You’re an engineer. There are absolutely scenarios where so much of a system is broken that you have to redesign the whole system. You can’t turn a steam engine into an electric motor piece by piece.
40% of the population is one missed paycheck away from poverty while a handful of people have rocket ships and megayachts and buy-a-few-politicians money. That is not a bug, that is the central operating principle, the Carnot cycle of capitalism. If you’re one of the millions who are in the “wage labor” part of the cycle instead of the “extract profit” part of the cycle, capitalism has already gotten real bad.
You’re an engineer. Don’t be so reductionist. You sound like a kid who invented a perpetual motion machine with an overbalanced wheel and magnets. You should know better.
I guess I just really don’t understand the draw. CommunismCapitalism is a nice thought, until actual people are involved. People are corruptible, which is why communismcapitalism is seen as utopian. It’s an ideal that only works under perfect circumstances.
Say what you will about the USSR, but it took a bunch of peasant farmers under exploitative monarchy and literally rocketed them into a global superpower in, what, 2 generations? While weathering the immediate tangible effects of two world wars, and staying competitive against the capitalistic world power that remained virtually untouched in both wars and casually claimed industrial supremacy by virtue of that fact.
How great can capitalism be if the capitalists had a multi-century head start, better natural resources, advantageous geography, a bigger population, and it was still close?
Add up chattel slavery, Trail of Tears, proxy wars, not-so-proxy wars, the general condition of the M-I-C you’ve mentioned, the general plight of the Global South, etc etc etc, and get back to me. I’m not sure the advantage is so definitive as you assert. “Externalities”, the economists call them.
Pretty sure I explicitly struck out all references to communism so I don’t know what you’re talking about. My comment was about the fanciful idealism required to justify capitalism. Show me one instance of capitalism implemented in democracy (which didn’t devolve into cronyism).
Firstly, I know you’re not going to justify genocide by saying the survivors of that genocide get to have casinos. That’s so outrageously, ghoulishly evil that you can’t possibly have meant that and I must have misunderstood.
Secondly, where do get the idea that capitalism started in America in 1860?
Thirdly, you ignored everything else I asked you to add up. You made no mention of slavery, or the Global South.
Fourthly, what’s fundamentally different between the colonial exploitations of mercantilism and private exploitations of capitalism?
I call your arithmetical integrity, or more laughably your ability, into question.
Every one of those four is a mixed economy with significant central economic planning and regulation. Without substantial oversight, capitalism tends to degrade into private monopolies with feudalistic tendencies over time. Like I said, it’s an idealistic system which looks great until actual people are involved. Then you have to either modify it past anything but a spiritual similarity, or down in the neoliberal fountain.
I don’t think you can really compare pre and post industrial superpowers, especially measured specifically against the ridiculously advantageous position of the mid century USA (perhaps I should have said nuclear superpower, or space-faring). And pretty much everyone in the hemisphere “nearly” lost WW2
History is rife with "nearly"s. The USSR had to content with y’know, actually being in the middle of both world wars and suffering the material consequences. And then went on to go toe-to-toe with the golden child of capitalism (safely nestled on its distant continent, far from the material consequences of war, with all the post-war industrial economic advantages that wrought).
The US had a freakish advantage, no one should have gotten even close. And the USSR got smacked down bad through both wars. And yet, they were stiff competition. It’s like gloating that your thoroughbred greyhound barely beat out a half-blind, 3-legged street dog in a race. The fact that it was close should be your sign.
I am responding to your points with the same logic you initiated. You won’t acknowledge that you’re operating on a double standard where communism is a fundamentally idealistic and flawed whenever actually implemented, but it’s different for capitalism because reasons. This conversation never started.
Critical thinking needs a bit of work there buddy. That’s exactly my point: the USSR did not have communist policies, it wasn’t even based on communism. It was an authoritarian state-capitalist regime which called itself socialist (not even communist), much like North Korea calls itself a democratic republic.
As a term, communist state is used by Western historians, political scientists, and media to refer to these countries. However, these states do not describe themselves as communist nor do they claim to have achieved communism, as it would constitute an oxymoron—they refer to themselves as socialist states that are in the process of constructing socialism.
The book is very clearly focused on US intervention directly against the USSR and other socialist regimes. Did you even glance through the table of contents?
Are you suggesting that we ignore this significant, direct interference from an abnormally advantaged superpower as a contributing factor to the USSR’s downfall? That’s simply illiterate.
In one corner, an uninterrupted economy bolstered on the global scale by not being a smoldering pile of ashes. In the other, the ruins of post-war Europe, juggling reconstruction and revolution.
Your analysis is either deliberately disingenuous, or feeble-mindedly impotent. I’m not interested in either. Read a book.
Exploit the global poor and extrajudicially unseat duly elected leaders around the world to subvert the democratic will of foreign citizens and maintain capitalist hegemony? Who did your daddy tell you the hungry witch was?
That was you, but your reading comprehension is not surprising. Maybe try some sources besides right wing propaganda. Good luck in life, you’ll need it.
@o_o asked “why are folks so anti-capitalist?” not long ago. It got quite a few comments. But I noticed a trend: a lot of people there didn’t agree on the definition of “capitalism”....
I have to agree with @arvere, you aren’t working with an accurate definition of communism. You said pure communism revolves around the state which is explicitly false. Pure communism is, by definition, moneyless, classless, and stateless. Historically, there have been state-socialists who believe that sort of system can provide a viable alternative to grassroots revolution in transitioning from a capitalist to a communist society. However, pure communism is anarchic, there is no state. Cooperation is spontaneous.
Additionally, it does not preclude personal property: items an individual keeps for personal use, e.g. your house, your car, your TV. What it does preclude is private property: items an individual keeps to charge others for their use, e.g. a rental property, a taxi, a movie theater.
Respectfully, you might want to brush up on your communist theory.
Where did you get that idea? Anarchism is explicitly a left-wing political ideology that emerged from general socialist thought. The two are intimately linked in their development, and heavily influenced one another with the “purest” form of either by their own principles independently culminating in anarcho-communism. You can debate the viability of this system all you like, but the definition of the term is what it is.
It is defined as implicitly free of hierarchies, including the state. If you want to talk about a system with a state, you’re no longer taking about communism. We can talk about pragmatic incarnations of socialist policy, we can talk about the conditions necessary to foster a communist society, we can talk about the consequences of either. But if the subject is the definition of communism, none of that is relevant.
If we go by your distinction between personal and private property, what is to stop anyone from renting out their personal property?
A lack of money for one. The existence of other cool projectors, if you didn’t build the cool projector by yourself, that can be communally held. If you built it yourself, and decide to hoarde it yourself, presumably other members of the community would hesitate to share their cool stuff with you. Patents and IP are private property, so anyone with skill in projector-making can try to copy it.
If you recognize the benefit of sharing your cool stuff in exchange for others sharing their cool stuff with you, everyone gets to use lots of cool stuff. If you hoarde the cool stuff you personally invented, no one will let you use the cool stuff they personally invented, and you’ll only get to use the cool things you personally invented.
As others have pointed out, it’s an oxymoronic misnomer used by right-wing “libertarian” neo-feudalists. The hierarchy inherent to capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with anarchism.
If you want to opine about the finer points of the implementation of a system, be my guest. I won’t pretend that human civilization, at present, is compatible with the tenets of communism. One day, maybe.
But if you’re going to talk about a system, talk about the system. Don’t strawman a McCarthyist Frankenstein of right-wing propaganda to make your point. Engage the concepts as they are defined, and speak to the deficiencies in the actual system as they exist.
Are there problems with communism? Maybe, probably, sure. None of them come from authoritarian states, because communism has no authoritarian states. We’re there lots of regimes who claimed to be communist for the PR? Totally, definitely. There were lots of shitty attempts at ornithopters and DaVinci helicopters before the Wright Brothers too, doesn’t invalidate the thence unrealized principles of aerodynamics.
I repeat, if you want to talk about the viability of various schemas, go ahead. I’m sure you think you’re much smarter than every communist theorist to ever live (unironically, I really do believe you think that). I’m sure you are doubtlessly certain of what is and isn’t possible, and I’m sure you can’t derive any additional nuance from reading those who have dedicated extensive thought and analysis to the topic
Nonetheless, I think even you can understand that strawmanning is the refuge of idiots with no actual merit, and whether or not you think communism is “possible”, it is best to actually talk about the topic instead of some silly oxymoron (like “authoritarian state communism”)
As futile as it sounds, I do think you might benefit from anarcho-communist research. I’ll leave it at that.
Again, not the topic. My only point is “Don’t misrepresent the topics you’re debating”
I don’t think communism is presently viable. I do think communism might be viable in coming generations, maybe.
My political acumen is negligible. My semantic acumen, however…
Even if communism will never work, characterizing it by a central state is categorically false. Your words are wrong. If you want to talk about authoritarian states masquerading as communism to engender public appeal, say that. That’s not communism though. If you want to argue against such a state, do that. Still not communism.
If you want to argue against the merits of a non-hierarchic, moneyless, classless, stateless, anarchic system, feel free to do so while you call it communism. But don’t call something that isn’t communism “communism” and then say that communism doesn’t work for the reasons your strawman non-communistic “communism” doesn’t work. Use the right words.
I’m not here to fix your politics, I’m here to fix your words.
What gave you the idea that capitalism is a singular pure concept and communism is not? Either your definition of capitalism is so simplified that there’s an singular communistic counterpart, or your definition of communism is so specific that there are dozens of capitalistic counterparts. Be consistent. You haven’t been talking about communism at all.
Your “communism category” is compromised solely of decidedly not-communistic transitory states, some with the stated goal of eventually facilitating communism. They are by definition not communism by virtue of being states. You call them communism because they have been called such by several non-communists: authoritarians leaders trying to sway their population, terrified capitalists trying to deceive the proletariat, ‘temporarily-embarassed-millionaires’ parroting pundit talking points.
Read the literature: communism, real communism, is by nature anarchic. It is definitely free of hierarchies, coersion, profit extraction. Anarchy, real anarchy, is by nature communistic. There can be no money in anarchy, because money creates class and class creates hierarchy.
Anarcho-capitalism is a fake idea. Private property is inevitably leveraged into power, and the power vacuum doesn’t stay empty long. The only true anarchism is spontaneous cooperation in a purely horizonal democracy. Any deviation from anarcho-communism is no longer anarchy, and no longer communism.
Again, is communism sustainable? Probably not right now, definitely not at any point in the past, probably not for quite some time, if ever. Doesn’t legitimize fake masquerade communism wrapped around the decidedly non-communistic authoritarian government as an example of the ideology.
I don’t let my wife touch my phone. Not because I’m hiding anything, it’s because last time I let her touch it she started absent-mindedly closing out of my emotional support browser tabs.
Brought to you by my discovery that some people think that “the customer is always right” isn’t the slogan of a long-dead department store, but rather it’s an actual call the cops law.
Lots of people buy Emotional Support Animal vests online and think that means they can bring them into restaurants. Nope, FDA is very clear about it: trained service animals only. ESAs actually have almost no special privileges over regular pets. Basically the only exceptions they get are against pet policies/fees on leases.
Our brain is still binary: a neuron fires or it doesn’t. Our computational complexity comes from the dense interconnections, the architecture. Just because a digital computer doesn’t presently have architecture that complex doesn’t make it fundamentally impossible. In fact if I’m not mistaken, ChatGPT is already more complex than we can presently understand. It wasn’t “designed” top-down in its present state, it has transformative matrices weighted by iterated training. We literally don’t know why it gives the answers it does. We gave it criteria to fulfill, and trained it over and over again until it got really good at fulfilling those criteria. That process is only accelerating, I don’t know why you’d think there’s some arbitrary barrier.
What I said is that the transition from kicking it’s legs to crawling will take some time, but the transition from crawling to marathons will happen basically overnight. My whole original comment was based on that, and the fact that it will look like it’s struggling to crawl right up until that fateful night when it teaches itself to run at supersonic speeds.
Yes, it’s kicking its legs now. Yes, there’s no good way to predict when the inflection point of exponential growth will happen.
No, philosophizing about accountability has nothing to do with the facts of AI singularity. No, questions about “actual” intelligence vs “illusory” intelligence are neither relevant to the conversation, nor even meaningfully solved even when just talking about other humans, much less non-human organisms.
That’s why these barriers are arbitrary. You can’t even prove that an average human is capable of responsible accountability in any scientifically objective or meaningful way (and I’d argue that, anecdotally, a disturbingly large percentage are in fact ill-suited to the task). But again, none of these points have anything to do with the AI singularity.
The AI singularity is based upon exactly one premise: can an AI reprogram itself to be slightly better at reprogramming itself. That’s it. Nothing about consciousness, or accountability, or morality or responsibility or initiative or anything else. It all boils down to editing is own code to be more efficient at editing its own code (or generating “children” along the same premise, it’s functionally the same). This creates a positive feedback loop which increases exponentially in capability. You’re trying to moralize a mathematical function.
I think the issue here is you’re interpolating a couple different concepts:
Iterated technological self-improvement resulting in exponential growth
Artificial General Intelligence
The threat to humanity from advanced AI
1 is the singularity, 2 and 3 are frequently hypothesized consequences of 1. Kinda like extensive use of fossil fuels is one concept, the greenhouse effect is another, and rising sea levels a third. They are related, but distinct, even though one contributes to another.
Combining related concepts under one term dilutes the term and makes it more difficult to effectively communicate. Of course, the moral quandaries are valuable topics of discussion, but the mathematical function is a separate topic, and likewise valuable in and of itself
Popularity is not correctness. You’re using a sloppily defined term. I’m using the fundamental definition. Your (Verners) concept muddles matters pointlessly.
The fact is, self-refining LLMs can very possibly exhibit the intelligence explosion fundamental to Von Neumann or I.J. Good’s definition. They are already beginning to alter the way human society operates (coding, school, replacing jobs). They easily pass the Turing test with the right prompts. Your whole point is that it’s not “real” intelligence because they don’t really “understand”, but I can say the same for you. For all I know, you’re an LLM and there’s literally no way that you can prove you aren’t.
Lines in the sand about “real” intelligence are purely philosophical, and that kind of hyperopic philosophizing is exactly the sort of behavior that dooms humanity via underestimation. I’d rather we didn’t find ourselves under machine overlords because “technically they aren’t even really intelligent”.
Again, you are hung up on semantics and terminology. You are going down a checklist based on one specific person’s extrapolation on the possible consequences of the implementation of a concept. I am looking at the core concept underlying that extrapolation (the exponential increase in capability of a system, due to the recursive application of the system’s transformative capabilities to the architecture underlying those same capabilities).
You are caught up on whether the ability to operate on the basis of more data every second than any human can digest in an academic lifetime qualifies as “superhuman”. You are hung up on the same extraneous and irrelevant concepts you introduced: consciousness, accountability, decisions, understanding, inspiration.
My original statement was that the singularity doesn’t look like the singularity until it does.
Even your liberal definitions still rotate around the concept of exponential iterative growth (despite their addition of functionally extraneous {though derivative} concepts like supremacy or emergent consciousness). There’s nothing more that I can say there. You’re going on about definitions changing, the center of the definition is the same. Iteration. Self-programming. Exponential growth.
It doesn’t look like it until it does. That’s what the exponential function does. It’s nearly horizontal, negligable, barely noticable gradual growth; until it hits the anchor point when it rockets up, nearly vertical, almost infinite growth. That’s the core concept at play. Learning to crawl for months, then setting impossible records the next day.
Learn what an exponential function is. Learn why it looks like that, and what the anchor point represents. Learn how LLMs work. Look into Microsoft’s LongNet.
It’s not going to look like the singularity, right up until it does
I’m invested in nothing, there is no con. I’m sorry, you do not seem to understand the fundamental concepts at play. I would recommend trying to learn but I understand if you cannot.
I've noticed that lemmy as a whole is much more leftist than reddit (outside of political servers of course)
I can’t really think of a reason for that as Reddit is hated somewhat equally by “both” sides of the spectrum. It’s just something I find interesting.
How i feel on Lemmy (programming.dev)
What is the definition of capitalism? Is it compatible with people owning the things they produce?
@o_o asked “why are folks so anti-capitalist?” not long ago. It got quite a few comments. But I noticed a trend: a lot of people there didn’t agree on the definition of “capitalism”....
People say “I have nothing to hide” until you them to unlock their phone and give it to you. Chances are, you’ll quickly find out they have things they’d like to hide. (kbin.social)
Privacy ftw
One of us (lemmy.ml)
Such coincidence (sh.itjust.works)
Moana PLEASE (lemmy.world)
Barbenheimer (feddit.uk)
https://feddit.uk/pictrs/image/1e571547-54b1-469f-8d0f-c4d82fc0b6dd.jpeg...
rule (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
People who work in food service or customer service: What’s the dumbest thing a customer ever insisted was “the law” or “illegal”?
Brought to you by my discovery that some people think that “the customer is always right” isn’t the slogan of a long-dead department store, but rather it’s an actual call the cops law.
Venn Diagram Rule (media.kbin.social)