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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Put those monkeys underwater and you might conclude that drowning is in their nature. I know of the studies you’re referencing regarding monkeys being taught to use money and I’m aware that they were done with monkeys in captivity. In the same vein, the debunked study about “alpha” wolves was done on wolves in captivity and observations of wolves in their natural environment countered the study’s findings. Our actions are a result of the context and material conditions that we are in.

    People dominate others for personal gain because they live in a system that rewards them for doing so. Place those people in a system that rewards them for helping others and the very same selfish impulse will make them saints. The “tragedy of the commons” is enlightenment era defeatist bullshit. The commons existed and were managed by people for thousands of years before capitalists enclosed them and dared to claim that it was the inevitable result of human nature.



  • These kinds of movements are a consequence of over-exploitation. The “lie down” movement - also “let it rot” - is similar to the “quiet quitting” movement in the US. People will not be motivated to contribute when they are struggling and do not see any benefit to trying harder. If these people were fairly compensated for their labor and had greater autonomy over how to contribute they would not lose motivation. Alienation from the result of their labor is also a huge contributor; feeling rewarded for your work can be as simple as seeing the result (a teacher seeing their students find their passions, for example).



  • Communism envisions a society where there are no haves and have nots (classless) and socialism is put forward as the economic system that will get us there eventually. There are criticisms to be made about the method but the vision is good.

    Capitalism does what you’re doing here, snarkily talk down to anyone who dares suggest such a society might be possible and is worth working towards, and puts forward instead that there must be haves taking advantage of have nots for society to function and that no other way is possible.











  • Whose propaganda did you suck down blindly?

    Chill out a bit, my comment could not have possibly given you the impression that I’m a supporter of capitalism if you had read it carefully. I began my comment by putting forward the capitalist argument for copyright - a steel-man argument - and ended it by debunking it.

    Copyright is meant to foster and improve the commons and public domain

    You said yourself that copyright establishes art as private property (or “intellectual property” if we’re being more precise). That does the opposite of fostering and improving the commons and public domain.

    If copyright was not tradeable or transferable

    Then it wouldn’t be copyright. Copyright is a capitalist construct, not a public good corrupted by capital.


  • At the root of this cognitive dissonance is who benefits and who doesn’t. Copyright law is selectively applied in a way that protects the powerful and exploits the powerless. In a capitalist economy copyright is meant to protect people’s livelihoods by ensuring they are compensated for their labor, but due to the power imbalance inherent to capitalism it is instead used only to protect the interests of capital. The fact that AI companies are granted full impunity to violate the copyright of millions is evidence that copyright law is ineffective at the task for which it was purportedly created.


  • It’s because this isn’t about privacy at all, it’s about a popular social media platform being outside the control of domestic intelligence agencies. The US is unable to control the narrative on TikTok the way they do on American social media, which allowed pro-palestinian sentiment to spread there unhindered. It had a huge effect on the politics of the younger generation (IMO a positive one) by showing them news and first hand accounts they wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

    Edit: And yes, China is able to control the narrative on TikTok and that is a potential problem, but so far they’ve had a fairly hands-off approach to US TikTok aside from basic language censorship. I figure the way China sees it is that an unmoderated free-for-all will do more to sow divisions in the US than a carefully controlled (and therefore obvious) pro-China narrative ever could.



  • Alright, I’ll play along.

    Claim:

    The document titled hamas human shields released by NATO Strategic Communications is propaganda.

    Argument:

    Merriam-Webster defines propaganda as-

    the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person

    Let’s break that down. To determine whether the NATO StratCom document hamas human shields meets the criteria for propaganda we need to answer the following:

    Q: Does the item in question contain ideas, information, or rumor?

    A: Without having to verify any claims you can still confidently state that the document contains at least one if not all of these. Statements of opinion can be classified as ideas, and statement of fact can be considered either information or rumor depending upon the amount and veracity of supporting evidence.

    Q: Was the item in question spread for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person?

    A: By posting the document on a public forum for the purpose of defending NATO’s actions, you yourself fulfilled this criteria. Prior to that, NATO StratCom also fulfilled it, as they have an implicit interest in defending the actions of NATO (which this document serves to do)

    For example: I can point to evidence that Tasnim News is propaganda.

    I don’t dispute this.