this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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Lefty Memes
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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
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0. Only post socialist memes
That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)
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That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
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The only dangerous minority is the rich.
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We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
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Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
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Yes, that's the point; if we can't tolerate any uncertainty, then in essence nothing is provable and there's nothing to do. It's inconsistent to assert that I must have perfect knowledge about something while acting as though I exist when you have no way of verifying that.
When you say that you have a degree, you mean specifically in philosophy, correct?
my focus was logic and scientific reasoning but the undergrad requirements covered ethics
there are ethical systems that can exist even if we don't. kantian ethics require only that you decide what should be universal law and act accordingly. that doesn't require that you know anything outside of yourself. by contrast, utilitarianism is fraught with epistemic problems.
Every set of axioms is independent of reality by definition. Deontology isn't special in that way; consequentialist systems are also axiom sets. Furthermore, every ethical system has the same problem when putting it into practice; if you don't know anything about the world, your ethics system might as well be empty.
i suppose so, but if your axioms depend on the future, which by definition is unknowable, then it is empty.
Consequentialist axioms impose an ordering on world-states, almost all of which will never exist. I don't understand how you can think the axioms themselves depend on future events; by definition they wouldn't be axioms.
if you must do what will cause the most pleasure (or least displeasure), then your axiom depends on knowing the future.
No, acting upon the axiom requires "knowing the future" as you put it.
even knowing how to act requires knowledge of the future in such a paradigm.
Every ethical system requires knowledge of the world.
Knowledge of the world includes knowledge of the probability of future world states.
Future world states are subject to doubt.
Present world states are also subject to doubt.
There is no fundamental difference between the degrees of uncertainty about present and future events.
We can know with a high degree of certainty that without intervention, the sun will be destroyed. I can know with a high degree of certainty that your arguments come from a mind that is not part of a mind that I am part of. I can know with a high degree of certainty that the place I am currently located will not be subject to an event that will destroy me.
Privileging the certainty of nearer-term events is fallacious. It is true that any particular chosen event becomes more probable as its proximity to us increases, because there are fewer ways to avert it, but that does not mean all further-future events are less probable than all nearer-future events.
probability is never 100%, but the categorical imperative is always 100% certain.
Are you claiming that in a particular physically real situation, the categorical imperative can can tell you the correct course of action with 100% certainty? If so, please explain how that's possible when your personal certainty of the situation is (necessarily) less than 100%.
if you've decided that a certain course of action should be universal law, then complying with that law is moral. The categorical imperative is incredibly simple to apply
Look, I'm not even getting into the fundamental problems with the insane, subjective, and ad-hoc way the moral imperative is supposed to work; I'm pointing out that you're performing apologetics. I don't need to get into the weeds of how it works, because your argument is fallacious.
If you decide that it's wrong to allow an infant to starve, but that poisoning a child is wrong, how can you be 100% certain that what you are about to feed it isn't poison? You can't know that it's moral to feed the child what you are about to feed it. The absolute certainty you claim is either a useless technicality or an outright fiction.
this is handwaving. i believe the kids today call it "cope"
it doesn't matter. if i don't believe it's poison, then feeding it to the child is the right thing to do. done-and-dusted.