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fedi moonbat
he/they
anarcho whatever

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

@SallyStrange a history of every transaction? every coin minted?

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

@Air_Quotes_Comedian

the universal constant thing is something that mystifyers latch onto because it does have some validity, And so they can say "look the evil scientists they're hiding this from you, they don't want you to know the truth!" and it's just like no, science does tend to be conservative and slow to integrate new discoveries, not because it's a conspiracy to hide the existence of God ( a common accusation, even tho plenty of scientists are religious ) it's because they don't want to leap to conclusions based on limited evidence and just throw out centuries of knowledge because there are fuzzy bits on the edge of their models.

But again, it does have some validity as it highlights certain problems with positivism, the usually unexamined 19th century philosophy that underpins most of modern science. Basically the core assumption is that all that exists is at least potentially observable (or deduced), and only that which can be observed (or deduced) can be said to truly exist. These assumptions are practically useful, because then scientists, unlike theologians and philosopher don't spend their time on metaphysical speculation with no basis in observable reality, but when these assumptions are taken to be absolutely true or don't account for other epistemic factors it can lead to problems. and again this due to scientists not consulting the history of philosophy, so when scientists discover flaws in their models that are based on these methodological assumptions, they think they've made some new discovery and go out and publish a book and make the rounds on talk shows.

From the position of Pyrhonic Skepticism for example, proposing such a thing as "universal constants" at all, is absurd, it's a dogmatic and arbitrary postulation, we don't know how constant these things are in the grander scheme, how could we? we can't observe everything everywhere in the universe throughout all of the history of existence! It would be more proper to say, these things only appear to be constant from our limited observations, and so for our purposes it is safe to assume they are constant for practical purposes, without making any claims as to their universality, which we cannot possibly know. Just like we assume a each day is exactly 24 hours, it's not actually, the length of days vary throughout the year by a few seconds, but it's safe to assume. Problem solved lol

This is also i think the source of the state of disarray within theoretical physics, they don't seem to want to accept the obvious that a universal theory of everything is impossible because we simply cannot observe or account for all the casual factors underlying reality. In all probability, most of this universe cannot be observed or deduced, we can't know wtf a blackhole is, and so the physicists get more and more into speculative territory until they turn into this guy www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAhQElpYT8o

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

@brothersoul @FediChamp

no problem, I don't think Friendica has any streaming features, not sure if there is an easy foss solution to that, you could look into Jitsi Meet, but that is more considered an alternative to Zoom calls, but basicall it's a video stream, peer tube is dope tho

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

@trans_caracal @Air_Quotes_Comedian

ngl I did like his Book Sense of Style as I am an advocate for clear and simple prose (tho i rarely practice it), and his arguments in Tabula Rasa are reasonable: humans are not "empty slates" we do have innate cognitive faculties, as all animals do. No one debates this now but it needed to be said, 40 years ago, or did it? even then most arguments only apply to like radical behaviorists or stalinist sociologists and in retrospect it's clearly part of his whole anti "postmodern" neo enlightenment bullshit because it's a straw man of contemporary anthropology. Weird If you watch interviews he did in the 80's he seems almost like a leftist, but no, he is just ~~kinda gay~~ very "nice" and well spoken, and I think that helped him fly under the radar for many years as he increasingly became more mask of about his reactionary agenda. So yeah, what a p.o.s. also a Lolita Express frequent Flyer. 😒

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

@Air_Quotes_Comedian

right on, yeah when it comes to the popular discourse around theoretical physics or quantum mechanics it's an absolute shitshow, largely because this stuff isn't even taught in schools to most people, so the first time they ever get exposed to any of this is in a video about how "scientists prove we live in the matrix" then again theoretical physics itself is kindof, a fucking mess lol, and there's lots of grifters in this space ( from what I can tell Stephen Hawking is not very well regarded anymore ) but because of the general ignorance and how the media doesn't even employ knowledgeable writers to cover these subjects, there isn't even a frame of reference to talk about these controversies, that are mostly mathmatical in nature

I'm sure you know a lot more about physics than me, i'm more social science/humanities/philosphy person. I will say, and I think Marx remarks on this in his day, that a lot of scientists, lacking any familiarity with philosophy will sound like absolute bafoons as soon as they talking outside their field, Pinker or Sam Harris are the worst examples but they're just tip of iceberg

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

@Air_Quotes_Comedian

yeah i mean the thing about science, at least, the old enlightenment view, is it's supposed to be democratizing in that scientific truths are universally valid because they are are imminently demonstrable. This is still true of course when we're talking about fundamentals of natural sciences like physics or thermodynamics or chemistry. But like that line about "a sufficiently advanced science becomes indistinguishable from magic" it goes the other way, that magic and woo and now indistinguishable from science to a lot of people, since these so few people are even taught these fundamentals.

There are these processes under capitalism of stratification and bureaucratization, and in science increased specialization, or with universities being increasingly funded and controlled by private interests, you can't even talk about objective universal science like you could 100 years ago, because like the religious dogmas of old, there interest is involved in what is deemed ot be "true", but in order to serve their interests, they must pretend to be disinterested, objective, unbiased. But in order to do that, they need people to be generally ignorant of scientific principles and so defer to their authority.

You can literally just pay any research firm or university department to do a 'study' that can "prove" or "disprove" ( in reality, suggest, imply, or call into question) just about anything, and then you also pay other quacks to do 'peer review" and even if the findings get challenged down the line, it doesn't matter, because the study gets picked up by media outlets who run with whatever factoid the financiers of the paper wanted to put out there. Say the beef industry funds a study with the aim of "proving" the health benefits of ground beef, they pass it off to the media who runs the headline "New study finds ground beef is good for you actually" and by the time the study is ripped to pieces by actual scientists who take time away from their actual research to debunk this garbage, the damage has already been done, and millions of people have heard that "ground beef is good for you actually" and have increased their beef intake accordingly,. if you try to argue with them, they'll be like "uh this is science, facts don't care about your liberal feelings"

All that ^^ is very obvious to me, because of my intermediary-at-best knowledge of sociology, economics and history, what used to be called "critical theory". And this is exactly why there's been such a push against the humanities and "soft sciences" because the ruling class doesn't want people to see through their grift. In fact many people would call me a conspiracy theorist whackjob for connecting these dots, because they simply were never exposed to any kind of critical social theory, and so anything that calls into question the sacred legitimacy of these scientific institutions must mean I am some tin foil hat wingnut.

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

@Air_Quotes_Comedian

I always imagine literal "vice chair" where I guess people feed your drugs and perform sexual favors the moment you sit down

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

@Air_Quotes_Comedian I suppose not, but then lay people are like "oh you think you're some kind of expert" and I'm not "no" but then a lot of the supposed experts because they're so specialized overly have an overly narrow view of things, to the point of being totally ignorant of related fields. Big problem in social science actually, like between economics, sociology and anthropology, these are all made up of competing schools of thought, and the different fields rarely communicate which means different "sciences" often have radically different views of the same exact topic.

Imo you don't have to be an expert to discuss a topic, the basic principles of emperical reasoning should be enough to discuss problems of general importance, and if you do have some expert insight you should be able to have share your knowledge in a way normal people can understand,

It's even worse in tech tho, because ya know, you have totally fake job titles made up by VC startups, like the criterea for calling oneself a 'software engineer' is far lower than that of an actual engineer who must have a fundamental understanding of physics and mathematics.

Some mofos just call themselves "experts' without any reference to a degree or anything "forieng policy expert","security expert" that's even a thing lmao stfu, they don't issue degrees for "experts" in any reputable university, maybe you're knowledgeble, but they'll just be like "Uh i'm an expert shut up and listen to me"

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

@Joyous01 it is incredible how so many distinct species develop wings and just start flying around, i wish i could fly 😿

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

meta shitpost subtoot

i don't think oli liked my rant by how the concept of "relevance" is capitalist propaganda, i hope he doesn't fediblock my instance

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

genocideshitpost

are you still talking about the genocide Gaza? okay boomer, the genocide everyone's talking about now is in Darfur, get with the times

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

@0x4d6165 interesting, that's kinda similar to egregore, which is something that is real because people believe in it

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

raytheon

@whitequark those are certainly all related somehow

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

when i was in college i was like "yeah fuck a career, i'm gonna be a revolutionary theorist and organier, let's see, i'll need to study sociology, economics, anthropology, philosophy, actually why go to college, my education will be in the streets, i can just download all the books and teach myself"

well that didn't really work out, but i am superficially knowledgeable on a variety of subjects so

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

Bluesky and the Fedi: Winner's Syndrome, on "relevance", Diddy reference

@oliphant

real shit

a lot of it comes down to questions of values and what kind of place you want to build, and fedi is rooted in free software, p and anti-capitalist values ( even right leaning fedizens are generally anti corporate capture ) and BS simply is not, sure there are lefty foss types there, but the people making the decisions are the same tech elites whose California Ideology is destroying the entire planet.

When someone uses a term like 'relevance', I'm always like, relevant to what? mainstream American pop culture? whatever fashionable scam rich people are into this week is not relevant to me and my life and people care about, and the dehumanizing implication is: You Don't Matter, Poor People Don't Matter. Who decides what's relevant? Apparently it's not any of the millions of people on fedi -- it's rich people.

This is a bit of a leap, but watched a video on the Diddy, and how back in the 2000's "everyone" ( not everyone, the super rich/celebrities ) felt they needed to go to his "White Parties" in order to 'stay relevant"... "if you weren't there, you weren't relevant" one has-been said in an interview, and this bourgeois idea of keeping up with the next big thing is why so many hopped on crypto and AI. It's also used in gentrification "this neighborhood is the spot, this overpriced novelty cafe is "the place to be*" they say as they forcibly displace local inhabitants. It's a mass manipulation tactic used by powerful predators to coerce people into buying into and legitimizing their schemes, and afterwards all these marks are left with is some embarrassing photos with a notorious human trafficker. 📸

You know who else isn't relevant ? Palestinians, undocumented migrants, people living in tent cities, people in prison, minimum wage workers, turns out vast majority of human beings are not relevant. What is relevant is what insecure and gulliable rich people are being conned with today, and anything that doesn't vibe with their own self absorbed self-congratulatory fantasy world is not. But what's really disheartening is how many people who really should know better also fall for this because this kind of thinking is ingrained so deep in our culture.

To be fair, if I was a journalist or had a podcast or was some kind of content creator, or my career was tied to my reach in any way, then sure I'd probably be on Bluesky or some other corpo platform to advertise my product, even then I'd still come to fedi when I wanted to enjoy myself and talk to people who are relevant to me... but also news flash most people don't actually need or want to do social media as PR, and that's another con job altogether; convincing every person on social media they are actually a brand 🤳

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

i don't understand this sense of urgency like "we need a new protocol, ActivityPub is doomed ah" idk seems to work pretty well actuallly, i don't think the problem is the protocol, and you know you can just ignore the spec sometimes you don' thave to follow it to a T - you can also just do shit that has nothing to do with the spec and then change the spec later based on these new developments in practice.

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

@b9AcE pretty good Behind the Bastards episode on that asshole

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

@Nickiquote @RickiTarr

"english classics like ham and mustard" wait, so that's it, ham mustard and bread ? that's what I make with one hand when i'm too lazy to make a real sandwhich

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

get you a trad-cath trans-fem trad-wife

lumpen 🍉 III @scrum@wanderingwires.net

@brothersoul @FediChamp

so Diaspora is a separate network altogether, Friendica connects to both the ActivityPub protocol and Diaspora Network whereas the rest of fedi only Does ActivityPub, both Friendica and Diaspora are a little more "facebook-like" as opposed to "twitter-like" in terms of their interface but not that different

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