George Takei  🏳️‍🌈🖖🏽Mar 18
This honestly explains a lot.
Show threadThe Sleight Doctor 🃏🍉

@georgetakei FFS even the word "introspection" isn't modern. It dates back to the 17th century in English but derives from the ancient Latin "introspectus", meaning to look within. Why are these billionaires so willfully, proudly ignorant?

I'm starting to think some of them are philosophical zombies - in that they have no inner lives - which perhaps explains why they think chatbots might be people and other humans are expendable.

Mar 18 at 4:11amWeb
Show threadTockMar 18
@ApostateEnglishman @georgetakei If the ultra rich and their self-made billionaire power controls spoken language, they can control pretty much anything they want.
Show threadspangheroMar 19
@ApostateEnglishman @georgetakei Money making money means that have no need to be introspective, assuming they are even capable of it. They've one at capitalism so we should put that one away, get another game out with a very different way of keeping score; one that doesn't reward concentrating/hording counters
Show threadDingoMar 19
@ApostateEnglishman @georgetakei
No introspection, no empathy, no humanity.
Show threadMary BranscombeMar 19
@ApostateEnglishman @georgetakei it's ironic that Andreesen picked '400 years ago' as his example: the beginning of the age of reason, the era of Descartes and Leibniz. It's beyond ignorance and into somekind of willful denial of history.
Show threadPete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫Mar 19

@ApostateEnglishman @georgetakei

They probably have inner lives, who knows, probably somewhat shrunken and dried out by being denied the water of empathy.

But they will argue any nonsense to devalue other people's humanity in case it stops them getting what they want, and they know what the response would be to "I have an inner life because I'm a special boy who was granted one when I got my first million, but poor people don't".

So they come to straight up denying that anyone has a mind.

Show threadBai ShenMar 19

@ApostateEnglishman @georgetakei I read an article/study about how the more money someone has the more detached from reality and people they get. Introspection would require them to consider that they're flawed or that other people are actual people and not NPCs in their game of life.

<Ten dollar banana meme>
<Principal Skinner wrong meme>

Show threadacbMar 19
@ApostateEnglishman @cstross @georgetakei Various strains of “rationalism” and neoliberal-adjacent thought valorise “high decoupling”: the ability to rationally do long-term cost-benefit calculations without being overwhelmed by the enormity of one’s immediate actions. Perhaps the apex of this is decoupling from any inner life at all?
Show threadThe Sleight Doctor 🃏🍉Mar 19

@acb @cstross @georgetakei Yes. I expect you probably already know about longtermism, a component of TESCREAL, which seems to be the guiding ideology - bordering on religion - of the tech broligarchy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TESCREAL

@timnitGebru , btw, is an essential fedi follow for those who aren't following her already.

TESCREAL - Wikipedia

Show threadCharlie StrossMar 19
@ApostateEnglishman @acb This is generally correct (and TESCREAL is *indeed* a syncretistic religion in its early decades), but please don't randomly rope in everyone on mastodon, it clogs up our mentions.
Show threadThe Sleight Doctor 🃏🍉Mar 19
@cstross @acb Sorry Charlie, but that wasn't me, I just replied to a comment! The comment I was replying to must have tagged you. 🤷🏻‍♂️
Show threadNomdebMar 19
@ApostateEnglishman @georgetakei too many of them, example Zuckerberg, appear to have nothing close to a quality education, a world education, a cultural education. It's a complete poverty of imagination except for tech. Empty internal lives. Empty. Musk is another example. An empty shell of a man, no substance.