Having seen student politics with and without parties - my student union had them, my engineering society banned them - I'm convinced that it's not bad voters that ruin democracies but political parties. Parties need to simplify their messages to get buy in, and promote a 'team first' over 'issues first' mentality in their members. They're anathema to principles of honest debate and compromise.

The large scale something is, the more a political party matters. At a school level you can be closely informed about all of the issues and know all of the players. You can barely do that at the level of city politics. State and federal politics simply doesn't allow it.

Large scale democracies only work when people are willing to live together. If you play democracy as a winner-take-all game, it's going to fail sooner or later.

I'm not convinced that anything works at the national scale, at least not over the long term. I suspect that the US, as one of the oldest-and-largest democracies, is demonstrating a path that others will eventually follow.

I think they mean cost of incremental units. 0->1 is much more expensive than 1->100 in software, unlike with things like lattes or houses

I assumed that they meant "cost of production", since that's what you give to keep your money, so that includes 0->1. But if what they meant is what you said then I'd say that the cost of 0->1 is not somehow less important. Software does make 1->100 much more accessible though, so, in that way, you have an opportunity to help out very small businesses in a way that you can't in other industries, which is even more of a reason to buy code from your peers, IMO.

On the one hand, I agree and wish more people would pay for useful code. Hell, I wish I would be more willing to pay for useful code. It's irrational how unwilling many people, including myself, are to pay for things like that.

On the other hand, you wouldn't download a car...

I think the comparison to other industries is that while they pay for tools, it's not the inventor of the hammer that gets paid, but the producer of the unit, which in software is ~0. I'm not arguing against paying/donating to FOSS, but I do support the discrete distinction to physical tools.

If the tool is saving you a large chunk of time, then why does it matter what's happening in another industry? We seem to be losing a really simple thread here: Pay for things because they present more value to you than you're giving away in payment.

Y'all seem to have some notion of what constitutes "fair" payment that you're so attached to that you're willing to shoot yourselves in the foot.

Yeah, "manufacturing" is a different step than "R&D"

Definition one on Merriam Webster is, "To make into a product suitable for use." This is what I thought you meant, because cost of production is what it costs to forego buying something. IMO, that's the cost you really want to consider.

I'm agnostic on the question of objective moral truths existing. I hold no bias against someone who believes they exist. But I'm determinedly suspicious of anyone who believes they know what such truths are.

Good moral agency requires grappling with moral uncertainty. Believing in moral absolutes doesn't prevent all moral uncertainty but I'm sure it makes it easier to avoid.

Your last paragraph brings to mind an insult from a fictional culture where the very wealthy and powerful can live indefinitely: "<minor villain> has grown nothing. And he has planted nothing". Such a perfect summation of the attitude of a culture with lots of time

The trick is to tie your sense of identity to being a badass with more than enough self control.

I thought it was German and had an awful time trying to parse it. Makes so much more sense once one knows it's Greek.

Even as a native Greek speaker it is hard to parse it.

Cool!

https://eucyclos.wixsite.com/eucyclos

There's an interview with Dan schmachtenberger where he talks about the worst book ever written (his opinion is that it's 'the 48 laws of power'). He made the point that being consistently wrong is actually pretty impressive, and there are worthwhile lessons from watching someone getting taken seriously despite being wrong. Maybe you could revisit them with that approach.

> There's an interview with Dan schmachtenberger where he talks about the worst book ever written (his opinion is that it's 'the 48 laws of power').

Could it be this?

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIzRV4TxHo8

I don’t think they’re disgusted by Chomsky’s work because it’s wrong. They’re disgusted because of the recently surfaced ties with Epstein.

Not sure the approach holds.

Actually, it's both. I wanted to study media theory, and it was interesting that his work both appeared in compilers and philosophy, so I thought, “Let’s buy some books and dig into them.” The content was stupid, but I didn't need to throw the books away. After writing that comment here, I actually went and sent all of them to paper recycling...

Dead Internet Theory seems the new iteration... not finite in extent but in novelty maybe, a small mirror maze with infinite reflections on a very small set of themes.

I still don't understand what happened to stumbledupon. That was INTERNET! for me.