aasatru

Working quite a bit with lawyers and law students it’s endlessly frustrating that so many of them are there not because they have any interest in understanding what the law is or how it relates to society, but simply because they had good grades and they figured a law degree was the natural thing to do.

Follow your interests. If you’re not interested you won’t end up doing interesting things.

The legal industry is about to get upended by LLMs.

As an LLM myself, this weirds me out every time.

Capitalism favours psychopaths.

These people are successful under capitalism not in spite of being terrible people, but because they are terrible people.

I’m usually not the first person to quote Jesus, but when he said that camels had better chances getting through the heads of needles than rich people had of getting into heaven this is sorta what he was getting at. If you’re not a gigantic piece of shit you’re just not going to get that rich.

Avoiding politics might be wise on some level, but by all means do talk about unionizing.

I think solutions to this is of a very individual nature - it’s hard to imagine a universal solution.

But it seems your addiction might be to beer more than to alcohol itself, for now at least. And (some) alcohol free beer has gotten really good.

So my suggestion is this: Next time beer is on sale, instead of buying a six pack match the value in buying alcohol free beer. When you’re back home you can still pop a cold one, it still feels like a nice reward, and you don’t feel bad after. And you don’t run the risk of developing an addiction to alcohol.

I never had a drinking problem, but I try to always keep alcohol free beer in the fridge these days just because I think it’s a nice treat after a day of work or whenever.

And then you’re on your phone, and typing two spaces at the end of each line is a mess because your keyboard insists you really want punctuation and a space. Because why would you end a sentence with two spaces. Gah.

It’s the kind of pain that will always come with being the first mover. Every active community on Lemmy faced this hurdle at some point in history - it takes a little while to reach critical mass.

Engaging with small communities and encourageing people who are trying to make it happen is a huge help. In addition to manageing your own, of course. Thank you! :)

Thanks for looking into it!

I think maybe it makes sense to consider three different levels of opposition.

The first is the actively anti-human assholes. This is the direction that the US has certainly taken, that the Torys are prone to, and that trans people are at the frontlines of right now. This is where people fuelled by hate actively want to strip people of rights. As far as I’m concerned it’s really the same battle be it for trans people, women, minorities, hell, even white men who are not landowners. I think the people seeking to take our rights away here won’t stop before they have destroyed everything. Trans people first, the rest of us second. I think we’re blessed with this group being very tiny in Denmark.

The second is just pure neglect. I’d say this is where the Torys really shine. Not giving a shit and defunding the NHS gets you to the same point eventually, but just with less opposition. A lack of education could also be put in this box. Denmark is not immune to this, but I think the current government is making an effort at least it some areas that matter to me. That said, I’m not a big fan - I certainly wouldn’t vote for them if I had the right to.

Then, third, there’s the lack of action. This is just thinking that the current system is good enough. Opposition to gender quotas would be a typical example from the women’s struggle - for trans rights, it’s access to affordable trans health care. Here one depends on the realization that in order to achieve a just society, it’s not enough to simply do nothing. I think this is where the fight is mostly taking place in Denmark. It is an important fight, but it’s also miles ahead of the miserable shithole of the first level I listed (aka Amercia).

Then again, that’s just my attempt to make sense of it. There is overlap between the levels, it’s not always clear cut, and it’s easy to slide downwards. But I think it’s nevertheless important to acknowledge that the fight looks very different depending on contexts.

Yeah, when I stated that it literally wouldn’t be a dilemma any more it’s because having the prisoners sitting in the same interrogation room would destroy it, the same way playing poker with your cards backwards would destroy the game to the point where it cannot really be considered poker any more.

Wasn’t making a smarter point than that. :)

I guess there’s a reason people argued about this dilemma for so long in the literature. :)

For cooperation to emerge between rational players, the number of rounds must be unknown or infinite. In that case, “always defect” may no longer be a dominant strategy. As shown by Robert Aumann in a 1959 paper, rational players repeatedly interacting for indefinitely long games can sustain cooperation.

Well, sure, it’s if they are in the same room or they can hear through the walls or whatever. An actual flow of information, not just them lying to each other. I assumed that was obvious.

Two prisoners are arrested.

Both are given a choice: Rat out your buddy, and we’ll let you go with one year in prison. Keep your moth shut and we’ll give you four years. If you keep your moth shut and your buddy rats you out, you’ll get ten. If you both rat, you both get eight years.

The dominant strategy of both prisoners is to speak: In either case, ratting on their buddy will lower their punishment. However, if both prisoners choose this strategy, they end up losing collectively: Rather than both receiving four years as they would if they both kept their moth shut, they both yet eight years because they both talk.

That’s the basics of the dilemma. The years don’t matter, just the ranking of preferences.

If the prisoners can communicate, they will know that the other prisoner didn’t talk, and if one prisoner opens his mouth, he will know that the other prisoner will immediately do the same.

I learned the prisoner’s dilemma when I studied game theory. The fact that it depends on a lack of information flowing between the prisoners and that snitching is only the dominant strategy when it’s a single-round game is just parts of the assumptions of the dilemma.

I should also add that the prisoner’s dilemma is only a dilemma when it is played in only one round. Once it becomes a game of several rounds cooperation arises as the dominant strategy.

Then again, I’m not sure how the prisoner’s dilemma is relevant here in the first place, I just thought it was a funny point to make.

The prisoner’s dilemma depends on the fact that the two prisoners cannot cooperate. If you allow information to flow between them it’s literally not a dilemma any more.

So yes.

If you mean cooperation with the police, how the hell did you derive that from my text?

I currently live in Denmark. I have to admit I’m not following the public debate here very carefully, and there are plenty of backwards people around who will shout loudly about just about anything, but any reversal (or anything else than gradual strengthening) of trans rights would come as a huge surprise to me.

I am open for the possibility that I’m simply not following close enough. But I think the problem with trans rights is that it has become politicized, when it is really not a political issue. The fact that I have not heard about it at all in the public debate here is therefore, in my opinion, a good sign. For sure one can dig up shitty opinions if one starts looking for it, but they have not been given a defining role in the public debate as is the case in many countries.

Yeah, I’m not going to make the argument that people are fundamentally good either, and they are shaped by the media landscape they consume.

I live in a country where trans rights are not really questioned, and where I am feeling confident that they won’t be. Of course it still has ways to go and there are bad people, but trans rights have not become effectively politicized and it’s just not a point of contention.

It’s no fundamental rule of society that we have to go around hating each other. It’s a construct. That doesn’t mean it’s not the case where you live, but it’s something that can be changed.

Leftists and other assorted humanists and progressives are wildly unpopular because most of the public simply can’t imagine not having the sheer bloodlust they have for thy neighbor.

Believe it or not, this is not a necessity of human nature. It’s just your society that’s fucked up. And it’s probably not even that bad if you go out and talk to people rather than judge society by the distorted reflection given on social media.

Social media is probably the most powerful propaganda tool of all times.

In the 1960s you would say the same thing about TV, and you’d be right. Before that it was the cinema. It’s not because the mediums as such are inherently evil, but they carry an inherent power that can be used for evil.

Currently, social media is very much being used for evil.

There is, however, another element to it, and one that is completely new for social media. That’s the illusion that we can actually contribute in a meaningful way by participating.

Nobody believes they are actively fighting fascism by watching TV all day. Yet, on social media, well-meaning people are wasting their time shouting at clouds rather than going out in the real world and and actually achieve anything. They collectively tread in water as democracy dies, all the while they feel like they are “doing their part”. In other words, social media is pacifying as fuck.

I participate in the Fediverse because I have hope that we are building something different here; something that can derail the platforms that are currently used for evil, and something where the organization of actual opposition can be possible. I think it might be. But I am also afraid I am just wasting my time.

Social media is literally just a fairly accurate reflection of us as a species and our civilization.

Strong disagree. Capitalists sell it to us as a mirror, but it’s a distorted mirror that shows us exactly what they want us to see for whatever reason.

If they want to sell us diet pills, they will turn it into one of those amusement park mirrors that makes you look fat. If they want to overthrow democracy, they’ll turn it into a mirror where everyone standing around you suddenly look suspicious and cruel. And if the Russians want to pay them to get control of what people will see in the mirror, hell - that’s just freedom of expression.

Add on top that pretty much everyone on earth is staring mindlessly into the mirror for hours every day, and you got yourself what I would consider to be a problem.