37
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by infinite_ass@leminal.space to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

"How impressed everybody is" is the basis of money, law, self-worth and our models of reality. But that's a pretty shabby basis if you ask me.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] BombOmOm@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

“How impressed everybody is” is the basis of money, law, self-worth and our models of reality

Money

Is it? I don't try to impress anybody with money I do or don't have. If you do, consider not doing so. You might find your finances in a better state.

self-worth

Don't, I repeat, do not base your self worth on what other people think. Listen to their input and make yourself the best person you can be. But if you only have self-worth due to how impressed your neighbors are, you are going to have a very poor life as you make a continued bad decisions.

Law

There are vanishingly few laws that are centered around impressing anybody. The core theme to is to create laws that best allow for the functioning of society. For some easy examples, lack of criminalizing murder, lack of property rights, or lack of a tax code all fuck up modern society pretty quick.

our models of reality

I'm not sure how 'impressing others' is part of this at all? Our model of reality, ie physics, chemistry, math, have nothing to do with impressing others?

[-] infinite_ass@leminal.space 6 points 3 weeks ago

Excellent. An opportunity to elaborate my thingy.

By impress I mean that the thing looks big. People are impressed by big strong stuff.

Stuff that has big value is worth a lot of money. Thus money is based on people being impressed.

For good and ill, one's self-worth is generally based on how much attention you get and how much nice things people say about you. Thus self-worth is based on people being impressed.

Law is based on impressive arguments, impressive authorities, impressive force, impressive majorities.

Models of reality are likewise. Arguments, axioms, authorities, experiments, observations.Somebody is impressed and the hypothesis gets promoted to theory or whatever.

That's where I'm going with that. People are being impressed. Majorities are getting impressed. Impressive people are being impressed.

[-] howrar@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 weeks ago

I'm not sure if "impressed" is the right word for what you're trying to describe. I'm just going to address the first example to try and figure out what you mean.

Stuff that has big value is worth a lot of money. Thus money is based on people being impressed.

This sounds tautological. Is "big value" not synonymous with "worth lots of money"? I'm reading this as saying "Something that is worth a lot of money is worth a lot of money, and people are impressed by things that are worth a lot of money, so if people are impressed by something, it will be worth more money."

[-] infinite_ass@leminal.space 2 points 3 weeks ago

Yes, big value is synonymous with worth lots of money

[-] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)
[-] kinship@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 3 weeks ago

Reality is unfathomably complex. We can use our pre frontal cortex and think everything critically or we can learn patterns that are good enough.

Why is white sinonimous with purity and peace? Why we can have a somewhat coherent consensus on beauty? Why rockstars fabricate ludicrous stories to be seen as bad boys?

Telling an archetypical story impresses and dazzles other people. Again, reality is too complex.

What I have been learning to do, since I struggled with what you are asking a lot. How can I have substance and at the same time tell a compelling story?

[-] kinship@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 3 weeks ago

Why do we like being fooled by magicians? Why do we like being fooled by some branding or propaganda? It is our nature, you realized that. Now how do you not suffer internally with that fact? How can you turn this knowledge into wisdom? By using it for good

this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2024
37 points (84.9% liked)

Asklemmy

43974 readers
613 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS