Power & wealth have toxifying effects on those who accumulate such. Their opinions and decisions become increasingly self-centered, careless of the various balances of the world around them.

The end stage of capitalism was always tyranny, and it was important for that to be understood and guarded against via quality education for the masses, plus regulatory and oversight bodies backed by science, facts & reality. That and socialistic political practices, of course. Also of course, a high regard for sustainability and respect for habitat and nature's web.

In the end we have failed at too many of these things.

Much harder to concentrate power if you have to compete against its dispersal. Socialism is the distribution of power, widely across all hands, right wingers want to concentrate it narrowly, into the hands of the few. Which do you think is wiser?

Love his work! He inspired me to take a pledge to donate 10% of my income to effective charities: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge

Isn't this the guy that said that humans are inherently evil because people don't donate to charities? "Comparable moral importance". Who dictates morale importance lmfao?

Nice one!

I'd not heard of philosopher Peter Singer before, and I love that I got a nice little introduction here. 🤍

comparable moral importance

Therein lies the problem. Who is doing the comparing?

Yall should probably be aware that this guy is foundational to the technosalvationist philosophy that SV bros use to justify setting the planet on fire in order to summon AI Jesus.

Edit:

And also he’s a eugenicist.

I feel like maybe I should leave some links.

• Why Effective Altruism and Longtermism Are Toxic Ideologies
• Unwell to Begin With, Episode 3: Silicon Valley’s TESCREAL Eugenics Cult with Dr. Émile Torres
• More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity
• Sam Bankman-Fried and the Moral Emptiness of Effective Altruism

checks alt text

Peter Singer

OP can start with a proper text alternative.
No way someone unable to read an image will get the content, and search engines won't find it by missing text, either.

Not cheating accessibility & editing a post to correct that is definitely in OP's power.
Nothing of comparable moral importance is lost by doing so.

But what about the stock market?

This haunts me every day

ordinary people are evil is a great video about that paper by Singer.

The billionaire delimma is more like what if the bad thing directly benefited me, should I stop it from happening?

Is the picture (and possibly the quote) from the movie Insomnia?

I should rewatch Patch Adams very soon.

Apparently (okay quick search unsure accuracy so don't trust me) line was from a movie for his character but written (and apparently directed, according to snopes) by Bobcat Goldthwait, neat.

He ended up with significant depression because of lewy bodies fucking with his brain..

Did he end up with people that made him feel alone?

Excellent, thank you!

And if I may?
I'd love to hear some Aussie / Australasia quotes from you, as I feel like we're getting a bit stuck in a 'Euro-American' territory of quotes, barely touching the other continents & peoples & classes much. That's poorly-stated of course, but I meant well. :S

Having said that... I guess I've self-assigned myself some homework, haha. *gulp*

You’re doing a great job! Im mostly still lurking around but want to be more active. Thanks for all your hard work.

I try to keep up the sub as I can, Mr.N., but there's nothing like the founder's touch!

Hope all is as well as can be reasonably expected, mate. ✊

Oh, and Robin Williams was an absolutely fascinating figure to me... well worth an excellent biopic or whatnot, ey?

He made the world a better place.

God, I miss that guy 🫡

That sounds... not good, frankly.

I struggle to remember anything even the truth

Assuming I understand you correctly, then yes-- we're indeed a clan and tribe-based species at heart (and identical genetics!), not unlike you can see in some of our fellow apes and other social animals.

And yeah, there's a certain classic imperative working-- like, how much does one strive for individual position vs. how much does one 'be a good soldier and support the group.'

IMO we somehow lost track upon these realities, and quite badly, I'd argue.

As in, we forgot all these basic facts of reality, altho there's a heavy disclaimer, and it's this-- as a species close to ~500 generations now, repeatedly trained upon the idea of 'civilisation is good and normal,' the chances of us individually taking all this in to account upon a healthy mindset is... just, damn. Negligible.

And yet our natural / historical / traditional state upon 300Kyrs of sapiens' existence is to be allies upon each other, for the direct purposes of survival. We're meant to be friends and help each other... is a basic sapiens truth IME.

We’re a social species. We desire to be validated and recognized for who we are (“individuality”), and that’s inextricably tied to our instincts to be connected to a bigger group. They’re not opposing ideas, rather more so two ends of the same stream. Too much of one or the other is unhealthy, of course, but the flow is all the same. No need to disavow either :)

everyone should have a winchester lever action.

leveractions are incredibly sexy.

even the most popular leveraction, the winchester 1895 is considered an "antique" firearm, and thus you can buy one without needing the standard NFA background check or other requirements.

god I love leveractions.