བོད་རྒྱལ་ལོ།

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • A lot of people are saying to learn to cook, but things aren’t that simple. Many people know how to cook perfectly well but order out anyway, either because they’re busy or because they have mental health conditions that make cooking incredibly stressful.

    We need to change our economic system so that CEO bonuses aren’t inflating the prices of people’s food. This would make it easier for people to eat out more often if they feel they need to. It shouldn’t break the bank to get simple meals at a restaurant.





  • It has to do with the societal consequences of how them “valuing their time” impacts people. Nurses refusing to do volunteer nursing has little impact on the overall system of access to healthcare.

    Healthcare is heavily regulated through legislation, and is going to be free or paid or corporate or not corporate largely as a result of the legislation. Nurses can’t just do what they want. People who are concerned about the state of healthcare should therefore change things by targeting legislation, not by targeting nurses.

    Creative work is not like this. Creatives refusing to do do volunteer creative work means that either they will charge for their work, which creates a barrier to access, or they will use (and push others to use) platforms like YouTube and TokTok that make money from ad data.

    The former choice results in class differences in access to art, and the latter choice results in everyone using platforms that have proven themselves to be hostile to minoritized groups and progressive causes. These outcomes aren’t legislated – they are the result of creatives choosing to “value their time”.

    In otherwords, creatives choosing to “value their time” means that they will happily enforce class-based restrictions in access to art, and will happily support conservative corporations and surveillance capitalism.

    And I practice what I preach, too. I have spent thousands of hours developing free software and making free educational materials for people, donating my labour to support progressive causes and supporting others who do the same. Creatives who insist on charging for their work are a ball and chain on the movements I support. They are leeches and class traitors.

    Creatives should value other people. Fuck their time.


  • No, my point specifically relates to creative work. You said in your comment:

    under our current economic model people require money to survive and if they do not get money for doing their creative work they might not be able to continue making that work.

    This is false, basically. They can do other types of work. Creative work can be done without making money for it. Plenty of people have a day job and make creative work in their free time. The same option is not available for most other types of work, such as government, doctors, lawyers, etc. If you try to do these types of jobs outside of the framework of a regulated business, you’ll get the book thrown at you.

    The issue I’m getting at isn’t “are you responsible for the actions you take to make a living”. Rather, I’m getting at the issue of “does creative work require becoming an employee of a capitalist company, thereby siding with its shareholders in having a vested interest in increasing that company’s profits regardless of the societal damage caused?”

    The answer to that question is a resounding “no”. Creatives need to grow a spine and get a day job.



  • It is not selfish to want to be payed for working on something like a video that in some cases takes hundreds of man hours of work to complete

    Yes, it is, if your desire to get paid causes you to remain on corporate-controlled social media, to the detriment of society.

    Not to mention, plenty of people can and do put hundreds of hours of work into projects that they don’t ask for payment for.

    “Content creators” who get paid through advertisements are class traitors whose interests are aligned with the capitalist class. They will fuck over society to make a buck for themselves.


  • As an aside, people who are bothered by my arguments should consider watching Contrapoints’ recent video on conspiracism. The points I am making in this thread are the same points she makes against conspiracy theories.

    Atheists like the OP suggest (ironically) that religion is an intentionalist, evil force, but a basic survey of the history of religion easily disproves this type of thinking. Intentionalism and binarism are cankers on the pursuit of truth. Like politics, religion is nuanced; it is not a grand conspiracy, even if there are groups in it who conspire. Atheists would do well to be wary of conspiracism, lest they place their hatred of religion over their pursuit of truth.


  • basically it’s not that religion has aided studies, but rather studies have made it despite religion

    In some cases, sure, and in other cases, no. For example, Buddhism is supported by nine other fields of knowledge – the vidyasthanas – including such things as grammar and logic. Religious teachers draw examples and ideas from these fields when giving religious teachings. One must study these other fields to become a “learned one” (pandita/mkhas pa).

    This is a living tradition that continues to the present day. For example, the Dalai Lama has heavily promoted education in modern science among Buddhists, and has co-authored several books on the connection between the two.

    The idea that religion is just some anti-educational brainrot is, ironically, anti-educational brainrot. Religion definitely can function that way, but it cannot be reduced to it.


  • Not to be Muslim-phobic, I am aware if the rich history of debate and science in the Middle East, but the material conditions have changed now, conservatism has been on the rise since the 70s.

    Yes, we seem to agree here. And if you acknowledge that material conditions influence how religion plays out, then you must acknowledge that it is not really intellectually honest to reduce religion to one form or another. Religion isn’t inherently either intellectual or ignorant, it is subject to the material conditions that it appears in.

    You speak of mahaviharas, but Buddhists I have met are just as conservative as the average religious person when it comes to women’s rights, feminism and gay rights.

    Yes, most old religions have unfortunately inherited prejudice and closed-mindedness from broader society. Although, I think you must also acknowledge that educated people can be bigoted, and we see this among non-religious people too.

    Mansoor al-Hallaj was executed for saying ‘Ann-al-Haq’

    A religious person being executed on religious grounds for challenging the religious state isn’t exactly an indictment of religion – both sides were religious. It is an indictment of religious ideology being enforced by the state.

    I don’t believe that religion is unique in this regard – states also use capitalism, liberalism, and other ideologies to repress proponents of competing economic + political systems. This doesn’t make economics + politics bad, and it doesn’t make religion bad either.

    That rational thought survived when people were religious is hardly to the credit of religion

    This is not true. In a Buddhist context, rational thought was taught by Buddhists like Dignaga and Dharmakirti. They studied and promoted logic + reasoning specifically for religious reasons.

    such things happened anyway and under the sanction of religion

    Yes, as I’ve said, religion includes both sides. You cannot erase the religiosity of the people that the state was trying to repress.

    As long as religion is under an institution, it is the nature of institutions to cling to power and hence, suppress dissent.

    I agree, with the exception of more decentralized and countercultural religious groups. When religious groups accrue great power, it’s a dark day for everyone. But I don’t think this problem is unique to religion. I think it’s a problem with having power over others.


  • [Buddhism] is intended to justify existing, generational, disparities in wealth, power, and property.

    Uh, no, this simply isn’t true. In South Asia, these disparities are instantiated in the hereditary varna system (usually translated as “caste”, though conservative Hindus will object to this), in which the highest social class is the Vedic clergy called the “brahmins”. Brahmin supremacy has been a constant feature of South Asian society going back millennia, and it is still widespread today.

    As the Buddha said in the Vasala Sutta, “Not by birth is one an outcast; not by birth is one a brahman. By deed one becomes an outcast, by deed one becomes a brahman.”

    This runs counter to the idea of generational class, which was the general attitude of brahminical society and was how brahmins maintained their power over others.

    The Buddha elaborates on this idea in the Vasettha Sutta:

    While the differences between these species

    are defined by birth,

    the differences between humans

    are not defined by birth.

    Not by hair nor by head,

    not by ear nor by eye,

    not by mouth nor by nose,

    not by lips nor by eyebrow,

    not by shoulder nor by neck,

    not by belly nor by back,

    not by buttocks nor by breast,

    not by groin nor by genitals,

    not by hands nor by feet,

    not by fingers nor by nails,

    not by knees nor by thighs,

    not by color nor by voice:

    none of these are defined by birth

    as it is for other species.

    In individual human bodies

    you can’t find such distinctions.

    The distinctions among humans

    are spoken of by convention.

    This is essentially an early version of social constructionism.

    The Buddha goes on to criticize the various things that brahmins do, saying that e.g. doing sacrifices makes you a sacrificer, not a brahmin. He ultimately says that only people who are virtuous, detached from pleasures and free from disturbing emotions are really “brahmins”. So, the Buddha actually taught a countercultural criticism of hereditary class.




  • Not really. If you read about the history of medieval universities, madrasahs, and mahaviharas, you will see how deeply and widely religious people have studied throughout history. It was customary for religious scholars to learn all kinds of topics, such as grammar, logic, and medicine.

    Religions are made up of people, and have accommodated all kinds of people. Some are wise scholars, and others are ignorant conspiracists. Religion can’t really be boiled down to one side or the other, though I understand how the rise of fundamentalist Christian fascism might make this hard to see.



  • That’s fair enough, and sorry for jumping to accusing you of dishonesty. To be honest I’m totally shocked that you and so many others in this thread have had such an easy time installing software through the CLI. I have had loads of trouble for the same user case as you, to the extent that I’ve had to completely give up on installing a variety of programs that didn’t have GUI installers available.

    Our experiences are totally opposite, so it makes sense that we have opposite stances on the CLI.


  • I’m talking about installing ordinary programs via the CLI in the 2020s. I have had loads of complicated installs for software (no LLMs) just for personal use in the last 5 years. I’ve heard the same story from other people who’ve switched to Linux.

    I think what’s happening is that people who insist that the CLI is easy just don’t tend to run into the problems I’m talking about, whereas for CLI haters it’s the norm.


  • That is an oversimplification and you know it. Why is it so hard for CLI people to be honest?

    Installing software on the command line is often a nightmare, requiring multiple commands and throwing error messages that you can only find mention of in one unresolved thread on some obscure forum somewhere.

    Plus, there are so many different commands that you have other CLI users saying that they need to pull up reference tools to remember how to do different actions. I have only ever needed to that once or twice ever for GUIs.

    Get real.