Un trop vert timide

Reminder of my only two previous comments in this topic:

Both can be true.

and

I’d understand if these tools were small scale, eco-friendly, ethically developped and trained, and owned by the workers.

Considering most LLM and AI/AI-adjacent tools used are large-scale tools created and owned by big greedy corporations, I’d say the tools themselves are a product of late stage capitalism, thus the bad results they produce are results of simultaneoulsly :

• the tools themselves
• why they were created
• how they were created
• why they are used
• how they are used
• …
• late stage capitalism (which also influnce the previous items)

End of the reminder.

Your answer to that was:

You started by saying they produce the issues, but are now explaining what I said above, that they are a product of upstream social issues.

What motivated my answer is:

Most events have multiple causes and multiple consequences. All of them can also interfere with each other. They can form retroaction loops too.

What I was explicitely saying is:

These tools were created and specialised for late-stage capitalism goals. There will be some common consequences, including bad ones, between usage by the big corpos and usage by random persons, whatever their skills. That’s why I said that both these takes are true:

The output of LLMs is massively increased global warming, increased prices of goods and services, decreased number of jobs, increased numbers of bugs in software, massive increase in wealth migration from poor to the rich, and increased surveillance. None of that has to do with the quality of the users. Just using it at all results in all of those things.

and

those things are the outputs out late-stage capitalism.

It seems that we disagree about my view, but don’t attribute to me shit I didn’t say to fight this false argument.

So…

Is this worth discussing.

Apparently no, at least not when you oversimplify causality and misrepresent what I said. Still worth argumenting for others to have more arguments to weight.

Now, this discussion looks to me like the stupid “debate” around “guns kill people” VS “guns don’t kill, only the people using them do” in the specific context of gun control laws.

And also, fuck capitalism, and other systems of exploitation, oppression, domination.

I’d understand if these tools were small scale, eco-friendly, ethically developped and trained, and owned by the workers.

Considering most LLM and AI/AI-adjacent tools used are large-scale tools created and owned by big greedy corporations, I’d say the tools themselves are a product of late stage capitalism, thus the bad results they produce are results of simultaneoulsly :

• the tools themselves
• why they were created
• how they were created
• why they are used
• how they are used
• …
• late stage capitalism (which also influnce the previous items)

Both can be true.

In other words, claiming to be “apolitical” (whatever that means) is a political stance.

From what I understand, that flaw can be lessened (not voided) by using sociology instead of eugenics/pseudobiology. So-called “races” as social constructs, or “perceived races” are less based on discrimination. This concepts can instead describe the existing discrimination. That does not nullify your point, by the way, it just dampens the flaw you pointed to.

Also : please re-read this lemmy community rules, as I just did, because you pushing the idea that only church have meaningful communities is not really compatible with the claimed goals of this community. (Me engaging in a debate with you seeam to also break a rule. Sorry fellow atheists and apostates.)

90+% of people used to attend church weekly.

No. This number comes out of nowhere. Maybe 90+ % of churchgoers did, but that’s what a churchgoer is.

Or you talk about a time when this was mandatory for the population. Pretty sure that was never the case in the USA, whose constitution in incompatible with mandatory participation in religious office.

I have no interest in continuing this interaction, since you don’t seem to accept that communities always existed and thrived outside of religious duties and cult sites.

Bye.

You seem to misunderstand my two previous comments. Reread carefully, and don’t hesitate to ask for precisions or complementary explanations about what I said. Also remember that contrary to some people’s belief:

• atheism is not a recent thing
• secular communities that can influence a whole society have not waited the 20th or 21th century either
• christian churches didn’t exist before the 1st century. The world without it was not a hellhole without any community, solidarity, or any beneficial value.
• christians churches are a model only to people whose personal culture was heavily influenced by any christian culture. Other social and cultural systems have other models.

That forced social obligation angle is an important if weird part of how churches benefit society in non-religious ways.

That’s not at all specific to churches, nor does it only produces beneficial consequences for society. (Domination systems pose many societal problems, some deadly.)

People who only ever do what they want when they want end up in isolation bubbles.

I don’t agree with that statement. That doesn’t match the acts of solidarity and socialisation I witnessed.

As attendance at churches has plummeted while the remaining churches have politicized, people have replaced those communities on social media,

Or not. Offline social hubs, politicized or not, and old school online social hubs still exist. Aside frop those I cited before, bars / pubs / cafés are still social hubs. The workplace is one too, at least in places where workers can have purely personal interactions with their colleagues.

By the way, politisation is not inherently bad, and the politisation of churches is as old as churches. Charity is political, preaching is political, clergy is in a way a political organisation. Hell, countries like the USA or France have law separating the “State” from the “Church” precisely because of the history of political ingerence from religious organisations like the roman catholic Church or the anglican Church.

which have algorithmically placed them in echo chambers.

Which difference with a community of churchgoers ? The religious belief systems, combined to the rules dictated by the clergy and peer pressure, can also cause an echo chamber. Any kind of community can become an echo chamber. Predatory communication media on internet (including the so called “social networks” or “social media”) are indeed efficient at maintaining very-large-scale echo chambers that transcend geography.

And occasionally hanging out with friends is not participating in a third place like a church.

Agreed, but I cited this only as an exemple of possible forced interactions. They can however lead to create or participate in what you call “a third place”.

They no longer regularly socialize with hundreds of community members they otherwise would never speak with.

Very probably false. Your statement is, once again, based on the assumption that church was and still is the sole purveyor of motivation to socialise, form communities, help each other, etc. That has never been true.

And that is a loss. It’s one reason people are increasingly lonely.

Irrelevant since the premise is false. I didn’t rigrously studied socilogy meta-studies on the subject, and you didn’t either considering how you phrase your statements, but I’m pretty sure the so called “loneliness epidemic” does not count the decrease in church attendance (or the secularisation of most christian dominated societies) as a significant cause. I’m sure these may share common causes, though.

Inknow people who are stuck in dead-end careers and hate their lives whonreally should just move somewhere else, but they’re afraid to because they have like 5 people in the world they’re close to, and literally don’t knkw how they’d find a new socialmgroup if they moved across the country. The answer to that used to be to move to a new area, start attending church, and meet people.

You almost had it. The church part was only one possibility among athoers. For some people, avoiding any church at all costs was a solution.

Because contrary to how you portray churches and their communities, these are not paragons of happiness, fulfilment, or benefits to society. Some communities may be mostly beneficial, some mostly detrimental. On the whole a common aspect of religions is control : religions can be viewed as systems of belief or systems of social cohesion, sure, but they also can be viewed as systems of domination. You yourself mention that aspect when talking about the obligations.

Systems of domination are never beneficial to society. They are beneficial only to the few at the top of these systems. These are the main tool enabling all kind of abuses :

• rapes and other sexual abuses are most often related to domination. Which international organisation related to our discussion is infamous for enabling many such abuses, and covering them ? The roman catholic Church. (Other cults are also infamous for that.)
• ethnic cleansings, wars, colonisation, racism, are related to domination. Religious beliefs and organisations have been contributors to all of these. (“Missions”, religious wars, crusades, etc) The driving factor being greed for money and power, capitalism and its ancestries and variants can often be the main contributor, but religion provides tools and “workforce” for these processes.
• minorities that stray to far from the societal “norms” are often oppressed by the dominant groups (in terms of power and influence in the societyn not in terms of demography). Such minorities include non cisgender people, as well as gender non-conforming cisgender people. You know what is an hostile environnement to these groups ? Most churches and their communities.
• non exhaustive list

For oppressed groups, churches cannot be a solution if they and their church-affiliated communities are part of the oppressors. Are they condemned to be isolated though ? No. They can find a sense of community, belonging, support, solidarity, an contribute to benefit the society as a whole, and chruches are not to thank for that. Mostly, autosupport organisations are their main salvation. Can these be echo chambers ? Depending of the subject, of course, like any community. Can they suffer from social media ? Yup, because their oprresor are dominant there too, but autosupport groups can also exploit the less predatory ones to help extend their group, and thus their ability to support each other and defy oppression.

Tl;dr : even when talking about community, belonging, solidarity, benefical impact, etc, churches are not the center of the world, nor the main model. Churches can even be an obstacle.

Wall of text incoming.

But the thing is they dont.

What make claim this general statement ?

As religion has declined, the vast majority of people who used to go to church weekly haven’t replaced that by attending other community groups.

• religion != going to christian a church or temple
  • even practicing christians can have their own way of practicing
• non-religious people and secular social gatherings are much older than christian churches, and far more than any US church
• how can can you even claim “the vast majority of people who used to go to church weekly haven’t replaced that by attending other community groups” ?

And the “interest” part also fundamentally changes the nature of it.

Yes, but what’s your point?

People going to church were often going there out of a sense of obligation.

I don’t know enough about the sociology behind this. However, this sense of obligation can also apply to gatherings not related to any christian church. Peer pressure and other social norms are not reserved to religious groups from the christian family of religions, nor to any religious or ideological group.

Parents don’t drag their kids to the comic shop and make them hang out with people.

Are you sure? I agree that not usual regarding a comic shop specically, but it still can happen. If not parents, other family members or friends can force someone into the forceful one’s favourite gathering evenet/place. The place can be a comic shop. I actually have been pressured by someone to participate to a very private cultural club regrouping a fraction of the community I talked about. That “someone” was a member of the club, but didn’t even ask other members consent before shoehorning me in. The club session didn’t take place in the shop, but in some members’ homes. Most accepted me, but still… others and I were forced to interact in this situations, and the only thing that helped is that we already interacted spontaneously and positively at several previous encounters.

Parents do indeed drag their kids to non religious social hubs and make them hang out with people :

• family events
• village / town events
• events with friends or colleagues
• public or private ceremonies (marriages, veteran ceremonies, etc)
• public events (fireworks, ball, promotional events, anything really)
• sports, cultural, or other clubs, even when none of the parents is a member of the club
• rallyes (the aristocrat networking event, not the vehicle race.)

Friends or relatives from the same generation can also do the same, to the same kind of hubs, plus others like nightclubs and their afterwork equivalent (that matches “events with friends or colleagues”, but the noise and the mass of people adds much stress for some.)

I’ve personnally experienced most of that when I was a child / teen, and still experience part of it. And although I was a roman catholic as a child, the only times this forced socialisation happened linked to church activities were linked to marriages, communions, baptism or funeral. I never took part in catechism, nor in periodic masses, or any parish event. That didn’t prevent me from finding a community. Actually, social norms and obligations were and still are one of the biggests obstacles preventing me from participating in significant way in a community. The others are social fears/anxiety, and poor mental health. (Due to working and living conditions degradation, as well as to the socio-ecological context, and the economics and politics that cause all of this. I hate the greed for any kind of domination, and the oppression and exploitation this greed encourages.)

Anyway, I don’t understand your point about the “obligation” incentive, and the forced participation. It wasn’t part of the discussions when I first answered, so it’s not a point I discussed either.

Communities and social interactions, wether linked to any religion or not, can and will happen without external constraints.

The absence of pressure is even better. Forced social interactions are at best awkward and tiring. I usually find these abusives. They also implies power dynamics that will probably lead to further suffering, toxicity, or (potentially very serious) abuses. We should not encourage the use of religion as a domination system (or any such system really) to force and structure social interactions and community.

The religion itself often ends up being quietly secondary to the community building, and I still don’t know what replaces the Church for the non-religious.

What can act as community hubs are very dependant of the community, but really don’t need to relate to religion. Especially if they serve as hub for people from different religious backgrounds

Aside from the places linked to religious activity, from any religion, the places that come to my mind, partly from my own experience, are:

• Local dedicated community centers, where they exist.
• Associations & clubs (the sport of school kind, not gentlemen’s clubs)
• Sometimes shops.
  • The best community hub I used to go to was actually a “booksshop” dealing in mangas, anime, video games, and tabletop games. They often organised nocturnal tabletop gaming events. The shop served as a social hub even outside of these events, and the community was a safe place for some us not “misfits” (special interest nerds, LGBTQIA+ teens and adults, etc).

In other words, any community driven or community focused place or organisation can serve as a meaningful cosmopolitan social hub. People will gravitate naturally toward the hub·s centered around their interests. (Be it a religion, a sport, a social cause, a subculture, etc.)

You were so close. The countries in the UN judged that Equal Earth was better suited for the currently expressed needs than Mercator. Detailled purposes changed, prefered projection was changed accordingly.

Putting aside the doom recompilation meme, I find this idea conceptually funny.

Thank you, but the pessimist I am cannot reassure you on this point.

Currently France and most of its population are very far from that fierce image, and that’s not new.

Our so-called “leaders” follow objectives and methods similar to their U.S. counterparts, with an apparent lag / delay. Our ten years president is a neo liberal with also some traditionalist catholic views on social norms. The asymetry in apparent power is such that those politicians don’t have too much to fear from the general population. (For now at least.) They just have to get enough people to vote for them once in a while, and manipulative communcation campaign do the job real fine.

Demonstrations and strikes don’t often work: they are generally ignored, circumvented, or smeared, criminalized, and sometimes violently repressed. (With accusations of terrorism). We even have a very violent “police” unit seemingly fully dedicated to beat up demonstrators. (The “BRAV-M”.) More powers, more tools, more weaponery and legal protections are given to the police (or similar) forces.

The fatigue and discouragement from our worsening living conditions depowered the fights for general interest causes. (against domination and exploitation systems, for example)

But !.. the same worsening living conditions are becoming bad enough that people become more afraid of being passive than of the consequences of opposing the “elites” and their goons. I sure hope the balance will tip in favor of those who fight for a better life before the faschist-style authoritarism is fully installed.

2027’s elections will be quite a battleground, but honestly we’re in need of more than some “providential” elected president with a good program. The framework of our current institutions system is rotten, focused on presidential power, and must be discarded to a framework based on equality of rights, equality of opportunities, solidarity, freedom, respect, compassion.

TL;DR:

France is currently not as much a land of rights and successful social fights as some believe or claim it is. It is also not a land of freedom anymore. (See freedom of press rankings, for example.) It’s rapidly (d)evolving into a fully fledged capitalist owned, highly repressive, police state. There are reasons for despair, but also some reasons for hope. All is not lost, but the fight will be arduous.

The same strategy is used in France. Our social welfare, including retirement funding and medical care, is being dismantled this way.

We know that Trump is only the chaotic mouthpiece for a much larger and much more problematic power structure in the USA.

A power structure that has been quietly and increasingly fucking the rest of us for decades. Trump simply ripped the mask off and got loud about it.

Not just in the USA. All around the world, mainly among the self proclaimed “(representative) democraties”, which are many countries. (The openly authoritarian regimes are already authoritarian, but can still progress toward more intolerance.)

And yes Trump, while himself being the symptom of these systems current state, has acted as a catalyst for the march toward hateful authorianism.

If we’re talking about D.J. Trump, then I’m pretty sure we can expect at least some sighs of relief in many countries, but not from those in power. This guy is a nuisance for more than just the USA, because of the USA’s geopolitical dominant position, and also because of the international networking between supremacist leaders and similar.

Agreed.

There was a famous case in France several years ago, around the freshly dead heinous monster named Jean-Marie Le Pen. His “orator talents” were praised after his death, both by dominant media and dominant politicians, including supposed to be ennemies with him and his legacy. Those who still publicly stood against him and his legacy were told to rospect the dead and were vilified. But as some members of communities he targeted said: “I will respect him in death like he respected us while alive.”

The man was a white national-supremacist with ties to the OG nazis. Racist, imperialist, xenophobe, LGBT-phobe, redheaded-phobe(?), … He very probably participated with enthousiasm in torture and other mass crimes from the french side during Algeria’s independence war. (Also, colonialisation is a mass crime in itself.)

So yeah, fuck forced reverence. This guy was a hateful mass criminal, and his death didn’t change this fact.