It does feel a bit 1930s at the moment doesn’t it
I’ve been working through a few biographies of the top brass of Nazidom, and even with the rather perfunctory understanding I’ve gained from these books of Hitler’s seizure of power and all that followed in Nazi Germany, my ears are pricking up in horror every day as I listen to the latest news from around the world. And I’m not even going so far as the Holocaust. If the Holocaust and WWII never happened, the Nazi regime would still have been an unmitigated nightmare.
The language certain politicians are using is plucked directly from the mouths of Goebbels’ and Himmler’s rotting corpses. How can they not see what lies ahead if they continue with this shit? We know how this story ends. We have examples of it from recent memory, we don’t even need to cast our minds back to the 1930s 🤷
The language certain politicians are using is plucked directly from the mouths of Goebbels’ and Himmler’s rotting corpses. How can they not see what lies ahead if they continue with this shit?
What’s even more infuriating is that when you try to point this out to others, they act like you’re insane/exaggerating.
But it’s not literally the Holocaust again, so it’s fine /s
I’m trans, god help me…
poland better not be the epicentre again - signed a Polish trans person
Not literally the Holocaust again yet.
It is emotionally and intellectually painful using critical thinking while those around you are calling the other side Nazis.
1 Nazis are bad 2 The other side are bad 3 The other side are Nazis Optional: add an example that confirms bias
Both sides calling the others Nazis doesn’t imply that centrists are using critical thinking. It just means that one side is lying. Nazism is a far right ideology.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.”
— Jean-Paul Sartre
Boy I sure do love living through historical events that will likely end up in textbooks in the future
Bold of you to presume that people will be allowed to read about these times, in the future:-).
That’s why I said they’ll likely be in textbooks, no guarantee lol
Fair enough!:-)
My history teacher said that the greatest curse you can give someone is telling them “May you live in interesting times” and boy do I feel that now.
May you live in interesting times…
Edit: Ah, was done below, great minds…
As someone who consumes a lot of ancient history, it can also make you like “Ah yes, another city rises, another is displaced by climate disaster, and another falls due to land mismanagement. ‘Tis the way of things.”
It’s true. I wonder how many ancient Babylonians, Greeks, Chinese, Egyptians, Persians, Romans thought:
“Surely, this empire will last forever! Look upon our works, ye mighty, and despair!” (EDIT: LOL It appears we’re all of one mind remembering this poem. We must be doing something right. XD)
Especially in modern times it’s insanely difficult to imagine the geopolitics shifting drastically, but it’s happened before, it’s happening now. The difference being that the rest of the globe is now much more invested in your shenanigans with your neighbors, but it’s still happening.
What does one do amidst a regime change?
I’m glad I’ve never had to seriously consider it until now. …but it unnerves me that I probably need to start.
how does one consume ancient history? do you eat the source documents?
That’s unrealistic— some of them are etched into stone
Nonsense, I look on Ozymandias, king of kings’ works daily and despair!
I was literally thinking about this poem moments ago.
It’s one of the greats.
Civilizations of a heirarchal centralized type definitely feel like temporary abberations, after reading Graeber and Wengrow
geopolitics included?
cries in enviro. sci
Hegel remarks somewhere[*] that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce
Something something heglian dialectics, something something new vegas, something something “Fuck caesar,blow his ass away, and Legate Lanius too”
This fantastic opening quote must have also been Marx’s weirdest flex.
history degrees bell curve :
idiot end : I don’t use my history degree
middle : history degree is useless
genius end : I am the MP for Gloucestershire and the cabinet minister for business
I really have begun to believe that politicians should employ historians to give advice on certain political events by drawing comparisons to previous situations.
That only really works in a benevolent dictatorship. In a democracy, the masses can vote for reality-rejection candidates.
It’s a pity democracy seems to be better than all the alternatives in practice, cause in principle there should be ways to improve things more. Inevitably though all other forms turn into draconian crap. Well, democracy does sometimes too, but less often.
“The Official Committee of Learning From Previous Blunders” lol what-if.
What’s odd about today’s “democracy” is how increasingly little government itself matters, next to corporations that are stronger than nations.
Government could choose to reign these corporations in, but the money the give officials makes them choose not too
“It’s okay, I’ll enjoy my retirement long before corporations start buying literal states, springing up company towns, employing workers younger than my current children, and buying and selling people via contracts, whilst waging open war with drones and wageslave conscripts.” –Most Politicians as they watch their green line go up, probably
Right, so whether they “can’t” or simply “won’t”, either way they don’t, and the problem just grows and grows with no bounds.
Cyberpunk was supposed to be fiction, not a blueprint :(
It’s like democracy is the least bad system…
A well crafted political system is one that stays uncorrupted the longest (or can recover less violently from corruption).
Well you know what “they” say: those who study their history - FUCK! - still end up repeating it, when nobody else around does the same.:-(
Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do learn from history are doomed to look on helplessly as everybody else repeats it.And those who try to prevent the teaching of history intend to repeat it
Well said
And due to such things as gerrymandering, we all get to share in the outcome.
Another thing that “they” say:
A stitch in time saves nine
It is not for me to judge exactly, who was not quite there, but very little of what has been done has been performed in secret. People have been watching, and yes even warning us, every step of the way. Now, people are shocked, Shocked I say, SHOCKED, but… we should not be. We all knew, or at least were warned, about the consequences, we simply chose to ignore it all.
e.g. Brexit looks to be something that can never be undone - as in even if it were technically to be done, the UK will never hold such a place of prominence again. It will fade into obscurity, eventually counting itself lucky to join the EU on whatever terms the latter will choose to dictate at that time.
And the USA looks likely to not survive to see that happen - in its current form at least. Assuming that Trump loses the upcoming election, which seems still roughly 50% at this juncture, the Supreme Court shenanigans, the absolute, I mean near-total brokenness of Congress, and the very next election in little more than 4 years time still await. And this time, whoever sits atop the Executive Branch will have the legal authority to assassinate all of their political rivals. Like Brexit, this is by no means over and done, and we can still go so much lower from here.:-(
Which might not be such a bad thing after all, to replace a broken system with a better one, but I do worry about this transition period.
Same. I haven’t used my history degree at all. It has just enabled the “oh, fuck” overdrive in my brain over the last several years. I hate it.
If you think it hasn’t happend before, check again, nothing in history is new
When have we had AI so good the turing test lost it’s whole meaning overnight?
The mechanical turk. Like the mechanical turk LLMs have the same flaw, it’s really just a human behind the best implementations.
I’ve checked my PC looking for the tiny man managing my local llm, no luck yet but perhaps they’re smaller than I thought…
Is ai learning training data it got from itself?
That’s nice dear, the amount of human hours tuning your model to not be complete gibberish definitely don’t count, and the fact all live service LLMs employ at least a few dozen third world workers to check results and change outputs disagree with your under powered rng.
They sure put a ton of money into sweeping it under the rug that exploiting workers at near-slavery wages is always what makes these “technological revolutionary marvels” actually tick.
Whether it’s new FoxConn chips, EV batteries, “free shipping”, or LLMs.
Every. Time.
Be a better person. Less ignorant, more useful.
Uh… No.
Weird, that’s also the only thing my Politic Science degree has ever gotten me!
History majors rise up
