Has Russia perhaps thought for a moment why are countries making an alliance to defend against Russia? Why aren't countries in NATO worried about being attacked by other countries in NATO? Because *all the countries there don't want war*.

NATO is not to attack Russia, but to defend against it. The idea of protecting against counter attack from the West is like saying "I can't leave my house to protect against the possibility of a meteorite against my head."

Google's ideal would be that every single search result would be both relevant and an ad. And it's going there, somewhat at least. Because the people who have the most time to write articles are employees writing/researching 8h a day. Someone doing it on their free time has no chance of competing. The problem is that obviously the people paid to write are biased. In some cases maybe it's a problem, in others maybe not.

Hi! I love the ideia of an off-grid house. If you didn't get that permit for urban land ("you can build a house here") then the whole thing has no sanitation, electricity or water connected to the main supply right? And are we still allowed to place a building, even in those conditions, in an agricultural land?

I'm sorry, but I will do this: I used to think like you're thinking. Pointing other people's logic fallacies, understanding sophism and the logical soundness of arguments.

Logic, for human debates, is very nice in theory. But there is a reason humans adopted shortcut thinking and don't use logic all the time. We are not robots. We don't have infinite processing capacity, and statistics and probability save A LOT of time. For example, doing strawmen fallacies is useful. It allows you to filter through a lot of crap before investing time in digesting whether what that person said makes sense or not. If you would go into any conversation with a blank state of "Let's analyse the logic here" Good luck with that.

So we adopt shortcuts. What shortcut is he doing? "I'm like you" is indeed establishing commonality. The person is saying "I get where you're coming from, i've been there, so I understand at least some reasons why you currently think that way." This is useful if the person is being honest because it let's you know that this person might be saying something more valid than if they had no idea where you're coming from. It means they were once in your position, and something made them switch. It's different than if they never had been in your position. They never had to think anything through. So knowing this is useful. This saves time. Is it fool-proof? Not really. People can lie, or might have not thought that much about it anyway, but like I said people are not robots, and we can't analyse each argument like if we were one.

So rather, let me also help make a shortcut and your argument more clear: Don't call out this behavior, which from an honest person is good, call out what you're actually thinking that he's doing - that he's trying to manipulate readers. Why you would think that, I don't know.

I was in the top 1% both in highschool and college and for me going in person, in terms of learning, was (and still is) a waste of time. I would learn MUCH faster outside of classes. I much prefer a recording of a class which i can watch, rewatch, play at 2x, take notes without stress and note down all my questions, than a regular in person class.

The only thing I got from being in person was friends. But that can be achieved in other ways without having to be forced to sit on a class. Group studying is one, and helps a lot in learning.

If people choose a course and then don't have motivation for it that's a totally different problem. The problem lies not in tricks to make the person do it anyway, but on them reassessing why they chose that course in the first place. I always had motivation to do my course on my own because I chose it for a reason. And if kids are too young to see why they might want to do this specific course, then maybe the course itself needs to change to be a tiny bit more practical and fun.

There can be many reasons for that and most have nothing to do with life choices or "mental models" whatever that means.

* Trauma triggers and unprocessed/unconscious trauma. You'd be surprised how common this is. People who grew up in neglectful or abusive homes tend to believe there's something wrong with them and that their childhood was fine. So when life feels like shit, like there's no point, and it's only suffering every day, that somehow other people manage and they don't, they see no light at the end of the tunnel. It must be their fault, and for some reason they can't "get over it" or "Let it go".

* A person repressing stuff, which at some point reaches breaking point or saturation.

* Combination of (unlucky) factors - e.g. winter/less sun, less people around for some reason, had to sacrifice exercise for extra work, (...).

* Chemicals in the brain indeed, change from one day to another. And maybe the day they feel depressed is when they are seeing things more realistically and crash with that realization.

I don't buy this idea that it's part of the human condition that we're bound to have depression sometimes and that it's chemical imbalance. If we look at human history of psychiatry you'll see how coldly we've been treating patients. You'd be horrified at how we treated mentally ill people in the past. Why would you think we're doing any different now, just in a more mODeRn way - "They're sad because their brain is wrong. Give them a pill."

!remindme 100 years

It must be safe to do tax evasion, money laundering, and drugs with a system that is transparent and traceable till the beginning of its existence.

What is your view on the relationship between ADHD and childhood trauma?

I don't know if NFT's have a future or not. I'm kind of agnostic on this one. But what is not cool today can be cool tomorrow and vice versa. Internet used to be for nerds only. There's a famous sketch of Letterman making fun of Bill Gates about it. So we will see.

I agree that there's no plan or roadmap, so maybe I was not clear in my wording. What I mean is that given infinite time, a smart species will tend to emerge, and when it does, it will be the most successful one. So evolution (by random chance) converges to higher intelligence.

We need to stop talking about "the mob" as if these people came through a membrane from another universe and are fundamentally non-humans and different from us. Instead of being condescending to people maybe it would be more useful to understand why this behavior happens, instead of dismissing it as "weak mindedness" or "anger issues".

The "mob" are people that are probably finding little meaning in life. Their "match" is probably feeling like they have something to fight for instead of their grueling 9-5 soul sucking work to pay debt in order to enrich just a few.

It's easy for humans to also externalize pain. They might be angry for very valid reasons, but which they feel powerless to change, and that anger is still in their body, needing, indeed a match to escape. Repressed anger causes disease (cf. Gabor Mate). It's a natural instinct to act out and let out misdirected anger.

Talking about "mob" is like talking about "witches" 400 years ago(pharmaceuts) or "hysteric women" 100 years ago (women with BPD or PTSD). It's dehumanizing and misses the point, and in a few years people will look back at comments like this like we look at witch burning and the stone age practices of psychiatry a few years ago.

Intelligence is indeed just one tool. But as we see, maybe one of the best tools after a critical point. So it could be expected that after a while, evolution does converge to create intelligent beings who are able to control the environment and other species and even themselves, and with it, be the most successful of them all.

But OpenSea is cool and SecondSea is not. Anyone can own things on SecondSea so it's basically worthless.

"I own a Mona Lisa NFT."

"Oh really?? You mean THE Mona Lisa NFT?? How did you manage? I thought that was owned by Louvre!"

"No, i mean, I bought this one on SecondSea"

"Ah ok. I bought it on ThirdSea just to test. It's free after all. But nice, good for you."

The end result of unregulated capitalism is feudalism/slavery.

Just think:

What is more competitive than a company where its employees work for free?

Should we be surprised that this is exactly where things are going? Not literally for free, but to its modern equivalent - the minimum people accept before they get to the streets with pitchforks. The modern day version of working for free is working for a salary where you basically don't get much of it except for basic necessities required for said job. Putting kids in debt out of college has been "perfect" for this. The revolting house prices idem. So workers are forced to be in debt for their whole life, and get to enjoy 2 weeks of holidays out of 52 in a year, while the rest spending on surviving. How far is that from working for free, in the modern day, really? What is the alternative, be a social outcast and go live in the woods? Risk it all and be entrepreneur?

Unregulated capitalism is working as intended. And that's exactly the problem.

Exactly. I mean food that we buy for 10€, 15€ a pop counts for inflation. And then the most expensive thing we ever purchase in our lives, say 400 000€ right now, and the effect on inflation on that doesn't count? Doesn't make sense to me.

I agree with you about the abuse aspect. That's one thing this could change. I would for example change the voting system to not allow a negative score. It doesn't happen often, but it still doesn't feel good that people disagree and not only do they not upvote, but they downvote until you get negative score.

In my opinion if you disagree don't upvote, or at least downvote until 0. So people know the overall sentiment is negative, but there's not need to show how negative it is. If it's so bad to be offesive or innacurate, then report it. But downvoting until it's negative feels really overkill and feels like at the moment everyone not only disagrees, but hates you.

The constructive replies you talk about depends on the subreddit. There are subreddits that are literally lifesavers. For example subreddits to overcome emotional abuse and abusive relationships, you'll find support there that is simply amazing and not abusive at all. Or subreddits about certain niches that people are passionate about.

Unfortunately toxic people are sadistic and get a kick out of abusing people, so it's bound to happen. Best way is to report it, so the moderators either warn the person or ban them.

For depressed people I wonder. How much is it the brain's "fault" or is it genuinely something (a lot of) thing(s) wrong in the person's life?

It's easy for example to overlook trauma, and just blame ourselves "why can't we just be happy" or our brain's chemistry, while ignoring all the terrible things that happened to us, because it's too painful to relieve them.

Aren't treatments like this like reducing a person's fever by force (which they got because of a bacteria infection) while not fixing the underlying issue that caused it in the first place?

TL;DR: Instead of asking "What's wrong with you?" and making that part right by force, shouldn't we be asking "What happened to you?" and helping with that?

We humans are gene making machines. We like to pretend we are superior and full owners of our choices, that we are above animalistic tendencies, that we are special and not like the others, but... couldn't be further from the truth. We are different, but not that different. Gene making still drives our behavior, whether we see it or not. And in more ways than most people imagine.

Why are people ok with being wealthy? Because having access to resources means more chances that your genes will be passed on - based on how it used to be in nomadic times. Maybe now that doesn't apply as much, but genes don't know it. For all our limbic brain and genes know, we're all still cavemen hunting, fighting for resources, foraging, etc. So yes, people will be ok with being wealthy.

Why is there no limit of wealth where people who have it say "ok that's enough, I don't need another one billion dollars"? Why do people keep hoarding absurdly until infinity? Because our genes are not used to infinity. It used to be that "the more the better". Famine would come. Let's save up as much as possible, let's get as many nuts as possible. There never was infinity of resources. We are not built to get it. This is what people need to understand about rich people that seem insane (besides possible trauma that drives other parts of their behavior). This is just how we are programmed.

Why is there so much political corruption and people stomp on top of each other to get more power? Why is it that morality seems to be such a fallible reason for people to act? Same. Exact. Reason. Evolutionary advantage based on millennia old hardware. If you kill my genes, yours go on, and mine don't. If you have more power, you have more access to resources. More chance of survival.

Asking someone to use their higher intellect and go against their instincts in favor of morality is often really hard. All of these are instincts. And unless we change humans' genetic code, or we somehow with AI merging change our intellect, we will continue being this way. We are the same guys that would burn witches, and chant "kill kill kill!" in gladiator coliseums. Just now the way we burn witches and chant that is different. More "sophisticated".

DDG should change their name though. Seriously. Who wants to use such a ridiculous sounding search engine? AltaVista sounded good and had a meaning (seeing from above). Yahoo fine. Bing also ok. But duckduckgo seems like the most ridiculous name someone came up on a brainstorm meeting for search engine names. But then they did went with it.

We are humans. We need social connection, we need soap operas, "trash TV" is just human drama basically. Our brains were not made for studying math 24/7 but they were made for social interaction 24/7. Social interaction is like driving on autopilot. It fulfills us. Doing science, solving hard abstract problems, being engaged in political events is tiring. Sometimes we just want to do what our brain is made for as its default, resting activity.

Why is it trash also? I'm sure there's a lot of interesting psychology to unpack there. It's just trash if one thinks we need to dedicate ourselves to "higher purposes" and anything else is "lowly" and "denigrating". As if whatever one chooses to do in their free time, that doesn't hurt anybody, and is just a little human drama in a watchable package that maybe we miss during day to day, as so much of a job life is dry, and that makes us connect to our inner humanity is "trash".

Unregulated capitalism you mean.

Totally agree with your comment about the cancerous need for growth. If a company is not growing, immediately it's seen as if something is wrong with it.

We live in a society where everyone is almost fending for themselves. When we lived in tribes, a woman would rarely have to provide for herself, be competitive or fierce. She could if she wanted, but only by choice. She could just as well embrace her softness, take care of children and so on. She would always be cared for by the tribe, and would never be alone, having to earn her own means of subsistence.

Not anymore. Now women can't depend on their family or partners for subsistence. If they do embrace their femininity, become softer, or forego job time to be more time with children, they earn less, they provide less for their kids. And worse, what if the relationship ends? What then? Now she has to be full the provider. A typical man role.

So it's too big of a risk to be soft and feminine.

Would there be a bad situation if there was nobody profitting from it? Maybe there is a root cause, but Zillow is certainly one cause why this is so bad. Not the root one, but a cause still.

The thing with FIRE movement is more about escaping being forced to work soul sucking jobs, commuting, management, mindless boring tasks.... And it's not always easy to change fields, or change company, move city, ....

People that I know that are already FIREd or plan to don't actually intend not to work. They want to, but on things they actually enjoy. If there was UBI the FIRE movement would go significantly down because one of it's main goals would be achieved by default. Right now the only way to get those goals is with passive income from investments.

We have this one life, and wasting it is not the way to go. FIRE people don't want the riches or hoarding insanes amount of money for power trips with their buddies. Most are very frugal in fact, that's the only way to achieve FIRE in the firs place. They just want the freedom from forced work. That is the essence of the FIRE movement.

It provides value though. It's a great medium to store value.

Throughout history there have been stores of value which had little intrinsic value except their scarcity and tradeability - rai stones, certain sea shells, (...). Just like Bitcoin.

Gold is just another of those. It has some industrial value, but it's current value FAR surpasses the value that comes from there. Most of gold's current price/market cap comes from being a good store of value.

Now you have Bitcoin which has exactly the same characteristics as every other store of value humanity has ever used, but two more that we never had before:

1- it's immaterial. This can be seen as good or bad. But the fact that it's immaterial means you can trade it with anyone in the world, at lightning fast speed (with layer 2 at least), you don't carry weights if you want to "carry" it with you, and you can split into millions of pieces.

2- it's scarcity is hardcoded. Every single store of value that stopped being one, at some point stopped being scarce. And thus lost it its ability to store value. Caravel sailors used their huge ships to transport the heavy Rai stones much more easily than by the previous method the tribes that used it (by hand through a laborious process) and were able to transport dozens of them at a time. Sea shells either had to be found, and those they used were rare, or in other places they had to be minted in a special way to make them "worthy". Kind of proof of work. Suffice to say, explorers started using nets to get hundreds of them from high depths and immediately they lost their value. Now we can only have 21M BTC and that's it. There's no way around it, for now at least.

We've gone full circle again. History tends to repeat itself. But now we don't have pitchforks. I wonder how the next revolution is going to happen.

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

If you look at future predictions they almost always make the same mistake: they're based on the technology available at the time they were made.