Thought experiment.

You have to first think of something to do, then not do it.

How did this fare for you? Or did you try it?

It’s about the type of barrier. The legal barrier is a concrete literal barrier which will reward any imagination or alternative usage with punishment. The internal blocks we have where we fail to imagine other uses for things isn’t so much of a literal barrier, it is the result of a process and can easily or eventually be broken out of. Although.. surely these things are intertwined so how useful is it to even separate them ideas-wise, when in the world they come as a package.

It means that, for example: When you walk downstairs without thinking about the movements of your legs, you do it without wanting to basically. But when you realize that your legs are mindlessly walking downstairs, you realize how scary that lack of will was. Or, another simplier example: When you realize you are breathing, you start to breath wanting to do that.

I'm here because of the content that people like you and I create. Without that content, there is no value. Yes, it is owned by concentrations of wealth.

This technology is not going away. It will evolve. I don't see a choice but to talk about how we can move it in positive directions. I see no harm in proposing practical solutions and letting them get ripped apart, until some good proposals come up that lots of people are willing to get behind.

Heidegger isn't always consistent as a person. I agree that there is an inherent critique of capitalism in his works more broadly, especially in his critique of emerging technology (which to me feels compatible with Marx), but the guy was also a Nazi. He asks interesting questions and makes interesting observations, but it's like none of that informed his life.

I’m wondering what the point of “if we were to use it for anything else we would be breaking the law” is here, that’s what I’m challenging. If we were to use a billionaires plane in a way that specifically benefits the public I don’t see any relevant use of it besides it’s initial intent: to transport x people to y place. Now sure, the government can and very well might decide this public use to be illegal. However this doesn’t change the idea of the airplane purely becoming the essence of being transport. Whether it’s used for the public or for one individual, capitalist or communist, we’re still appropriating the use-value in materials in a way that alienates us from what they truly are.

The difference between your stance and Singer’s has nothing to do with courage—it’s almost exclusively a matter of epistemics. Singer thinks we live in a world where systemic change is hard and where he would have a very small chance of accomplishing anything if he switched away from charity to advocate for it full-time. You (apologies if I’m making any bad assumptions) think we live in a word where systemic change is somewhat easier and where Singer would have a substantial chance of making concrete changes if he pushed for it. Courage doesn’t factor into it—and unless criticism explicitly focuses on why systemic change is easier than Singer thinks, it’s going to miss the mark.

(Another possible difference of opinion is that Singer is more risk-averse—that given a choice between saving 1 life with certainty and 101 lives with a 1% chance, he’d pick the former—but since he’s a utilitarian, and it’s hard to do utilitarianism without being at least somewhat comfortable with expected value theory, I doubt that’s his main objection.)

Not a great believer in the good/evil dichotomy. Nature is 'red in tooth and claw', so if my Deity is immanent in nature, it includes that side of things. I don't accept that is evil, though.

Well. Yes and no. Your example is correct, but what if it were a truly communist society. No class, no money, etc etc.

While that plain is sitting there, it is still only potential.

>Not really, it tends to assume false consciousness and that people would already agree if they weren't being mislead.

Indeed. Which I think is covered in “they are too stupid …. brainwashed”. I didn’t say the assumption was always necessarily wrong ( though I certainly don’t trust ideologues Of any flavour on the subject).

>Charity also is not counter to ideological consistency aimed at systemic change - I donate to vegan charity Viva, for example.

No indeed the two are not mutually exclusive , one can do what you can on a micro(?) level while working for wider macro change. My problem is while I can see a change in our eating habits and people being persuaded of that over time , it’s far harder to come up with an alternative to “capitalism” that would work better overall and be accepted to populations.

Bear in mind that I absolutely agree with the social limitation of capitalism. But the article seems to be promoting replacement not reform.

Not in terms that were able.

Probably something like 1/0=error.

It reminds me of the idea. If we are 2 dimensional beings and limited by all 2 dimensional limits, the God is 3+ dimensions, based on your definition. It's not something I can fathom.

Extreme poverty has halved in the last 20 years, 2000 is hardly medieval, in fact the dismissal of those in extreme poverty around the world like that is a major obstacle in continuing to improve global conditions for the most poor. Source on global extreme poverty increasing to 20th century levels during the pandemic?

Edit:

You are right that there was an increase, my mistake, of about 1.5 percentage points from 8.4 percent of the world population to 9.9 percent living in extreme poverty.

This is a massive tragedy to those 140 million people, and I don’t want to minimize that. That being said, you hugely overstated the matter, and the increase in poverty regressed us to 2016, not 1922.

With the global resurgence and reopening of international free trade following the pandemic progress will be able to resume and continue towards the goal of 5% by 2030. Over 1/2 of those living in extreme poverty live in just a handful of nations, so focusing aid and development projects on those nations should allow the efforts of organizations working in this field to continue to save lives and reduce human suffering.

I would encourage you to learn anything at all about actual policies that can be supported to reduce world poverty. While simple ideological dogma can be tempting and comforting, doing real work to help real people is complicated and difficult, and requires complicated solutions. Champagne Socialists can rail against institutions for being imperfect all they want, they are imperfect, but I am more impressed by the people who work hard to improve lives as effectively as they can regardless of imperfect circumstances, who don’t let ideals become the enemy of progress.

The way billionaires donate to charity operates in a whole other world than how we do though. It is not really “charity” in a genuine or fair sense at all. Billionaires donate specifically because there are laws in place that relieve huge amounts of taxes for people who donate large amounts to charity. In theory it’s supposed to work 1-to-1, but it doesn’t, they end up having to pay way less money out than they’d typically have to. Also, they set up their own fake charities so when they “donate” they aren’t really, they’re funneling it right back into their pockets.

In essence, this sort of charity we say is opposed to change is opposed because it quite simply isn’t charity. It’s a way for the wealthy to sneakily get even wealthier, while simply calling it charity. Real charity, the contribution to real individuals who need help, and organizations that are truly set on helping others, is not at all opposed to systemic change.

I don’t think it’s ridiculous if we take it as improve on rather than just change. It’s always possible to change just not necessarily for the better. There’s certainly lots to be improved in capitalism but whether it can be improved on is yet to be demonstrated. It’s certainly possible but the writer is far clearer on Singer’s faults than any alternative.

Will it be any real consolation for people to hear that they’re better off than we’re the medieval peasants?

Also, many studies have shown that this pandemic reduced a lot of these gains that had taken a century or so to accumulate. And with the current monetary policies of the US and European central banks, we’re going to see in-debt developing countries fall into a chasm of debt so deep that it’ll look pretty much impossible to overcome.

The system is not resilient.

After making this discussion, i started to become a bit sad: since a lot of humans have or never realized that their actions aren't fully conscious, does it mean that they are no different from machines? Does It mean that real humans are very rare? Since children often act impulsively and almost randomly, are they still humans? I don't like the idea of humans being for the most part aleatory slaves, people who have no choice but to serve a dice...

So what’s your point, is that good or bad. The public don’t benefit from it is it even relevant?

I’m probably taking it too literal then, capitalism does what Heidegger was talking about in an incredibly literal way, but deeper than that it is true that we have some shit going on with that also

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I’m curious what your pluralistic alternative to capitalism. I’m all for reforming and controlling capitalism through social measures - but the article certainly seemed to me to be suggesting a complete replacement. And indeed rather sneering at Singer. Personally I think the third way is to actual out in the effort to convince , persuade, and work through the democratic system - if you have actually worked out what can and needs to be changed.

This is where experiments come into play. For which can be programmed into something. But the ability to make iterations will be the test.

Yeah, personally, I'm not sure what I would do about billionaires. Praising them definitely rubs me the wrong way and helps entrench systemic issues. But sometimes it's worth dealing with the devil for their power.

Much of the UK old Labour left backed Brexit and always had, it was seen as aiming at systemic change.

Really? If mr millionaire decided to buy his plane as a big metal toy with lights for his kids to draw on and play on, would that be illegal? I think the government would let him get away with it. All technology usually has a few other potential uses even if it’s completely unorthodox.

Not sure if it does, nor does Heidegger himself ever suggest it, this essence of technology could be present in, and I think could be argued to have been, present in all industrialized nations, regardless of what economic system they used, at the time of Heidegger's writing.