freemo

freemo, 3 months ago

@AnarchoCatgirlism

For comparison here is moon dust side by side with similar dust/sand particles from various places on earth.

image/png

freemo, 2 months ago

@ned

Thank you, very interesting.

I wonder if she gave any excuses.

@toxomat

freemo, 2 months ago

@swordgeek

Would be easy to confirm. If she made it up in childhood I would expect there to be some record of that somewhere.

@ned @toxomat

freemo, 3 months ago

@Shamar @toiletpaper @scottsantens > Uhm… no: only van Gogh was an artist.

Sorry, yes I mispoke. I should have said “people” not artist. Otherwise my poiunt stands

Meucci was a inventor (invented the phone)

I am aware of who is. He had the marketable skill of being able to create a device that was more less a telephone, but lacked the complete set of marketable skills needed to market it. Namely, he was not particularly skillful in how to create or file patents and thus was unable to monetize his invention.

Which is again in strong support of my position, you need marketable skills, not just some random melange of skills that might create genius, but will prevent that genius from having utility since you lack the needed, and complete, skills to take it there.

and Olivetti was a visionary enterpreneur (his company invented the first programmabke desktop computer, then illegally copied by HP).

Olivette is in fact the strongest example in support of my point. He managed to start a company, it was quite successful during his lifetime (albeit it more so after too). In fact in his own words he praised the capitalist system, specifically the USA where he moved to be the pinnacle of modern economies.

The market was unable to understand the utility provided, because it simply does not work as in the classical economy models.

What are you talking about, the market cant “understand” utility, again thats not what utility is… The market can not exist in any state other than one in which utility is represented in the market, it is by definition.

Not to mention these are all examples of things where the market literally did demonstrate the utility. Van gogh had his paintings sold for millions. The fact that it was after his death only means they had utility to people later and not before… When he was alive his paintings brought people less joy, and thus had less utility,a nd people paid less for it. Later after his death people enjoyed his paintings more, meaning they had more utility then they had during his life, and as such their price reflected it.

Similarly with Meucci, his invention certainly had utility to people, but since he poorly documented the patent his invention it had less utility for people. A well documented good idea has more utility (by a large margin) then a less documented one.

And finally again Olivette literally had a very successful company and very much realized the utility of his work in his life.

There is an annoying feature of the market called information asymmetry that makes often impossible to understand (and thus pay for) what provide value. It’s a slightly advanced topic in microeconomics (that in fact, I studied at the University, in the course of Political Science, decades ago).

Again you seem to fail to understand the meaning of utility here. The utility of a thing is intimitatly related to the information attached to it. If your product is not well documented or have the info needed to show its value it objectively has less utility, the information you attach to a thing is a large part of how much utility that thing has. Things dont exist in a vacuum.

So there is no need to continue this convesation: keep thinking that I confirmed your opinion if it make you feel better than understanding what I actually wrote..

I mean, you can also just actually listen to what i said and try to understand it rather than disagreeing with concepts you clearly never bothered to understand before you decided if you agreed with it… that works too.

@toiletpaper @scottsantens

freemo, 3 months ago

@undefined @toiletpaper @scottsantens @Shamar

Uhm.. no: to act ethically you (reasonably) need to study ethics.

I have studied ethics quite a bit, both in university where we had quite a few classes on it and in my own time.

Studing ethics is not enouth to be ethical, sure, but it is required.

No its literally not required. Obviously it can help if your trying to solve large complex problems, sure. But I know people with downsyndom who cant even read who exhibit better ethics than most people I know. If you care about people and show kindness you will likely be more ethical than someone no matter how well studied they are on the subject. At least in your day to day life. I dont expect such a person to define the ethical considerations of a nation, but that is far from saying they cant be ethical.

Being good is different from being ethical, for example. Adherence to a certain form of morality is not being ethical.

Wrong… To quote wikipedia: “Ethics or moral philosophy is the philosophical study of moral phenomena.” Similar to be ethical is the adherence to ethics. that is, the expression of moral phenomena.

But ethics is a deep branch of phylosophy and for sure I’m not qualified to teach it (over mastodon :-D)

Yes it is a deep branch of philosophy… and we are agreed, you are not qualified since you are getting even the fundamental concepts wrong, let along the deep study of the branch of philosophy which goes well beyond that.

For the record I also dont consider myself qualified to be an expert on philosophy, though I am well studied on the topic.

@toiletpaper @scottsantens

freemo, 3 months ago

@Shamar

Well, our society needs people who can reason about ethics, for example.

If society needs a thing then it has utility, if it has utility then it is marketable. That said wit snot just “does society need some number of these people” as it is about having the correct number of them.

Sure society needs (and will pay for) people who study ethics. It is a marketable skill as long as there are not enough such people, at some point you have too many and its no longer marketable.

Every nobel peace prize winner could be argued is likely an expert on ethics in a marketable position.

We need people who can create poetry and art. But capitalist market fear ethics, as it would conflict with profit maximization.

All of those are example of things that provide utility to society and are marketable. In fact I explicitly listed these as examples of marketable skills.

People buy poetry books, people buy art. It nis an example of a marketable skill.

As for poetry and art in general, the greatest artists tend to be poor and misunderstood, and in no way create their masterpiece for the market (that tends to exploit them after their death).

The fact that you think they are good doesnt mean they are good. But if they are truly good then either they dont have marketable skills (for example they suck at art, or dont know enough about business to sell their art, or some other needed skill they lack to make themselves marketable)… or they refuse to work for someone. There are plenty of jobs for artists, in the world , particularly if you are trained.

The value of the greatest artists is often really understood decades after their death.

Providing some benefit long after everyone is dead isnt helping us now. You want to do things that will be appreciated in 100 years, do that as a hobby. We have enough things we need now to not worry about a what if far intot he future.

Also for every artist that becomes well known after their death there are a million artists which provided little or no value because they were always objectively crappy.

So pursuing only marketable skills as a condition to survival is, again, a way to produce a reserve army if labour to keep wage low.

You just proved the opposite, literally everything you listed are examples of marketable skills when highly trained and not oversaturated. So umm, no.

This because the market do not know what will be valuable for the society.

You literally just made the case it does.

@scottsantens

freemo, 3 months ago

@undefined @toiletpaper @scottsantens @Shamar > you are just showing that you know nothing about art (or its history).

You said I know nothing about art or its history and then said absolutely nothing that contradicted what I said… In fact you agreed perfectly with what I said.

The ability of the market to pay for value is well shown in the cases of van Gogh, Meucci, Olivetti and so on…

Yes those are all examples of artists who made far more after their life. Which I already said occurs… you literally just insult me, say i wrong, then just went on to say how i was wrong and didnt actually disagree with a word I said…

The market is not rational.

Never said it was, or that it needs to be. The market is based on utility, but you clearly do not understand what utility means, it doesnt mean something is rational. It means it serves a purpose to someone, and bringing enjoyment is a valid purpose and would be an example of utility.

@toiletpaper @scottsantens

freemo, 3 months ago

@Shamar @scottsantens

Uhm… if you actually meant that people studying whatever they decide to study to any degree should earn a decent income that make them independent, then I agree that this is a better alternative to #UBI.

No not exactly, but not too far off. People should be able to study whatever marketable skill they want, but it should be totally up to them which skill it is. Do i think someone should be able to go to school to become a the best bubblegum chewer in the world, no, but they should be able to pick and choose their career between any of the choices that will allow them to provide enough utility to society that they can sustain themselves without welfare in the future.

But note: the income should be granted to anyone studying whatever they are interested into, not to people studying “what the market need”.

No that is non-sensical and literally doesn’t solve the problem. The goal is produce people who have something to offer society that is of value to its fellow members. That can represent art, music, and plenty of fields that are all marketable skills. It doesnt mean you can learn how to become the best weed smoker in the world and expect people to pay for it or whatever other silly nonsense you might come up with.

Or maybe I misunderstood your words: did you mean that anyone pursuing higher education in any possible field should be financially supported by the collectivity?

Almost, all marketable subjects (read: subjects with utility where the skill has use to others) should be free and tax payer paid to any level.

Yet the “who pays?” issue persist: you know that such “Universal Culture & Income” would have a huge economical cost: how do you think it could be payed through taxation?

The same people who pay for everything else, the tax payers. Which is exactly who should be paying to improve society (tax payers being both corporations, and individuals since both pay taxes).

freemo, 2 months ago

@BernieDoesIt

I grew up in extreme poverty that continued into adulthood. I lived in the ghetto, on welfare in section 8 housing in a home with my grandparents, cousins, uncle, and mother all in the same small home.

Thank you for the QED though regarding your own bias.

@jkxyz @scottsantens

freemo, 3 months ago

@scottsantens

As someone who is strongly against UBI, and strongly supportive of welfare I can earnestly say people simply not working is not at all the reason I (or most people against UBI in my opinion) are against it.

The reason i am against it is because it causes people more harm than good. People who are in a position where they need assistance need to be given the tools to get out of their situation, and the help to get there needs to be conditional on this (and we should be spending the money that goes with that). Financial assistance should be conditional with mandatory job training or mental health therapy needed to help someone succeed, not just money.

In fact when there are underlying bad habits, as can often be the case, it is possible money can even make a persons condition worse and cause them to sleep farther into poverty.

freemo, 3 months ago

@jkxyz

I think you’re saying the same thing, that if people are given money without any strings attached then they will not start working but use that money for nefarious purposes.

No I wouldnt go that far at all. I think most people who are poor have very poor financial hygene. It is not nefarious, or even intentional. They probably spend the money on things they feel really are the important and right things to spend money on, when in fact it isnt

It also depends ont he amount, at minimal levels and among the poor it may be spent on food, which is a good purchase, but doesnt help get the person out of poverty, so in those cases its less about spending hygiene and more about needing more resources (like education/training) and not about the money.

There’s been quite a lot of research showing that unconditional cash donations are very effective at easing extreme poverty

Yes there has, and thats my point, simply easing poverty is treating the symptoms not the problem, and requires and infinite infusion of money to sustain never resolving the problem. We dont want to “ease poverty” we want to break people free of poverty all together, to not need the financial help at all in the end. Easing poverty with an endless firehose of cash doesnt accomplish that.

@scottsantens

freemo, 2 months ago

@radiojammor

Oh, so you are paying a universal basic income and providing shelter.

There you go lying about what I said again.. and i asked you to go away the last time.

Well look at you, you are actually a UBI advocate!

A soup kitchen is not a UBI, you are being blocked now for thinking it is.

@scottsantens

freemo, 3 months ago

@mjambon Yea its a bit harder to understand because its a bit of applying it in the opposite way you normally think of it.

So regression to the mean is explained one way that i think is not particularly counter intuitive to how it is applies but let me start with the basics.

Formally, regression to the mean is all about how if you take lots of samples of things with all sorts of bizzare distributions, in the end they will eventually average out to a normal distribution (thus explaining why normal distributions tend to be the default and crop up everyone)...

In practice though the fallacy aspect arrises when you pay attention to addressing outliers, and on resampling they appear to have been "fixed", when in reality they only cropped up as outliers in the first place due to random chance and nothing as changed.

A very typical example given is if you look at a city and pick the top 5 intersections where accidents took place last year and put additional safety measures in place the next year you will notice that those intersections have reduced the number of accidents significantly. You assume this is due to your safety measures when in fact that would have happened regardless since they were only outliers by random chance and they simple "regressed to the mean"...

So how does that apply here. Well like i said its a bit of what i just said but kinda in reverse. You are assuming your sampling is average, when in fact you are samping outliers. So while the reality tends to regress towards the mean (went home after their normal average length bike ride) those that remain are the outliers but you dont recognize them as outliers. So its the same principle of regression to the mean just, the inverse of it.

Make sense now?

freemo, 2 months ago

@toiletpaper

Yet it doesn’t stop you from proffering a derisive opinion about it, without any example or evidence to speak to.

Correct, I have strong opinions about theories which draw conclusions based on a lack of evidence, very strong opinions.

Pardon me, but your attitude belies that claim.

My attitude has been polite but honest. I have refered to ideas as idiotic, but refrained from any personal attacks. Any feelings you have about my attitude is completely fabricated in your head based on the fact that I mock ideas you hold dear, which you take personally. Thats on you, I have stated in no uncertain terms what my words meant so you didnt have to speculate but here we are… This deserves no more energy or thought from me, you continue to waste my time.

Good bye (read: leave me alone) and have a good day (read: I still want you to be happy despite you insisting on wasting my time further)

@skaly

freemo, 2 months ago

@niclas

there is some incentive there. But honestly I do think psychiatrists are acting in good faith in their diagnosis, they are just wrong.

The effect, in my opinion, is a societal one. Most americans have developed personality disorders, its like living in a mental hospital. But since they are the majority, the overwhelming majority, it is the healthy people who, through societal gas lighting (being on the receiving end of people with personality disorders) they are convinced they are the ones who are broken instead. Psychiatrists tend to go along and look for reasons.

The end result is a bunch of people int he minority being diagnosed with autistm rather than the vast majority being diagnosed (more correctly) with the personality disorder.

@AncientGood

freemo, 3 months ago

@customdesigned positronium exists pretty much anytime antimatter-matter collisions take place. They go through a process where they form positronium first, and then after a short halflife will decay into photons. But they dont directly annihilate, just like any other matter they fall into orbitals first until they give off enough energy to reach ground state, their ground state is just annihilation

freemo, 3 months ago

@wjmaggos So as far as billionaires go I only may know one (I'm not sure if he is a billionaire but he is damn close, he was the main investor in a very long list of well known large companies).

And yes, you will often find him in pictures standing next to Obama int he white house back when he was in office. He put a lot of time and money into lobbying for democrat party interest, which included universl health care.

freemo, 2 months ago

@Radical_EgoCom

A few individuals concentrating wealth among themselves isn’t desirable

It is if those individuals are providing the most utility to society. Absolutely it is.

at least not to the poor

Even to the poor. A society that maximizes utility of its resources benefits the whole of society when that society has equity (instead of equality). Which as I said is an element of a healthy capitalism.

as it creates a power imbalances that favor the elite

No, it creates power imbalances that favor the people who add the most utility to society, making them elite. Which again, is exactly what we want.

These power imbalances exist because the capitalist system inherently prioritizes profit over the well-being of workers and the community

Incorrect. capitalism inherently prioritizes utility, profit without utility doesnt exist in a healthy capitalism. As for the well-being of workers, you only get maximum utility if you have healthy workers, ergo a healthy capitalism will not dismiss the health of its working populace.

making checks and balances insufficient in preventing exploitation and oppression.

Since your prior was wrong your posterior is likewise wrong.

It’s not individual or collective action that’s at fault, it’s the inherent nature of #capitalism.

Since you are repeatedly mischaracterizing what capitalism even is this conclusion falls flat.

@Vincarsi

freemo, 2 months ago

@Radical_EgoCom

> Concentrating wealth in the hands of a few individuals inherently creates systemic inequalities and power imbalances

While the word "systematic" is a bit nebulous here, and not too important, overall I'd say yes, this is true, it creates power imbalance, and that is a GOOD thing.

There should not be equal power, there should be power imbalance. People who have demonstrated they have produced the most utility for society should have more power than those who dont. This ensures those with a demonstrated track record of providing utility for society continue to maximize societies utility.

Now the important part, of course, is having the proper checks on those powers. A president has more power than a citizen, this is fine because we have checks on that presidents power, checks that (ideally) ensure that if that power is abused they loose that power.

> investments by the wealthy do not address the root causes of poverty

Agreed. I am not claiming that investments by the wealthy alone address the root cause of poverty. While having wealthy people in a society is a good thing I am in no way proposing it solves all of life's ills. I am also in no way claiming we should be without social programs. All countries in europe are capitalistic for example, most of which also include social welfare as part of their capitalist governance, and that is an important aspect of a healthy capitalist government, but must be done carefully to do right as well.

> exploitation perpetuated by the #capitalist system.

Capitalism doesnt exploit people. People exploit people. And if markets allow exploitation then they arent free markets, and therefore are not capitalist in nature.

@Vincarsi

freemo, 2 months ago

@Radical_EgoCom

concentrates wealth and resources into the hands of a few rich individuals

Yes, though, it distributes fairly based on their contribution to society when operating in a healthy way. Societies dont have an equal distribution of people contributing equal utility, ergo you should see unequal distribution of wealth in a healthy government with a typical population.

which is what leads to the kind of conditions that the OP is talking about

Fully disagree. Uneven distributions of wealth does not, in and of itself, lead to lower quality of life or less charitable works. In fact, it has been objectively shown that rich people give significantly higher percentages of their income to charity than middle class or poor.

where wealthy people hoard resources for themselves and refuse to give any to others

That does not line up with reality IMO. Very few rich “hoard wealth” which would look like a mountain of resources sitting in a vault collecting dust (such as useful minerals, or other materials useful to society). In fact they dont even tend to hoard money itself. Almost all rich people have all of their money actively in the community and used for social utility. For example in investment in businesses. No person who hoarded wealth would be rich because wealth looses value with time. You only become rich by not hoarding wealth (putting your money out into the community, at a risk of loosing it or getting a return).

@Vincarsi

freemo, 2 months ago

@Radical_EgoCom

Concentrating wealth in the hands of a few individuals creates a power imbalances that favor the wealthy elite at the expense of the majority,

Thats a circular argument. Concerntrating wealth creates wealthy people, absolutely, thats the point. It doesnt favor the wealthy, it creates them, exactly as we should want it to (assuming this is concentration is a factor of utility, which in a healthy capitalism it is).

checks and balances within a capitalist system are sufficient to prevent abuse of power that these power imbalances spawn.

Whether they are sufficient or not dependent entierly on the government. Some government lack sufficient checks and balances on power, others do not. There is nothing inherent about capitalism that garuntees these checks and balances are absent.

Capitalism itself inherently exploits workers through the extraction of surplus value from their labor.

Wrong, capitalism provides the necessary utility to workers to allow their labor to have surplus value, surplus value that their labor would not have on its own.

It’s not correct to only attribute exploitation to individual actions…

Agreed, it would be incorrect to attribute exploitation only to individual actions. Which is why i didnt do that, I expressed both the effects of individual actions and collectively (checks and balances are a collective actions).

and ignore the effects of #capitalism

Its not the effects of capitalism, so those arent ignored.

@Vincarsi

freemo, 2 months ago

@Vincarsi

you’re mischaracterizing capitalism as something that doesn’t have inherent flaws.

No I wouldnt say so. I am not claiming its flawed or not. Capitalism itself is one ideology, as with all ideologies it does not and can not exist in a bubble. There is no such thing as a “pure capitalism” because a capitalism is one among many principles that must be combined to form a government.

Flaws arise in how one combines the various principles available to them to form a system of government than incorporates those principles.

As I have mentioned many times I continually assert the adjective “healthy capitalism” to distinguish it from unhealthy capitalism, which can certainly exist as well (and have plenty of flaws). What makes a capitalism healthy or not comes from the nuance in how one combines principles along side it.

The very fact you keep talking about “healthy capitalism” belies that you know you’re talking about a fantasy where all of the problems with capitalism are magically solved.

Quite the opposite, if I thought capitalism was perfect as a pure ideology without the need for any other principles or nuance then I would not need the adjective “healthy”. The fact that I am using that adjective is exactly the evidence that it isnt a fantasy and that I am well aware that unhealthy capitalism can also exist.

I’m not interested in a system that’s only good if everyone does it right.

Since capitalism is not a “system” it is a pure ideology, and a system only comes about when you combine principles and nuance to create an overall mechanation this statement is nonsensical to the context.

The world has been brought to the brink of destruction under capitalism

The world has been brought to the brink of destruction under quite many principles in play, many of which have had unhealthy manifestations. This includes communistic countries (which also are equally nuanced).

it doesn’t matter what it’s like healthy when it’s so easily sickened.

Agreed, which is why the overall system selected must be one that is not easily sickened.

@Radical_EgoCom