"Software entropy's a bitch, and then we die."
Honestly I feel we are rapidly approaching software heat death. Especially now that people are starting to get LLMs to write their code for them!
I actually think that the whole state of affairs with software is caused by a whole superstructure that is kept in order to keep up a market for developers in order to circulate money, which requires them to stack complexity and make things 1000x harder than they should be.
My views on "mental illness" are more or less the same. We make up an artificial standard of what it means to be a normal, or at any rate functional, human being, which actually just means supporting the same money-circulating superstructures with inane labour, and we create a whole artificial set of habits and alimentary patterns that make us sick, and now we create yet another market to give lobotomizing drugs to people so that they can keep walking the death treadmill of money.
We really are forced to live the worst lives possibles, human beings have been turned into cattle these days.
So yeah, you don't really want to get me started on this.
That's okay. I mean, I *was* starting to think I'd ruffled your feathers somehow. I seem to have upper echelon skills in that department, you see....
Try me! Here's a tip: you'd have to hold on to ordinary (some would say safe) views on a topic to really rustle my feathers.
Anyway you should know by now that (so long as you're not actually hostile), however the guy on the other side reacts to your words, that is their problem, not yours!
This is the internet, after all :-)
I would really like to elaborate more but these days my brain isn't in verbose mode. I hope you understand.
> I actually think that the whole state of affairs with > software is caused by a whole superstructure that is kept > in order to keep up a market for developers in order to > circulate money, which requires them to stack complexity > and make things 1000x harder than they should be.
That sounds about right.
Where I depart on that is I can't blame a superstructure, as though some sinister, free-willed thing. To my current way of thinking, the superstructure is an emergent property of the mathematical integral of many self-centric behaviors. There seems to be a superstructure sort in the way there seems to be a glowing circle hovering midair when rotating a hot firebrand tip in the dark. Is there a circular "thing" in the case? Not really. But it surely looks like there is, and we can say there is, and if we say it enough we can even believe it, and believing it seemingly makes it so.
In the superstructure case, I think it's the mass repetition of "I'm more important than all else, so I will almost always cut myself breaks over all others". That's what I mean by "self-centric behavior". You get enough people repeating that often enough, and next thing you know there appears to be an evil - or let's just call it an anti-societal - superstructure driving the whole thing. Except there isn't. There's just a seeming momentum to a whole lot of selfishness, and then we call it something else to avoid accepting that assessment and its inherent response-ability.
Something like that.
Things are harder than they seem to be because people are working against each other by being more for/about themselves than for/about the collective, about each other. The mathematical integral of enough seemingly infinitesimal self-centric behaviors is an economic hot firebrand tip of hell. :-)
Pondering that is how what I call "The Zeroth Commandment" came to mind. It's called that because we all know of the "Ten Commandments", and we all know practically nobody can follow them due to the self-centricity of the root of their behavior(s). But what if we started with a simpler commandment that might be thought of as underlying the rest (hence "Zeroeth"), but a better behavioral starting point?
How about: "Thou shalt not inconvenience"?
We have the power to put ourselves perhaps not last, but perhaps not first. That's all it's suggesting. Don't take shortcuts that lead to more otherwise unnecessary effort/work/frustration for others.
Something like that.
> My views on "mental illness" are more or less the same. We > make up an artificial standard of what it means to be > a normal, or at any rate functional, human being, which > actually just means supporting the same money-circulating > superstructures with inane labour, and we create a whole > artificial set of habits and alimentary patterns that > make us sick, and now we create yet another market to give > lobotomizing drugs to people so that they can keep walking > the death treadmill of money.
Continuing in the above vein, the "artificial standard" is seemingly having to be more self-centric (or "inconveniencing") to keep up with others' being more self-centric, and the *seeming* superstructure that emerges from the integral of enough self-centric, inconveniencing behaviors - *seemingly* in order to survive, if not thrive.
> We really are forced to live the worst lives possibles, > human beings have been turned into cattle these days.
'Tis definitely a vicious cycle. Moooooooooooooooooooooo! :-)
> So yeah, you don't really want to get me started on this.
Oh yes I do. It's really the only topic that matters should we wish to persist without going sufficiently crazy to annihilate ourselves and/or others.
>> That's okay. I mean, I *was* starting to think I'd ruffled >> your feathers somehow. I seem to have upper echelon skills >> in that department, you see.... > > Try me! Here's a tip: you'd have to hold on to ordinary > (some would say safe) views on a topic to really rustle > my feathers.
You don't have to worry about *that* happening. :-)
> Anyway you should know by now that (so long as you're not > actually hostile), however the guy on the other side reacts > to your words, that is their problem, not yours!
In a way. But I think it comes back to me, so to speak. Or even if there isn't something overtly karmic about it, I can't un-remember my having possibly riled someone unnecessarily, and remembering that affects me going forward.
> This is the internet, after all :-)
Truer chewed cud hasn't been uddered! ;-)
> I would really like to elaborate more but these days my > brain isn't in verbose mode. I hope you understand.
I do. My wife has me going lots of different directions. And they're not bad directions. It's just that I've been on a sort of textural quest since "local BBSes" in the early 1980's / late 1990's, and so this activity feels like something that's about to become important any minute now, even though it pretty much never has: the hope springing eternal thing, or something like that.