I think I'll take a break from this one, after some parting thoughts.
I don't believe in a "soul" or any particularly special cosmic importance assigned to human beings or any particular divine presence that assigns such importance to human beings. That said, crude reductionism plays into the hands of the ruling class and is far more often used to degrade and denigrate "the other" than it ever actually meaningfully challenges the arrogance and the abuses of the ruling class. Look at how many of them (and their enabling minions) see the rest of us as "NPCs" or even "husks" to borrow a term from the "Effective Altruist" eugenicists discussed here a few days ago.
If we're all supposed to call our individual consciousness "an illusion" on some deterministic grounds and then stretch that stance further to state that we can (and by implication, should) be easily replaced with chat programs and the like, why fight the ruling class at all? Why not just let the superficially more efficient computers do their thing, let the the owners of such computers, simply "stochastic parrots" like the rest of us even if they clearly get a lot more power and privilege with their own "parroting," rake in those profits at all our expense? Why don't we just let them do as they please and instead lay down and die because we have no more right to exist than the machines that the ruling class owns for purposes of replacing us, one purpose at a time? It all doesn't matter how we suffer because our lived experiences are all just an illusion, right? :galaxy-brain:
If and when society is improved somewhat and suffering is reduced, I'll be more open to discussions of how we're all "meat computers" in "meatspace" and what meaningful consequences (if any, really) that such reductionism entails for how we should think about ourselves and each other. Until then, it's just another kind of alienation and insulation, a privileged position to see others suffering and adhere to crude and nihilistic yet ironically lofty perspectives on the human condition that usually further demoralize the proletariat instead of motivating them to fight back and, materialistically, do fucking nothing to improve their material conditions.
That's why so many right-wing techbros like to talk about "meatspace" and "meat computers," I argue. The perspective does not threaten their power and in their interpretation actually strengthens their grip.
You clearly completely missed my point if you can look at the gross injustices of the world and the growing contradictions of capitalism and see the machines owned by the ruling class as at least the equal of people for their right to exist, and declare "this is equalizing!" while the people are trampled over by their rulers, "equal" as meat and/or parrots or whatever reductionist descriptions you feel privileged in using.
I hold no special metaphysical fondness for Buddhism. It's often another alienating system of maintaining the status quo and expanding the power of the ruling class, especially as applied by rulers that have adopted it historically.
I said I wanted to take a break because it's almost always :wall-talk: dealing with arguments like yours. I'm more Continental in my philosophy about what is happening and what ought to be done and less about quaint and privileged abstracts about "what is, is."
I predict this is going to go nowhere except, maybe, name calling. You did make a new account specifically to pitch your take in this thread, after all. I really don't want to get into this further right now.
"Your poetry is just parroting, just like the machine replacing you" provides no comfort and for that matter no hope and no way forward for the poet being replaced, and on those grounds I argue it can even be counter-revolutionary.
I could expand that philosophy further into telling a laid off factory worker that the robot that replaced their post on the assembly line simply did his job better and therefore he should have no grievance instead of asking that worker why the owner of the machine is the only one that significantly benefits from the machine's labor, and then suggesting what is to be done from there. If I told that worker that they are literally the equal (or by implication of efficiency, the lesser) to the machine that replaced them in the factory, and therefore should feel some sort of solidarity with that machine and be happy that their existential equal took over the job, even while owned by someone that gets all the machine's benefits, that worker would be demoralized or pissed off and I wouldn't blame them.
The "path" you suggest is a potentially ruinous one on those grounds when it comes to any future possibility of defeating capitalism before it destroys us all, "meat" or "parrots" or whatever.
I think I'll take a break from this one, after some parting thoughts.
I don't believe in a "soul" or any particularly special cosmic importance assigned to human beings or any particular divine presence that assigns such importance to human beings. That said, crude reductionism plays into the hands of the ruling class and is far more often used to degrade and denigrate "the other" than it ever actually meaningfully challenges the arrogance and the abuses of the ruling class. Look at how many of them (and their enabling minions) see the rest of us as "NPCs" or even "husks" to borrow a term from the "Effective Altruist" eugenicists discussed here a few days ago.
If we're all supposed to call our individual consciousness "an illusion" on some deterministic grounds and then stretch that stance further to state that we can (and by implication, should) be easily replaced with chat programs and the like, why fight the ruling class at all? Why not just let the superficially more efficient computers do their thing, let the the owners of such computers, simply "stochastic parrots" like the rest of us even if they clearly get a lot more power and privilege with their own "parroting," rake in those profits at all our expense? Why don't we just let them do as they please and instead lay down and die because we have no more right to exist than the machines that the ruling class owns for purposes of replacing us, one purpose at a time? It all doesn't matter how we suffer because our lived experiences are all just an illusion, right? :galaxy-brain:
If and when society is improved somewhat and suffering is reduced, I'll be more open to discussions of how we're all "meat computers" in "meatspace" and what meaningful consequences (if any, really) that such reductionism entails for how we should think about ourselves and each other. Until then, it's just another kind of alienation and insulation, a privileged position to see others suffering and adhere to crude and nihilistic yet ironically lofty perspectives on the human condition that usually further demoralize the proletariat instead of motivating them to fight back and, materialistically, do fucking nothing to improve their material conditions.
That's why so many right-wing techbros like to talk about "meatspace" and "meat computers," I argue. The perspective does not threaten their power and in their interpretation actually strengthens their grip.
Parting thoughts over.
:manhattan:
deleted by creator
You clearly completely missed my point if you can look at the gross injustices of the world and the growing contradictions of capitalism and see the machines owned by the ruling class as at least the equal of people for their right to exist, and declare "this is equalizing!" while the people are trampled over by their rulers, "equal" as meat and/or parrots or whatever reductionist descriptions you feel privileged in using.
I hold no special metaphysical fondness for Buddhism. It's often another alienating system of maintaining the status quo and expanding the power of the ruling class, especially as applied by rulers that have adopted it historically.
I said I wanted to take a break because it's almost always :wall-talk: dealing with arguments like yours. I'm more Continental in my philosophy about what is happening and what ought to be done and less about quaint and privileged abstracts about "what is, is."
I predict this is going to go nowhere except, maybe, name calling. You did make a new account specifically to pitch your take in this thread, after all. I really don't want to get into this further right now.
deleted by creator
Not necessarily.
"Your poetry is just parroting, just like the machine replacing you" provides no comfort and for that matter no hope and no way forward for the poet being replaced, and on those grounds I argue it can even be counter-revolutionary.
I could expand that philosophy further into telling a laid off factory worker that the robot that replaced their post on the assembly line simply did his job better and therefore he should have no grievance instead of asking that worker why the owner of the machine is the only one that significantly benefits from the machine's labor, and then suggesting what is to be done from there. If I told that worker that they are literally the equal (or by implication of efficiency, the lesser) to the machine that replaced them in the factory, and therefore should feel some sort of solidarity with that machine and be happy that their existential equal took over the job, even while owned by someone that gets all the machine's benefits, that worker would be demoralized or pissed off and I wouldn't blame them.
The "path" you suggest is a potentially ruinous one on those grounds when it comes to any future possibility of defeating capitalism before it destroys us all, "meat" or "parrots" or whatever.
I really don't want to get into this any further.