Comments by "Dan" (@Dan-ud8hz) on "The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder"
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"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
-- President Dwight D. Eisenhower
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"The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said 'This is mine', and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."
— J.J. Rousseau, 1754
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“After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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“After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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"In his book A Primate's Memoir, Sapolsky studied the activities and lifestyle of the Forest Troop to explore the relationship between stress and disease. In typical baboon fashion, the males behaved badly, angling either to assume or maintain dominance with higher ranking males or engaging in bloody battles with lower ranking males, which often tried to overthrow the top baboon by striking tentative alliances with fellow underlings. Females were often harassed and attacked. Internecine feuds were routine. Through a heartbreaking twist of fate, the most aggressive males in the Forest Troop were wiped out. The males, which had taken to foraging in an open garbage pit adjacent to a tourist lodge, had contracted bovine tuberculosis, and most died between 1983 and 1986. Their deaths drastically changed the gender composition of the troop, more than doubling the ratio of females to males, and by 1986 troop behavior had changed considerably as well; males were significantly less aggressive.
After the deaths, Sapolsky stopped observing the Forest Troop until 1993. Surprisingly, even though no adult males from the 1983–1986 period remained in the Forest Troop in 1993 (males migrate after puberty), the new males exhibited the less aggressive behavior of their predecessors. Around this time, Sapolsky and Share also began observing another troop, called the Talek Troop. The Talek Troop, along with the pre-TB Forest Troop, served as controls for comparing the behavior of the post-1993 Forest Troop. The authors found that while in some respects male to male dominance behaviors and patterns of aggression were similar in both the Forest and control troops, there were differences that significantly reduced stress for low ranking males, which were far better tolerated by dominant males than were their counterparts in the control troops. The males in the Forest Troop also displayed more grooming behavior, an activity that's decidedly less stressful than fighting. Analyzing blood samples from the different troops, Sapolsky and Share found that the Forest Troop males lacked the distinctive physiological markers of stress, such as elevated levels of stress-induced hormones, seen in the control troops.
In light of these observations, the authors investigated various models that might explain how the Forest Troop preserved this (relatively) peaceful lifestyle, complete with underlying physiological changes. One model suggests that nonhuman primates acquire cultural traits through observation. Young chimps may learn how to crack nuts with stones by watching their elders, for example. In this case, the young baboon transplants might learn that it pays to be nice by watching the interactions of older males in their new troop. Or it could be that proximity to such behavior increases the likelihood that the new males will adopt the behavior. Yet another explanation could be that males in troops with such a high proportion of females become less aggressive because they don't need to fight as much for female attention and are perhaps rewarded for good behavior. But it could be that the females had a more direct impact: new male transfers in the Forest Troop were far better received by resident females than new males in the other troops.
Sapolsky and Share conclude that the method of transmission is likely either one or a combination of these models, though teasing out the mechanisms for such complex behaviors will require future study. But if aggressive behavior in baboons does have a cultural rather than a biological foundation, perhaps there's hope for us as well."
(Emergence of a Peaceful Culture in Wild Baboons):
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"After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy."
-- Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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“Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete beastiality, and it all comes form lying continually to others and himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. it sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked up on a word and made a mountain out of a pea--he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility...”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
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"I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals."
Albert Einstein, 'Why Socialism?'
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
Isaac Newton
"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."
Stephen Hawking, 2015 Reddit AMA
"Above all, we should bear in mind that our liberty is not an end in itself; it is a means to win respect for human dignity for all classes of our society.”
Admiral H.G. Rickover, Father of the US Nuclear Navy
“There is no joy equal to that of being able to work for all humanity and doing what you're doing well.”
R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path
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"If the attack had been of some more violent kind it might have been easier to resist. What chilled and almost cowed him was the union of malice with something nearly childish. For temptation, for blasphemy, for a whole battery of horrors, he was in some sort prepared: but hardly for this petty, indefatigable nagging as of a nasty little boy at a preparatory school. Indeed no imagined horror could have surpassed the sense which grew within him as the slow hours passed, that this creature was, by all human standards, inside out - its heart on the surface and its shallowness at the heart. On the surface, great designs and an antagonism to Heaven which involved the fate of worlds: but deep within, when every veil had been pierced, was there, after all, nothing but a black puerility, an aimless empty spitefulness content to sate itself with the tiniest cruelties, as love does not disdain the smallest kindness?"
― C.S. Lewis, Perelandra (1943)
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"After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy."
-- Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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“After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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"The paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
“Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'.”
― George Orwell, Partisan Review (1942)
"The feeling I have after killing a Nazi is the feeling of a hunter who has killed a beast of prey. Every time my bullet fells a Nazi I have the feeling that I have saved lives. Any people who have had Nazis trampling over their land know that. For the Nazis kill children, women, old men. To let a Nazi remain alive in your land is to abet the murder of your own people. Only the dead Nazi can he trusted to leave the innocent unharmed. Every Hitlerite killed is a step forward on the road to the liberation of mankind."
― Lyudmila 'Lady Death' Pavlichenko of the Ukraine, Speech to Americans (1942)
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Now that's Orwellian.
“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good,' for instance. If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well--better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good,' what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still...In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words--in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston?”
― George Orwell, 1984
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"After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy."
"In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice."
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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“Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity…”
― Frederick Douglass
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Ever hear of the acronym "DARVO" regarding behavior of abusers?
Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim/Offender.
It's also the root of modern "conservative" politics.
"The embrace, by working Americans, of policies that hurt their own interests can be understood on the basis of Ferenczi’s model of identification with the aggressor. Intrafamilial child abuse is often followed by the abuser’s denial. Children typically comply with abuse, in behavior and by embracing the abuser’s false reality, under threat of emotional abandonment. Similarly in the sociopolitical sphere, increasing threats of cultural and economic dispossession have pressed working Americans to adopt an ideology that misrepresents reality and justifies their oppression. In society as in the family, there can be a compensatory narcissistic reaction to forfeiting one’s rights that, ironically, encourages feelings of power and specialness while facilitating submission."
(The traumatic basis for the resurgence of right-wing politics among working Americans)
DOI: 10.1057/pcs.2015.53
"When effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases."
(Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism)
10.1177/0146167212439213
“If all you had ever felt toward another person were the cold wish to “win,” how would you understand the meaning of love, of friendship, of caring? You would not understand. You would simply go on dominating, and denying, and feeling superior. Perhaps you would experience a little emptiness sometimes, a remote sense of dissatisfaction, but that is all.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him."
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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💯
“Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete beastiality, and it all comes form lying continually to others and himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. it sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked up on a word and made a mountain out of a pea--he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility...”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
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Socialized democracy was used to pull the US out of the Great Depression with FDR's New Deal and worked exceedingly well up until 1980, when Reagan's economics (tax cuts on the wealthy, removal of regulation) started to reduce and eventually lower the life expectancy of the average American.
"Even before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic occurred, the US was mired in a 40-year population health crisis. Since 1980, life expectancy in the US has increasingly fallen behind that of peer countries, culminating in an unprecedented decline in longevity since 2014."
doi: 10.1001/jama.2020.26339
The Preamble (and Philosophical Cornerstone) to the US Constitution is a leftist manifesto that we've yet to live up to:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
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The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (Economic Historian Carlo Cipolla):
1. "Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation."
2. "The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person."
3. "A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses."
4. "Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake."
5. "A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person."
The Sixth Law of Stupidity: A Biophysical Interpretation of Carlo Cipolla's Stupidity Laws (Ilaria Perissi and Ugo Bardi)
6. "Humans are the stupidest species in the ecosystem."
"Cipolla’s quadrant highlights several fundamental features of those systems that can be described as both “complex” and “autocatalytic,” where the growth rate is proportional to the size of the stocks. These systems include living creatures, biomes, entire ecosystems, as well as human-created entities such as companies, organizations, and entire economic systems. The analysis of Cipolla’s quadrant, carried out using the Lotka-Volterra model shows the similarity of many phenomena driven by the dissipation of energy potentials: from life to commerce [26]. There are, indeed, some basic laws at work in these systems and when we use the term “law” for a physical system we mean that some factors are at work to keep it, if not perfectly regulated, at least within some boundaries.
Cipolla’s quadrant tells us that these complex systems are all dominated by the same factors, but that these factors can operate in different ways. The simplest case is the predator/prey (bandit/victim) relationship, in which the predator seeks only maximum short-term profit. The result is periodical oscillations, homeorhesis. It is also possible to see the condition of “stupidity” where the actions of the actors in the exchanges lead to doom for everyone and everything. In ecosystems it is extinction, in economic systems, it is financial ruin. The analysis also shows the possibility for these systems to adjust in such a way to attain the condition that Cipolla describes as “intelligent people” and that in ecosystems goes under the name of “symbiosis.” As proposed by Lynn Margulis [20], symbiotic systems that go under the name of “holobionts” are the basic unit of the ecosystem. We may extend this definition to all kinds of autocatalytic complex systems, including those forming the human economy. But if holobionts are an efficient unit of energy dissipation, why does stupidity exist? In particular, why is it so common in the economy as Cipolla correctly notes? Cipolla’s description of stupid people is that “..some are stupid and others are not, and that the difference is determined by nature and not by cultural forces or factors. One is stupid in the same way one is red-haired; one belongs to the stupid set as one belongs to a blood group. A stupid man is born a stupid man by an act of Providence.” What Cipolla calls “an act of Providence” may be seen also as the result of the genetic setup of human beings. Indeed, humans are a relatively recent element of the ecosystem: modern humans are believed to have appeared only some 300,000 years ago, although other hominins practicing the same lifestyle may be as old as a few million years. Yet, this is a young age in comparison to that of most species currently existing in the ecosphere. So, humankind’s stupidity may be not much more than an effect of the relative immaturity of our species, which still has to learn how to live in harmony with the ecosystem. That explains what we called here “the 6th law of stupidity,” stating that humans are the stupidest species on Earth. It is a condition that may lead the human species to extinction in a non-remote future. But it is also possible that, if humans survive, one day they will learn how to interact with the ecosystem of their planet without destroying it. Acknowledgment. One of us (U.B.) would like to remember the figure of Carlo Maria Cipolla (1922-2000), whom he had a chance to meet in Berkeley in the 1980s. Cipolla was a brilliant and creative mind, but also a kind and open personality. His work, not just about stupidity, is still having an important impact on the way we see the world."
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It's not the emotion itself, it's what the pseudo-emotion is used for. It's weaponized self-pity and it's sociopathic manipulation.
“After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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It's not that he's crying it's that he's crying over nothing. He's pitying himself and that's a sign of sociopathy.
“After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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"If the attack had been of some more violent kind it might have been easier to resist. What chilled and almost cowed him was the union of malice with something nearly childish. For temptation, for blasphemy, for a whole battery of horrors, he was in some sort prepared: but hardly for this petty, indefatigable nagging as of a nasty little boy at a preparatory school. Indeed no imagined horror could have surpassed the sense which grew within him as the slow hours passed, that this creature was, by all human standards, inside out - its heart on the surface and its shallowness at the heart. On the surface, great designs and an antagonism to Heaven which involved the fate of worlds: but deep within, when every veil had been pierced, was there, after all, nothing but a black puerility, an aimless empty spitefulness content to sate itself with the tiniest cruelties, as love does not disdain the smallest kindness?"
― C.S. Lewis, Perelandra (1943)
“A part of a healthy conscience is being able to confront consciencelessness. When you teach your daughter, explicitly or by passive rejection, that she must ignore her outrage, that she must be kind and accepting to the point of not defending herself or other people, that she must not rock the boat for any reason, you are NOT strengthening her prosocial sense, you are damaging it--and the first person she will stop protecting is herself.”
“In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
Ever hear of the acronym "DARVO" regarding behavior of abusers?
Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim/Offender.
It's also the root of modern "conservative" politics.
"The embrace, by working Americans, of policies that hurt their own interests can be understood on the basis of Ferenczi’s model of identification with the aggressor. Intrafamilial child abuse is often followed by the abuser’s denial. Children typically comply with abuse, in behavior and by embracing the abuser’s false reality, under threat of emotional abandonment. Similarly in the sociopolitical sphere, increasing threats of cultural and economic dispossession have pressed working Americans to adopt an ideology that misrepresents reality and justifies their oppression. In society as in the family, there can be a compensatory narcissistic reaction to forfeiting one’s rights that, ironically, encourages feelings of power and specialness while facilitating submission."
(The traumatic basis for the resurgence of right-wing politics among working Americans)
DOI: 10.1057/pcs.2015.53
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@dan2178 Junkie Jordan is weaponizing his self-pity and you're falling for it. Context matters.
“After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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@FUNKY_BUTTLOVIN Ever hear of the acronym "DARVO" regarding behavior of abusers?
Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim/Offender.
It's also the root of modern "conservative" politics.
"The embrace, by working Americans, of policies that hurt their own interests can be understood on the basis of Ferenczi’s model of identification with the aggressor. Intrafamilial child abuse is often followed by the abuser’s denial. Children typically comply with abuse, in behavior and by embracing the abuser’s false reality, under threat of emotional abandonment. Similarly in the sociopolitical sphere, increasing threats of cultural and economic dispossession have pressed working Americans to adopt an ideology that misrepresents reality and justifies their oppression. In society as in the family, there can be a compensatory narcissistic reaction to forfeiting one’s rights that, ironically, encourages feelings of power and specialness while facilitating submission."
(The traumatic basis for the resurgence of right-wing politics among working Americans)
“In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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Never ever give a sociopath your pity.
“After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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"The paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
“Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'.”
― George Orwell, Partisan Review (1942)
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Absolutely.
“In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice."
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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@buzzhawk “What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity.”
― Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
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Biggest (or most obvious) logical mistake of Atlas Shrugged (and Objectivism, more generally): Ayn Rand’s “greatest” work required more than a thousand pages to “elaborate” on Aristotle’s contributions to the law of non-contradiction using a fantasy whose physicist hero invents a free energy device (violating the law of non-contradiction, ¬(p ∧ ¬p), as well as violating basic laws of physics).
Biggest aesthetic/literary mistake: Deep-sea divers say that “divers that can’t tie a knot, tie a lot.” Shakespeare wrote “brevity is the soul of wit.”
Biggest character/ethics/morality mistake, part 1: she equivocates what in real-life are Promethean “demonstrators” (from the latin demonstratus, past participle of demonstrare “to point out, indicate, demonstrate”, figuratively, “to prove, establish”) like Newton, Einstein, Bohr, Tesla, Fuller, and Hawking with “monsters” (from the Latin monstrum, “divine omen (especially one indicating misfortune), portent, sign,” figuratively “repulsive character, object of dread, awful deed, abomination”) like child murderer William Edward Hickman, whose characteristics she admired:
“[The] claim that Hickman’s greatest crime is his anti-socialness confirmed my idea of the public’s attitude in this case - and explains my involuntary, irresistible sympathy for him, which I cannot help feeling just because of this and in spite of everything else.”
― Ayn Rand, Journals, (p. 42)
“There is a lot that is purposely, senselessly horrible about him. But that does not interest me. I want to remember his actions and characteristics that will be useful for the boy in my story. His limitless daring and his frightful sense of humor…”
― Ayn Rand, Journals, (p. 43)
Whereas the actual character intentions and conclusions of said Promethean demonstrators aren’t difficult to find:
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
― Isaac Newton
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
― Niels Bohr
"I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals."
― Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?
“What we now want most is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth and the elimination of that fanatic devotion to exalted ideals of national egoism and pride, which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife.”
― Nikola Tesla
"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."
― Stephen Hawking, 2015 Reddit AMA
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"If the attack had been of some more violent kind it might have been easier to resist. What chilled and almost cowed him was the union of malice with something nearly childish. For temptation, for blasphemy, for a whole battery of horrors, he was in some sort prepared: but hardly for this petty, indefatigable nagging as of a nasty little boy at a preparatory school. Indeed no imagined horror could have surpassed the sense which grew within him as the slow hours passed, that this creature was, by all human standards, inside out - its heart on the surface and its shallowness at the heart. On the surface, great designs and an antagonism to Heaven which involved the fate of worlds: but deep within, when every veil had been pierced, was there, after all, nothing but a black puerility, an aimless empty spitefulness content to sate itself with the tiniest cruelties, as love does not disdain the smallest kindness?" ―C.S. Lewis, Perelandra
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"Orwellian" is a more appropriate word for describing the restriction of language:
“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good,' for instance. If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well--better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good,' what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still...In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words--in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston?”
― George Orwell, 1984
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“After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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@BarryLyndon2025 I am non-religious and understand the allegory perfectly well. I guarantee I'm more familiar with the mythology and metaphor of the Bible than Jordan Peterson is. It's exactly why I'm not religious.
The wallowing in self-pity to garner sympathy after dehumanizing people is a big red flag for sociopathy.
“After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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@omnibus5359 I think there's more synchrony in the language now than there used to be, but "libertarian" was used by at least some prominent Europeans and a few people I've known whose political beliefs more closely corresponded with Kropotkin's ideas of Anarchism than any of Ayn Rand's nonsensical Dunning-Kruger overconfident incompetence. I wish I could recall more clearly who used this terminology, sorry.
It never really made sense to me either, but there's a lot of bad faith linguistic enantiodromia in the modern disinformation atmosphere, Ayn Rand's explicit word-twisting of "we" (the first and most important word of the US Constitution) into a scare-word in Anthem and "selfish" into a supposed virtue in everything she wrote are a couple of examples of what I mean.
“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good,' for instance. If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well--better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good,' what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still...In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words--in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston?”
― George Orwell, 1984
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"In truth, there was only one Christian and he died on the cross."
Friedrich Nietzsche
"What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity."
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
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"The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed."
William Gibson
"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."
Stephen Hawking, 2015 Reddit AMA
"Even before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic occurred, the US was mired in a 40-year population health crisis. Since 1980, life expectancy in the US has increasingly fallen behind that of peer countries, culminating in an unprecedented decline in longevity since 2014."
doi: 10.1001/jama.2020.26339
"Technological fixes are not always undesirable or inadequate, but there is a danger that what is addressed is not the real problem but the problem in as far as it is amendable to technical solutions."
Engineering and the Problem of Moral Overload
doi: 10.1007/s11948-011-9277-z
"I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals."
Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?
"Above all, we should bear in mind that our liberty is not an end in itself; it is a means to win respect for human dignity for all classes of our society.”
Admiral H.G. Rickover, Father of the US Nuclear Navy
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Ever hear of the acronym "DARVO" regarding behavior of abusers?
Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim/Offender.
It's also the root of modern "conservative" politics.
"The embrace, by working Americans, of policies that hurt their own interests can be understood on the basis of Ferenczi’s model of identification with the aggressor. Intrafamilial child abuse is often followed by the abuser’s denial. Children typically comply with abuse, in behavior and by embracing the abuser’s false reality, under threat of emotional abandonment. Similarly in the sociopolitical sphere, increasing threats of cultural and economic dispossession have pressed working Americans to adopt an ideology that misrepresents reality and justifies their oppression. In society as in the family, there can be a compensatory narcissistic reaction to forfeiting one’s rights that, ironically, encourages feelings of power and specialness while facilitating submission."
(The traumatic basis for the resurgence of right-wing politics among working Americans)
DOI: 10.1057/pcs.2015.53
"When effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases."
(Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism)
10.1177/0146167212439213
“If all you had ever felt toward another person were the cold wish to “win,” how would you understand the meaning of love, of friendship, of caring? You would not understand. You would simply go on dominating, and denying, and feeling superior. Perhaps you would experience a little emptiness sometimes, a remote sense of dissatisfaction, but that is all.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him."
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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You're off the mark, Matt. Context matters. Junkie Jordan isn't expressing emotion over real concern, he's weaponizing self-pity.
“After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
"The paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies
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“If all you had ever felt toward another person were the cold wish to “win,” how would you understand the meaning of love, of friendship, of caring? You would not understand. You would simply go on dominating, and denying, and feeling superior. Perhaps you would experience a little emptiness sometimes, a remote sense of dissatisfaction, but that is all.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him."
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."
"Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained."
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
"I believe it is the duty of each of us to act as if the fate of the world depended on him. Admittedly, one man by himself cannot do the job. However, one man can make a difference. We must live for the future of the human race, and not for our own comfort or success."
"Responsibility is a unique concept... You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you... If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible."
"When doing a job — any job — one must feel that he owns it, and act as though he will remain in that job forever."
“Above all, we should bear in mind that our liberty is not an end in itself; it is a means to win respect for human dignity for all classes of our society.”
― Admiral H.G. Rickover, Father of the US Nuclear Navy
“There is no joy equal to that of being able to work for all humanity and doing what you're doing well.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path
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Junkie Jordan is weaponizing the self-pity he's wallowing in and you're falling for it.
“After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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― The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (Economic Historian Carlo Cipolla)
1. "Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation."
2. "The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person."
3. "A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses."
4. "Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake."
5. "A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person."
― The Sixth Law of Stupidity: A Biophysical Interpretation of Carlo Cipolla's Stupidity Laws (Ilaria Perissi and Ugo Bardi)
6. "Humans are the stupidest species in the ecosystem."
"Cipolla’s quadrant highlights several fundamental features of those systems that can be described as both “complex” and “autocatalytic,” where the growth rate is proportional to the size of the stocks. These systems include living creatures, biomes, entire ecosystems, as well as human-created entities such as companies, organizations, and entire economic systems. The analysis of Cipolla’s quadrant, carried out using the Lotka-Volterra model shows the similarity of many phenomena driven by the dissipation of energy potentials: from life to commerce [26]. There are, indeed, some basic laws at work in these systems and when we use the term “law” for a physical system we mean that some factors are at work to keep it, if not perfectly regulated, at least within some boundaries.
Cipolla’s quadrant tells us that these complex systems are all dominated by the same factors, but that these factors can operate in different ways. The simplest case is the predator/prey (bandit/victim) relationship, in which the predator seeks only maximum short-term profit. The result is periodical oscillations, homeorhesis. It is also possible to see the condition of “stupidity” where the actions of the actors in the exchanges lead to doom for everyone and everything. In ecosystems it is extinction, in economic systems, it is financial ruin. The analysis also shows the possibility for these systems to adjust in such a way to attain the condition that Cipolla describes as “intelligent people” and that in ecosystems goes under the name of “symbiosis.” As proposed by Lynn Margulis [20], symbiotic systems that go under the name of “holobionts” are the basic unit of the ecosystem. We may extend this definition to all kinds of autocatalytic complex systems, including those forming the human economy. But if holobionts are an efficient unit of energy dissipation, why does stupidity exist? In particular, why is it so common in the economy as Cipolla correctly notes? Cipolla’s description of stupid people is that “..some are stupid and others are not, and that the difference is determined by nature and not by cultural forces or factors. One is stupid in the same way one is red-haired; one belongs to the stupid set as one belongs to a blood group. A stupid man is born a stupid man by an act of Providence.” What Cipolla calls “an act of Providence” may be seen also as the result of the genetic setup of human beings. Indeed, humans are a relatively recent element of the ecosystem: modern humans are believed to have appeared only some 300,000 years ago, although other hominins practicing the same lifestyle may be as old as a few million years. Yet, this is a young age in comparison to that of most species currently existing in the ecosphere. So, humankind’s stupidity may be not much more than an effect of the relative immaturity of our species, which still has to learn how to live in harmony with the ecosystem. That explains what we called here “the 6th law of stupidity,” stating that humans are the stupidest species on Earth. It is a condition that may lead the human species to extinction in a non-remote future. But it is also possible that, if humans survive, one day they will learn how to interact with the ecosystem of their planet without destroying it. Acknowledgment. One of us (U.B.) would like to remember the figure of Carlo Maria Cipolla (1922-2000), whom he had a chance to meet in Berkeley in the 1980s. Cipolla was a brilliant and creative mind, but also a kind and open personality. His work, not just about stupidity, is still having an important impact on the way we see the world."
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"Pro-Life"? Conservative policy is "Forced Birth". Progressives ARE pro-life in that we don't want society to collapse on a burning hellscape. Remember - Progressive policies better serve any conservative values actually worth keeping.
"Our hunter-gatherer future: Climate change, agriculture and uncivilization-
•The stable climate of the Holocene made agriculture and civilization possible. The unstable Pleistocene climate made it impossible before then.
•Human societies after agriculture were characterized by overshoot and collapse. Climate change frequently drove these collapses.
•Business-as-usual estimates indicate that the climate will warm by 3°C-4 °C by 2100 and by as much as 8°–10 °C after that.
•Future climate change will return planet Earth to the unstable climatic conditions of the Pleistocene and agriculture will be impossible.
•Human society will once again be characterized by hunting and gathering.
For most of human history, about 300,000 years, we lived as hunter gatherers in sustainable, egalitarian communities of a few dozen people. Human life on Earth, and our place within the planet’s biophysical systems, changed dramatically with the Holocene, a geological epoch that began about 12,000 years ago. An unprecedented combination of climate stability and warm temperatures made possible a greater dependence on wild grains in several parts of the world. Over the next several thousand years, this dependence led to agriculture and large-scale state societies. These societies show a common pattern of expansion and collapse. Industrial civilization began a few hundred years ago when fossil fuel propelled the human economy to a new level of size and complexity. This change brought many benefits, but it also gave us the existential crisis of global climate change. Climate models indicate that the Earth could warm by 3°C-4 °C by the year 2100 and eventually by as much as 8 °C or more. This would return the planet to the unstable climate conditions of the Pleistocene when agriculture was impossible. Policies could be enacted to make the transition away from industrial civilization less devastating and improve the prospects of our hunter-gatherer descendants. These include aggressive policies to reduce the long-run extremes of climate change, aggressive population reduction policies, rewilding, and protecting the world’s remaining indigenous cultures."
doi: 10.1016/j.futures.2019.102488
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Ever hear of the acronym "DARVO" regarding behavior of abusers?
Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim/Offender.
It's also the root of modern "conservative" politics.
"The embrace, by working Americans, of policies that hurt their own interests can be understood on the basis of Ferenczi’s model of identification with the aggressor. Intrafamilial child abuse is often followed by the abuser’s denial. Children typically comply with abuse, in behavior and by embracing the abuser’s false reality, under threat of emotional abandonment. Similarly in the sociopolitical sphere, increasing threats of cultural and economic dispossession have pressed working Americans to adopt an ideology that misrepresents reality and justifies their oppression. In society as in the family, there can be a compensatory narcissistic reaction to forfeiting one’s rights that, ironically, encourages feelings of power and specialness while facilitating submission."
(The traumatic basis for the resurgence of right-wing politics among working Americans)
DOI: 10.1057/pcs.2015.53
"When effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases."
(Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167212439213
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@HoloScope “If, instead, you find yourself often pitying someone who consistently hurts you or other people, and who actively campaigns for your sympathy, the chances are close to 100 percent that you are dealing with a sociopath.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
“As a counterpoint to sociopathy, the condition of narcissism is particularly interesting and instructive. Narcissism is, in a metaphorical sense, one half of what sociopathy is. Even clinical narcissists are able to feel most emotions are strongly as anyone else does, from guilt to sadness to desperate love and passion. The half that is missing is the crucial ability to understand what other people are feeling. Narcissism is a failure not of conscience but of empathy, which is the capacity to perceive emotions in others and so react to them appropriately. The poor narcissist cannot see past his own nose, emotionally speaking, and as with the Pillsbury Doughboy, any input from the outside will spring back as if nothing had happened. Unlike sociopaths, narcissists often are in psychological pain, and may sometimes seek psychotherapy. When a narcissist looks for help, one of the underlying issues is usually that, unbeknownst to him, he is alienating his relationships on account of his lack of empathy with others, and is feeling confused, abandoned, and lonely. He misses the people he loves, and is ill-equipped to get them back. Sociopaths, in contrast, do not care about other people, and so do not miss them when they are alienated or gone, except as one might regret the absence of a useful appliance that one has somehow lost.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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(Our hunter-gatherer future: Climate change, agriculture and uncivilization⋆):
"For most of human history, about 300,000 years, we lived as hunter gatherers in sustainable, egalitarian communities of a few dozen people. Human life on Earth, and our place within the planet’s biophysical systems, changed dramatically with the Holocene, a geological epoch that began about 12,000 years ago. An unprecedented combination of climate stability and warm temperatures made possible a greater dependence on wild grains in several parts of the world. Over the next several thousand years, this dependence led to agriculture and large-scale state societies. These societies show a common pattern of expansion and collapse. Industrial civilization began a few hundred years ago when fossil fuel propelled the human economy to a new level of size and complexity. This change brought many benefits, but it also gave us the existential crisis of global climate change. Climate models indicate that the Earth could warm by 3°C-4 °C by the year 2100 and eventually by as much as 8 °C or more. This would return the planet to the unstable climate conditions of the Pleistocene when agriculture was impossible. Policies could be enacted to make the transition away from industrial civilization less devastating and improve the prospects of our hunter-gatherer descendants. These include aggressive policies to reduce the long-run extremes of climate change, aggressive population reduction policies, rewilding, and protecting the world’s remaining indigenous cultures."
DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2019.102488
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"You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about.
War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it … Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors.
You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail."
― General William Tecumseh Sherman
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"When effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases."
Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism
"It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false. To admit that the false has any standing in court, that it ought to be handled gently because millions of morons cherish it and thousands of quacks make their livings propagating it—to admit this, as the more fatuous of the reconcilers of science and religion inevitably do, is to abandon a just cause to its enemies, cravenly and without excuse."
― H.L. Mencken, American Mercury
“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives...
I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position as at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party...
There is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power."
― John Stuart Mill (British philosopher, economist, and liberal member of Parliament for Westminster, 1865 - 1868)
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Ever hear of the acronym "DARVO" regarding behavior of abusers?
Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim/Offender.
It's also the root of modern "conservative" politics.
"The embrace, by working Americans, of policies that hurt their own interests can be understood on the basis of Ferenczi’s model of identification with the aggressor. Intrafamilial child abuse is often followed by the abuser’s denial. Children typically comply with abuse, in behavior and by embracing the abuser’s false reality, under threat of emotional abandonment. Similarly in the sociopolitical sphere, increasing threats of cultural and economic dispossession have pressed working Americans to adopt an ideology that misrepresents reality and justifies their oppression. In society as in the family, there can be a compensatory narcissistic reaction to forfeiting one’s rights that, ironically, encourages feelings of power and specialness while facilitating submission."
(The traumatic basis for the resurgence of right-wing politics among working Americans)
DOI: 10.1057/pcs.2015.53
"When effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases."
(Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism)
10.1177/0146167212439213
“If all you had ever felt toward another person were the cold wish to “win,” how would you understand the meaning of love, of friendship, of caring? You would not understand. You would simply go on dominating, and denying, and feeling superior. Perhaps you would experience a little emptiness sometimes, a remote sense of dissatisfaction, but that is all.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him."
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Hypocritically and ignorantly, the Trump-cult's slogan, "Make America Great Again", is referring to a time when America was a democratic-socialist nation.
Democratic socialism was used to pull the US out of the Great Depression with FDR's New Deal and worked exceedingly well up until 1980, when Reagan's economics started to reduce and eventually lower the life expectancy of the average American.
"Even before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic occurred, the US was mired in a 40-year population health crisis. Since 1980, life expectancy in the US has increasingly fallen behind that of peer countries, culminating in an unprecedented decline in longevity since 2014."
doi: 10.1001/jama.2020.26339
The Preamble to the US Constitution is a leftist manifesto that we've yet to live up to:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
"Technological fixes are not always undesirable or inadequate, but there is a danger that what is addressed is not the real problem but the problem in as far as it is amendable to technical solutions."
Engineering and the Problem of Moral Overload
doi: 10.1007/s11948-011-9277-z
"I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals."
Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?
"Above all, we should bear in mind that our liberty is not an end in itself; it is a means to win respect for human dignity for all classes of our society.”
Admiral H.G. Rickover, Father of the US Nuclear Navy
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True statement.
"In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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All Junkie Jordan Peterpan is doing is wallowing in self-pity and that's a big red flag for sociopathy.
“After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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"The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed."
William Gibson
"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."
Stephen Hawking, 2015 Reddit AMA
"Even before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic occurred, the US was mired in a 40-year population health crisis. Since 1980, life expectancy in the US has increasingly fallen behind that of peer countries, culminating in an unprecedented decline in longevity since 2014."
doi: 10.1001/jama.2020.26339
"Technological fixes are not always undesirable or inadequate, but there is a danger that what is addressed is not the real problem but the problem in as far as it is amendable to technical solutions."
Engineering and the Problem of Moral Overload
doi: 10.1007/s11948-011-9277-z
"I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals."
Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?
"Above all, we should bear in mind that our liberty is not an end in itself; it is a means to win respect for human dignity for all classes of our society.”
Admiral H.G. Rickover, Father of the US Nuclear Navy
The Preamble to the US Constitution is a leftist manifesto that we've yet to live up to:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Democratic socialism was used to pull the US out of the Great Depression with FDR's New Deal and worked exceedingly well up until 1980, when Reagan's economics started to reduce and eventually lower the life expectancy of the average American. Hypocritically and ignorantly, the Trump-cult's slogan, "Make America Great Again", is referring to a time when America was a democratic-socialist nation.
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“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
“It is no disparagement to truth, that it can only prevail where reason prevails. War begins where reason ends. The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.”
“The white slave had taken from him by indirection what the black slave had taken from him directly and without ceremony. Both were plundered, and by the same plunderers. The slave was robbed by his master of all his earnings, above what was required for his bare physical necessities, and the white laboring man was robbed by the slave system, of the just results of his labor, because he was flung into competition with a class of laborers who worked without wages. The slaveholders blinded them to this competition by keeping alive their prejudice against the slaves as men--not against them as slaves.”
“For no man who lives at all lives unto himself. He either helps or hinders all who are in anywise connected to him.”
“To enslave men, successfully and safely, it is necessary to have their minds occupied with thoughts and aspirations short of the liberty of which they are deprived. A certain degree of attainable good must be kept before them.”
“There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.”
“A man must be disposed to judge of emancipation by other tests than whether it has increased the produce of sugar,—and to hate slavery for other reasons than because it starves men and whips women,—before he is ready to lay the first stone of his anti-slavery life.”
“Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the copyist of many, and being such, he was forever the victim of inconsistency; and of consequence he was an object of contempt, and was held as such even by his slaves. ”
“The morality of free society can have no application to slave society. . . . Make a man a slave, and you rob him of of moral responsibility. Freedom of choice is the essence of all accountability.”
― Frederick Douglass
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(The Sixth Law of Stupidity: A Biophysical Interpretation of Carlo Cipolla's Stupidity Laws):
"Humans are the stupidest species in the ecosystem."
'Cipolla’s quadrant tells us that these complex systems are all dominated by the same factors, but that these factors can operate in different ways. The simplest case is the predator/prey (bandit/victim) relationship, in which the predator seeks only maximum short-term profit. The result is periodical oscillations, homeorhesis. It is also possible to see the condition of “stupidity” where the actions of the actors in the exchanges lead to doom for everyone and everything. In ecosystems it is extinction, in economic systems, it is financial ruin. The analysis also shows the possibility for these systems to adjust in such a way to attain the condition that Cipolla describes as “intelligent people” and that in ecosystems goes under the name of “symbiosis.” As proposed by Lynn Margulis [20], symbiotic systems that go under the name of “holobionts” are the basic unit of the ecosystem. We may extend this definition to all kinds of autocatalytic complex systems, including those forming the human economy. But if holobionts are an efficient unit of energy dissipation, why does stupidity exist? In particular, why is it so common in the economy as Cipolla correctly notes? Cipolla’s description of stupid people is that “..some are stupid and others are not, and that the difference is determined by nature and not by cultural forces or factors. One is stupid in the same way one is red-haired; one belongs to the stupid set as one belongs to a blood group. A stupid man is born a stupid man by an act of Providence.” What Cipolla calls “an act of Providence” may be seen also as the result of the genetic setup of human beings. Indeed, humans are a relatively recent element of the ecosystem: modern humans are believed to have appeared only some 300,000 years ago, although other hominins practicing the same lifestyle may be as old as a few million years. Yet, this is a young age in comparison to that of most species currently existing in the ecosphere. So, humankind’s stupidity may be not much more than an effect of the relative immaturity of our species, which still has to learn how to live in harmony with the ecosystem. That explains what we called here “the 6th law of stupidity,” stating that humans are the stupidest species on Earth. It is a condition that may lead the human species to extinction in a non-remote future. But it is also possible that, if humans survive, one day they will learn how to interact with the ecosystem of their planet without destroying it. Acknowledgment. One of us (U.B.) would like to remember the figure of Carlo Maria Cipolla (1922-2000), whom he had a chance to meet in Berkeley in the 1980s. Cipolla was a brilliant and creative mind, but also a kind and open personality. His work, not just about stupidity, is still having an important impact on the way we see the world.'
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"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."
― Stephen Hawking, 2015 Reddit AMA
“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”
― Buckminster Fuller
"...This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals..."
― Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?
"Technological fixes are not always undesirable or inadequate, but there is a danger that what is addressed is not the real problem but the problem in as far as it is amendable to technical solutions."
― Engineering and the Problem of Moral Overload
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"The paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
“Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'.”
― George Orwell, Partisan Review (1942)
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"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."
― Stephen Hawking, 2015 Reddit AMA
“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”
― Buckminster Fuller
"...This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals..."
― Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?
"Technological fixes are not always undesirable or inadequate, but there is a danger that what is addressed is not the real problem but the problem in as far as it is amendable to technical solutions."
― Engineering and the Problem of Moral Overload
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"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."
― Stephen Hawking, 2015 Reddit AMA
“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”
― Buckminster Fuller
"...This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals..."
― Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?
"Technological fixes are not always undesirable or inadequate, but there is a danger that what is addressed is not the real problem but the problem in as far as it is amendable to technical solutions."
― Engineering and the Problem of Moral Overload
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The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (Economic Historian Carlo Cipolla)
1. "Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation."
2. "The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person."
3. "A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses."
4. "Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake."
5. "A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person."
The Sixth Law of Stupidity: A Biophysical Interpretation of Carlo Cipolla's Stupidity Laws (Ilaria Perissi and Ugo Bardi)
6. "Humans are the stupidest species in the ecosystem."
"Cipolla’s quadrant highlights several fundamental features of those systems that can be described as both “complex” and “autocatalytic,” where the growth rate is proportional to the size of the stocks. These systems include living creatures, biomes, entire ecosystems, as well as human-created entities such as companies, organizations, and entire economic systems. The analysis of Cipolla’s quadrant, carried out using the Lotka-Volterra model shows the similarity of many phenomena driven by the dissipation of energy potentials: from life to commerce [26]. There are, indeed, some basic laws at work in these systems and when we use the term “law” for a physical system we mean that some factors are at work to keep it, if not perfectly regulated, at least within some boundaries.
Cipolla’s quadrant tells us that these complex systems are all dominated by the same factors, but that these factors can operate in different ways. The simplest case is the predator/prey (bandit/victim) relationship, in which the predator seeks only maximum short-term profit. The result is periodical oscillations, homeorhesis. It is also possible to see the condition of “stupidity” where the actions of the actors in the exchanges lead to doom for everyone and everything. In ecosystems it is extinction, in economic systems, it is financial ruin. The analysis also shows the possibility for these systems to adjust in such a way to attain the condition that Cipolla describes as “intelligent people” and that in ecosystems goes under the name of “symbiosis.” As proposed by Lynn Margulis [20], symbiotic systems that go under the name of “holobionts” are the basic unit of the ecosystem. We may extend this definition to all kinds of autocatalytic complex systems, including those forming the human economy. But if holobionts are an efficient unit of energy dissipation, why does stupidity exist? In particular, why is it so common in the economy as Cipolla correctly notes? Cipolla’s description of stupid people is that “..some are stupid and others are not, and that the difference is determined by nature and not by cultural forces or factors. One is stupid in the same way one is red-haired; one belongs to the stupid set as one belongs to a blood group. A stupid man is born a stupid man by an act of Providence.” What Cipolla calls “an act of Providence” may be seen also as the result of the genetic setup of human beings. Indeed, humans are a relatively recent element of the ecosystem: modern humans are believed to have appeared only some 300,000 years ago, although other hominins practicing the same lifestyle may be as old as a few million years. Yet, this is a young age in comparison to that of most species currently existing in the ecosphere. So, humankind’s stupidity may be not much more than an effect of the relative immaturity of our species, which still has to learn how to live in harmony with the ecosystem. That explains what we called here “the 6th law of stupidity,” stating that humans are the stupidest species on Earth. It is a condition that may lead the human species to extinction in a non-remote future. But it is also possible that, if humans survive, one day they will learn how to interact with the ecosystem of their planet without destroying it. Acknowledgment. One of us (U.B.) would like to remember the figure of Carlo Maria Cipolla (1922-2000), whom he had a chance to meet in Berkeley in the 1980s. Cipolla was a brilliant and creative mind, but also a kind and open personality. His work, not just about stupidity, is still having an important impact on the way we see the world."
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(Our hunter-gatherer future: Climate change, agriculture and uncivilization⋆):
"For most of human history, about 300,000 years, we lived as hunter gatherers in sustainable, egalitarian communities of a few dozen people. Human life on Earth, and our place within the planet’s biophysical systems, changed dramatically with the Holocene, a geological epoch that began about 12,000 years ago. An unprecedented combination of climate stability and warm temperatures made possible a greater dependence on wild grains in several parts of the world. Over the next several thousand years, this dependence led to agriculture and large-scale state societies. These societies show a common pattern of expansion and collapse. Industrial civilization began a few hundred years ago when fossil fuel propelled the human economy to a new level of size and complexity. This change brought many benefits, but it also gave us the existential crisis of global climate change. Climate models indicate that the Earth could warm by 3°C-4 °C by the year 2100 and eventually by as much as 8 °C or more. This would return the planet to the unstable climate conditions of the Pleistocene when agriculture was impossible. Policies could be enacted to make the transition away from industrial civilization less devastating and improve the prospects of our hunter-gatherer descendants. These include aggressive policies to reduce the long-run extremes of climate change, aggressive population reduction policies, rewilding, and protecting the world’s remaining indigenous cultures."
DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2019.102488
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"When effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases."
Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism
"It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false. To admit that the false has any standing in court, that it ought to be handled gently because millions of morons cherish it and thousands of quacks make their livings propagating it—to admit this, as the more fatuous of the reconcilers of science and religion inevitably do, is to abandon a just cause to its enemies, cravenly and without excuse."
― H.L. Mencken, American Mercury
“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives...
I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position as at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party...
There is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power."
― John Stuart Mill (British philosopher, economist, and liberal member of Parliament for Westminster, 1865 - 1868)
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