Discussion What is this community's opinion on activism?

[AlbigenseanGhoul]

First post, so please do point out if I'm being dumb. I posted here rather than the "suicide discussion" for a less desperate discussion and to avoid people reading this as a "call to violence".

I recently learned of this community through that shitty tantacrul video, for which the lil' lad got literally hundreds of dollars in youtube donations alone. It came to me a in a very good time, as I was thinking a lot about why our society just won't let me die without forking a bunch of money (which I don't have) to do it. Now, I'm mentally ill, but physically able, so it's within the realm of possibility to torture myself under capitalism so I can get the means to leave this society through legal or illegal means. However one thing that got my mood much better, while still maintaining my blasé attitude towards living was the idea of getting organized and forcing this world to be better. Much more than any med or expensive treatment in fact. What are they gonna do, kill me? Guantanamo is still open I guess...

I understand that this route is not for everyone. I happen to be financially well off and able-bodied enough that this is much easier for me. Additionally I come from a Latinamerican Marxist perspective, which I'm sure isn't shared by all of those here. However you'd be surprised the effect that "just being annoying" can have in society. The odds of success still seem way higher than the ctb methods that are usually tried out there. I've seen lots of old users from here who probably no longer breath who were okay with traumatizing or harming people in their chosen method, so it's not like this forum is that afraid of making some actual noise.

As a final note, I leave this quote from Tom Hayden of the Chicago 8, which has nothing to do with suicide, but has been on my mind for some 4 months now. It really does feel appropriate to how I feel about dying.

[...] He's going to be all right, but he would want you to do for him what he is unable to do because he is in the hospital -- and that is make sure that if blood is going to flow, let it flow all over the city. If gas is going to be used -- let that gas come down all over Chicago and not just over us in this park. That if the police are going to run wild let them run wild all over the city of Chicago and not over us in this park. That if we are going to be disrupted, and violated, let this whole stinking city be disrupted and violated, let this whole military machine which is aimed at us ... around the city, don't get trapped in some kind of large organized march which can be surrounded. Begin to find your way out of here. I'll see you in the streets.

 

[TakesOneToKnowOne]

What kind of "activism" are you suggesting that is "okay with traumatizing or harming people in their chosen method"?
Your idea of "forcing this world to be better" looks like a moral justification for actions that will leave the world even worse than it is, not better.
Why not help someone in worse position than yours, if you have a need to take action? That would make the world a bit better, not worse.

Edit: The ideology you mentioned, killed tens of millions of people in the name of creating a better world. I guess that kind of contradictory thinking can be only a consequence of an ideology.

 

[TheSpookyNameGuy]

Hey I'm down, lets change the world together, no matter how futile.

 

[AlbigenseanGhoul]

What kind of "activism" are you suggesting that is "okay with traumatizing or harming people in their chosen method"?

What I meant to say there is that I've seen people here choose to go in ways that are clearly horrible both for them and to the people around them. Compared to that, many forms of activism such as sit-ins, protests, road blockages and such are positively mild, would be way less harmful to individuals and society. Of course they are significantly harder to do as individuals and require organization and unity, but I believe that they are way better in the long run to all people, be those who recover from their suicidal thoughts, be those who still wish to ctb. It is already a hellish existence right now, I personally believe it is worthwhile endeavour for those who can, to assure that at least the lives of ones like us in the future are better. I certainly am not advocating for anything actually harmful or traumatizing though.

Your idea of "forcing this world to be better" looks like a moral justification for actions that will leave the world even worse than it is, not better.
Why not help someone in worse position than yours, if you have a need to take action? That would make the world a bit better, not worse.

You raise a good point on how it is difficult to really determine what will make the world better. I mean, just look at how politicians worldwide seem to be completely fumbling how to deal with mentally ill people while at least looking like they want to help. I am not presenting "The Solution ®", but rather a possible avenue and am very open to understanding what this community thinks of it. On how I could help somebody else's life, truth is I can't, actually. Sure I may have the material means to live a relatively comfortable life for a while, but I'm not some rich person with political power or an audience. If my life is already rather shite, there's not much I could do for individuals by myself. I can hardly hold down a job properly. But, at least personally, I believe that none of the troubles that I go through or that I see people going through here have no possible solutions for society. We could at least try, as a group.

Edit: The ideology you mentioned, killed tens of millions of people in the name of creating a better world. I guess that kind of contradictory thinking can be only a consequence of an ideology.

I understand that there are many beliefs about Marxism in general, and I'll not try and refute the ones you point there as that will probably just make me sound annoying. However I could also point out many improvements of society brought up by Marxist thoughts, specially outside of the Soviet Union. For instance, the limiting of the working day to at most 8 hours, the abolition of child labour, minimum wage as a concept and collective bargaining for worker unions to ensure that every worker gets a fair share and of course public health initiatives all around the world, as well as fighting for the betterment of nations such as mine in South America. Marxism need not always be explosive or revolutionary, and we often make the mistake of conflating Marxism as the very large ideology and sociological thought with the very specific revolutionary Marxist-Leninism of the Soviet Union. I could prolong this discussion if it is interesting, but I think it is a bit of a tangent from just me explaining how activism is a thing I think is valuable by citing my political beliefs. Am open to talk more though!

Hey I'm down, lets change the world together, no matter how futile.

That's the spirit! Would you mind telling me some of your views on how things could be better? I'm actually rather new to this "actually talking about it" part of mental illness, and would love to know more about what older members think.

 

[TheSpookyNameGuy]

What I meant to say there is that I've seen people here choose to go in ways that are clearly horrible both for them and to the people around them. Compared to that, many forms of activism such as sit-ins, protests, road blockages and such are positively mild, would be way less harmful and to individuals and society. Of course they are significantly harder to do as individuals and require organization and unity, but I believe that they are way better in the long run to all people, be those who recover from their suicidal thoughts, be those who still wish to ctb. It is already a hellish existence right now, I personally believe it is worthwhile endeavour for those who can, to assure that at least the lives of ones like us in the future are better. I certainly am not advocating for anything actually harmful or traumatizing though.


You raise a good point on how it is difficult to really determine what will make the world better. I mean, just look at how politicans worldwide seem to be completely fumbling how to deal with mentally ill people while at least looking like they want to help. I am not presenting "The Solution ®", but rather a possible avenue and am very open to understanding what this community thinks of it. On how I could help somebody else's life, truth is I can't, actually. Sure I may have the material means to live a relatively comfortable life for a while, but I'm not some rich person with political power or an audience. If my life is already rather shite, there's not much I could do for individuals by myself. I can hardly hold down a job properly. But, at least personally, I believe that none of the troubles that I go through or that I see people going through here have no possible solutions for society. We could at least try, as a group.


I understand that there are many beliefs about Marxism in general, and I'll not try and refute the ones you point there as that will probably just make me sound annoying. However I could also point out many improvements of society brought up by Marxist thoughts, specially outside of the Soviet Union. For instance, the limiting of the working day to at most 8 hours, the abolition of child labour, minimum wage as a concept and collective bargaining for worker unions to ensure that every worker gets a fair share and of course public health initiatives all around the world, as well as fighting for the betterment of nations such as mine in South America. Marxism need not always be explosive or revolutionary, and we often make the mistake of conflating Marxism as the very large ideology and sociological thought with the very specific revolutionary Marxist-Leninism of the Soviet Union. I could prolong this discussion if it is interesting, but I think it is a bit of a tangent from just me explaining how activism is a thing I think is valuable by citing my political beliefs. Am open to talk more though!


That's the spirit! Would you mind telling me some of your views on how things could be better? I'm actually rather new to this "actually talking about it" part of mental illness, and would love to know more about what older members think.

Message me if you'd like, I'm not sure the others would take my views too kindly

 

[TakesOneToKnowOne]

I misunderstood your post as a call to mayhem before going out. Otherwise, I agree with a lot of your points and like the idea of helping others or taking non-destructive action towards helping people like us. You mention nothing specific though, just a general willingness to take action, which is a great start I guess :)

I disagree on the Marxism though. I do not know the theory in details, which may be better for an objective analysys, it probably separates me from the wishful ideological thinking. So, if you separate the theory(which is awesome) from the actual results of the implemetation, you see that it creates murderous, genocidal dictatorhips and unnecessary suffering. For example, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. Another recent example is Venezuela, they have the most oil the world, yet 75% of the people are poor. Possibly many more examples.

There may be exceptions and it may have some positive sides. But it is good if decisions are made based on the rule and not on the exceptions. As far as I know, I was born in such exception, (though do not remember it, because was young), namely Yugoslavia. But, I think it's relative success was due to geopolitical factors (the west was helping, because the country was against the USSR), internal factors (there were multiple states with different opinions, kind of like a democracy) and luck (people lucked out by getting a benevolent dictator).

In the future though, probably more socialist ideas will need to be incorporated into societies, as AI starts taking over.

 

[AlbigenseanGhoul]

Sorry for the delayed response, life got in the way.

I misunderstood your post as a call to mayhem before going out. Otherwise, I agree with a lot of your points and like the idea of helping others or taking non-destructive action towards helping people like us. You mention nothing specific though, just a general willingness to take action, which is a great start I guess :)

Oh that's a great start. Being rather new in this community, I don't think I'm at the point where I can advocate for any specific action and would like to know what is acceptable and interesting to the people here first. To give some of my perspectives on activism activities I think are interesting though, just a coordinated "popular private lobbying" by contacting specific helpful politicians worldwide would be at my "most accessible, low risk", while, depending on the interest we could actually annoy smaller news websites, which is less accessible and higher risk. The first one is less troublesome because, if we target only trustworthy and well-meaning politicians, we could have a better control of the narrative. The second is gigantically risky because we could have another "tantacrul/NYT event" where we get sockpuppeted for ad revenue and this site gets flooded. However, it would make no sense for me, a complete newcomer, to set anything in stone right now.

I disagree on the Marxism though. I do not know the theory in details, which may be better for an objective analysys, it probably separates me from the wishful ideological thinking. So, if you separate the theory(which is awesome) from the actual results of the implemetation, you see that it creates murderous, genocidal dictatorhips and unnecessary suffering. For example, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. Another recent example is Venezuela, they have the most oil the world, yet 75% of the people are poor. Possibly many more examples.

There may be exceptions and it may have some positive sides. But it is good if decisions are made based on the rule and not on the exceptions. As far as I know, I was born in such exception, (though do not remember it, because was young), namely Yugoslavia. But, I think it's relative success was due to geopolitical factors (the west was helping, because the country was against the USSR), internal factors (there were multiple states with different opinions, kind of like a democracy) and luck (people lucked out by getting a benevolent dictator).

I'm not going to argue over the dictatorships you pointed out, as I think that's a bit beside the point for me. I also don't know much about Yugoslavia in general, so I'm happy to learn. But rather, my interest is in presenting the alternate view that these autocracies are actually the exception. For every Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot (the last one generally regarded as a basically an Nazi in disguise by all Marxists nowadays), you get hundreds of people like Tony Benn, Mhairi Black, Dilma Rousseff, Salvador Allende, MLK, Jeremy Corbyn, who despite their personal qualities and flaws, were always very willing to respect democracy and the will of the people.

Marxist coups are a minority in how Marxists and Marxist-adjacent ideologies (indigenism, plurinationalism, anti-colonialism, etc) get into power, and in the countries where it does happen, it is usually done by Marxist-Leninists with broad popular and elite support, specifically because the previous governments are so terribly oppressive (Russian Empire, Batista's Cuba, pre-revolution Koumintang's China) that even the majority of Marxists, who are not Marxist-Leninists, allied with the MLs. In my case, socialists fought against the dictatorship in my country, and are largely to thank for what little democracy and public services we have here. I'm not saying you should become a Marxist or anything, just that Marxists are generally gentler and more democratic than you might think.

In the future though, probably more socialist ideas will need to be incorporated into societies, as AI starts taking over.

But this is where I'll have to correct you as a specialist. I work in the field of "AI", specifically in the hyped up field of Deep Neural Networks, which is what people usually mean by that acronym [1]. I have never seen in my studies a bigger discrepancy between the public discourse and the academic consensus than in this field. I don't work on it because it is good for society or actually useful, but rather because it pays good money even if you don't actually produce anything of use. Most of the "AI" (that is, only DNN AI) is just smoke and mirrors where you get sizeable funding for expensive NVidia hardware, which you often don't even need, "prove" "state-of-the-art" results on some artificial dataset, so you can get more funding and hardware while the end user sees none of those improvements. [2]

Now, there are two ways to understand the AI situation. One is the claim that AI will automate many jobs of society. That is definitely not the case, as DNNs are inherently unreliable and impossible to debug, due to technical reasons I won't go into detail. That means that any system facing the user, such as chatbots like ChatGPT, can't be trusted to always tell the truth, and therefore can't replace humans who are actually auditable. So it won't ever work in things like "automated support chats" for banks and such, which is why the more reliable banks rely instead on what are basically forms dressed up as chats. But the systems can't also easily be plugged in-between end-to-end systems for things that matter. That is why no sane person is suggesting using DNNs to process taxes or budgets, because that'd be a great way to lose your organization gigantic amounts of money randomly. This is why very few jobs important to the economy have been automated through "AI" [3]. The best automation out there is actually through cool, but boring-sounding methods like linear programming for big logistical systems, or development of robust APIs.

The other way, is that AI or other techniques will make work obsolete. Truth is, it already is. On a Yougov poll [4], 37% of respondents answered no to the question "Is your job making a meaningful contribution to the world?". This is a common reality of other first world countries like the Netherlands, where a sizeable portion of the population work unproductive jobs, simply because in our society, if you are born poor and don't work, you starve. Most investment in AI is just an investment bubble, stuff like chatGPT causes way more harm than good, and I wouldn't be surprised we had another dotcom bust within 5 years or so. The rest is actually just to make advertising companies generate more revenue. I have profitably worked on many AI projects that provided literally no use, only because the pay is good.

That was long rant to say that actually AI,as we have it, won't fix any societal issues we have anytime soon. In fact, it is being used in a way to target "mentally ill" people, such as me, for great profits. (Sorry if any of that probably sounded rude, but that was definitely not the intent.)

[1] compare 01/2022 vs 01/2013 on the frequency of articles tagged "cs.LG"
[2] just within the last 1 year, over 2 thousand articles that included "outperforms state of the art" have been published in arxiv on the Machine Learning section alone.
[3] compare google results of "AI will automate" vs "AI will automate before:2016-01-01". The claims are the exact same, but the timeline just got pushed 5 years later.
[4] https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/articles-reports/2015/08/12/british-jobs-meaningless

Message me if you'd like, I'm not sure the others would take my views too kindly

Apparently I need to post a number of replies before unlocking DMs. I just realized that there's a whole forum for politics that I missed, which I think is more appropriate for this than here. I'll be checking it out for a while and then message you when I can :) . I'm not sure if using outside platforms is within the rules, but I think it is wise (for both of us) to avoid that anyways.

 

[TakesOneToKnowOne]

I will try to answer some of the points. Not all, because it would take me 5 pages and all are on different topics.

Marxists are generally gentler and more democratic than you might think.

I do not know much about the people you mentioned, but they seem to be individual politicians advocating for more social support or fighting against dictatorships and unfairness in different countries, which is great in my view. The people and states I am mentioning are actual implementation of the ideology on a state level (one party, no private property...). In other words, whole societies that implemented Marxism, the results of which were not good in my opinion and proved the theory to be just that, a theory.

AI

I have so many things to say about this. I do not work directly in AI, but I am in IT, so kind of understand some of the concepts and have an intuition about where it may be going.

I don't work on it because it is good for society or actually useful, but rather because it pays good money even if you don't actually produce anything of use.

I do not see anything inherently bad in this. Many people probably do this, including me, meaning can be found in places other than work. But I understand this way of thinking, if it is hard and not meaningful and there is no meaning in other places, then it can lead to burnout, which is my case, maybe yours too.

any system facing the user, such as chatbots like ChatGPT, can't be trusted to always tell the truth, and therefore can't replace humans who are actually auditable. That was long rant to say that actually AI,as we have it, won't fix any societal issues we have anytime soon.

They are getting better exponentially though. That is the power of exponential, nothing happens for a long time, then some small improvements start, then boom. The discepancy in academic discourse and public in normal in my opinion. Again the difference between theory and practice. Plus, academia is just another human system, full of biases, personal interests, lobbyists, egos... You may be too deep in the forest to be able to see trees, maybe not, we will see. My thinking in terms of AI is, if I compare GPT-3 with GPT-4, then extrapolate to GPT-5, 6, 7, then it is a matter of time, when it becomes smarter than all of us in all fields. The halucinations are also being reduced with time (btw, humans make mistakes also). Now whether we can align it is a different issue, probably many smart people are working on this.

contacting specific helpful politicians worldwide

In terms of most impactful, it is a difficult question. Plus, not all people are in the same place mentally for the same reasons. My way of thinking would be that you can have most impact by aligning what you are good at with the goal.

 

[AlbigenseanGhoul]

I do not know much about the people you mentioned, but they seem to be individual politicians advocating for more social support or fighting against dictatorships and unfairness in different countries, which is great in my view. The people and states I am mentioning are actual implementation of the ideology on a state level (one party, no private property...). In other words, whole societies that implemented Marxism, the results of which were not good in my opinion and proved the theory to be just that, a theory.

I think we might just disagree on semantics then. I consider those I listed as either Marxist or Marxist adjacent. Marx himself never drew an outline of how a socialist state should organize, and from my perspective the "one party, immediate abolishment of property" is optional. Marxist-Leninists, the ones you mentioned, tend to call that revisionism but I don't fully agree with them there. But even at that level we still have places like Cuba, which is not really the best place in the world, but life is quite livable there, despite all sanctions. However, when I refer to Marxism, I refer both to revolutionary one-party movements such as the USSR, to general organized labour actions such as strikes, and to social democrat politics such as that of public housing and healthcare, which I recon you don't include in the same label. I guess that was our confusion there.

I do not see anything inherently bad in this. Many people probably do this, including me, meaning can be found in places other than work. But I understand this way of thinking, if it is hard and not meaningful and there is no meaning in other places, then it can lead to burnout, which is my case, maybe yours too.

Oh yeah, I didn't mean it like it's that bad of a thing, just as a disclaimer that I don't buy into the hype. It's an okay profession and all, very undemanding.

They are getting better exponentially though. That is the power of exponential, nothing happens for a long time, then some small improvements start, then boom. The discepancy in academic discourse and public in normal in my opinion. Again the difference between theory and practice. Plus, academia is just another human system, full of biases, personal interests, lobbyists, egos... You may be too deep in the forest to be able to see trees, maybe not, we will see. My thinking in terms of AI is, if I compare GPT-3 with GPT-4, then extrapolate to GPT-5, 6, 7, then it is a matter of time, when it becomes smarter than all of us in all fields. The halucinations are also being reduced with time (btw, humans make mistakes also). Now whether we can align it is a different issue, probably many smart people are working on this.

I think my main complaint is that funding is actually going more towards "things that are cool and could be useful" than "things that are useful right now". We never stop hearing about how "chatGPT will be good in the future", but the truth is that we don't actually know. It is actually very common for new technologies to just reach their limits. GPT, and before it GANs have this "cool" aspect because you can actually look at the output and comprehend it easily. However on the usefulness front it pales in comparison to auditable and harder to comprehend things like better and more stable APIs, static error checking and mathematical optimization. Even in the field of ML, there are things which are vastly more useful than what's now called GenAI, such as Information Extraction or optimization of inherently unreliable systems like internet packet routing, but those spend way less time on running on our training machines. I don't think they're bad, I even enjoy arguing random nonsense with chatGPT or generating images with pre-trained GANs, but it takes a lot of faith to believe they'll replace writing or video anytime soon, and those aren't even that essential of a market anyways.

 

[TakesOneToKnowOne]

funding is actually going more towards "things that are cool and could be useful" than "things that are useful right now"

I guess transformers are the new thing and they will try to push it to the limits, since they do not know them yet. Maybe it turns out it can not be made to not hallucinate in satisfactory percentages, maybe it can not be aligned, maybe it can not go over 100 IQ no matter how many graphics card you add. But, if it can be made to not hallucinate and can be aligned and can have a 200 IQ or more, then it is a big game changer (it can solve any problem better than any human). I think this is what they are trying to find out. GPT-4 compared to GPT-3 is way more aligned, hallucinates less and has better reasoning, so I do not think they are stopping any time soon.

 

[SexyIncél]

"Idiot" comes from "private person" — who doesn't take part in public affairs

Activists are simply those who alter social reality. Nothing wrong with that, and most of us reproduce society unthinkingly

 

[CarambaAlbum]

I see activism all the time where I live. I fucking can't stand it. When a group of people finally protest for something I believe in there is always some horrific political grifting that comes with that. Political parties desperate for votes chime in, if it's big enough then companies will try to sell you things while chanting "Fight the power!"

It's rotten to the core, the only winning move is to not play at all.