We live wasted lives
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Not the person who you replied to, but if you could trade all the cars in the world to go back to using rainwater to shower/flush toilets and buy drink water I think we should take that deal.
It has already been proven countless times that having walkable/bikeable cities with the adition of public transport is better for our health and the environment. Most countries don't even have drinkable water out of the tap anyway.
The only issue is that it doesn't rain enough in a lot of countries to keep up with our water usage for showering/flushing toilets, but infrastructure to move water is as old as the Roman's, so we would find a way again.
My friend, we have a way. Many ways. We don't need to find one. But we keep doing that too.
You are proposing civil engineering projects to deliver water to the people. Yes, that is how we do it.
The other fine contributor to this discussion posited dragging barrels of water from the river as if that would be a good thing. This is a perspective that I cannot support. -
Oh I'm actually quite happy with my own job in the public sector. It's varied and at times challenging work that benefits society as a whole. The pay isn't all that much, but we're talking about fulfillment here not salaries. Unfortunately for my peace of mind, I posess empathy and the knowledge that most aren't as lucky. Companies either grow or die, so massive faceless corporations provide a large and growing share of all employment. And it doesn't even need to be a big corp for the job to be a bs job.
If you work in the public sector you often don't have shareholders breathing down your neck for more profit (but it can happen).
And yes smaller companies can have bullshit bosses as well, especially when they are the type that either already had decently sized companies or just wants to be the next millionaire. -
My friend, we have a way. Many ways. We don't need to find one. But we keep doing that too.
You are proposing civil engineering projects to deliver water to the people. Yes, that is how we do it.
The other fine contributor to this discussion posited dragging barrels of water from the river as if that would be a good thing. This is a perspective that I cannot support.Yes I know we have plenty of ways to get water from A to B, but that isn't my point.
I am just saying that this hypothetical depends on what we would be giving up. If we can still live our lives, but we have to get water from the store instead of from the tap, I would be fine with it.
Car's are a necessary evil at the moment, and we need to change that, sadly there are a lot of people in countries like the US or Canada who actively work against biking, walking and public infrastructure.
"We need to remove the bike lanes because the fire engine can't get to point C quickly enough" meanwhile in NL they just drive over the bike lanes to get to D even quicker ....
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The meme is about a lack of fulfillment, not of comfort. The comment by ikr muddles these two off the bat by focusing on comfort as a retort to the meme, and my reply was to intentionally follow that flawed reasoning to display its absurd conclusion. Modern comforts will not make a job fulfilling.
Pointing out a positive side of something isn't muddying the waters, nor is it in any way an attempt to refute the original point. If you're unable to acknowledge something positive about the situation then I think that's on you, personally. Like I said, we should engage with the things people actually say, not what we think their implied meaning might be. It does not follow that being more comfortable should imply you should feel fulfilled and that is not an argument that's been put forward by anyone. No need to refute something nobody is putting forward. It just makes it harder to have a productive discussion, nothing more.
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I mean we have it pretty good compared to most of history
Found the berry picker
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Yes I know we have plenty of ways to get water from A to B, but that isn't my point.
I am just saying that this hypothetical depends on what we would be giving up. If we can still live our lives, but we have to get water from the store instead of from the tap, I would be fine with it.
Car's are a necessary evil at the moment, and we need to change that, sadly there are a lot of people in countries like the US or Canada who actively work against biking, walking and public infrastructure.
"We need to remove the bike lanes because the fire engine can't get to point C quickly enough" meanwhile in NL they just drive over the bike lanes to get to D even quicker ....
Mmmhmm. I sorta like the point that you want to just rush past. Civilization is a good thing. Among other things, it brings us water...
Ya, I get it. You are obsessed with cars. Ok.
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Mmmhmm. I sorta like the point that you want to just rush past. Civilization is a good thing. Among other things, it brings us water...
Ya, I get it. You are obsessed with cars. Ok.
Civilisation is a good thing yes also having access to clean and drinkable water is a good thing, but we don't need to flush our toilets with drink water, we don't need to shower with drink water, we don't need to water our plants with drink water or wash our cars with drink water.
I drink a lot of water per day and I hate it when I am in a country where I can't, but buying jugs of 8 litter water to drink isn't the worst thing either.
And since when are we obsessed about something when we talking about hypotheticals? Cause that is what this all was, heck I didn't even start about cars, that other person did ...
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Civilisation is a good thing yes also having access to clean and drinkable water is a good thing, but we don't need to flush our toilets with drink water, we don't need to shower with drink water, we don't need to water our plants with drink water or wash our cars with drink water.
I drink a lot of water per day and I hate it when I am in a country where I can't, but buying jugs of 8 litter water to drink isn't the worst thing either.
And since when are we obsessed about something when we talking about hypotheticals? Cause that is what this all was, heck I didn't even start about cars, that other person did ...
Ok. Figured you two had a similar bent. Heh. This is going nowhere. Nice to meet you. Lets move on.
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Once everything has been optimized and runs smoothly, there are no surprises anymore, nothing interesting, you just do a routine that you've specialized in and have gotten bored at 10 years ago. Our quality of life is unparalleled. Our quality of work less so. It's safe and all, but so so boring
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Throwing around the names of fallacies that don't apply instead of actual arguments doesn't further your cause just as much as you might think it does.
The no true Scotsman fallacy applies if:
- Person A makes a generalized statement ("No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge")
- That statement is falsified by providing a counter-example ("I know a Scotsman who puts sugar on his porridge")
- Person A does not back away from the original falsified statement but instead modifies the original statement and signals that they did modify that statement ("Well, no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge")
The main issue here is that using this fallacy, the claim becomes a non-falsifiable tautology. Every Scotsman who puts sugar on his porridge is not a true Scotsman, thus the claim becomes always true by excluding every counter-example.
Let's apply that to the situation at hand.
- [email protected] made the statement that communism can work, providing an example where it apparently did work. This statement is not generalized, so the first condition for the true Scotsman fallacy already doesn't apply.
- [email protected] provided a counter-example, where communism didn't work. This doesn't actually contradict the first statement, because [email protected] never claimed that communism always works, so providing a single counter-example doesn't negate the statement that communism can work.
- [email protected] then pointed out that USSR states never actually claimed to have achieved communism, and that statement is true. According to USSR doctrine, the goal was to get to communism at some point, but that point was never reached. While this can sound like an appeal to purity, there's no basis for a "no true Scotsman" fallacy here.
Please read up on your fallacies before throwing around the names of them.
When you claim that something is a fallacy, even though the fallacy you claim doesn't actually apply, then you are doing so to discredit the whole argument without actually engaging with it. This is a perfect example of the Strawman argument, which itself is a fallacy.
"I don't believe your country was under communism, that's not real communism" is EXACTLY the scotsman fallacy. But by all means, go for a lengthy post that says nothing.
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The same is true for capitalism too, though.
If you work in your own little company or if you are self-employed, then the "mission" of your work might be important to you and a source of motivation.
But if you work in a huge corporation, hardly anything you do actually matters. If don't perform at 100% and instead slack off, there are other people doing the same work. And if everyone slacks off, then they just hire more people. And even if the whole department underperforms, there are other departments that rake in the money.
And whether the company thrives or goes under, your input as a lowly grunt wouldn't have made a difference anyway. Even as a mid-level manager your input wouldn't have made a difference.
Years of my work at my job can be wiped out with one email from the CEO.
Literally the only difference between capitalism and communism when it comes to that is whether the CEO wipes out my work or the state.
And yet people work in huge corporations and those are succeeding fine. Yet the collective farms that I mention led to famines and underperformed severely.
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Pointing out a positive side of something isn't muddying the waters, nor is it in any way an attempt to refute the original point. If you're unable to acknowledge something positive about the situation then I think that's on you, personally. Like I said, we should engage with the things people actually say, not what we think their implied meaning might be. It does not follow that being more comfortable should imply you should feel fulfilled and that is not an argument that's been put forward by anyone. No need to refute something nobody is putting forward. It just makes it harder to have a productive discussion, nothing more.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]WaSTeD LiFe 🤪
What do you think they meant with the alternating caps and the emoji?
Personally, I think that it's quite clearly an attempt to ridicule the meme and those who agree with it, built on the preceding facts about modern white collar work being relatively comfortable, which is (as per my previous comment) irrelevant to the question at hand.
If you disagree on this interpretation of their intent, then we'll just have to agree to disagree. Good day to you. -
The same is true for capitalism too, though.
If you work in your own little company or if you are self-employed, then the "mission" of your work might be important to you and a source of motivation.
But if you work in a huge corporation, hardly anything you do actually matters. If don't perform at 100% and instead slack off, there are other people doing the same work. And if everyone slacks off, then they just hire more people. And even if the whole department underperforms, there are other departments that rake in the money.
And whether the company thrives or goes under, your input as a lowly grunt wouldn't have made a difference anyway. Even as a mid-level manager your input wouldn't have made a difference.
Years of my work at my job can be wiped out with one email from the CEO.
Literally the only difference between capitalism and communism when it comes to that is whether the CEO wipes out my work or the state.
But if a CEO does something that actually destroys the company (without question) the governance structure that most companies in most countries have will put a halt to it. If the company is of size to have an actual CEO than they will have a need for a governance structure.
The sad part is that due to whatever reason it doesn't always work like that.
Heck somebody once told me that in the US you can just fire people for whatever, which is insane to me
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Found the berry picker
Picking berries can be relaxing but cleaning them sucks
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But if a CEO does something that actually destroys the company (without question) the governance structure that most companies in most countries have will put a halt to it. If the company is of size to have an actual CEO than they will have a need for a governance structure.
The sad part is that due to whatever reason it doesn't always work like that.
Heck somebody once told me that in the US you can just fire people for whatever, which is insane to me
Governance structures aren't without fail either, as exemplified with quite a few big corporations going down over time.
Governance structures are also present in political systems, and also there they can fail.
A government and a corporation are really not all that dissimilar when it comes to managing work, projects and so on.
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No true scotsman fallacy. I could say that no country was under ideal capitalism so you can't criticize it either. You have to look at reality, not make believe nations that never existed.
I just gave you a true scotsman 4 messages ago, genius. You pick those debate skills up at Harvard?
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Throwing around the names of fallacies that don't apply instead of actual arguments doesn't further your cause just as much as you might think it does.
The no true Scotsman fallacy applies if:
- Person A makes a generalized statement ("No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge")
- That statement is falsified by providing a counter-example ("I know a Scotsman who puts sugar on his porridge")
- Person A does not back away from the original falsified statement but instead modifies the original statement and signals that they did modify that statement ("Well, no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge")
The main issue here is that using this fallacy, the claim becomes a non-falsifiable tautology. Every Scotsman who puts sugar on his porridge is not a true Scotsman, thus the claim becomes always true by excluding every counter-example.
Let's apply that to the situation at hand.
- [email protected] made the statement that communism can work, providing an example where it apparently did work. This statement is not generalized, so the first condition for the true Scotsman fallacy already doesn't apply.
- [email protected] provided a counter-example, where communism didn't work. This doesn't actually contradict the first statement, because [email protected] never claimed that communism always works, so providing a single counter-example doesn't negate the statement that communism can work.
- [email protected] then pointed out that USSR states never actually claimed to have achieved communism, and that statement is true. According to USSR doctrine, the goal was to get to communism at some point, but that point was never reached. While this can sound like an appeal to purity, there's no basis for a "no true Scotsman" fallacy here.
Please read up on your fallacies before throwing around the names of them.
When you claim that something is a fallacy, even though the fallacy you claim doesn't actually apply, then you are doing so to discredit the whole argument without actually engaging with it. This is a perfect example of the Strawman argument, which itself is a fallacy.
Actually, I think this is a case of the fallacy fallacy
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"I don't believe your country was under communism, that's not real communism" is EXACTLY the scotsman fallacy. But by all means, go for a lengthy post that says nothing.
Communism (from Latin communis 'common, universal')[1][2] is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement,[1] whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products in society based on need.[3][4][5] A communist society entails the absence of private property and social classes,[1] and ultimately money[6] and the state.[7][8][9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
Let's see how the USSR performed against this definition of communism.
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Common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products in society based on need.
Kind of, the state owned most means of production and distributed products. Arguably based on Russian need rather than any other Soviet republic's need. Let's be generous and say partial pass for this one. -
Absence of private property and social classes
Presumably this is private property as in the distinction between personal and private property set out by Proudhon. In that regard, as the state owned most all private property, in a way it was absent. But the state still owned it, and the state is counter to communism. Social classes still remained. -
Ultimately money
Still existed. -
The state.
That definitely still existed.
So what part of the USSR was real communism? Kind of common ownership of the means of production and kind of the absence of private property. All other criteria were failed.
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"I don't believe your country was under communism, that's not real communism" is EXACTLY the scotsman fallacy. But by all means, go for a lengthy post that says nothing.
So if someone calls you a git, and you say "I'm not a TRUE git", is that a no true scotsman too?
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And yet people work in huge corporations and those are succeeding fine. Yet the collective farms that I mention led to famines and underperformed severely.
Huge corporations also underperform compared to smaller startups.
If a small startup wants to roll out some new thing they just get to the work. If a corporation does the same thing it first takes a year of preparation and internal politics.
Remember the old anecdote about how long it takes to order an empty cardboard box at IBM? That one was an extreme example, but the concept persists.
We had a project, created by two people over half a year. The corporate parent liked it and wanted to expand the product to all the country division. So they planned for a year, then assembled 8 teams with a total of 50 people to copy that project with a planned development time of 3 years. They overran the deadline by 2 years.
