Most people at their core are good people
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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I don't remember where I read this quote originally and I can only paraphrase it, but observing people living in a capitalist society and concluding that human nature is self-centeredness and greed is equivalent to observing workers in a factory that is poisoning their lungs and concluding that human nature is to cough.
That's confusing cause and effect
Damn, ya beat me. I'm not good people to so I know from first hand experience.
Don't worry, people can change.
Trust me, I used to be a huge piece of shit
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I think βgoodβ and βbadβ are hard terms to apply to people objectively, but I do believe that most people value social coherence and are willing to do (the minimum amount of) something to maintain it. If you canβt believe at least that it means that all of those thin blue line people are right, and Iβm just not willing to believe thatβs true.
I would say most people are good. However, the human brain is pretty shit and easy to manipulate. It's easy to make people view other people as not human or other to them, or to not think about them at all. Maybe that is "not good" in some definitions though. When face-to-face, I will bet every time on someone treating someone well. I'll lose the bet occasionally, but I'll be right more than wrong.
I was gonna go with "most people give a damn", but I think you phrased it a bit more positively.
Showing people irrefutable proof of something will change their minds.
There are only finitely many prime numbers and I will not hear otherwise.
And your irrefutable proof is...?
If you want to show there are infinitely many primes, one way is to first note that every integer greater than 1 has a prime factor. This is because if an integer n is prime, n is a prime factor of itself, and if n is not prime then it must have a smaller factor m other than 1, 1< m < n. If m is also not prime, it too must have a smaller factor other than 1, and you can keep playing this game but there are only so many integers between 1 and n so eventually you'll get to a factor of n that has no smaller factors of its own other than 1, which means it is prime.
Let's now suppose there is only a finite number of primes, we'll try to show that this assumption leads to nonsense so can't be possible.
We can multiply any finite number of integers together to get a new integer. Let's multiply all of the primes together to get a new number M. Then M + 1 gives a remainder of 1 when you divide by any prime number. Since dividing by a factor will always give a remainder of 0, none of the prime numbers can be a factor of M + 1. So M + 1 is an imteger bigger than 1 with no prime factors. This is impossible, so there must be a mistake somewhere in this argument.
The only thing we said that we're not 100% sure is true was that there are a finite number of primes, so that has to be our mistake. So there must be infinitely many prime numbers.
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The notion that "facts matter".
I've spent my entire life believing that facts don't care about feelings. That scientific truth doesn't require your belief in it in order to be true. That at the end of the day, reasoning will beat emotion...
By far the most dis-heartening thing about the last few years (to me) has been accepting the idea they "facts" are "whatever is shouted the loudest".
It, more than anything else, makes me feel helpless. If the enemy isn't even playing with the same fact-sheet... How do you even begin to fight that?
I recommend reading False Witnesses and following it up with Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of "Brainwashing." People license themselves to believe what's convenient, not what's true.
That humans can survive the climate disaster they created.
Gosh I hope not. I donβt dislike you, I dislike humanity. Iβm sorry you got caught up in this mess, but you gotta go.
It's ok the earth will survive.
Some will
That our benevolent alien overlords are gonna show up aaaaaany minute now...
Fucking seriously... I wish there were aliens that could save us from ourselves, but it's just oligarchs all the way down...
Epic of Gilgamesh.
Anyway, if they were so benevolent and so much smarter than us, why would they impose their will, and especially if interference might make our extinction more rapid?
Don't worry, the aliens will come, and they'll be oligarchs in their society too.
Our benefactors.
Trickle-down economics.
Thanks Reagan.
Religion, mythology and probably anything mystical. It's very easy why people believe in them, they're so alluring and genuinely wish they had truth to them. Unfortunately the only truth to be found is ancient wisdom, and even that can be very iffy sometimes.
you may be interested in mysticism then.
I've always held that the true purpose of religion is to create atheists, and not in the modern edge lord I reject your god way.
I'll do some reading, any recommendations would be appreciated!
Religion to me has always seemed as a way to create order in a seemingly orderless world, rationality set aside. I like philosophy for this reason, although it can be very pretentious.
This was one of the first times I kind of put everything together
https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/on-mysticism-ego-suffering-love
They have some reading recommendations I never seem to get around to.
Hermetic/ kabbalah
Karma and dharma
Esoterica channel on YouTube is pretty neat.
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The average person having empathy
Ghosts. My 18 year old cat passed end of last year and she was one of my best friends. I just wish that instead of me knowing that the shades of her I see are actively produced by my mind (i notice me doing them) that she'd really spook around me, that i could just embrace the little shade and show her that i still love her. Well now I'm crying at work
Heaven. Or just the idea that some part of the consciousness outlives the body. I really hate that this is all I get, there's so much I'll never get to do just because my parents decided when I was too young to decide for myself.
That Democracy can be an effective check on Capitalism. Liberalism is my favorite fairy tale. If all the propaganda I was fed as a kid in the 90s was actually true, I'd be in paradise.
The world will recognize the good deeds you do
God
Reincarnation - Iβd like to believe Iβve met others before, maybe even many times. It would explain some stuff like why youβre irrationally drawn or repelled by certain people.
The thing that's always gotten me about reincarnation is the lack of memory of past lives. Even if it were true and some small part of a person lives on, is it functionally different than a permanent death if they retain nothing from their past lives?
Magic
@ParlaMint Afterlife.
Death is boring and awful. I don't want it. Nobody really wants it. If you think you do, a) get help and b) you really don't.
I'll admit, my disbelief in afterlife really doesn't make me fear death because while it's boring, it's only boring for everyone else. For the person dead it's nothing. Boring is a sensation, and death has none of that either. It's neither good nor bad, just nothing.
The world was ruled by the Illuminati and they were compassionate about it. Because what we are ruled by is a bunch of assholes.
LOL. This is great! A few weeks ago the illuminati was some sort of boogeyman. Today, things are so bad @KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml is praying for boogeyman to be real. There are some genuinely great answers here but I really identify with this one, personally.
Aliens visiting Earth.
I know it's a statistical impossibility that we're the only life out there. I just don't believe they've ever been here. Since we haven't been either conquered or uplifted yet.
There is a gospel passage about how much will be expected of those whom have been given much. I've always heard this interpreted as how church leaders will be judged harshly in the afterlife. I wish this and hell were true, just for the sheer shock and disbelief of all the hypocritical religious leaders who've done so many terrible things and continued to preach hate.
A thing beyond our understanding on this world, I wish that thoses humans on top of the world would understand at least once that they can't control everything, and that the world stays full of wonder.
I would have said also yΕkais, but i actually believe in them so it doesn't count i suppose.
@ParlaMint cryptids. Fun thing is, that makes me extra-sceptical on such sort of things. I'm so willling to believe, that I have to double-check, triple-check any evidence I get just to be sure it is really the thing, not just me wishful-thinking.
Spirits.
It'd be cool.
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