Objection
@Objection@lemmy.ml
- Comment on Do you think that Edward Snowden is a hero? 17 hours ago:
Username checks out.
- Comment on Do you think that Edward Snowden is a hero? 17 hours ago:
That’s completely ridiculous.
- Comment on Why do companies require you to submit a resume but also put the same data into their forms? 2 days ago:
Pretty sure it’s because we live in hell and are being tortured by malevolent entities. I’m unclear on whether we are being punished for long-forgotten sins in our past lives, or whether it’s more of a feeding off our suffering for sustinance situation. Could be both.
The only thing I know for sure is that whatever beings set things up that way are not recognizable to me as human.
- Comment on What hot af take do you have that you think you will be HORRIBLY executed and shunned from society for? 2 days ago:
V.I. Lenin’s writings are historically significant and should be studied and understood from an academic perspective regardless of whether or not you agree with them.
- Comment on Was starting to run low on the essentials 4 days ago:
Cut off.
- Comment on I am fully optimized. AMA 1 week ago:
- Comment on Has anyone else noticed the strong pro CCP and anti-west vibes here? 1 week ago:
You’re right, I misremembered it. However there have been calls for France to repay the reparations which it still has not done, and Aristide was overthrown in a foreign-backed coup after making that call.
- Comment on Has anyone else noticed the strong pro CCP and anti-west vibes here? 1 week ago:
I support a multipolar world order, in a large part because I believe that’s what’s best for developing/non-aligned countries. Since the US has been the sole superpower and has sought to establish itself as the sole global hegemon, using military aggression to expand its influence and power, it seems pretty natural to oppose it and support competition.
If the US and China are both major powers, then non-aligned countries have the freedom to choose who they do business with, which means they have some ability to bargain for a better deal. If the US or the West were the only game in town, then you’d have to accept whatever they offer, or be shut out of the global marketplace. Furthermore, many of the natural resources of poor countries remain in the hands of the Western powers that seized them through force during colonialism (Haiti is still paying reparations to France for freeing the slaves, for example). Ending this system of neocolonialism is a priority, and that requires an alternative economic bloc.
I don’t believe that China invests abroad just out of the kindness of their hearts, however, China has expanded its power through peaceful economic development and trade. China has not been at war with anyone for decades, in contrast to the US which has waged (and is waging) multiple wars of aggression, for the sake of seizing resources. Furthermore, the West will sometimes just decide to steal the assets of poor countries that are invested in their banks, as the did with Venezuela. When has China done this?
Even if you dislike the Chinese system, I see it as a necessity that enabled other systems to survive. The West has a specific system that they want to impose on the entire world, and if you’re the only country not doing that system, you’re screwed. But China is a lot more flexible, and imposes fewer conditions on domestic policy. This in turn limits the ability of the West to impose their policies, because a country can always choose to walk.
- Comment on Has anyone else noticed the strong pro CCP and anti-west vibes here? 1 week ago:
Trump is not some outlier or momentary fluke. The roots of Trumpism go far back and there are material reasons why people support him. So long as those root causes are not addressed, you should not expect Trumpism to simply go away, and the only thing US liberals want is a return to the status quo (the same status quo that brought us Trump).
When Obama was president, the same sorts of voices existed. Trump himself entered politics by supporting the “Birther” movement (a conspiracy theory saying Obama was born in Africa and not the US). The right had a complete and total unwillingness to compromise or cooperate no matter how amiable Obama tried to be. They denounced him as some gay foreign Satan-worshipping communist, and that was while he was keeping the War in Afghanistan going, bailing out the banks, and enacting healthcare reform that was originally proposed by a Republican. This whole extreme-right media sphere developed that needed constant stories to run with, no matter was actually going on.
Before that, we had George W Bush. Bush created ICE, he tortured people, he invaded multiple countries and started decades-long wars of aggression, he enacted mass surveillance which illegally targeted not only innocent Americans but also foreigners, including heads of state.
At what point does it stop being, “When will the US go back to normal?” and start being, “When will the US finally change?” Trump is more mask off, and somewhat more unhinged and unpredictable, but most of what he’s done is just following existing trends where they’ve been heading the last 20 years or more.
- Comment on The Projected Truth 2 weeks ago:
I can only lead a horse to water, I can’t make you think.
- Comment on The Projected Truth 2 weeks ago:
Don’t try to explain things you neither understand nor care about then.
- Comment on The Projected Truth 2 weeks ago:
But you’re explaining it with such a bad example that it undermines the whole point, it’s like if you said, “Some things are just objective facts, like which poems are good.” That to me indicates that it’s not really a simple concept at all, you just don’t see the depth because you haven’t examined it. Being unwilling to examine it, framing that examination as “the bottomless argument of philosophical truth,” only reinforces that. If you’re not willing to examine the question, then don’t assert that you know the answer in the first place.
- Comment on The Projected Truth 2 weeks ago:
Yes.
Not trying to say that everything is subjective, but that in particular is kind of a bad example.
I just think you’re being dismissive, while setting your own ideas as being apart from philosophy.
- Comment on The Projected Truth 2 weeks ago:
This is such a load of bull.
The whole point of objectivity is that it allows for cooperation and understanding between people with different experiences. People can invent whatever ideas they like, but by testing those ideas against an objective physical standard, it becomes possible to determine which one is more correct. Without that, when views diverge, people default to stuff like “might makes right.”
Critical thinking is a process of examining and questioning of one’s preexisting beliefs, through rationality. Without that process, what you have is either the ideas that you have passively absorbed through society (primarily, the ideas of the ruling class), or your own made up stuff that other people have no reason to agree with, leading to an inability to unite around an alternative and a de facto victory for the status quo. Subjectivity is not true freedom, because it leads to division and confusion, and division is incapable of resisting oppression, “For what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one?”
It’s such a pet peeve for me the way you’re always trying to tie the validity of trans identities to a rejection of objectivity. Trans rights are objective! It is factual, testable, observable, that supporting trans identities has a positive effect on people’s mental health. In rejecting objectivity, you are, in fact, opening the door to say that subjective perspectives that are transphobic are just as true as anything else.
- Comment on The Projected Truth 2 weeks ago:
Apparently? You keep making philosophical assertions.
You don’t get to assert your philosophical views and then say, “I’m not interested is discussing philosophy” to avoid examination and criticism of those views.
- Comment on The Projected Truth 2 weeks ago:
I see, so you’re only interested in asserting your philosophical positions, not examining or defending them in any way.
- Comment on The Projected Truth 2 weeks ago:
people created the ideas of countries, then made a list of them. USA is on that list.
People? Which people? If I get a bunch of people and declare a micronation within what the US considers it’s borders, is that objectively a country or not? Or suppose I convince a bunch of Americans that Germany isn’t really a country, does it then cease to be a country despite what the Germans themselves believe?
In any case, I would think that if something falls under the standard of, “This is true because a bunch of people say it is, even though there’s nothing physical you can point to to prove it” then it seems somewhat absurd to call that an “objective fact” What do “objective” and “subjective” even mean, then?
- Comment on The Projected Truth 2 weeks ago:
truth=facts. facts are objective. it’s a fact that the USA is a country in north America. there is no disputing that.
Not trying to say that everything is subjective, but that in particular is kind of a bad example.
Countries are socially constructed. The US is something that only exists so long as people agree that it does. There is no objective, material way of determining where one country ends and another begins.
In fact, there was quite a bit of disputing that historically. Prior to the American Civil War, lots of people said that the US was not a country but a union between countries, they were called “states” after all, and it was common to say “The United States are” rather than “The United States is.” There are still successionists today who argue for that interpretation. To say that the US is objectively a country means that there must be something in material reality that we can point to to prove that one interpretation is correct and the other is incorrect. What is that thing?
Whatever that thing is would have significant implications for how we see the world and look at other disputes, whether we’re talking about Spain and Barcelona, the UK and Scotland, China and Tibet, or Israel and Palestine. For example, if you say that historically, most US secessionists supported slavery and therefore they lacked moral character and the position is illegitimate, then it follows that what states exist is a function of the moral character of their supporters, and that seems to be adding lots of assumptions and moving away from any sense of objectivity.
“The US exists” is much more subjective than something like “This chair exists.” With the latter, you could argue that grouping a collection of atoms into the category of “chair” is arbitrary and there’s no way of determining when an atom stops being a part of “chair,” but that’s much more pedantic than socially constructed concepts that don’t really have a physical essence.
- Comment on Local news did an entire segment featuring a guy who's mad about having to drive more carefully. 2 weeks ago:
I think the main thing to criticize is the fact that the news picked this one random person’s grievance to platform.
Would the news do the same if a cyclist complained that a road was unsafe for cyclists? A driver being upset, while an expert disagrees, is considered newsworthy. But I’d bet that if it was a random cyclist who was upset, even if the experts agreed with them, it wouldn’t make the news.
- Comment on Retirement Plan 🕛 2 weeks ago:
Now now, don’t shoot yourself. After all, you’re not the reason those things are happening.
- Comment on $1$ 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on wat 3 weeks ago:
That’s intuitive but actually completely wrong. There is no “absolute” reference frame, and nothing can move faster than light in any relative reference frame.
The only thing that gets around that is the expansion of space itself. It’s not that the objects are moving away from each other, it’s that the distance between them is expanding, causing them to become farther apart.
The best analogy is to picture an ant crawling on the surface of an expanding balloon. If the balloon keeps expanding fast enough forever, the ant won’t be able to make it from point A to point B. It’s not really that the ant is moving away from point B, it’s just that the distance is expanding faster than it can move.
- Comment on We produce more resources than we could ever consume in the least sustainable ways possible. 4 weeks ago:
It’s wild how ideas like this continue to exist despite being so contrary to evidence and reason, just because it shifts blame away from systemic issues and the ruling class.
- Comment on What is a game you can’t understand why its so popular ? 4 weeks ago:
- Comment on The house always wins 4 weeks ago:
- Comment on The house always wins 4 weeks ago:
That sounds like one of the deeper circles of Hell.
- Comment on .ml has got to be the only place on earth where I'd get downvoted for a comment like this 4 weeks ago:
That’s still not as fast of a development, and the conditions aren’t really comparable. China used to be among the poorest countries in the world.
And while their government has not always been ideal, it was undoubtably the best option on the table historically. The corrupt Nationalists didn’t do shit for the people (and pocketed foreign aid). Before that, with no central authority, was the warlord period. Before that was the backwards Qing dynasty. In all the thousands of years of Chinese history, nobody really did anything for the rural people until the communists.
- Comment on .ml has got to be the only place on earth where I'd get downvoted for a comment like this 4 weeks ago:
Marx… is convincing with his way of argumentation (at least if you’re a bit stupid)
I’m sorry, what? Have you ever actually tried to read Capital? Most of Marx’s works are dense and academic, drawing intellectual traditions that are often unfamiliar to modern readers (classical economics, Hegel, etc). Marx’s way of argumentation isn’t really geared toward the lowest common denominator.
It’s kinda funny how you can’t even keep your criticism straight through a single comment. In one sentence, reading Marx is a “chore” that nobody would want to slog through, in the very next one, Marx is so persuasive, his honeyed words easily swaying the minds of any who stumble across them, like the Sirens calling ships to their rocks.
As for “no good goal exists anymore” or “it’s hard to see what good goal tankies ever had” maybe we just like it when this sort of thing happens:
lemmy.ml/…/86eca1ab-0d3d-4d7e-99fa-a7a3ddb4c3dd.j…
The revolution that feeds the children gets my support.
When you figure out a better way to do that, get back to me.
- Comment on .ml has got to be the only place on earth where I'd get downvoted for a comment like this 4 weeks ago:
This is the absolute worst part of site culture, particularly on .world.
If you talk shit about another user or instance, then checking up on whether it’s actually true or not is not “following around and harassing” it’s just basic fact checking.
This is why I always say, “If someone says something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they’re lying.” At the very least, it should be disregarded as hearsay. But somehow the culture is that people get to talk shit and if you check them on it you’re the bad guy. How anyone can stand that BS is beyond me.
- Comment on .ml has got to be the only place on earth where I'd get downvoted for a comment like this 4 weeks ago:
