Lennvor

This question is so generic I can't help but feel there is a more specific idea behind it. Can you talk about what made you want to ask this, what kind of answers you're expecting?

The thing is that, technically, "human fluorishing" (understood as the evolutionary tendency of our specie to thrive & expand) is not something that can be maintained indefinitelly.

I meant "human flourishing" as a shorthand for the list of things I listed, as in "things that tend to make individual humans feel fulfilled" not the expansion and thriving of humans as a species. I don't think the latter is always seen as utopian; for example if I were to list utopias like The Culture, The Federation in Star Trek, Le Guin's short stories, the Abbey of Thélème... Some of those do feature human expansion although even there it's not uncomplicated (The Federation not only explores but also colonizes uninhabited worlds and I think it's fair to see "the expansion of the human species" as part of its utopian vision; I think the same is true of The Culture but the books also challenge the idea), others straight-up reject it like many of Le Guin's utopias, and I think ancient versions of the genre like the Abbey of Thélème don't think that much about it at all. However all of those utopias portray humans as having or being able to achieve a variety of "personal fulfillment" goals such as those I listed; those are what I meant. I do think our evolutionary tendency to thrive & expand may be worth valuing for its own sake, contra Le Guin, but that's a different conversation.

Having said that I don't think the "rat utopia" experiments say that much about human flourishing. For one thing those "utopias" didn't meet all of the rats' needs - they had unlimited food and safety from outside threats but they didn't have unlimited space or the kind of stimulation they evolved to thrive and maintain their social structures in. I guess it's good nuance to understand that "flourishing" doesn't reduce to "unlimited food and safety from predators" but that organisms have other needs too (notably space), but I think it's something most people realize already. Note that stories that do feature "the evolutionary tendency of our species to thrive & expand" as utopian tend to have the opposite of a "rat utopia", with space colonization/exploration making space unlimited but with challenging conditions.

I'm also not convinced such behavioral sinks apply to humans, or at least apply to them as completely as they did to those rats. Some unique features we have that seem relevant here include our level of sociality, playfulness and adaptability. Humans are much more social than our closest relatives (& maybe all mammals) so overpopulation doesn't have the same impacts on us as others. We also (literally) play a lot more than any other species, in the sense of engaging in behaviors for the sake of random goals instead of the more straightforward ones that usually motivate us - in that category I'd list not only what we understand as play and games, but also things like art, science, sports, random hobbies, etc. We don't only individually play, but as cultures we devote time and resources to goals "for their own sake" instead of concrete survival/expansion. I'd guess such random behavior serves as a natural outlet in cases where conditions are "too favorable", one that we probably literally evolved to engage in (evolutionarily speaking play has the purpose of learning new things, and you do it when conditions are favorable enough that you don't need to focus on survival), meaning it's likely to feel satisfying to some extent at least. Finally, Alison Gopnik says adaptability is a hallmark of humans as a species and I think that claim holds up - human societies have proven able to adapt to a huge variety of environments, both physical and social. Our own societies are extremely different from the kind we evolved with and have tons of issues, but they still basically function, with a huge proportion of humans in them leading lives that range from satisfactory to fulfilling, in a way that wouldn't be true of a comparable number of chimpanzees. So I have doubts that we'd completely collapse as a species because of something so generic as conditions being "too favorable". Humans and human societies can be broken, no doubt about that, but that usually involves extreme scenarios. Unfavorable ones, at that.

It might be worth noting at this point that a lot of us, particularly of the "posting randomly on the internet" variety, do functionally live in "rat utopias" with unlimited food, no predators but limited space and tons of people around. And I think most would attest that while it's not the key to perfect happiness, it also hasn't devolved into the horrifying hellscape the rats experienced.

This isn't to say I think human utopia is possible/coherent/compatible with our nature. I just don't think the rat experiment is a very good example for that argument.

This kind of "why do we seek out happiness/pleasure but stories of artificial happiness/pleasure utopias always read like dystopias" question baffled me a lot until it occurred to me recently - happiness and pleasure are evolved systems that evolved for a reason. It feels absurd to treat them like a goal because they're not a goal, they're a measure. It's a bit like you're heating something and looking at the thermometer to check it's heating right, and someone says "hey why don't we paint the thermometer to have the value you want, that's much simpler and you'll reach your goal fine" and the answer is yes, but no. Yes, the thermometer will have the value you were aiming for and it may have looked like that was your goal but actually no, your goal won't be achieved because the real goal was never the thermometer it was heating the thing.

In our case, happiness, pleasure and so on evolved to drive us towards certain states and behaviors that it was evolutionarily beneficial for our ancestors to be in. Being physically comfortable, safe and healthy, being well-regarded by peers, achieving personal and collective goals, having friends and family who love you/have your back and you them, acting in line with what one feels is best, etc etc etc.

I think that has two consequences: 1) it's entirely possible that perfect happiness/pleasure isn't something we can ever attain, or that it's even a coherent state, via real OR artificial means. Because happiness/pleasure evolved under constraints that didn't include the requirement that such a state be attainable or even coherent. It doesn't mean it's impossible, but it definitely means there is no guarantee that it is. Certainly our current experience with happy-making drugs suggests it's much harder than you'd think. And 2) it puts into question the assumption that this state is "good". These dystopias always seem so sterile, like what's the point of all those people being happy, why have this system go to all that trouble to make it happen? Well, why should we care about anything, right, it's all value judgements. And there are obvious reasons humans would value happiness. But there are also obvious reasons we'd value safety, comfort, loving friends and family, having children, achieving personal and collective goals, social status, discovering new things, leaving a legacy, etc etc. The "artificially happy people" dystopia assumes that we value happiness above all those other things but that's an illusion borne from the fact happiness is a unified system driving us to all those things. A bit like thinking money is the most important thing because everybody is trying to get some, when in reality the money is just the unified vehicle for various things we really want - products and services, security, status, etc.

So insofar as all of those different goals are things we care about because we evolved to, it seems both more parsimonious and more robust to focus on goals that happiness/pleasure evolved as instruments to achieve rather than trying to hack the thermometer.

Arguably that's the difference between actual utopias and "we're all happy, that's good right?" dystopias. Actual utopias explore the conditions for human flourishing, and either portray happiness as obviously following from that or straight-up don't focus on happiness at all. Happy dystopias are dystopias precisely because the conditions they show are so antithetical to human flourishing that no reader would buy the characters are happy without the in-Universe happiness drugs or brainwashing or whatever.

Why wouldn't people expect differently? Is people trashing them on something so front facing undesirable for them or something?

900 comments and it's still up, looks like they gave up ^^

After giving it some thought, I think you should indeed do that. For Lemmy AND Kbin and more.
tl;dr: Advertising the existence of kbin and lemmy to random Reddit users is exactly what you want to do if you want to go against Reddit, and r/place is an excellent way of 1) telling people who don't know about it that these platforms exist, and 2) showcasing the vitality and size of the communities on these platforms

The major objection is that going to r/place gives Reddit the engagement and numbers they want for the IPO, and I think that's a compelling point but I don't think it's as obvious as the people making that point seem to think. The idea of "don't go on Reddit to protest Reddit, that's just helping Reddit" has some "But you live in a society, curious" vibes to it; I think the question of whether to protest vs abstain and how to best protest is always going to depend on the details of what you're protesting or abstaining from.

In this case I think Kbin and Lemmy users should put their names on the r/place board according to the following reasoning:

• The argument that you shouldn't go on r/places is essentially saying that the best protest against Reddit is people leaving Reddit, which I agree with

• Like all protests however it's not that impactful if it's a few isolated people doing it, you need to find a way to have users do it en masse. Coordination is key.

• Same thing for going on Kbin and Lemmy and others - these platforms become good if they have enough users to sustain vibrant communities, they rely on network effects.

• r/place as an event is a showcase of a community's coordination. It both requires a community to be large and well-communicated and it gives a very practical, visible way of advertising that coordination to both rivals and random observers (there's a paper out there proposing that this is why music evolved btw, hmmm that's pretty cool)

• what ultimately made me decide to post this is going on the thread for r/place's first day. Look at the conversations, this is exactly what they're doing: discussing the communities participating, commenting on what they draw and explicitly talking about what it means for those communities' size and coordination

• These comments also included people asking "why fuck u/spez ?" and "the only reason I'm still on Reddit is that there aren't any alternatives"

• This means there is a pool of normie users who aren't aware of the protest, but are following r/places, and the "fuck u/spez" movement is effective in bringing their attention to it

• By the same token there are tons of users who aren't aware of existing potential Reddit alternatives (one of those comments got "Lemmy" as a recommendation in replies and said "interesting I'll check it out" - they legit hadn't heard about it).

In conclusion:
Advertising the existence of kbin and lemmy to random Reddit users is exactly what you want to do if you want to go against Reddit, and r/place is an excellent way of 1) telling people who don't know about it that these platforms exist, and 2) showcasing the vitality and size of the communities on these platforms.

Now in practice I don't know that these platforms actually have the size and coordination to showcase that on r/places and that's fine, clearly a huge percentage of people here believe that boycotting Reddit entirely is more effective or more convenient. But if the question is "which hurts Reddit more, promoting Lemmy/Kbin on r/places or avoiding r/places", I've come to believe the answer is the first.

EDIT: oh right another objection I saw was "but the admins will just erase it", and there again look at the comments on r/place. Clear streisand effect on the guillotine, if there's stuff for lemmy/kbin/squabble that's visible enough and admins erase it it still works fine from a comms perspective.

After giving it some thought, I think you should indeed do that. For Lemmy AND Kbin and more.
tl;dr: Advertising the existence of kbin and lemmy to random Reddit users is exactly what you want to do if you want to go against Reddit, and r/place is an excellent way of 1) telling people who don't know about it that these platforms exist, and 2) showcasing the vitality and size of the communities on these platforms

The major objection is that going to r/place gives Reddit the engagement and numbers they want for the IPO, and I think that's a compelling point but I don't think it's as obvious as the people making that point seem to think. The idea of "don't go on Reddit to protest Reddit, that's just helping Reddit" has some "But you live in a society, curious" vibes to it; I think the question of whether to protest vs abstain and how to best protest is always going to depend on the details of what you're protesting or abstaining from.

In this case I think Kbin and Lemmy users should put their names on the r/place board according to the following reasoning:

• The argument that you shouldn't go on r/places is essentially saying that the best protest against Reddit is people leaving Reddit, which I agree with

• Like all protests however it's not that impactful if it's a few isolated people doing it, you need to find a way to have users do it en masse. Coordination is key.

• Same thing for going on Kbin and Lemmy and others - these platforms become good if they have enough users to sustain vibrant communities, they rely on network effects.

• r/place as an event is a showcase of a community's coordination. It both requires a community to be large and well-communicated and it gives a very practical, visible way of advertising that coordination to both rivals and random observers (there's a paper out there proposing that this is why music evolved btw, hmmm that's pretty cool)

• what ultimately made me decide to post this is going on the thread for r/place's first day. Look at the conversations, this is exactly what they're doing: discussing the communities participating, commenting on what they draw and explicitly talking about what it means for those communities' size and coordination

• These comments also included people asking "why fuck u/spez ?" and "the only reason I'm still on Reddit is that there aren't any alternatives"

• This means there is a pool of normie users who aren't aware of the protest, but are following r/places, and the "fuck u/spez" movement is effective in bringing their attention to it

• By the same token there are tons of users who aren't aware of existing potential Reddit alternatives (one of those comments got "Lemmy" as a recommendation in replies and said "interesting I'll check it out" - they legit hadn't heard about it).

In conclusion:
Advertising the existence of kbin and lemmy to random Reddit users is exactly what you want to do if you want to go against Reddit, and r/place is an excellent way of 1) telling people who don't know about it that these platforms exist, and 2) showcasing the vitality and size of the communities on these platforms.

Now in practice I don't know that these platforms actually have the size and coordination to showcase that on r/places and that's fine, clearly a huge percentage of people here believe that boycotting Reddit entirely is more effective or more convenient. But if the question is "which hurts Reddit more, promoting Lemmy/Kbin on r/places or avoiding r/places", I've come to believe the answer is the first.

EDIT: oh right another objection I saw was "but the admins will just erase it", and there again look at the comments on r/place. Clear streisand effect on the guillotine, if there's stuff for lemmy/kbin/squabble that's visible enough and admins erase it it still works fine from a comms perspective.

After giving it some thought, I think you should indeed do that. For Lemmy AND Kbin and more.
tl;dr: Advertising the existence of kbin and lemmy to random Reddit users is exactly what you want to do if you want to go against Reddit, and r/place is an excellent way of 1) telling people who don't know about it that these platforms exist, and 2) showcasing the vitality and size of the communities on these platforms

The major objection is that going to r/place gives Reddit the engagement and numbers they want for the IPO, and I think that's a compelling point but I don't think it's as obvious as the people making that point seem to think. The idea of "don't go on Reddit to protest Reddit, that's just helping Reddit" has some "But you live in a society, curious" vibes to it; I think the question of whether to protest vs abstain and how to best protest is always going to depend on the details of what you're protesting or abstaining from.

In this case I think Kbin and Lemmy users should put their names on the r/place board according to the following reasoning:

• The argument that you shouldn't go on r/places is essentially saying that the best protest against Reddit is people leaving Reddit, which I agree with

• Like all protests however it's not that impactful if it's a few isolated people doing it, you need to find a way to have users do it en masse. Coordination is key.

• Same thing for going on Kbin and Lemmy and others - these platforms become good if they have enough users to sustain vibrant communities, they rely on network effects.

• r/place as an event is a showcase of a community's coordination. It both requires a community to be large and well-communicated and it gives a very practical, visible way of advertising that coordination to both rivals and random observers (there's a paper out there proposing that this is why music evolved btw, hmmm that's pretty cool)

• what ultimately made me decide to post this is going on the thread for r/place's first day. Look at the conversations, this is exactly what they're doing: discussing the communities participating, commenting on what they draw and explicitly talking about what it means for those communities' size and coordination

• These comments also included people asking "why fuck u/spez ?" and "the only reason I'm still on Reddit is that there aren't any alternatives"

• This means there is a pool of normie users who aren't aware of the protest, but are following r/places, and the "fuck u/spez" movement is effective in bringing their attention to it

• By the same token there are tons of users who aren't aware of existing potential Reddit alternatives (one of those comments got "Lemmy" as a recommendation in replies and said "interesting I'll check it out" - they legit hadn't heard about it).

In conclusion:
Advertising the existence of kbin and lemmy to random Reddit users is exactly what you want to do if you want to go against Reddit, and r/place is an excellent way of 1) telling people who don't know about it that these platforms exist, and 2) showcasing the vitality and size of the communities on these platforms.

Now in practice I don't know that these platforms actually have the size and coordination to showcase that on r/places and that's fine, clearly a huge percentage of people here believe that boycotting Reddit entirely is more effective or more convenient. But if the question is "which hurts Reddit more, promoting Lemmy/Kbin on r/places or avoiding r/places", I've come to believe the answer is the first.

EDIT: oh right another objection I saw was "but the admins will just erase it", and there again look at the comments on r/place. Clear streisand effect on the guillotine, if there's stuff for lemmy/kbin/squabble that's visible enough and admins erase it it still works fine from a comms perspective.

Yeah, I got into it from the TalkOrigin.org website, and 1) I'd never have gotten into it otherwise, no question, and 2) I think it took years and many, many attempts to go from "huh they refer to a talk.origins 'newsgroup' where all this fun discussion comes from, oh the link does something weird nvm" to "OH HEY I MANAGED TO SIGN UP THIS THING IS REAL WHODATHUNK".

I said that in another comment but I think discoverability is huge. The way people find things out on the internet is by going to their usual internet places or asking questions of a search engine. I don't know how people got onto Usenet in the before times but definitely at the time I got onto it everyone was on the WWW and there were very few ways to even hear about Usenet there, let alone hear something enticing enough to want to check it out. And when you combine that with the technical barrier to entry that's pretty fatal.

I've only exposed my 4 year-old to Minecraft and Kerbal Space Project so far for reasons (now he understands "minecraft" to be an adjective meaning "that pixellated 90s video game retro aesthetic", it's adorable), but I taught in a preschool some years ago where I showed the kids Treasure Mountain and Midnight Rescue (some lucky kid might also have gotten Outnumbered but I was teaching preschool/elementary-school English, not elementary-school arithmetic). Huge hits.

Maybe it's time to get my own kid on SST[Edit - Treasure Mountain. That might have been too obscure] come to think of it, he is of age

The more I'm remembering and re-experiencing Usenet the more it reminds me of the huge differences between it and web interfaces that contribute to it being difficult to adapt but also having its own strengths.

A huge under-appreciated difference I think is that because all the messages are essentially email and you're meant to read them in an email client, and the threading isn't inherent it's the email client trying to figure out what's a reply to what, and the message titles are displayed in a thread with a separate window for message content, you get:

• infinitely long threads

• the custom of copying the post that's being replied to & replying at the bottom or inline, with further customs around trimming etiquette

• because the message is displayed in a separate window from the thread with its own scrollbar there is very little limit on post size other than custom (and I assume some client or server-related limit I've never run into, and I'm amazing at running into comment length limits on forums. Like, once I saw some apparently longtime Reddit user go "TIL there's a 10000 character limit on comments" and I just went "how did you not know that I run into it twice a week")

I think those things are what I truly love about Usenet as a forum interface. And I think they're very very hard to replicate on a webpage where everything is on the same page. Most other forums are linear instead of threaded; that's why I like Reddit so much I think! But even then there is obviously a cost in terms of page real estate to having excessively long threads, which Reddit manages in various ways. And either way, when the messages are on the same page as the tree structure then that's an extra limit on the size of both. I think that was a big part of the issue with Google Groups, although it did perform those tasks well enough that the newsgroup was useable you always got the sense they didn't want to. Like, there's a tree view but it isn't default I think? And it wasn't great at displaying really long threads? IIRC it struggled with the quotation formats too, maybe top-posted by default. I'd have to go back to remember. I wasn't around for DejaNews so I don't know how they did it, other than that everybody seemed to like it.

Did you feel it was a hot mess in terms of the interface, or in terms of the culture?