Words like "individual responsibility", "free Societies", "prosperous societies" are big words, big in the sense that they're fuzzy. I understand they're popular terms since Modernity. However, for the sake of communication in thread. I have a theory that finding some connection, even if on just emotional level, with the people responding here may be easier if you spoke "around" these words.
Consider for a moment that you are a social animal. For the purpose of this thought experiment, let's say that just means you're an animal that can't function long without being a part of N others like yourself. Also, let's add that there is some variance in behavior in all of these animals.
Also consider that the environment of these groups is not the same and the environment of the group has an effect on the group.
Okay run this experiment for T time based off those assumptions.
Some simple questions to ask:
- If you took an individual from one group and plopped them over to another group with a different environment would you expect a difference in their behavior?
- If you took an individual from some T and plopped them over to another some other T* (T* >> T) would you expect them to make different choices?
Okay this point you may feel that this is all condescending and what I'm doing here is a strawman of your original points with some nonsense assumptions.
You may feel like this whole speaking around words like "freedom" is dumb because you believe, as I believe, there is a thing called freedom and humans possess this thing. But that's our religion, we made a leap of faith to this freedom concept. Why force this model on others? It's not binary, there's a lot variations on this idea of freedom.
The thing is, I would argue as the others in this thread have implied that, we are not just born into this world, we are also born out of it.
If you follow this thought it gets really hard to buy this discourse as "veering into the fantastical". Because you have to ask what is a free society? To what extent can a society be free?
I don't necessarily disagree with your sentiment but I think at this point it is good to take a step back and consider the magnitude of the statement you just made.
Consider the extent of human societies that have existed, what it is that we know of them and through what lens we know of them. What do we mean by the words "significantly worse"? Where does this idea of "worse" stem from? And let's not forget the average person. How do we measure what's good for this average person?
Sorry for the random remarks your comment caught my eye for some reason. The point here isn't for some bogus relativism but merely to state the obvious, that the human condition can be far more complicated than we give it credit.
What are your thoughts on GDScript?
The reason I ask is I do a lot of work with Python these days and I like it most of the time. So I've been curious about a high level dynamic typed language for game dev. I have played around with Unity in the past and picked Unreal for my current project this time but kinda regretting that. I'm not doing anything technically impressive so I thought blueprints would help speed things up but I'm less than impressed.
This chain of comments reminds of what I read in a paper regarding multilevel group selection, namely:
"Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups". Though there is a bit of controversy around that if I remember correctly.
I know very little about economics but I am compelled to point out the irony in your comment.
How I understood your comment:
"This whole field, consisting up of many people trying to do understand things, is just a bunch of nonsense generalizations."
Thanks for clarifying. I was actually going to respond in a similar manner as ModernMech. Your original comment came off very defeatist towards the scientific method. I see now that it is aimed at our collective response to the scientific method. I also share your disdain towards this response, especially with pandemic response.
At the same time though, I get it and I do this too. This might be too reductionist but I think most of it comes down to trust. It's very expensive, in terms of time, to have a critical understanding of any specialized field. So taking the shortcuts like past experience, intuition, relying on others are more profitable. Especially if the goal is survival and not understanding of a system. This then becomes a game of finding the most "trustable" person but that's the catch 22.
This is pretty random and I realize your concern is safety for your family and the following point will do nothing to address that.
I just wanted to say, when I was a kid I saw a lot of homelessness and I think it helped foster some sense of humanity. One thing I still think about from time to time. I saw a kid, around the same age as me at the time, with no hands begging for money. I distinctly remember this feeling of "that could very easily be me, just a few variables different".
I guess the reason I'm saying this is as a parent, I don't wont to hide this from my kid. And this is not to say that I think your comment was to hide this from your kids. This is just what I thought about after reading it. It just gave me a lot to think about and I am not sure of a way to safely do this but I think its important. This is the system we actively participate in and endorse in one way or another. I don't want my kid to look away at the ugly parts.
The wording here always confuses me, why is it called intermittent fasting? Isn't all fasting already intermittent otherwise it would be called starving right?
I may not have read your post correctly but why do you think "seeking sympathy and confirmation" is mutually exclusive to a "mature response"?
There is a tendency I have seen in people in the tech industry to try to problem solve everything. Like debugging a bug. In my experience this creates unhealthy relationships. Sometimes all we can do is listen and say, "yeah that sucks, I'm sorry".
Consider for a moment that you are a social animal. For the purpose of this thought experiment, let's say that just means you're an animal that can't function long without being a part of N others like yourself. Also, let's add that there is some variance in behavior in all of these animals.
Also consider that the environment of these groups is not the same and the environment of the group has an effect on the group.
Okay run this experiment for T time based off those assumptions.
Some simple questions to ask: - If you took an individual from one group and plopped them over to another group with a different environment would you expect a difference in their behavior? - If you took an individual from some T and plopped them over to another some other T* (T* >> T) would you expect them to make different choices?
Okay this point you may feel that this is all condescending and what I'm doing here is a strawman of your original points with some nonsense assumptions.
You may feel like this whole speaking around words like "freedom" is dumb because you believe, as I believe, there is a thing called freedom and humans possess this thing. But that's our religion, we made a leap of faith to this freedom concept. Why force this model on others? It's not binary, there's a lot variations on this idea of freedom.
The thing is, I would argue as the others in this thread have implied that, we are not just born into this world, we are also born out of it.
If you follow this thought it gets really hard to buy this discourse as "veering into the fantastical". Because you have to ask what is a free society? To what extent can a society be free?