I always thought it was about power. Maintaining power structures requires a clear dividing line, somewhere. The line between women and men is artificially upheld, to create the illusion that there’s “naturally two categories in everything”. If people got the idea that you could “transition”, that would overthrow a whole lot of the artificial divides that we have in our society today.

the government can go into unlimited debt if it is willing to cause a hyperinflation at some point later in the future to eliminate all of that debt.

we need more working powers to keep our wealth and our standard of living up. obviously, as things are crumbling around us, this means we don’t put in enough effort to maintain things, and more hands would help.

that is a false thought. The labor market is regulated by supply and demand. That means, fewer workers lead to higher wages and a higher quality of life. It might seem paradoxical, but having a smaller workforce means people in the country will be able to afford more stuff.

That is especially important as people discuss the birth-rate, and immigration, in all countries, also in the US and in Europe. People say things such as “women have 1.6 children on average, which means our population is declining, and obviously that is the reason why our quality-of-life seems to be going down as well”. However, the opposite is true. As automation takes over and well-paying (and meaningful) jobs are eroded, having fewer people around doing all the work actually drives wages up, and leads to an improved quality-of-life.

ways to self-sabotage (100% speedrun)

Yeah, once you start getting good at something, it’s often faster to just do it yourself. That’s how you know you’re good at something.

I actually agree with this attitude - do what you’re good at and not what you’re bad at - but it isn’t very popular in America where “everybody can make it”. I guess it has something to do with an Eastern/Western divide in mindset, where the eastern mindset is more “know where your place/position in society is and stick with it”.

It’s surprising there’s not more hallucinations to be honest.

If you wanna hear about my personal belief system:

The world is all magic. Magic is older than science or rational thinking. However, science is a special product of magic. Think of Magic as a factory that just randomly produces one special object, and that is science.

Science is like a stable island, which spans the whole Earth in space, and approximately 400 years in time, starting somewhere in the 17th century and extending through the 21st century. Where the rational laws of physics prevail. Outside of that, you might as well stop rational thinking, because it’s not gonna help you. It’s all schamanic, right-brain-half thinking outside of that. And the incantations that we call language are a part of that.

funnily enough i came up with the exact same thing.

Also it’s worth pointing out that children don’t have an “innate” language. Then, how do they first learn their first language? It must be through some other mechanism than through language itself.

This implies that meaning can exist outside of words and language. In case you didn’t realize this before.

I understand your viewpoint, and that you see words as a database that maps sequences of sounds to meaning.

However, as a funny side note, i’d like to point out that that’s not what i’m doing when i’m trying to decipher the meaning of a word. If i’m unsure, i will extract the root of the word (only look at the consonants in the core part of the word), and then try to reconstruct the meaning from there. In that way, i have more of a “root of sequence of sounds” <–> meaning mapping in my language processing part of the nervous system.

From a technical perspective, you might wanna look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noisy-channel_coding_theorem

It basically says, that even when your channel over which you’re transmitting the data is noisy (i.e. does not transport the information exactly as you want it), you can still establish a clear communication over it. It’s fascinating, and i highly suspect that something similar is happening in our spoken language. The words in itself are ambiguous, but through relentless redundancy, somehow, the information still comes through clearly.

It is probably one of the reason why i have a habit of always saying the same sentence 2 or 3 times in a row, with slightly different wordings. I guess it is because i’m utterly aware of that information can get lost during talking, especially in a noisy situation, and that repeating the information helps splendidly with making it more clear. Other people, however, seem to be a bit annoyed by it :p

No, i disagree. Imagine a jungle, you might have a computer, but you can’t lay out cables due to lack of free space/straight lines. You would have to run the cables in such convoluted directions, that they might end up running in circles. Or the roots of the trees might hinder the cables, or destroy them over time.

The internet transports information. Roads transport goods and people. Both require straight lines from origin to destination, otherwise they’re inefficient.

Ah, what you’re describing here is Plato’s cave; a place underground so deep that you cannot see the stars. The starry sky, of course, is a metaphor for the internet, or for universal knowledge.

I think in such a world where there can be no internet, there can be no energy either. Because just like the internet, energy requires a straight line to travel along. But the internet could only not exist, if such straight lines were impossible, like in a very wrapped space (i.e. Jungle). In this case, Information could only be exchanged within small neighbourhoods, leading to the fragmentation of the space.

Plato, of course, provides a solution: You have to get out of the cave first, before you can reach enlightenment. In real life, such a thing is equivalent so “lifting yourself out of the swamp you have surrounded yourself with, and let go of earthly affections”. In a jungle, you could rise above the trees, to have a direct line of sight to the sky. Then, you can communicate. This idea is often expressed in the form of an arrow, which you shoot up at its origin, rising it above the trees and obstacles, only for it to travel in a straight line and come down somewhere else. So basically, the internet is arrows of information being exchanged.

Does that give you some ideas?

vota anarchista!

A few weeks, as i’ve spent some time abroad in some village where they literally didn’t have electricity.

It depends on whether you’re working or just slacking off. I think i’ve gone for 60 hours without eating, but that was when i was a teenager and bed-rotting and just didn’t care about eating properly.

Now, i don’t do that anymore. While being active (going to school, working), i guess it’s less than 24 hours.

I honestly don’t really know, but i can guess.

Stock on basic food items, maybe enough for a year or more (including noodles, rice).

Maybe, if you can afford the space/time for it, learn how to grow some basic vegetables on your balcony/garden, to go along with the calories.

That is all i can do. Maybe, also look into viable long-term accomodations in case you lose your house/apartment. Could be homeless shelters, could be sanctuaries, idk.

ooh shit, how did that happen? was it a crazy ex? i hope you get better soon. i know how demanding these post-stress syndromes can be. (i’m struggling with something similar, but not as severe)

I don’t think there’s a lot you can do … a lot of problems are big and complex, like food getting expensive, a staggering economy, … but what you can do is to talk with your friends and build social connections. If it doesn’t change reality, at least it makes you feel better :) and i mean it, lots of mental health problems (that are so widespread today) can be at least alleviated by social contact. And maybe gives society a little bit of extra stability … if people are connected in meaningful ways.

Apart from that, i can only pray that people take the world and the future seriously, and think twice before they put children into this world.

Do you have a matrix chat account? I would like to talk to you in more detail.

I have collected these thoughts discussing with a small group of friends.

To really understand long-term development, it isn’t enough to just consider “pop econ”, as you rightly put it. I have considered some thoughts into it that are right on the border between reality and mysticism, for lack of a better word. The reason people do things is because deep inside, they are moved by the meaningfulness of it all. That is why it makes sense to consider the world’s fate on a story-telling scale.

People believed during the 1960s that economic growth was the right thing to do. As we all know (The Limits to Growth) it can’t go on that way forever, in fact it has to come to a halt. That is why the economy is in turmoil, and people must have fewer children or we face a large unemployment crisis in the future.

When that exactly will be is a subject to debate, and i put 2040 because there’s Renewable Energy that has to be set up, including everything that has to do with it (green steel, …). So that takes a few (maybe 20) years to install. After that … what comes after?

In my eyes, the unemployment crisis is bigger than the food crisis. Acres lose fertility, yes, but they retain 40% fertility in the long-term, even with all the insects dying and the mycorrhiza dissolving. Since people only use 30% of (technically) possible food-sources today, this should work out.

Somewhere around 25% less world GDP than now in 2070 from climate change destroying everything.

I don’t think we’ll have (and i hope we won’t still have) “GDP” in 2070, honestly.