Always has been.

Surprised so few people are aware of this. It seems equivalent to me when you give it the same permissions Ublock Origin had.

Death is undefined from the perspective of conscious experience. That’s really my point.

It is axiomatic that if there is something that it is like to be dead then you are not in fact “dead”.

Just for fun then, I agree with you in some respects. Panpsychism might be the way the universe works and is in fact my own sense of reality - but the kind of “consciousness” that may persist upon the disintegration of the brain and body, won’t answer to “you” unless there is in fact a soul or spirit that exists separate to the body. Of that, I am not so sure. I’m thinking consciousness is probably something spooky separate to the body, but the idea that this fleeting thing that answers to my identity could have its own potentially eternal or at least much more resilient contingency doesn’t really make sense. More like, we are all part of the same singularity of consciousness that is the universe, dreaming ourselves into existence as discrete conscious actors in a grand play. Something like that, haha.

Life is all we can possibly conceive of knowing. I can’t tell you that you ought to live, but I can tell you that there might not be anything it’s like to be dead. Is it worth the risk?

However bad life might be at any given moment, unless total non-existence sounds “good” to you, death isn’t a risk worth taking. After all, we are always at some risk of dying. It’ll happen eventually.

If you were in the military would you follow orders that are unconstitutional? Which is to say, an order that requires you to suppress the American people?

I would hope service people would see what is happening and say no. But that’s a hope more than anything.

Hi, my name is ynthrepic and I’m a workaholic.

I have one of those jobs where holidays just mean double the work when you get back. None of the work goes anywhere, and there’s nobody else who can pick up the slack.

I actually love what I do, but…

I work in the public sector, and do heaps of unpaid overtime, to make life better for people who don’t understand the only reason we don’t do a better job is because the government keeps cutting our budgets, claiming it’s because we don’t do a better job with the money we were given the previous year.

We also do regular restructures which reduce morale and stoke fear, but the only people who lose their jobs are low level workers, or they just remove vacancies and claim savings on those, while moving middle managers sideways and not actually improving efficiency.

My job gets harder, I end up making more mistakes or have to cut corners to make shit happen. I complain I get in trouble. I have a kid.

I’m so fucking glad though I don’t live or work in the US. Y’all are so fucking fucked.

There is a little bit of an assumption of the mad scientist here. Most scientists and engineers are very compassionate and caring people, even if many are excentric. We care about a thriving humanities department.

The psychopath cohort you’re thinking of is the executive branch, or the people who made it to sales manager.

I mean yeah the internet has proliferated stupid. But I think everyone was always stupid, but just nowhere near power.

We need a meritocratic system that is also based on modern science and social psychology, and it needs to be diverse, equitable, and inclusive too…

If it’s always been that way, how did things ever get better?

Nah, it’s all about the money. It’s literally just trolling with people lives to make money off of their inevitable fear

The only way to win, is if people who have invested money aren’t afraid of losing it. Which of course almost nobody, because when gambling the house almost always wins. Which is to say an increasingly small minority get to win the lottery of a financially free life.

I’d prefer things end without violence… Which puts me in the most impossible timeline there is. It’s so frustrating realizing they’re all literally stupid or manipulated by stupid. Stupid being the promise of wealth, power, and fame ironically at all costs.

Only to be pardoned by the great leader of course.

Why couldn’t your meme show like solar punk utopian imagery, and people living in beautiful harmony with nature.

Oh, that’s why.

How is anyone free? You don’t pick your genes or parents or where you’re born and grow up, which friends you happen to make, or what opportunities come your way in life both for gain and for loss, trauma, abuse. How any of us grow into adulthood as fully functional compassionate human beings seems like a miracle, unless as OC said, you recognize that some people simply are just wired for evil, and need to be treated differently.

Wouldn’t surprise me if some significant percentage of over 18s we’re googling “how to vote?” as the poles were closing… I mean some were still asking a whole day after.

You give people too much credit. Most people don’t spend any time researching and critically engaging with politics or even news, and you probably couldn’t force them even if your tried to add compulsory politically neutral civics to the education system. Some people do well in math, but not in science. The same will be true in this class too.

Then there’s propaganda fucking everything up even further. Most people are not immune to propaganda and misinformation, particularly when most of what they know comes from their friends, who are themselves very likely victims of misinformation.

Yeah same, those old rolling balls were delicious.

I don’t think even OP or OC meant that nobody would work. But “work” as we imagine it now need not exist. Most specialist roles are fulfilling enough that people do them enthusiastically and with passion. It would be first and foremost a worker lead economy, rather than people being desperate for jobs. Companies need to buy talent in a more competitive market instead, in all industries not just the specialisations.

I imagine there’s still a wealth hierarchy but it’s a lot less dispirate and follows meritocratic lines, including the merit of being willing to get your hands dirty doing dirty or dangerous work not currently possible to automate. And obviously being very talented at sport, music, art, comedy, etc such that people want to spend any excess wealth they have on supporting them or buying access to their content (like now).

It’s not so different from now, it’s just the continued progressive advancement of what we see in many European nations already.

The point is that technology means a fraction of the population can feed and house the rest, and that fraction doesn’t need to live like royalty, and the rest don’t need to live in servitude for that exchange to happen.

Don’t you want others to enjoy your success with you? Apply that principle to all of humanity the world over, and you have what could be, if we just stopped waring over hoards.