DictatrshipOfTheseus [comrade/them, any]
Yes. This. This is exactly what I was talking about in my other comment in this thread, posted before seeing this one. I was calling it scale instead of scope, but this is spot on.
People will pick and choose how things function at one scope and pretend it applies at others. A lot of people, even good well-meaning ones, will do this and fall into this trap, but particularly shitty people will do this as a way to justify their garbage beliefs or justify hurting and demeaning others. Exactly like OP image “you don’t matter 'cause the Earth doesn’t give a shit if you’re here or not as one person. You’re a loser for thinking you matter at all.” FUCK that. You absolutely matter, just not necessarily at the scale/scope of an entire planet orbiting a star, that doesn’t invalidate or make meaningless the just as real scale/scope at which you DO matter. Their application of how things function at scale is always used in whatever way is beneficial to them at the moment or to prove whatever flawed, even sadistic point they’re trying to make. Capitalists, politicians, and of course the mass media under their control do this constantly and it infuriates me to no end.
It really is a matter of scale. Even at the scale of society as a whole, you as an individual don’t “matter” in that your presence (or lack of it) isn’t going to impact its course or functionality. It’s literally why we have to organize in order to even have any hope of achieving our aims. We certainly don’t “matter” on a global scale. However, what the person in the OP image said is entirely true. At the scale of our families and social group, and absolutely at the scale of our individual experience, each of us matters profoundly. At the scale of our individual experience, each of us is a universe unto ourselves.
It is infuriating to me when people refuse to understand that what is true at one scale may not be (and usually isn’t) true at another scale, but that this does not invalidate how true things are at any other given scale. The fact that your impact on the galaxy as a whole is so small as to be effectively insignificant does not mean that your impact on the world you live in, literally your sphere of experience and influence, is insignificant, because the truth is that it is extremely significant at that scale.
Western culture and society is pathological in how it simultaneously acts as though the only reality is what exists at the scale of the individual when it comes to blame and “rEsPoNsIbiLitY” but will utterly diminish and demean the experience of any individual that doesn’t spend their existence on this earth in service of the great evil god of capital. It’s Thatcher’s “there is no such thing as society, only individual men and women and families.” Meanwhile every single one of those individual men and women (rather the ones who don’t own or control capital) are treated as nothing more than a cog in a machine, a sliver of utility to be used as such then expended and replaced as such. It’s a philosophy that cherry-picks only the convenient truths of how things work at various different given scales and applies them across the board as if they’re true at all other scales, all of course to serve the interests of the ruling class. It is a source of many of the philosophical contradictions of capitalism and the diseased society that results from it.
I’ve loved (and since missed) your weekly rankings. Fucking hilarious content. But I’m really happy to know that the reason they’ve been put on hiatus is because you’re gonna be a papa. Not happy about the difficulty part of course, I hope that all gets worked out comrade. Anyway, congratulations! Health and happiness to you, your wife, and your soon to be introduced to this world son.
Well that’s the whole thing though, we have no idea how phenomenal consciousness really fits in a (supposedly) completely physical universe. Our current models are just mathematical descriptions of fields and particles, we have no mathematical model for “love” or the “redness of red”.
But this just isn’t true. We have an understanding of emergence, emergent properties, and emergent processes. Consciousness (including experience and qualia) are emergent properties of all that mathematical physics we understand quite well. Any time the whole “why do feel then and why am I not a philosophical zombie?” question comes up as a response to this, it’s asking a question that doesn’t have an answer. And not in the way that it’s a question that doesn’t have an answer because we haven’t discovered it yet, but a question that doesn’t actually even make sense when you consider the philosophical context.
To use another example… It’s like asking “why is there a universe?” Well, who says there even is a “why” answer to that question? If we do end up resolving the issue of how Relativity and Quantum Mechanics don’t perfectly align in extreme conditions, we may well answer the question as to how there is a universe (which actually still is an unsolved problem). But again, asking “why” there is a universe is making a giant and unfounded assumption that there is a “why” or a “reason” that the universe exists when there is absolutely nothing that necessitates there being a “reason” for “why.”
The supposed hard problem of consciousness is no different. Qualia/experience is an emergent property of mathematical rules the same way that the complex and unpredictable undulation of schools of fish is an emergent property of individual fish following very simple rules of how to move relative to the fish next to them, and there being a “why” beyond that is ultimately just nonsensical. Obviously, you can give it further and separate explanations that seem to provide a “why,” like: “fish evolved to do this because those that did were more likely to reproduce, that’s why.” And that’s perfectly valid, but so too is saying “consciousness evolved this way because it was likewise beneficial to the reproduction of the systems that produced it, that’s why.” But that’s all just other angles to addressing the “how.” We have all the “how” necessary to explain consciousness, even if there are gaps here and there, just as there are gaps to every single scientific question there is. I know that may not feel satisfactory to a lot of people, but honestly, I think that’s only because of a combination of the unfortunate reductionist scientific paradigm and the resulting underappreciation for and misunderstanding of emergence as a real (scientific) phenomenon.
Don’t know of any, but there was a similar (if shorter) list going around a few months ago, and it was pretty much debunked point by point here: https://hexbear.net/post/275117
I know it was deployed against Iraqis during the first Gulf War, with Hillary Clinton claiming Saddam was issuing his troops with Viagra specifically so they could [redacted] more.
I don’t doubt r**e was a claim made against Iraqis too, but it’s the absurd claim about soldiers taking babies from incubators that most sticks out in my memory when it comes to Iraq and the first Gulf War. However, Hilary Clinton talking about soldiers being given viagra was definitely about Gaddafi. Keep in mind who was in power when those respective conflicts were happening.
I don’t mean to refute that but they do have somewhat strict laws around nazi apoligia.
Yeah, about that…
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Mostly it was about fooling you into thinking that, as a worker, you have even an iota of power within that company.
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You: “The owners deserve all the value that results from owning the company and not the workers because the owners own the company, duh.” Reread what you said and note the ridiculous circular logic.
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The company would continue to function perfectly fine without the owner(s), yet would immediately cease to function or even exist without the workers. The only role the owner plays in the company (that the workers operate), is to siphon the value away from the workers who made it and unto themselves.
