WatDabney

Cynically, I’d say that that’s actually something AI shares with traditional religion - it’s only the followers who potentially invest faith in a set of myths and magical thinking - the leadership is just in it for the money and power, and just mouth the doctrine because that’s what’s necessary to keep the faithful in line and keep the money rolling in.

But really, I’d argue that what the author is ascribing to religion and then, pointedly, to AI is actually just a more fundamental human psychological dynamic that’s notable in religion, but is also part of the driving force behind everything from ethnic identity to sports team fandom.

I assumed that they were at least anarchism-adjacent - it’s pretty much a prerequisite for the bulk of their focus.

I hadn’t really looked into their political posting much though, and yeah - even with just a cursory glance, it’s promising.

And I hadn’t thought about that distinction between people who simply hold a position and people who “officially” wear the label in the context of anarchism (though I’ve noted it often with atheists), but yeah, there’s undoubtedly some truth there.

Thanks for the heads-up.

i’d like a stronger anarchist/libertarian community on lemmy.

That’s one thing that I’ve been both disappointed and surprised to not see.

The anarchist community on Reddit is fairly large, but not very anarchist. There’s a very strong authoritarian bent to their claimed anarchism. I had hopes that the nature of this place would invite a community that was anarchist not only in name but in spirit, but I’ve seen surprisingly little sign of that, or even really of anarchism at all.

I guess it could be counted as a weakness as far as attracting new users go, but I think it’s a strength overall.

It would be sort of nice if there was a stronger right-wing presence here, but at this point in our history, the right is overtly toxic. They’ve completely lost touch with honesty, empathy, integrity and simple human decency. Their entire identity at this point is built on hatred, bigotry and callous disregard for anyone other than themselves. They poison everything they touch, so the fact that they can’t gain a foothold here is very much to our benefit.

If we survive this era of Trump/Putin/Netanyahu/Polievre/Le Pen/Modi/Meloni/Hanson/etc., then hopefully the right will reconnect with reality, integrity and simple decency enough that they can take part in a community without turning it into a cesspool of hatred and lies, but unless and until that happens, this place is absolutely better off without them.

It’s really not.

It really is.

It’s mostly nepotism and reproducing the an untouchable ruling class that creates an autocracy.

And all along the way, people protecting the budding autocracy from criticism by diverting attention to the faults of some other system in some other place and/or time.

Put simply; when one system goes too far into autocracy, you should entertain the values of another system.

Um… sure. But that’s neither what you were doing nor what I was criticizing, so it’s not relevant.

Condemning that is approving of the current autocrats.

So… condemning people trying to shift attention away from the current autocrats by bitching about some totally different aurocrats is protecting the current autocrats?

Are you even trying to make sense any more, or are you just desperately stringing together random claims?

But perhaps you’re a particular fan of Trump/Musk.

Just desperately stringing together random claims. Got it.

The road to autocracy is paved with people who meet every criticism of the system with, “But look at how bad this other system is!”

Any system that gives a relative few authority over everyone else will sooner or later become autocratic, simply because that power inevitably comes to be held by those who desire it the most and are most willing to do whatever it takes to gain and hold it, and they tend to be greedy, power-hungry, dishonest, amoral assholes.

As far as that goes, the only real differences between systems are the specific hoops the assholes have to jump through.

Broadly, in a capitalist system, political power is awarded to the wealthy, while in a communist system, wealth is awarded to the politically powerful.

So the greedy, power-hungry, dishonest, amoral assholes follow different paths in different cases - accumulating wealth with which to buy access to political power in one or climbing the ranks of the ruling party in order to gain wealth in another - but the overall dynamic is always the same.

And that’s a large part of the reason that I’m an anarchist.

I mostly like “rational self-interest” as a sort of framing device.

I believe egoism to be a fact. I think every choice that * every* person makes is self-interested, even those that appear to be entirely altruistic.

Presuming that to be true, there are two things that I consider vital - that people are aware that that’s what they’re doing, and that they focus on doing it as rationally as possible.

And yes - “rational” is a slippery concept. The details are elusive at best, and much more to the point, necessarily subjective (which IMO is the part that Rand most vividly got wrong and Stirner, by contrast, got right). But while that means that a sort of universal formalization of the concept would be difficult at best, I tend to think it’s not necessary - that if people essentially stay within the guardrails of “rational self-interest” and maintain some measure of intellectual honesty and sound critical thinking, whatever it might all shake out to be couldn’t help but be at the very least more broadly good than bad, and certainly more broadly good than the various delusional authoritarianisms to which we’re subjected.

Thanks for the response.

Certainly there’s more nuance to them. As I said, I think that “rational self-interest” is fundamental to both of them - it’s nothing close to the sum of either one.

And for the record, I have zero respect for objectivism and a great deal of respect for egoism.

But that’s really beside the point. I’m not arguing for or against either one. My point has been explicitly about the underlying concept of rational self-interest in and of itself, and specifically the fact that it’s consistently misrepresented by its critics (or more precisely by Rand’s critics, who incorrectly ascribe the idea to her and her alone).

I think what I’m describing is fundamental to both of them, that most of the differences between the two philosophies are at the peripheries, and that far and away the most significant difference between the two is that one was proposed by Rand, who’s a designated target for people eager to earn hip internet leftist cred through a public display of unequivocal hatred, and the other was proposed by Stirner, who’s someone that most are only vaguely aware of, if at all.

But that’s the stance that proponents of ‘rational self-interest’ have settled on.

No - it’s the stance that people who want to self-affirmingly publicly proclaim their hatred of Rand have assigned to proponents of rational self-interest.

That’s the heart of my criticism - people don’t discuss or debate the idea - they just trip over each other in their rush to be the one to most vividly proclaim their hatred of Rand. Hating Rand is like a hip internet leftist membership badge, so every time her name comes up, everybody who wants to solidify their image as a hip internet leftist rushes in to say, “Hey! Look at me! Look at how much I hate her! That means I’m one of you!”

And since the hatred comes first, everything else is shaped to accommodate it. Like, for instance, misrepresenting the idea of rational self-interest so that it becomes something easily condemned so that it can be added to the list of reasons to hate Rand.

She is, however, acting in her own rational self-interest by keeping all the value of the new machine for herself and not passing it on to her workers.

No, she rather obviously is not, as vividly illustrated by the fact that she caused so much hostility that she ends up going to the guillotine.

She is very clearly acting in her irrational self- interest.

If she were acting in the group’s rational self-interest, she would allow them to work half as long.

And if she were acting in her own rational self-interest, she would do the same, since her well-being (and in fact, as neatly illustrated in the comic, her very life) depends on the well-being of the group.

Since she is acting in her own rational self-interest, she threatens to fire her workers if they do not work the same hours as before and pass the value on to her.

No. Again, she is rather obviously acting in her own irrational self-interest, as vividly illustrated in the last panel.

Any purely rational person (as opposed, mind you, to an empathetic one) would take the option to do that.

What on earth leads you to believe that rationality and empathy are mutually exclusive?

As social animals, empathy is eminently rational, and in fact I would argue that rationality is impossible without it.

Rational group interest IS rational self-interest.

As social animals living in communities and as part of any number of groups, we must, if we’re rational, be mindful of the well-being of groups, because our own well-being depends on it.

‘Rational self interest’ is just being selfish.

No it in fact is not. Selfishness causes any number of negative consequences - suffering, hostility, crime, conflict, rebellion, war, death… So it’s bludgeoningly obviously irrational, and therefore cannot be rational self interest.

Or more pointedly, they are all things that illustrate ways in which it’s in your rational self-interest to not be a dickhead.

All of Ayn Rand’s own examples of rational self interest were irrational and against her interests.

Yes, they were. She was a shallow, ego-driven, willfully ignorant reactionary.

But that has nothing really to do with rational self-interest as an idea.

It’s such an easy philosophy to mock because it’s just really stupid.

Except that it’s not.

What’s stupid is the plainly irrational choices that are made and ascribed to “rational” self-interest.

True rational self interest would involve creating cooperative structures that give a safety net if anything goes wrong.

Exactly.

So the simple fact of the matter is that when someone argues against those safety nets, they aren’t actually arguing from a position of rational self-interest.

The philosophy hasn’t failed - they have.

That series of steps, common or not, is bludgeoningly irrational, and for multiple reasons.

In fact, the introductory part of the comic, showing her rejecting the entirely rational option of working half as long to produce the same amount clearly communicates the point that it’s irrational, as does the last frame, illustrating the consequences of her self-evidently irrational choice.

I’m still waiting for a critique of rational self-interest that doesn’t fail right out of the gate by stipulating an irrational position or decision.

This one wasn’t even vaguely close.

I am a ghost.

I’m extremely introverted and non-confrontational, so if a situation is too unpleasant or stressful, I vanish. It’s what I’ve pretty much always done. I have no idea how many times I’ve had someone say to me, " Hey - what happened to you? I just looked around and you were gone."

It’s sort of a trap. A lot of it is that, in addition to being introverted and generally non-confrontational, I’m hyper aware of people’s emotions, so if I expect that they’re going to be angry or hurt, I especially don’t want to deal with it. But of course, then I introduce the chance that they’re going to be angry or hurt because I “ghosted” them (or as it was most commonly known before the social media era, I “blew them off”). And yes - I feel bad about that.

All in all though, it’s still generally less unpleasant than the alternatives.

Which neatly sums up why I do not and will not even have a Steam account, but buy many games from GOG.