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uncompensated driving, commute times, etc

people don't realize how much their car is costing them. IRS rate is like $0.60 a mile. running errands for work all day? 45-minute commute? yeah you're effectively making less than minimum wage now

very difficult to get people to understand though

It's not that every psychological problem is directly due to capitalism (though many are directly or indirectly) it's that capitalist psychology mostly cares about profitable treatments, whether they're effective or not. I'm inclined to think some form of talk therapy or psychoanalysis may be more helpful to a lot of people than solely symptom-based treatment. But who can afford to go to therapy for years?

Even from the pharmaceutical side, we're mostly just tweaking the mechanisms of consciousness without necessarily addressing or understanding the holistic structure, so the best we can hope for is trying various meds until one sort of works. But most of us can't afford to spend years trying a new med every few months, with all the turbulence and uncertainty that goes along with it.

Cbt, dbt and the like are somewhat useful at treating certain symptoms, but generally fail to address root causes. And the way they're often applied, they seem more intent on teaching people to accept their treatment under capitalism than anything.

Consciousness is complex in a way that isn't effectively modeled by insurance-mediated healthcare and science, which overemphasizes quantitative variables in a field that's profoundly qualitative. Not to mention the obsession with the individual, ignoring the systems that individuals exist within.

Tbh I feel like that's more a fault of capitalism than a shortcoming unique to psychology.

Assuming this is coming from a lack of friendship:

Start with a pet, if possible. Then work your way up.

Getting my cat a few years ago helped take the edge off so I didn't come off as so desperate or distant (oscillating between the two extremes).

Then slowly picked up effective habits and retrained bad habits in interacting with people. Still working on it.

If you mean you feel lonely within your existing friendships, there's a degree to which that is "normal" or at least somewhat universal. Some philosophers would say true connection with another person is fundamentally impossible. But even if that's the case, we can find meaning and beauty in the process of trying to achieve the unachievable. Happiness comes not from finally filling an unfillable lack (a mythical ideal), but the novelty or enjoyment of the process.

I get shitbox Toyotas for under a couple grand and run them into the ground. Whatever maintenance I can afford.

I don't trust cars nor roads nor drivers

:michael-laugh:

Ironically I think 20 hours is about the estimate for reading it if you read 300 wpm, iirc

Of course it's pretty dense theory so most people aren't gonna be reading at a fiction pace. Took me a few months to get through it.

I agree with one exception:

There's a certain type of person who has no coherent message, their whole purpose is to engage in bad faith. In that case any attempt to attack the message is futile due to the asymmetrical nature of disinformation. And the disinformation that spreads so effectively is often stuff that dials into people's subconscious assumptions. So it's not always obviously absurd to average people.

See Sartre's description of how antisemites use this tactic:

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. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

The difficulty people have, from what I've witnessed with federation, is differentiating good from bad faith users. And I see this very much from all sides: putting it broadly, people got used to a certain Overton window. Thus it's easy to assume someone with a foreign opinion doesn't actually hold that opinion, they're just trolling or crazy. I think it's best to assume good faith until proven wrong, otherwise the trolls have succeeded in their goal to poison all dialogue and exchange.

Another thing worth keeping in mind, Lemmy represents a major threat to corporate social media. The best way for this threat to be eliminated is if, in its infancy, it fragments and stagnates due to drama like this. It's very easy to make an account on any instance, or multiple accounts.

It's also been my impression that the meme of federation being impossible has taken up 95% visible discourse, with the perceived ills that the meme is based on only being like 5%. One of those things where a small problem is artificially blown up until it becomes the big problem it was falsely claimed to be. I've seen a few people voice this sentiment: that their only exposure to the drama is people complaining about the drama. I saw a similar suspicious phenomenon happen on Reddit a few times.

no 3.5mm headphone jack

Whaaaat? Why?

also a pet theory i like (that isn't actually true or provable) is that gifted programs are meant to remove children deemed smarter from their communities and funnel them into middle management and academia, so they don't become agitators for change in their communities and workplaces

on the topic of iq, i have a lot of problems with the way people seem to interact with the concept. there's a bunch of assumptions all baked into it:

• iq is a variable that actually exists in nature

• people's iq is static and follows a standard distribution

• iq tests are capable of objectively measuring or at least approximating this variable

• this variable is a good stand-in or even synonymous with cognitive ability

• cognitive ability is univariate or single-faceted, able to be described with a single number

• cognitive ability equates to or correlates with usefulness, happiness, sociability, success, whatever

• finally, that any of this really matters, like in a materially impactful way, or is something that we should focus on

it's not that each of these statements is 100% wrong, it's that each shouldn't be assumed to be true. but the way i usually see iq invoked kinda just uncritically runs with all of them, contained within a neat little ideological package.

So a rough estimate of 1600 kcals per pound of rice, 10 billion pounds, assuming daily intake of 2000 kcals, that's roughly the yearly calories of about 22 million people (assuming I didn't fuck up somewhere). To put it in perspective.