more outreach to, and adoption by, communities that are not specifically tech- or FOSS-focused, like crafting, parenting, fashion, home repair, or brewing, for example. gotta keep chipping away at those network effects. onboarding and ux will need to be top tier.
The new socialists thus want the state to dictate the prices of many goods and services, especially essentials such as food and rent. Where money is required it will come, almost exclusively, by squeezing the very wealthiest. It is a form of retail politics that appeals not to notions of the common good, as in prior waves of socialism, but to people’s narrow self-interest. Lower my rent! Cut my bills! Give me free buses! Protect my job! The solutions are naive, and often unworkable. But the message is so simple, and so attractive, that this Gen-Z socialism is gaining adherents across the democratic world.
None of that is socialism. it's social democracy (aka gentler capitalism) at best. lower rent, lower bills, free buses, and job protections are not "selfish", they apply to everyone.
Sure! it's a question of how we decide to govern ourselves as a collection of societies.
In a nutshell, I'd recommend a commune made up of federated communes, with decision making done at directly democratic assemblies at the most local level, then sending delegates (who have no power of their own and who can be instantly fired/replaced) to meet with other assemblies to make agreements, in steps going up to the broadest level (citywide, regional, etc) necessary for the decision to be made.
It's very well written. This is just AI affecting how people view well-organized, nicely-formatted, and clear writing these days. Thanks for keeping us updated on the progress of the fediverse and for doing it so thoroughly!
i cited wars as counterexamples against peace. if that doesn't make sense to you, im not sure we can have a productive conversation.
i completely agree that humans are part of nature. So if you like, everything we do (and everything that occurs ever) is "natural" because everything is part of nature, but that's a fairly useless definition. we also do some relatively unique stuff, too, that is not mirrored by other animals. Nation states are not the same as wolf packs or bonobo societies or whale pods.
the most important difference here is that nations have institutions (such as a border) that exist despite the actual relationship of the people on those borders. the people on both sides of the Berlin Wall didn't want it to be there. The people who live in Beebe Plain, a town divided by the US-Canada border, have much more in common with their neighbors than the politicians in Washington DC and Ottawa who make decisions for them. this is not the same as pack membership setting territory boundaries, this is control from a distance by strangers.
anyway this has been interesting, im gonna get on with my day.
you said "decide to keep the peace" which I provided counterexamples against. I shorthanded that as "negotiate" but you can just sub in your exact language and the point stands.
i don't deny the social abilities of wolves. i don't even claim that there are zero similarities between social boundaries and formal borders. what im doing is pointing out that borders formed by the institution of the state are fundamentally different from social boundaries adopted by people, wolves, or any being capable of negotiating them.
my motivation here is to undermine the idea that national borders are "natural", which tends to legitimate them in many people's minds, like the meme in this post tries to do. I want to undermine that because i believe it isn't true and because there are fundamentally better ways to organize society.
so the borders of the US were agreed upon by entities who decided to keep the peace, not established by war and genocide? the borders of several African states were not set by colonial violence? the border between Russia and Ukraine is being "renegotiated" and not fought over? Israel "renegotiating" with Lebanon?
there's a big difference between populations who come to agreements with each other and states who do things for power.
the state is an organization that includes a tiny minority of people who get to command and control the greater population. you can argue that its power is legitimate because of elections if you want, but it is not the same as the people. meanwhile, the wolves don't experience that kind of government.
those aren't borders, those are territories arrived at by wolves interacting with each other and deciding to keep the peace. has nothing to do with formal borders imposed on us by states
im not arguing sapience, im examining your definition of sentience, which was self-awareness. my question was how we distinguish between mimicry of a sentient being and actually being sentient, with an analogy that a recording of a sentient being is a perfect mimicry but isn't the same as having sentience.
similarly, how do we know that an llm is self aware and not merely a machine that returns clever combinations of recorded sentient beings? what is the equivalent of a red dot mirror test for an llm?
"sufficiently adaptive" is doing a lot of work there. i can "mimic" a thought by copying and pasting text that someone else wrote. it wouldn't mean that I understood it, could reason from it, connect with it on an emotional level, or incorporate it into a worldview
your music simile misses the point in a similar way. a record player can play music just as well as the artist who recorded the record, but we don't say the record is the same as the musician.
what proof do we have that llms are truly self aware and not merely returning text that mimics the self awareness of the humans who made the materials they were trained on?
it is robust . it doesn't rely on leaders remaining true to their ideals despite the corrupting influence of power, avoiding assassination, staying in power despite attempts to topple them, and transitioning power successfully to another generation of leaders who fulfill the same criteria.
it is truly democratic . no one has any more power than anyone else, everyone is (or can be) involved in decisions that affect them
it is flexible . communes and communities can look like whatever is both (1) possible in the area they exist in and (2) possible for their members to agree on (while remaining anarchist... if you agree to have a king, it's not anarchism anymore lol)
it is ecologically sustainable . the end of capitalism, private property, and wealth accumulation means resources are used only as needed by the community and not to generate profit.
it promotes human thriving, community, and meaning in life . the end of capitalism means no more working all week to make someone else richer. the end of the state means you can't be ordered around by power-hungry officials and cold bureaucracies who don't know you or care about you or your community. you work on a combination of things that (1) you find meaning/enjoyment in doing (2) improve or maintain your community (3) provide variety to your life, instead of the same job every day, if you prefer. you make decisions with your neighbors that really affect your community.
more outreach to, and adoption by, communities that are not specifically tech- or FOSS-focused, like crafting, parenting, fashion, home repair, or brewing, for example. gotta keep chipping away at those network effects. onboarding and ux will need to be top tier.