okay, so idealism. to almost everybody, this means "believing in the possibility of a better world where everybody can have better lives" or some shit. to a few weirdos, it means some other shit like "ideas are the real world of which the world of objects is a mere shadow".
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to a Marxist, it seems to mean something derived from the latter that comes out to what we could call "liberal idealism", the idea that you can change people's behavior and make it ~better~ by changing their ideas, since obviously our cognition is where our choices happen
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the Marxist thinks this is woo-woo nonsense and prefers philosophical materialism, specifically economic determinism, holding that people's behavior changes when their material conditions change (later formulated as "get 'em by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow")
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the liberal and the Marxist are, of course, both right and both wrong. the Marxist is right that the universe is material, unless they're an eliminative materialist or something which is just being a fucking idiot. the liberal is right that our behavior is produced by software
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the Marxist is right that just twiddling software will not produce results *over the long term*; we all know by now you can hack people's brains to get them to act against their material interests, but uncle Darwin tells us that all that gets us long-term is better brain security
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is the crisis of The Current Year the liberal strategy of changing hearts and minds running out of steam against the stark wall of real world economic contraction and desperately doubling down in hopes that one last big load of gasoline will finally put out the fire? stay tuned!
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Replying to @chaosprime
Wait... you mean exponential growth can’t go on indefinitely?
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i mean, it can go on indefinitely in the sense that for most of the time it's going on, the time at which it will stop will not be definite
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