Another interesting angle to this: I believe "mindshaping practices" can also refer to how the media not only tells people what to think, but also how to think[1]. People are arguably taught to engage in mind reading[2] via the manner in which politics and other topics (COVID being the most recent important example) are covered.

[1] "We 'know' X is true, because if you look at it in this way (and only this way - those other ways are just far right Russian conspiracy theories) it has the appearance of being True - thus, it 'is' True)".

[2] "This small subset of GroupA thinks/behaves in this way, thus all members of the group do the same."

There are easy ways to reveal (under a logical framework) how flawed this thinking is (replace GroupX with "The Jews", "The Blacks", etc and observe how cognition immediately changes, if it does not terminate in response), but they typically do not work.

> That's way easier said than done

So have been many capabilities humans now wield/enjoy (consider how long it took to get from London to New York before flight was figured out), until someone actually decided to figure out how to do it.

Apologies for the optimism. 🙏

Fantastic article, very well written.

To speak plainly, your lines are drawn by you, for your purposes.

They are in no way the limits of other people's interests or choices.

Might ponder that.

Demonstrating how easily casual language can be misinformative - "Being an expert means you're a regular person who has advanced knowledge on a specific topic" could easily be (and very often is) interpreted to mean that if someone isn't ~formally identified as "an expert" then their opinion on a subject is necessarily inferior to that of an [declared to be] expert.

Well, now you know.

Wonderful! Thanks for sharing

> This is clearly related to the concept of epistemic justice,

No, nothing about that is clear. Your obsession is showing. Not everything revolves around your personal pet topic of interest.

This is clearly related to the concept of epistemic justice, which, while many black and feminist scholars have talked about this since at least the 60’s, picked up steam when Miranda Fricker’s book, Epistemic Injustice, came out in 2007. Following Fricker, Jose Medina has also done some incredible work.

What I am saying is this conversation has been important for scholars for decades, and just because you didn’t know that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been happening.

You’re not being mean, I am aware it’s overthinking. And I found the article extremely neat and helpful so thanks to OP!

I believe that Nietzsche was incredibly sarcastic. He, not the reader, knew what the uebermensch was, which he wouldn't have brought into the world if he hadn't taken atheism as a "matter of course" (or did he?)...one can feel a bit...undone...by his ideas if you embrace them, can't you? Like can't you just feel the wisdom draining from your mind one sentence at a time and filled with some nameless grand sense of megalomania, even as every virtue and goodness that could elevate you disappears into some abyss? Don't you feel a bit distracted by your own unrealistic desires? Maybe enthralled by things that push you aside from mainstream social life, as if one were simply removed from others' lives altogether? Maybe even a bit "dead"?

Do you really want to find meaning in Nietzsche or do you want to create your own meaning to life? What are you searching for? It's your mind that writes the meaning, not Nietzsche's... unless you believe him like he's some kind of "prophet", "preacher", or even "Antichrist", of course. I believe that Nietzsche said in Ecce Homo that if you were to meet his uebermensch, you would not recognize him or probably think that he was "...a devil!" Really now?

Nietzsche encouraged us to almost blithely create a mythos as "a lie, to give life meaning". He also asked why we seek truth instead of untruth. He also spoke in constant double-entendres in the manner of Heraclitus, so that anyone can interpret him in many different manners, as per their choice.

People think he destroyed metaphysics, but I think he simply concealed it from enough people that I don't need to worry about them questioning the effect of the meaning I give life on people, who seem so wrapped up in their own beliefs not to notice...

Will this parenthesis ever close

I like the first solution of refusing to accept just any gift and appreciate the experience of giving, but boy is that article negative. Christmas doesn't need to be Dante's Inferno.

I don't want to be mean here, but could this just be a case of you overthinking it just a little? You don't need to appreciate every gift, just like the article says, and ignore the power dynamics altogether. If someone wants to force it on you, they always lose.

And what exactly is a "bad gift"? The other person needs to take it in good faith that you did your best no matter the outcome.

Chomsky is resolutely not an anarchist theorist, but rather a fellow traveler--he admitted as much himself.

Goody, more midwit nu-stoicism. Just what this sub needed!

What is your stance on unconscious processes?

>I’m pretty sure the breakdown of the human body due to aging and wear and tear would lead to organism death well in advance of trillions of years. > >Even the elderly consume the same amount of energy as the young but just eating can’t extend life forever.

This break down of the body is something encoded into our DNA, not something dictated by the nature of reality. We have found life forms on Earth that appear to be biologically immortal and can continously regenerate themselves, seemingly without end as far as we can tell.

>Entropy is at work at all times to move systems from highly improbable states like human beings into highly probable states. It’s very much a problem.

Entropy only necessarily increases in a closed system. The human body is very much not a closed system. As long as there is other entropy to increase (such as from un-fused hydrogen or un-evaporated black holes), there is no physical reason we cannot keep the entropy of a human body low over very long time periods.

>It’s at work at all times. It only needs to work once. This is why magic is impossible and why the hard problem of death will never be solved.

Again, only in closed systems. If you spill milk on the floor nothing is physically stopping you from sucking it back up into the carton. Though the action of doing so will increase the overall entropy of the universe, even if it decreases the local entropy of the milk-carton-floor system.

>Heck even computer systems degrade with time if you wanna go the human consciousness in computers route. Entropy defines the limits of the possible.

I mean, if you never repair the computer (which you totally can, no magic needed I promise), sure they'll degrade over time.

Death also isn't needed for evolution, only varying amounts of reproduction between individuals.

Specifically, death by aging is likely an unintential outcome of evolution, rather than something that evolution needs in order for it to happen. I can get into the mechanics of how aging likely evolved, but it is a bit a biology lesson.

I would also hesitate to say that we have stopped evolving in "interesting ways" (whatever that means). Evolution happens on a very slow time scale and I do not think anyone has a good handle on what our current environment most selects for or how strongly it selects for it. Seeing how it is difficult to point to any evolutionary changes in the past 5,000 years (a vast majority of which were before modern medicine and food production techniques), to say definitively we have stopped evolving in the last 50-100 years since the invention of antibiotics and vaccines and adoption of modern agriculture is jumping the gun a bit.

Especially since it isn't like we've totally eradicated untimely deaths (that is to say death before reproduction). We still have 3.1 million young children dying of starvation and 5 million dying of disease each year. Even ignoring deaths among older children/teenagers, we are losing over 1 person in 20 before they have a chance to reproduce.

Even ignoring the modern death rates among young children and babies, there is still a great discrepancy in birth rates among individuals and that is what evolution actually acts on. An adult who made a conscious decision not to have children (an increasingly common phenomenon) is just as evolutionarily unfit as a baby who died before their first birthday.

For a population to be truly evolutionary stable it needs to be infinitely large (8 billion may approximate that), each individual must mate randomly (definitely not true), and there must be no selection pressures (unlikely, as I layed out above).

I have a family member who is a fantastic gift giver but they almost never take responsibility for hurting others feelings or admit they were wrong... Your point about gift giving and avoidance reminded me of her. (Though of course not all gift giving is like this.)

I’m pretty sure the breakdown of the human body due to aging and wear and tear would lead to organism death well in advance of trillions of years.

Even the elderly consume the same amount of energy as the young but just eating can’t extend life forever.

Entropy is at work at all times to move systems from highly improbable states like human beings into highly probable states. It’s very much a problem.

It’s at work at all times. It only needs to work once. This is why magic is impossible and why the hard problem of death will never be solved.

Heck even computer systems degrade with time if you wanna go the human consciousness in computers route. Entropy defines the limits of the possible.

Absolutely

Realistically entropy will only start to become a problem in a few trillion years, and even after the last star dies in a 100 trillion years there are many feasible (and relatively low tech) ways to harvest energy from black holes.

I don't know about you, but I'll start worrying about the technical differences of a few trillion years and forever when I get there.

Those are certainly problems that would come up if we were immortal, but are those problems worse than a global genocide every generation (aka the current status quo)? I think we underplay how brutal of a tragedy death by aging is simply because it is universal, (currently) inevitable, and we have been desensitized to it over the lifespan of our species.

Another way to look at the tragedy of death by aging to consider this thought experiment:

Imagine tomorrow we all wake up and by magic everyone is immortal and ageless. All of the problems you brought up would immediately manifest. However, these problems could also be solved immediately if we euthanized everyone once they hit 100 years old. Naturally, all of these euthansions will be done to a perfectly healthy person and often against their will, but for this solution to work there can be no exceptions.

If this "solution" seems incredibly unethical to you then I don't know how you can look at the current status quo and deduce it is the better that people die of old age.

I am also curious to hear your reasoning behind your feelings that wanting eternal life is an egotistical attitude. Is it an egotistical attitude for a 20 year old to hope to live past their 50th year in good health? If not, why would it be egotistical for a healthy 50 year old to wish to maintain their health until they are 80? Or an 80 year old to wish the same for 120? And so on?

Someone's life does not lose value as they age. They are not any less of a person nor any less deserving of a healthy future just because they are a few decades older. The death of an 80 year old is just as tragic as the death of a 20 year old and in my opinion neither would be egotistical in wishing for a long, healthy, and happy future.

Not quite. Philosophy way back when helped one find the path to “the good life” whatever that may be.

I draw my philosophical line when that line cripples me from enjoying the small pleasures of day to day life, after all, what is the point of philosophizing if it paralyzes you!

Good philosophy is a curative not a poison to the people and surroundings you find yourself in, including during the gift-giving season as difficult to navigate as it be.

Edit: OP enjoy your gift of Reddit gold Mwuahahaha