The problem, fundamentally, is that unlike a computer program that won't compile if there's syntax errors,
or that will crash on null pointer dereference, etc.
There's no such mechanisms in place to ensure logical consistency and coherance of made claims.
Thus the onus is on you to quickly realize that the other party "doesn't have what it takes" and bail out, or you're arguing with a person that doesn't have the mental capacity to recognize syntax errors and subtle bugs, they are simply interested in arriving at their destination and couldn't care less if they arrived there with an unbroken chain of valid chess moves.
> I don't think this is true. There are times when I do think it's true, and when I start feeling that way I know it's time to step back because I can no longer engage constructively.
I love how you don't even care if it's true, merely how you think at any given moment (and this changes with mood) and how those thoughts makes you feel.
If you're unable to entertain the idea significant amount of people don't have "what it takes" (which is a fact, btw), have you ever been able to engage constructively?
One of the hallmarks of a person who isn't interested in playing chess is a person who focuses not on what IS true, but "what they think" or "how they start feeling" about chess moves at any given time, etc. Ie. focus is about vibes.
If they take the most absurd interpretation or nitpick about irrelevant details that doesn't take away from the crux of the point you're making - and that's the best they can do - are they really intelligent?
Or are you simply dealing with people that "don't have what it takes" to do better?
They simply don't have the faculties to make a better argument or approach from a different angle, it's the best they can do, and the best they can do is just not enough.
The frustrating part about arguing - on the internet:
1. Infinite supply of people.
2. 90%+ of times before you get anywhere, you find out the person doesn't have "what it takes".
At minimum you have to filter out 90%+ of people that simply don't have the mental faculties to evaluate what is and isn't a valid argument, before you even get started. All this just takes energy and there's just no benifit.
Its like imagine you're trying to playing chess, but
1. Most of the people don't even know rules.
2. Even if they know (some of the) rules. Some people are fundamentally incapable of recognizing and telling a difference between valid or invalid chess move. Some moves - like castling - are fundamentally too challenging for them to grasp. They simply don't have what it takes to participate.
3. And then you find out whole bunch of people aren't there to play chess to begin with, but rather discuss how the moves they use in their house is all different.
> One is that money makes people inherently happy. Which is so obviously wrong it's not even worth talking about.
Really. The mere fact of having large chunk of cash and resources, without necessarily even spending it as such - per say, can make people inherently happy-ier.
I'll give you an example: You can say NO whenever you wish. It reduces stress without having spent a single penny of it. It changes your attitude to life by mere fact of having it. Even if don't say NO (because situation doesn't call for it), having the mere option to say it at any given moment - makes you inherently happier and have a healthier attitude to life.
So not even this point stands. Money can make people inherently happy-ier. Without as much as even spending a penny extra as you would have had before you got the "big stash".
"money can't buy happiness" is a poor mans cope. It's a comforting lie for proletariat, the opium for the goycattle.
If you can't buy happiness either one of these is true:
1. You don't have enough money to buy it. Buying happiness isn't cheap.
2. You have skill issues.
Most people simply don't have enough money to test the hypothesis that "money can't buy happiness", for them earning money involves a lot of struggle and selling their time, and all sorts of opportunity costs.
Thus for working class people having more money is intrinsically linked to selling more of their time or "working harder" (having two jobs, overtime).
Therefore it seems unintuitive to them that having more money will bring hapiness. After all they have to work so hard for it and sell a piece of themselves for it.
And then there, of course, people with skill issues.
The more money I have, the happier I become. Money has brought nothing, but pure joy in my life, it has made me smile more!
> Most of the things that can be remedied with money are not the truly painful things of life either.
Have you done the math of what life consists of for most people?
It's 9-to-5. Your life is DOMINATED - by large order of magnitude - by involuntary wage slavery.
Where you literally sell away your time for pennies on a dollar to a highest bidder.
That is the most painful thing in life, bar none, there is nothing worse than this. This is what ruins most of your health, ages you the most, causes most of the stress, which seperates you from spending more time with your family and loved ones and being free and doing what you want.
Unless the wage-slavery happens to be of enjoyable type for you. Which is bit of an outlier, lets be honest.
> From having no respect from your peers?
Most people automatically give respect and admiration to people with money, regardless if it's deserved or not.
> Will money save you from heartache? From being lonely?
Being a 9-to-5 wage-slave is ten times worse than heartache or loneliness. Or most other things.
If you're lonely and aren't able to distract yourself from heartache and you have boatloads money, you have SKILL ISSUES of the most severe kind.
Money has brought nothing, but pure joy in my life.
Dude, every sane language out there does this. Just generally with 4byte prefix. Null-terminated stuff has always been backwards compat stuff.
Pascal strings - historically and why people even remember this being an issue - were up to 255 chars in size, if not you had to use different string type.
You might still want raw pointers for all sorts of low level stuff, but you almost never want to have null-terminated strings for anything but back-compat, one of the worst things ever, even on memory constrained systems.
Yup, and there you go confirming beyond sliver of doubt that you're a genuine, certified "akshually" type redditor.
Fundamentally incapable of distilling the substance of the argument, and always latching onto any opportunity to misunderstand and nitpick some irrelevant semantics instead.
> The purpose of consumption for most people is to soothe the pain of working.
Yes, for a lot of people it is like this.
When I was young, I couldn't understand why people went on 1-2 week short, extremely expensive vacations where they blow multiple months worth of their savings (ie. multiple months of their income after expensives) in what is extremely short amount of time. It seemed mind-bogglingly stupid.
Now I understand. Being part of the system and doing 9-to-5 wageslavery is inescapable fact of their life.
So when they get 2 weeks off - 2 weeks to actually go and live freely, they just go all out on having a good time. Because no matter what - they are going back to 9-to-5 system.
And however wastefully they "consume" whatever is left after basic expenses, doesn't really matter in grand scheme of things and won't free them from slavery.
It's a distraction. "Whatever hours of free time I get after work, I'm gonna indulge consoom however I want"
Now software engineers are a bit different, where it's possible to retire after 10 years of work if you plan and live frugally, this is simply not an option for vast majority of people.
> The masses work because they want to consume, not the other way around. Everyone wants more
If he wanted to say masses work, because they have to pay rent and meet basic necessities (ie. under threat of homelessness and starvation), he would have clearly said so.
The way this is worded very clearly refers to conspicuous consumption and consumerism - ie working as means to buying ever more funkopops and ever pokemon cards, ever larger houses to put ever more stuff in them, garage with ever more cars, a vacation house, a pool, a yacht and then a bigger one. And this being the primary motivator (rather than base survival)
Thus no matter what your productive output is per hour of labour, you will always work as much as you can, because you are - presumably - insatiably driven to always consume ever more with no end to it.
And frankly, he certainly is right, but only to an extent, as there definitely are people that operate like this, however them being majority? I don't think so.
> The masses work because they want to consume, not the other way around.
Hell, no. Masses work, because they have to.
It's not under threat of violence, it's under threat of sleeping under a bridge and starving. Which, frankly, isn't that far off.
People often spend as much as 30-40% of income on rent alone. Plus, once you stack up all the other basic necessities (which have heavily gone up under inflation), you'll have very small sliver left to allocate to "consumption" in a traditional sense of the word, where you "consoom" for sake of consooming all sorts of meaningless stuff.
Moreover, society is structured such, that you can't really partially retire - say take 5 year sabattical and come back without people perceiving as if there must be something wrong with you.
Most jobs aren't really accomodating of people who just wanna come in 2 times a week. Neither would that support basic necessities and rent except for some select few jobs.
> Why? It’s repressive if done to cap a natively-growing population, since that means government controlling reproduction (à la one-child policy).
There's a point where caping even natively growing population is actually the right move.
There's plenty of overpopulated shitholes (Mumbai, Dhaka, Cairo, Bangladesh, etc) where it would have been an absolute blessing if government was controlling reproduction or put a population cap in place.
If you think capping population is wrong, go visit Dhaka, I highly recommend it.
If you're still on the fence after visiting Dhaka, you're beyond saving.
I remember "playing" it briefly somewhere within PS2-era.
And the absolutely horrid framerate is the thing that I remember most about the game. It absolutely ruined the experience for me and made me stop 'trying' to play it.
And no, it isn't me a primarily a PC gamer complaining about 30fps. It was like 15-20fps. It's was absolute ass, bordering on unplayable.
It's like you weren't grappling with a colossus, instead you're constantly fighting the laggy 15fps framerate.
And I don't mean it just by the standards of today, I mean by standards of the day.
God of War games hit 50-60fps pretty well on PS2 and had all the epic bosses and set pieces
> A stunning number of people have been raised/educated solely by the internet. That’s the source for knowledge, not other people.
On the internet you can learn from and sometimes interact with the best of the best, so the barrier of entry for what constitutes an "expert" is rised much higher.
For all I know maybe you are an expert, but as a general rule of thumb - people are sick of "experts" eager to share their "expertise".
It's simply the case that the supply of "experts" wanting to share "expertise" vastly eclipses the demand by several orders of magnitude.
I think there's a business somewhere, where you get paid to listen to "experts" and they get to feel better about themselves. It's a win-win.
So if people don't perceive you as an "expert" and dont go to you for answers, you simply do not register as one or they have a rather high bar which requires observable undeniable artifacts (and I don't mean credentials, I mean software) and competition is rather fierce - there's simply overproduction of people who think they are "experts" and thus you have to give unmistakable symptoms of being one to register.
> If you stood on the street corner and asked every passerby what they would change about their phone, I think you would be there all day before someone said "I wish I could replace the battery".
I doubt most people wouldn't even think that this is a thing they can wish for or that this is even within realm of possibility.
It has to be explicitly named as an option - as, I'm afraid, people have forgotten that you can have "nice things".
Also I feel rather uncomfortable every time somebody purports to be representitive of or know that "most people" want.
Well, the world is exactly as "God" created it.
Thus, if the world is falling apart, then the God - observably so - has done a real shoddy job.
If you come upon a piece of well written software - you can infer that it's written by a good and competent programmer.
And if the software on the other hand is shitty, then more likely than not - made and created by a shitty programmer.
World as is - is obviously created by either somebody extremely incompetent or downright malevolent as far as UX for living beings is concerned.