nzp

38 ms·

301.
by nzp 13y ago
I agree it's debatable in terms of relationship of Leninism to "vanilla" Marxism. It is much less debatable, I think, that Leninism is an honest (in the sense of not being intentionally wrong or deceptive) continuation of th
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by nzp 13y ago
Well, for what it's worth Wikipedia article on the paleolithic suggests there is much evidence of trade during that era (referenced, but I don't have the time to research that ATM). But that's beside the point really. The i
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by nzp 13y ago
The comparison is deeply flawed. Psychoanalysis is not good at explaining what has already happened. It only seems good if you don't know that those "explanations" have no actual basis in reality. Psychoanalysis is mostl
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by nzp 13y ago
> No, I am not equating government and society. I am questioning the simplistic view that a person can exist today and succeed independent of the society they grew up in. Then we are in complete agreement on that. I was pretty sure you
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by nzp 13y ago
Of course you can't (although I do believe we can and should be free from unwanted, unpleasant labour). But hey, you asked a value based question and got a value based answer. ;)
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by nzp 13y ago
You're trying to paint a reality that doesn't really exist. In practice the employer competition you mention comes down to competing who can pay the least, not who can pay the most. Income statistics show this trend very well, r
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by nzp 13y ago
Do note that Zed actually discusses in this book (at least in the online version) why it might not be the best idea to learn C from K&R today. His basic argument, IIRC, is that the examples in K&R are very bad when it comes to writ
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by nzp 13y ago
> 1. When a worker decides to work for an employer, he does so voluntarily. No one forces him to sign the contract. I see. And if the worker decides he doesn't like working for any of the available employers, what happens then?
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by nzp 13y ago
Yes. That's exactly what would be just, among other things.
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by nzp 13y ago
> But to claim that only a government can build those things and therefore you are forever indebted to the society as a whole is just plain wrong. It is wrong because it doesn't make sense, but I don't think tks2103 equated gov
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by nzp 13y ago
What's wrong in taking a class in anything including Marxist sociology? Are there some domains of knowledge which should be intentionally left unexplored, lest we corrupt all our precious bodily fluids? What is this--Texas Board of E
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by nzp 13y ago
Without further qualifications, I too agree completely. However, to me it's both sad and funny how twisted the meaning of "free" and "voluntary" become when used to defend (liberal) capitalism. This is a general r
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by nzp 13y ago
Maybe I wasn't clear enough in my last paragraph, so I apologize to you, but I was thinking of something that didn't fundamentally had anything to do with capitalism. This example still clings to erroneous notion that state socia
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by nzp 13y ago
> No it isn't. Trade is. [snip meaningless analogy] Trade? No, trade is the foundation of any kind of economy, of any kind of organized social life. Exploitation is one of the foundational concepts of capitalism, but the same
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by nzp 13y ago
If the list goes on, you could have then easily picked better examples, couldn't you? When North Korean society still had any meaningful relationship to socialism ( not communism) it actually had a higher GDP than South Korea. It on
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by nzp 13y ago
That (mis)quote of Churchill doesn't really mean anything, it's a shallow apology of capitalism, just a catchy formula that superficially seems to make sense if you don't care to think about the possibilities. If you suspend
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by nzp 13y ago
> The problem is nobody has a good plan for what else to do. There are plenty of plans, if one is willing to listen (anarchism). It's not the lack of plans that is the problem, it's people not having the guts to let go of what
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by nzp 13y ago
> by the guy WHO ORIGINALLY WROTE GREP Just a pedantic remark: He (Mike Haertel) originally wrote GNU grep. Grep, on the other hand, was originally written by Ken Thompson.
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by nzp 13y ago
Please stop confusing psychology and psychiatry. That was the point of my post. You're using these two words as if they are synonyms. They are not. In fact they have little in common. One is a science (psychology), the other mostl
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by nzp 13y ago
I agree. I mentioned in another comment -- he may be completely faking his state in order to write an engaging story and sell the book. But he is describing very well how a well adjusted person with psychopathic traits would behave. The
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by nzp 13y ago
> That wasn't an insight he had in advance, that was an interpretation forced on him by the test results. In other words, he was cornered into accepting a picture of himself, clearly at odds with reality, through personal dedication
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by nzp 13y ago
Sigh. This is one of those scientific subjects that has become a popular topic in the mainstream, and with it come a lot of misconceptions. So it's not surprising to me how many comments are skeptical of what this guy writes. It&#x2
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by nzp 13y ago
> Disclaimer: I have a B.S. in psychology (and a B.S. in Computer Engineering) so I'm probably biased. You're not biased, and that shouldn't be a disclaimer. You just know what you're talking about. ;)
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by nzp 13y ago
Understanding on a purely cognitive level what is moral and what is not has nothing to do with what you're actually going to do, if you're a psychopath. That's really one of the most striking characteristics. Psychopaths ar
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by nzp 13y ago
> This is why psychology and psychiatry are being abandoned. This is like saying: "This is why biology and [insert-some-unreliable-medical-procedure] are being abandoned." (because said procedure was found unreliable). Without
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by nzp 13y ago
Yep, intelligence is a significant factor in the behavioral outcome.[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6789637
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by nzp 13y ago
> They can even develop their own rational morality, arguably in many ways better than the instinctive emotional morality most people have. One of the striking things about psychopaths, and I'm talking about the obvious anti-social
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by nzp 13y ago
> As to psychopathy, the linked article says it all -- a researcher finds out he's a dangerous person by reading a brain scan, with no other supporting evidence and copious contraindications. Pretty much no, that's not what the
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by nzp 13y ago
There are other test which measure psychopathic tendencies, although they don't necessarily label "psychopathy" as that which they measure, for example some are "amorality" questionnaires (where amorality is roughly
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by nzp 13y ago
For me, one of the best features of HN is the minimalistic interface, including lack of links. Although, I'd welcome escapable asterisks.

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