LinkedinLenin [any, comrade/them]

I agree with one exception:

There’s a certain type of person who has no coherent message, their whole purpose is to engage in bad faith. In that case any attempt to attack the message is futile due to the asymmetrical nature of disinformation. And the disinformation that spreads so effectively is often stuff that dials into people’s subconscious assumptions. So it’s not always obviously absurd to average people.

See Sartre’s description of how antisemites use this tactic:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

The difficulty people have, from what I’ve witnessed with federation, is differentiating good from bad faith users. And I see this very much from all sides: putting it broadly, people got used to a certain Overton window. Thus it’s easy to assume someone with a foreign opinion doesn’t actually hold that opinion, they’re just trolling or crazy. I think it’s best to assume good faith until proven wrong, otherwise the trolls have succeeded in their goal to poison all dialogue and exchange.

Another thing worth keeping in mind, Lemmy represents a major threat to corporate social media. The best way for this threat to be eliminated is if, in its infancy, it fragments and stagnates due to drama like this. It’s very easy to make an account on any instance, or multiple accounts.

It’s also been my impression that the meme of federation being impossible has taken up 95% visible discourse, with the perceived ills that the meme is based on only being like 5%. One of those things where a small problem is artificially blown up until it becomes the big problem it was falsely claimed to be. I’ve seen a few people voice this sentiment: that their only exposure to the drama is people complaining about the drama. I saw a similar suspicious phenomenon happen on Reddit a few times.

Oh fuck I thought the mattress was a railing

Was thinking it wasn’t too bad, as a kid I always loved those kinda loft areas in bourgeois houses, even though they’re pretty impractical

Load-bearing cube

no 3.5mm headphone jack

Whaaaat? Why?

also a pet theory i like (that isn’t actually true or provable) is that gifted programs are meant to remove children deemed smarter from their communities and funnel them into middle management and academia, so they don’t become agitators for change in their communities and workplaces

on the topic of iq, i have a lot of problems with the way people seem to interact with the concept. there’s a bunch of assumptions all baked into it:

• iq is a variable that actually exists in nature

• people’s iq is static and follows a standard distribution

• iq tests are capable of objectively measuring or at least approximating this variable

• this variable is a good stand-in or even synonymous with cognitive ability

• cognitive ability is univariate or single-faceted, able to be described with a single number

• cognitive ability equates to or correlates with usefulness, happiness, sociability, success, whatever

• finally, that any of this really matters, like in a materially impactful way, or is something that we should focus on

it’s not that each of these statements is 100% wrong, it’s that each shouldn’t be assumed to be true. but the way i usually see iq invoked kinda just uncritically runs with all of them, contained within a neat little ideological package.

Yeah, to me it sounds like “even a tax collector, the worst type of person you know, is better than the Pharisee in this story”

Comics made with the sole intention of getting memed feel less authentic than memes naturally grown in the wild.

That’s just thought-terminating. There’s no universal truth that ends do or do not justify means.

Is locking up a sex offender to prevent further victimization justifiable? Is taking bread from a store to feed a starving person justifiable? Is banning false advertisement justifiable? Is requiring licensure for medical practice justifiable? Those actions are all means that directly violate some conception of liberal human rights.

Additionally, there’s often not a clear delineation, in the real world, between means and ends. The real world is made up of complex networks of powers and interests competing against each other, regardless of what can or cannot be justified. We believe in advancing working class power, interests, and rights, which by definition necessitates undermining the power, interests, and rights of the ruling class and its enforcers/enablers. Within that framework we accept and perform criticisms of the methods used to progress those goals, but only inasmuch as those critiques can help to refine strategy and inform future liberatory movements. Otherwise it’s either carrying water for US interests or squabbling about the moral standing of dead people.

Oh I can empathize with that struggle. If I get time this week maybe I’ll try to write a basic summary of it.

I agree with the sentiment, but please do read the essay I linked. It really changed the way I thought about things.

It’s very much about strategizing and analysis, not moralizing or dividing or anything like that.

Eh I just don’t think there’s much utility in being so strict with categories. That’s fine as a shorthand though, and for explaining to coworkers who aren’t familiar with the theories.

But the point of a material analysis is to, well, analyze. What are people’s material interests? How do those interests shape a person’s revolutionary or reactionary potential?

Rather than try to illustrate it myself with made-up examples, I’m gonna delete the paragraph I wrote and just post an actual material analysis from history

From a materialist lense, middle class usually refers to the small business owners, landlords, etc. Petty bourgeoisie basically. They historically tend to welcome fascist ideology out of fear of losing their privileged position in society.

So there’s a difference between the working person who might get caught in a false consciousness versus the tenuously well-off person who’s somewhat class conscious. The latter is likely a lost cause more often than not. The former can often be reasoned with if we can speak to their experiences as a worker and cut through the spectacle.

But yeah the Liberal use of the term “middle class” as someone occupying arbitrary income brackets is an immaterial abstraction with very little utility for either prediction or description.