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mojo_raisin

@mojo_raisin@lemmy.world

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mojo_raisin , (edited )

Because no viable alternatives have been shown to work.

Capitalism has proven it definitely doesn't work, we're careening toward ecological collapse.

Humans existed without state, and therefore with (likely multiple coexisting) informal economic systems for hundreds of thousands of years, I'd say that has been show to work.

mojo_raisin ,

I'm all for new ideas so long as they're old ideas.

mojo_raisin ,

That doesn't mean those methods or some form of them can't work, you just assume this is true because you've been given that message by those who need us to believe this for them to maintain power.

And let's say no non-state method can possibly work at our scale, is that to essentially throw up our hands and say, "well, since intelligently shrinking our population and economy to a size that can be sustainably managed and is appropriate sized for our planet (i.e. "degrowth") is unspeakable, and other methods we sorta tried for a bit don't seem to work, we'll just go ahead and continue with this known broken method until it all collapses from overexploitation" ??

Wouldn't it make more sense to say "I want human society to exist in 100 years and for that to happen, we need to learn to live within the bounds of our planet"?

mojo_raisin ,

Biochar (created in a retort) is how you sustainably sequester carbon for the long-term using trees (and similar biomass).

mojo_raisin ,

I think the key would be to not use any additional resources to grow, harvest, etc.

This could be done for example by landscaping companies that put their waste through a retort (which could be anything from a stove made of mud bricks, to a mobile trailer that does on-site pyrolysis and use the resulting biochar to fertilize their customer's plants. Farms could put their waste through it, innoculate the biochar with animal waste, and use it as fertilizer.

I make biochar from my backyard waste in my firepit using a can like this guy.

Any other method of carbon capture I've ever heard about makes no sense. Having hundreds of engineers and workers drive to work for years to engineer and build giant metal and plastic factory/machines with parking lots that require staff that has to drive and park there, etc is nonsense. And even if they work, what would they do with the carbon? Biochar provides a cycle that is accessible to everyone, can be done on-site, uses no fancy technology, nothing is patented, and doesn't require all this nonsense.

mojo_raisin ,

True but people need to know to look to the documentation, it's not something we're born with. People learn to ride a bike, to drive a car, use their TV, etc without reading much documentation. We should educate people on how to figure things out rather than shame them for not knowing as much as you.

Don't assume everyone can learn as easily as you can or has a background that would facilitate their grasping of the topic. Here you are casually saying "just read the man page" and referencing gcc, it would take my mom a week of education to get to the point where she'd be able to understand what gcc even is and why it has a man page.

And if you don't want to help them, ignore the noobs, don't push them away.

mojo_raisin ,

I get the sentiment, that we're not killing nature, just ourselves, but "nature" is not one thing. Killing nature amounts to humans causing incredible suffering to untold trillions of individual animals each with a lilfe, a consciousness.

I saw my Kitty suffocate due to embolism and had to put her down and it's no less of an awful event because it was a cat and not a human, it screwed me up and it was years ago. I imagine that level of needless suffering happening every day X 1 billion due to human greed and apathy.

mojo_raisin ,

Pretty sure I already specified unnecessary suffering, I didn't suggest that animals wouldn't suffer without us.

mojo_raisin ,

So only the lucky unfit sperm destined to produce one who wears a red cap will be able to successfully fertilize the egg?

mojo_raisin ,

It's time to return to human curated directories.

mojo_raisin ,

Nope, been thinking about what it would take to make one though.

mojo_raisin ,

These problems are not all the fault of either the producers or consumers, we're both part of a fucked up cycle within an exploitative economic system and influence each other.

It doesn't make any more sense for the consumer to wash their hands of all blame and consume without concern and push all the blame on the producer than it does to say it's all about our "carbon footprint".

mojo_raisin , (edited )

It's not possible to produce the amount of meat needed to feed our massive population while treating animals humanely.

There are really two options to deal with this:

  1. Most humans in the world become vegan -- sounds great but it's not gonna happen

  2. Reduce our population to sustainable numbers (by eliminating the driver of the population explosion, i.e. fossil energy) -- maybe also not gonna happen

Edit: What (do I think) will happen? We'll continue as we are now as hundreds of billions of animals are tortured until our civilization collapses. This will happen because we were all brought up under a state and told that defending ourselves, our communities, our animals, is wrong and illegal.

mojo_raisin ,

You're right, to some insufficient degree, but that's like reducing your meth habit.

mojo_raisin ,

Anti-work is anti-exploitation.

It's not about people wanting to be lazy yet still have all the niceties, it's about not being coerced into a lifetime of labor to enrich the ones coercing you. A person's labor should enrich themselves and those they choose.

mojo_raisin ,

I think that would cause a different confusion. I don't know that this is a concept that can be expressed in a single existing word. Sometimes concepts take time before the right word arises. No sense blaming people for using the language available to them to express a novel idea.

mojo_raisin ,

Then how come cannabis doesn't have the same cancer profile?

mojo_raisin ,

I'll let you know how it goes, I'm coming up on about 30 years of smoking the sweet sweet cheeba.

mojo_raisin ,

Nothing sinister, we just don't delete what we say we delete. Instead we keep it in your profile to feed the algorithms and set the "deleted" flag to make you think it's gone.

mojo_raisin ,

But clearly the data is not overwritten and this was intentional. How do I know? Because that would amount to a massive amount of data, if it was de to a bug in Apple software or underlying filesystems, it would be detected in monitoring systems "Hey, we're using 10x the data we should be, maybe we should look into it".

The mistake was in the flag code that was supposed to fool us.

mojo_raisin ,

So are you saying that they suffered from a filesystem bug that caused deletion failure? I'd imagine they use standard filesystems on their backend, I haven't heard about any bugs like this.

If you ask me, what's more likely, that a company known for shitty behavior lies about deleting files so they can continue to use that information to profit, -- OR -- that they are experiencing a filesystem bug on their backend, I'll choose the former.

mojo_raisin ,

Seriously: I don’t think the cost benefit is there to intentionally make a maneuver like this.

You might be right

They can’t let short-term greed get in the way of long-term greed!

lol

mojo_raisin ,

Humans lived for 200,000 years before we started acting like a cancer. It's not our species that is cancer, it's the dominator culture that evolved within our species that is the cancer.

mojo_raisin ,

You're not wrong.

I see capitalism more as a tool that arose due to the rise of the dominator culture in our species. A species without dominator instincts would not invent capitalism.

mojo_raisin ,

Ok, but why did feudalism come about, after 200,000+ years? Capitalism is just a current incarnation of an exploitative system brought to us by dominator culture. Before Capitalism it was Feudalism. If you back far enough, you get to stable groups that operated for millennia apparently without the need for domination being the primary driver of society.

Using game theory, if the players start out cooperating, this can go on indefinitely, but once someone cheats the game becomes exploitative. Sounds a lot like what happened in our species.

mojo_raisin ,

I know that's the common story, not sure I believe it.

  1. I don't know that it makes sense to talk about class dynamics at a global/species level until the 19th or 20th century when culture and ideas could spread. Until then any class dynamics were probably intra-group.

  2. Evidence shows that the change from pre-agricultural to agricultural societies was not linear or quick, it took thousands of years and happened in fits and starts in different areas before really catching on everywhere. It doesn't make a lot of sense that we invented agriculture and suddenly culture changed to protect the crops.

  3. Feudalism did not occur everywhere, it was mostly a European thing

mojo_raisin ,

A lady but yes indeed!

mojo_raisin ,

I don't necessarily disagree with any of that, don't necessarily agree either though.

I don't think class conflict (that drove feudalism etc) arose just from there being grains around that "needed protection". Without the dominator instinct, grain storage just means insurance, food security (security against bad weather, not finding the herd to hunt, or outside groups raiding).

I think class conflict was due to individuals who both desired power over others and understood that grain provided a means of attaining power because it provided a hoardable resource that allowed paying others to back them up. "You want to eat good? Then protect me and my hoard" That then sets up a situation where the grain holders become the upper class, those they pay for protection become class traiters, and everyone else ends up exploited.

I posit that humans as a species are a generally good cooperative species but due to natural variation, some individual's brains are wired to think in a more exploitative way. But this exploitative person would be viewed negatively by their community and without a state to protect them, would be vulnerable to the direct consequences of their actions; and so this exploitative strategy was kept in check and unable to grow.

The ability to hoard grain allowed those with the dominator instinct to gain the upper hand against their community and take power. Feudalism evolved from that.

The rare dominator instinct + hoardable resources evolved into large scale exploitative economies of various types where the dominator instinct then became common and is now in most of us.

mojo_raisin ,

Actually I'm an ROUS.

mojo_raisin ,

Is this “dominator instinct” backed up by science, or vibes?

Vibes, mainstream science is a product of capitalism, why would it vilify itself?

Is it not more likely that...

These things are not mutually exclusive. The dominator instinct is not a metaphysical thing. Every species chooses (by evolving) a life strategy. Think about Bonobos vs non-bonobo chimps, same biology for the most part but they chose different strategies at the species level, chimps went with the dominator strategy and bonobos didn't. The dominator instinct probably pops up in some individuals the bonobo populations but is kept in check by the bonobo culture.

mojo_raisin ,

The chimp/bonobo thing does have a scientific basis. I'd say genetic variation that causes modulation of personality traits is pretty well established as having a scientific basis. The fact that mainstream science doesn't view things in terms of a "dominator instinct" doesn't mean anything other than that those funding the science don't have motivation to view things that way.

mojo_raisin ,

Sorry for the late reply, I've been away.

Animal behavior is the product of both genetics and environment (including the environment affecting the genes, epigenetics), and feedback loops are real but any neuroplasticity is limited to what our genetics will allow and what level of change is genetically possible over a given number of generations.

Since people’s behavior changes the environment, it creates a feedback loop; societies form a semi-artificial environment where people learn that domination is successful behavior, and are rewarded for continuing it. Thus, the behavior is propagated across generations, no instinct required.

This is what will cause genetic changes over time and turn learned behavior into innate behavior. Like the non-bonobo chimps probably started out that way (or maybe vice-versa) and over millennia or even millions of years, no longer have the capacity to behave like the other regardless of environment. If we took a non-bonobo family and put them with regular chimps I don't believe the non-bonobo children would behave like bonobos because they are around bonobos.

Even if the "dominator instinct" is purely behavioral and not based in biology at all, it doesn't change my point. My point is really a game theory point, that our species chose cooperation as a general strategy because it works out best for everyone in our situation at the time. But because we vary (whether genetically or a person's learned behavior) an occasional individual comes along that tries out a different strategy.

Here's a game that demonstrates my point.

https://ncase.me/trust/

Imagine a form of this game is played in early humans that have a cooperative culture. The cheater is likely to be ostracized or beaten up/killed allowing the cooperative culture to continue. But then you throw money into the game (ability to hoard resources, and create artificial scarcity by taking things from others and allowing selective "paying" of individuals that back you up. Now when a cheater comes along, they have tools (money and artificial scarcity) that allow them to break out of the normal game rules and dominate others -- a dominator instinct was born.

mojo_raisin ,

LROUS

mojo_raisin ,

Surely the benefit of a learning and growing brain is that it can respond and adapt to situations faster than germ-line genetics ever could.

Absolutely, but it's our genome that programs this adaptability.

Consider humans vs giant pandas for example. Our genes programmed our (brains and) bodies to be highly adaptable, some can be vegans, others carnivores, some can live in the snow, others in the tropics, we can learn new languages throughout life, and build novel tools and learn to use them. A giant panda might die if eats anything other than bamboo and will do poorly in any environment different than what it's evolved for. This is because we evolved for adaptability while giant pandas evolved to be fit in a mostly unchanging environment.

Giant pandas probably don't have the genetic adaptability built in for a dominator instinct to arise in them, while in humans, the dominator instinct can arise within our mental adaptability. It might start as meme (in the Dawkins sense) and then the brain can evolve to facilitate the behavior (to be honest, I think this is what is happening in our species currently, generations living under exploitative economic systems might be driving our brains to be less sympathetic to others rather than viewing others as part of our environment).

Why would there be a genetic limiter

It's not that say giant pandas have evolved a genetic limiter really, it's that humans have evolved to be able to survive in various and changing environments and a brain that can learn is a key part of this ability. Giant pandas have not had the selective pressure to evolve a genome tolerant of change able to produce a brain that can adapt on the fly to new environments.

mojo_raisin ,

I'd say exploitative (and dominant) behavior can be either biologically based instinct or learned trait.

Learned behavior could potentially become a trait if it spreads, is beneficial to the species reproductive success, and genetic mutations occur.

  • A nice person can learn that to survive requires them to act in an exploitative manner, I'd not call this an instinct, this is a animal of an adaptable species adapting to a cruel environment.

  • A person that is not nice because they are less adaptable and see exploitation as the default way of operating in life and would act this way even in a nice environment could be called an instinct. This could be the biological start of what could evolve into a stable instinct in a species should this person's genes become dominant in the population (I believe this is happening now).

The reason I talk the way I do on this topic, is my belief that early humans did not have a desire to dominate others on a large scale, we were more like other animals. Not that everything was peaceful or tribes didn't have leaders and inter-tribal battles, just that any individuals with a tendency to dominate and hoard were mostly taken care of by cultural mechanisms and didn't get very far, i.e. they got their ass beat when then screwed over their brother and the community said "good, they deserved it". Or a tribal leader that was dominant and coercive rather than a respected leader could get killed and there's no state to stop this or punish those who did it. The tribe decided their leader was bad for them and took care of the issue.

But at some point, these cultural mechanisms were not enough to contain these individuals with a dominant instinct and they took over and colluded, and this eventually evolved into the concept of the state.

The thing that might've tipped the scales is money. Money provides a means to hoard wealth, something that is difficult without money as things rot or or too large, etc. By hoarding money that represents resources, they are simultaneously creating artificial scarcity and those willing to violently back up the dominant hoarder can have more than others setting up a class structure. This is a bit different than for example how Marx says classes came about.

tl;dr I think our society was stable for 200K years until a dominator instinct took over that was previously kept in check culturally, facilitated by the invention of money. This situation exploded when we found our fossil energy inheritance that we're currently wasting on the equivalent on hookers and blow. And now society is built around the dominators, designed for easy exploitation and prevention of self-defense, it's called "statehood".

mojo_raisin , (edited )

Isn’t “the state” just cultural mechanisms extended beyond familial or interpersonal ties?

This is "community"

"State" refers to a group of people that feel entitled to rule over others and use violence to do so. To help ensure their power they create laws that make their violence legal and give it names like "law enforcement" and make your violence, particularly violence to protect yourself against them, illegal. This typically goes along with enclosure leaving people nowhere to escape the state.

There’s a threshold where the group becomes too numerous for a member to form social ties with all other members.

This is true but does not on it's own lead to the formation of state. Without dominator types successfully taking advantage of the situation, it could just as well lead to loosely connected communities. Also, the size of early non-state communities was limited to ecosystem provided resources (i.e. they were inherently sustainable), our populations are not because we found fossil energy.

Domination and "the state" are not equivalent, but it takes the former for the latter to come about. Domination without the state has always existed on some level, I think that pre-state societies had cultural mechanisms to prevent dominators from taking over.

mojo_raisin ,

My thoughts about this

Anarcho-communism (and similar ideologies) isn't really about everyone being equal, that's a silly goal that would take enforcement and calculations, it's not practical. Instead, anarcho-communism is a different way of living based on cooperation rather than exploitation and doing what is needed for people rather than what a few rich owners want.

You and a "lazy" person won't necessarily have the same outcome. A person unwilling to even pick up after themselves or contribute would still be guaranteed housing, food, and health care, but that's about it. You on the other hand could work to have a nicer place or acquire things, so long as you aren't getting them exploiting others or common resources. If you build a nice chair the anarcho-fuzz isn't gonna come and take it to split it amongst the community.

The thinking around "laziness" needs to change. A person unwilling to do even the absolute minimum might be called lazy, but A person unwilling to trade their time for money isn't a bad thing. It's not the "lazy" people that wipe out species, start wars, and cause climate change.

mojo_raisin ,

Exactly right, thank you.

mojo_raisin ,

Our society already produces far more than we need, it's just sucked up by the owner class. If we removed the owner class and their hoarding, we could all work less and still have more than enough to provide for those unwilling or unable to completely provide for themselves.

I personally would be happy to do a bit of work to help ensure people aren't starving or freezing to death because they're going through a depressive episode or even if they're just "lazy fucks". Pretty sure every one I'd consider a friend thinks the same.

You know, it's people with an attitude like yours, unwilling to help out without direct benefit, who I consider lazy, not the person with low ambition.

mojo_raisin ,

Good thing people like me exist that will not only feed the "freeloaders", but take care of you too when you break your leg.

mojo_raisin ,

I say ambition, drive, greed, etc are personality issues that cause harm to others and the environment.

While I'm sure there are a few individuals that would rather sit and die than go get some food, this is not something to actually be concerned with. You watch too much right wing TV telling you there's a whole class of people that just want to take from you, but what's actually happening is that this group is being stolen from and what you see as laziness is often just an unwillingness to facilitate being stolen from.

mojo_raisin ,

Without ambition and drive people would still be living in caves.

And we'd have a planet to live on indefinitely rather than letting a few thousand rich people destroy our world causing massive suffering. But really, there's a world between living in caves with zero progress and letting capitalists destroy our world while we praise them, I'm not suggesting we live in caves, I'm suggesting we don't let ambitious assholes kill us all while blaming us for the problems they create.

I don’t need some jabbering moron with an agenda to tell me how I should feel about things I can observe with my own eyes.

And you don't have an agenda of driving civilization in the direction you want? Are you that blind to your own behavior? You're engaging in a conversation about it and pushing a point, that's an agenda.

It’s always a situation where the few are carrying the many

That's very likely due to different people having different tolerance for exploitation. Just because you don't mind being exploited try to be a good boot licker doesn't mean others are bad because they don't want to be exploited. Maybe in a different situation you'd be viewed as the lazy one. It's not selfish to not work harder for another's gain.

mojo_raisin ,

Or have your phone location turned on and be super boring back and forth. When you deviate use a burner.

mojo_raisin ,

So, slaves?

mojo_raisin ,

The ratchet effect is real, but it least it buys us time to try to solve problems for real outside of electoral politics. The alternative effectively immediately eliminates any chances of solving any problem.

If you're worried about the ratchet effect it's because you've pinned your hopes on electoral politics; interestingly this argument often comes from people saying they don't believe in the power of electoral politics to effect change.

mojo_raisin ,

No no no, that's "cellulose", it's fine, nothing to see here.

mojo_raisin ,

You can use the parted module for partitioning

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/community/general/parted_module.html#ansible-collections-community-general-parted-module

Format with BTRFS or many others

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/community/general/filesystem_module.html#ansible-collections-community-general-filesystem-module

These might come in handy:

For ZFS, I'm not familiar but I found

Here's the index of all modules: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/index_module.html

mojo_raisin ,

They lost dream job status for me when I realized I was facilitating some evil shit. Like "oh! great job in genomics! I can help cure cancer!" Then realize it's "oh, help China build population scale genomic sequencing, wonder what they're gonna do with that?"

And "oh, edge computing, sounds cool", then realizing "oh, edge computing is mostly useful for facial recognition, wonder what people will use that for?"

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