I seriously cannot have any degree of nuanced conversation here.
Like I get it, we all know capitalism is bad, but it feels like every time I or anyone go towards discussing the steps that need to be taken to address current looming problems in the short term, someone has to jump in and shut it down with "capitalism bad >:[ " and tear down any idea presented because its not complete and total destruction of the current economic model.
The result just feels like an echo chamber where no actual solutions get presented other than someone posting whole ass dissertations on their 33-step (where 30/33 steps are about as vague as “we’ll just handle it”) plan to fully convert the world to an anarchist commune.
Edit: I still vastly prefer Lemmy and the fediverse and a whole, my complaint here is that many of you are TOO INTENSE. You blow up small scale discussion.
I completely agree. However, I also think its better than ‘most’ internet places.
There is a down-vote brigade around any kind of criticism of a knee jerk reaction people are having to a headline. I think because of the current political climate, nuance around responsibility for the state of things simply isn’t suffered, which I do understand the sentiment. However, I’ve also been pleasantly surprised at the number of 3+ deep comment threads, which seems to be about where the nuance appears.
Its really the knee jerk downvoters and one line commenters who do actually lack critical thinking skills, but this isn’t unique to lemmy. Its all over, hackernews has them too, there is simply a larger effort to ‘appear smart’ on hn than lemmy. Lemmy is more casual, which is fine. This is a space for casual discussion, and hot takes are fine and should be welcome.
I’ll use a political example, such as my concern around how much water carrying I see for groups like congressional Democrats. If you push back on something coming from NYT as being a ‘Democratic win’, you’ll be very quickly downvoted below 50%. However, I don’t think the lack of nuance is because of lemmy or the demographic here. I think its from a place of real fear around what might happen if the US loses its democracy to fascism that is generally palpable across the internet and offline as well. People are materially very afraid, and reacting without nuance right now, and I think the fear is justified. However, if we want to find solutions, we need to maintain a clear head and keep discussions happening. Its open forums like Lemmy where opinions are made and nuanced developed; there needs to be space for that.
This same point can be extended to issues around global war, climate change, the rise of global fascism, the usurping of generations of potential by the oligarchical class, any of the innumerable ills we are currently staring down the barrel of. Its a stressful time and people are rightfully scared and worried. Scared worried people don’t do nuance. They react. Up for things they think they agree with, down for things they don’t. No nuance.
Largely I agree with the point, but I don’t think its a lemmy thing in the current climate.
It’s becoming way more difficult to introduce nuanced news to a mass audience.
People aren’t informed outside of their own bubble. I’m self aware enough to seek out all sides of the story. Even if it means I have to learn an opposing viewpoint.
I hate having content suggested and ‘curated’ for me on every single platform. It’s a divisive echo chamber.
I like your point about a place of fear. I did an edit to clarify that I still think the Fediverse beats other social media and my complaint is a criticism coming from a place of love. It’s very hard to continue wanting to engage in low-level discussion around issue when I know someone is about to take it over with either some grand (in scale, not concept) statement about the issue, or abject defeatism.
Humans have been trying to make Capitalism “work” for the past 400 years. It. Doesn’t. Work. We’re now at an extinction level event due to just how atrociously bad Capitalism is for the human species (and all species for that matter) .
Is there an /s missing or not? Genuinely hard to tell. Your comment is so fitting to what OP is complaining about.
There’s no /s missing. Just because the op complained doesn’t make the facts less true.
I think we agree on capitalism for the most part, but do you see how OP and others might find your comment unhelpful?
As OP says themselves, yes, they know capitalism is bad. Pointing it out and leading every discussion onto it doesn’t make for a very interesting or nuanced debate.
As others have said, capitalism is here to stay for at least several decades, probably closer to a century. Major societal change is unrealistic on the short term. I think OP (and I think I largely agree) thinks that it would be better to talk more concretely about the small incremental changes we can make to make society better today.
“we’re moving straight towards that iceberg, we’re all going to die!”
“I agree but this reaction is not being helpful. Now help me rearrange these deck chairs…”
I mean, this kinda comes back to OPs complaint again. As I attempt to enter in this discussion with a more nuanced take, you reply to me in a sarcastic tone with a metaphor (that I don’t think fits very well to reality) that seems to imply that either I fully agree with you or I am part of the problem or at least not doing anything helpful.
Surely you realize that these topics are complicated and there’s not a black/white dichotomy? Can you understand how OP and others might find comments like that off-putting, as you either need to fully agree or you’re part of the problem?
I also don’t think this stance or attitude is helping your case actually. If you want to convince people to action, this is not the way to do it. This just puts them off and pushes them away.
Not every post I make is meant to be a convincing call to action. Not every situation is going to be helped at this. I surmised that this thread - full of smug centrists pointing out how we “have to be realistic” and downvoting everyone pointing out that being this way has led us directly to a climate apocalypse - is not going to be worth the effort.
(that I don’t think fits very well to reality)
I think it’s the most apt analogy there is. There, the only possible solution would have been an effective mutiny, to wrest the wheel from the captain and sail to safer waters, and damn the journey time or company profits. Much like the only solution we have right now it to wrest the “wheel” of society from the rich an d damn company profits.
But I saw you elsewhere engaging in unscientific climate denialism, much like every capitalist apologist has to in order to stave of cognitivie dissonance, so I have no patience to talk to antiscientific people.
Surely you realize that these topics are complicated and there’s not a black/white dichotomy? Can you understand how OP and others might find comments like that off-putting, as you either need to fully agree or you’re part of the problem?
There is no complications in saying that an Anthropogenic extinction is underway and we need to stop the system powering it.
But I saw you elsewhere engaging in unscientific climate denialism, much like every capitalist apologist has to in order to stave of cognitivie dissonance, so I have no patience to talk to antiscientific people.
Where? I’m sorry if I’ve offended you but I am definitely in favour of doing all we can to stop climate change and I am definitely not anti-scientific or in denial about climate change (I fully believe climate change exists and is caused by humans, for the record).
Please, let’s not devolve to name-calling or insults.
You agree this is an extinction level event? You agree capitalism is largely at fault?
Climate change is legitimately a very large threat to the planet and while it likely will not drive humans to extinction, it’s certainly killing lots of nature. So I don’t think calling it “extinction level” is inaccurate.
And yea, capitalism definitely has at least a part of the fault.
But again, these things are complicated and any discussion around them must reflect that with nuance. It’s hard to say if climate change would have happened regardless of capitalism (edit: i.e. climate change could still have happened if we had some other kind of society) - it could be.
Ok. So imagine a world that progressed technologically like we did until the 70s, but it’s some kind of decentralized communism focusing on democracy at work. (Business is worker owned and operated)
In the 70s, do they still suppress the science of climate change?I can’t say for sure, but it seems far less likely to me. Thoughts?
I think I agree with you, it seems less likely, but we can’t know. But also, society is not a choice between A and B. You may as well be hypothesising about what would have happened in an anarchist society, or dictatorial or monarchy or whatever.
I think this kinda falls into what OP is complaining about again. We can’t change what happened before the 1970s. What does it help to theorycraft like we had a time machine? I’m much more interested in what we can do today about tomorrow, and I think that discussion would probably also be a lot more productive.
What you are describing is a correct “image” of human-nature.
It also is a correct understanding of why humankind won’t get its viability in-order until it’s far far far too late to make any difference.
There are 1 or 2 papers, recently, on how human-nature is reactive to obvious-problems, and how that makes it impossible to prevent ClimatePunctuation, as I call it, from killing either all or nearly-all of our kind from this planet/system.
Nuance & considered-reason, both, have no place in imprinted animal-reaction, which is what is displacing considered-reason from our world, now.
“dog whistle” is just a euphamism for imprinted/programmed animal-reaction, limbic-mind’s displacement for considered-reason.
Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast & Slow” is the most important psychology-book in our world, right now, it is on this 2-system basis of our minds…
All the intense-but-not-actual/workable enforcing of ideology-addicts… it’ll never save us.
fundamentally, consider that addiction is a mechanism, not a problem: addiction-to-integrity is a Good Thing™, right?
Addiction-to-growing-up, addiction-to-wisdom, addiction-to-outgrowing-ignorance, addiction-to-being-a-proper-parent, etc…
But that is nuance.
Try telling any of the ideology-addicts whose ideology is centered on “addiction” that addiction is just an impersonal-mechanism, and it is what-the-addiction-is-TO that can be a problem … and you’ll discover how rabid/automatic/closed minds can be.
shruggeth
No matter: if life is what human-ignorance need eradicate from this world, then … eventually … life’ll try again, elsewhere.
An eldless stream of Universes, filled with worlds, it doesn’t matter if we won’t earn considered-reason, does it?
It’ll happen somewhere…
someday…
Statistically, it must, right?
_ /\ _
I discovered Lemmy and Hacker news at roughly the same time, and the difference in comment quality is striking. Obviously HN is a lot more mature platform, and more specialised, but still… People over there are lamenting the quality of their comments and saying they’re not what they used to be, but the majority are interesting and constructive
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It’s cool if you like to circle jerk with libertarian tech bros I suppose.
omg lyk dis iz wat op is tlkin abt!!!,
It’s obvious these people don’t enjoy this place, yet instead of leaving to find somewhere else they do enjoy or putting in a modicum of effort snd starting a community to foster likeminded peoples, they’d rather moan to feel validated.
Or in other words, they want a right wing discussion board and are upset people would rather engage in other topics.
Did we just have a different post on this topic a couple days ago? I can dig up my reply from the last thread but basically Lemmy and the fediverse is similarly bad for political discourse as the other social platforms because of the (semi)anonymous of social media and the fact we don’t really have the mental bandwidth needed to devote time to have nuanced conversations with strangers.
I find Lemmy significantly worse than reddit was in this regard. The number of times I’ve had my different (not unpopular outside of lemmy) opinion met immediately with personal insults is way higher here in the few months I’ve been here than my years with reddit.
I’ve just been learning not to engage on any of the lemmy propaganda areas, and that leaves me with a lot less active communities.
I seem to have a knack for pissing off fanboys. There’s no use using logic and reason.
I’ve found the same and sadly when I open Lemmy up I see the same half dozen articles still at the top of home. I’ve done back to Reddit on Mobile where there’s still a ton of new content.
I agree, and attribute that to the kind of people who would boycott Reddit forever, where the largest part of the lemmy population seems to originate from.
As much as I roll my eyes at the overuse of the term, lemmy is mostly comprised of the "woke"est of the reddit population.
People who make their politics their personality appear at both ends of the spectrum.
Lemmy is less ban happy than reddit, so I don’t mind throwing down in the comments. Do your part, fight against stupidity.
It’s not less ban happy at all.
Reddit will ban you from some subs just for commenting in other subs, no way it’s as bad here
Well, entire instances are banned (defederated), sometimes for barely any reasons. Sooo it’s even worse
Like I get it, we all know capitalism is bad
Perhaps it’s you who isn’t bringing the nuance
Yeah. It’s a moderately popular forum. You need to find a small community or instance to get nuance because places trend towards echo chambers after a certain size
That isn’t a universally unpopular opinion; at least two of us hold it lol.
I may have to ignore all the politics and news communities for a while and focus on more important things like star trek memes.
Maybe try [email protected] ? It’s more laid back
I think this is mostly because it’s a smaller community overall so when you’re in those politically minded subreddits, it’s all the same opinion. I think it’ll change as lemmy grows and more people with diverse experiences and outlooks join the discussions.
While I agree, I will add that therein lies part of the problem. Many people will see those extreme reactions, decide no one is willing to hear any sort of dissenting opinion, and write off lemmy as a whole :(
This is my big problem with online spaces. Yes it’s great to demand that everything should be different, but I’ve spun on this planet for a few decades and all I can say is change happens slowly.
We’re still dealing with the fallout from slavery and it ended over a century ago. A decade ago I fought for gay marriage and I thought we won, but it’s still being contested.
Keep fighting for change, but know that we need to focus on small victories. Places like the US are not going to give up capitalism in the next year. Or the next decade. Or century. What we can do however is push for strong regulation, housing, and rights.
Nuance here is important, and I agree dropping the “everything bad is bad” talk is key. We all know it’s bad, but a country is a big ship, and a big ship takes a very long time to turn around.
110% agree.
I could say “you know, I guess I can kinda see why people thought free market capitalism would work”
And someone will come out of the woodwork like “I can’t believe you think billionaires profiting off exploitation is actually a good idea”
First of all, no? Lol I’m saying I understand why people might think it would work, but for some reason forget that we as a people are generally selfish. Human nature and corruption and all that, people in power hoard power.
So basically you’re saying capitalism would work if human nature were completely different? Gee I wonder why people don’t take your views seriously.
The irony is palpable.
What if corporations didn’t count as people? If they didn’t worship the almighty dollar and put profits over people? Could capitalism work?
No idea, probably not, but I’m not an economist. And humans are notoriously bad at screwing up basically every form of government.
Also, that wasn’t my viewpoint, but you gotta admit that a lot of things in life would be better if human nature were completely (positively) different. Our lizard brains are wired for self preservation.
Wait, are you not being sarcastic…?
Whenever I have a broad vague discussion of the world that is subject to significant interpretations and assumptions it creates a lot of friction too. Contraversy is one place where Lemmy’s high response rates work against it.
To the people doing “capitalism bad” replies I implore you to check out socialist economists. Fleshed out descriptions of socialism and communism usually discuss emulating the successes of industrial capitalism while mitigating the failures. The idea of armed revolutionary communism is largely a mess that only ever worked in rural environments.
Armed revolutionary communism appeals to teenagers and simpletons, that’s why you see it brought up a lot on Lemmy.
Fleshed out descriptions of socialism and communism usually discuss emulating the successes of industrial capitalism while mitigating the failures.
This is true for socialism, but communist economics are traditionally moneyless.
Socialism is conceptualized as a transitional economic stage, so it makes a lot of sense it would share commonalities with capitalism.
Armed revolutionary communism is a bit of a misnomer, since it’s a part of that socialist transitional stage towards communism. If memory serves, it has basically only been done in rural/early industrial states.
Currency has always been a metaphor for energy and other resources to help alleviate the incongruities of a barter economy. A moneyless society is just a barter economy even if people’s needs are largely met.
A moneyless society is just a barter economy even if people’s needs are largely met.
I’m not even sure this is really true, but even if it was it would still be fundamentally different from industrial capitalism.
The point is not that its the same as capitalism, its just there are constraints on social reality as there are on physical resources. Money is a state intervention and one of the results are systems that skim money off the top of it. Its obvious that an effecient theoretical economy would be more efficient without money as it creates a lot of unwanted problems.
Can you clarify the intent and meaning of this original statement? Maybe i’ve misunderstood what you’re trying to say:
To the people doing “capitalism bad” replies I implore you to check out socialist economists. Fleshed out descriptions of socialism and communism usually discuss emulating the successes of industrial capitalism while mitigating the failures
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Just hexbear did the trick for me, although I also dont shy away from blocking users if I find nothing of value coming from their comments.
They will still be able to influence votes, I believe. Defederation is the only way to prevent that.
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Lemmygrad certainly won’t downvote me they banned me in the first what three days of me making an account so they can’t see my comments. I wear the title “NATO apologist” with pride (even though I don’t like NATO), translated it means “Doesn’t want Ukraine invaded and argues so well that it might actually pull people away from our cult”.
They don’t ban you for simply going “tankies bad”, they thrive on that kind of easily dismissible stuff, fuels their victim complex and provides them, by downvoting, with a sense of agency and accomplishment they lack in the real world. Tons of threads that look very different when you’re looking at them from lemmygrad.
Lemmygrad certainly won’t downvote me
I’m not worried about them downvoting people. I’m worried about them upvoting whatever fits their agenda to the top of the front page.
Then they will also implicitly upvote the takedown comment that debunks it to smithereens, that they can’t see because they’ve long since banned everyone posting such comments.
If you tally votes by stance that might be an issue, but if you tally them by quality or impact the situation looks quite different. You’ll see, nay actually you do see (or at least I have), a +80-50 comment on the top, directly followed by a +50-0 one debunking it. Noone is going to take the first one seriously with that ratio. Even not being aware of lemmygrad, people would just assume that the first comment’s original upvotes were because the takedown hadn’t been written yet. Bonus: The first comment came from lemmygrad and its OP can’t even see the rebuttal and follow up with further bullshit, saving everyone lots of time.
It’s just as bad on Lemmy.world.
Got people here literally rooting for the Houthis and Hamas, which are both part of nearly identical, extreme, right wing authoritarian ideologies.
I have done this several weeks ago, and I agree it helps.
