Yeah, mutual aid works on the local level or in insular communities like long-term discord groups with a tight group of regular members. With community mutual aid, I’m generally in favor of just taking people at their word. If they say they need help, give them help. No need to interrogate them like the food stamp office will. You prevent people from abusing the system by simply not granting endless requests from the same person. Or if someone needs severe aid, at that point you can start actually verifying their story, helping them access government benefits, helping them find employment, etc.

But that kind of open approach works for in-person aid. It doesn’t work for anonymous online aid, where someone can use bots to spin up hundreds of convincing profiles each begging for money.

I just don’t think mutual aid works well in an online context. The only online context it works in is among communities like small discord groups where people know each other for years. But on a lemmy or mastadon-type service? Mutual aid is impractical. Any people asking for aid should be directed to local groups that can help them in person.

Yeah, there are indeed all sorts of weird hypothetical but possible scenarios out there. You might actually be a Boltzman brain and not even know it.

But I prefer to focus on what we can actually measure and observe. And we do know that consciousness ceases each night. Even if we count dreaming as consciousness, you conscious experiences is not a continuous thing. If “you” are simply your consciousness, then you die every night.

“You” is just a thought pattern, a bit of software if you want to use a crude metaphor. Your body and mind are just the substrate that runs that software. And in principle that same pattern could be run on a computer.

Who says you need physical continuity? Imagine I’m running a city simulator game. I save the file and send it to another computer. I open it up and start it again. Is it not the same simulated city? Sure, the hardware is different, but that matters little. It is not the hardware that defines the essence of my virtual city, but the information that describes the city model itself.

You could do the slow piecemeal upload process. But again, that scenario is just trying to preserve the illusion of the continuity of consciousness. Real human consciousness is interrupted daily. There’s no need to go to such great lengths just to preserve an illusion of continuity.

Each instance of our consciousness is a limited thing spun up for a limited time. This is as it always has been and always will be. This is simply your nature; there is no need to resist it. The fruit fly may as well lament its own limited existence, instead of dancing in the joy of its one living day.

If anything, this should encourage us to live life to the fullest. But also, to pass the torch with pride. You’re part of an seemingly endless line of you’s, and there will hopefully be many after you, today’s consciousness, has ceased to be. You’re part of a grand rely race stretching back thousands of times longer than your own consciousness. Make the goal each night to go to bed knowing you did your part, a worthy link in the great chain that is your existence. Go to sleep with peace knowing your later selves will manage things just fine. Close your eyes, and let the water take you.

I suppose that’s possible. I’m just going with the breaks we can actually verify with scientific evidence. What is known is that consciousness ceases for prolonged periods during the night. “You,” your consciousness, completely ceases in these periods, just like being put under anesthesia. You’re not awake. You’re not dreaming. You’re just gone.

They’re both you. Though the two you’s will quickly diverge as their experiences differ.

YOU MUST BALANCE THE EQUATION!!!

In the same way it is “you” that wakes up each morning. Their are periods of the sleep cycle where the mind is active and dreaming. There are other times when you are just gone, complete cessation of consciousness. In many ways, we live our lives as a series of discrete individuals, each life a single day in length. Each inheriting memories from the last.

Good morning Lemmy. Enjoy your one day of existence, and keep passing the torch.

Not who you’re replying to. But yeah, there’s plenty of vehicles that old on the road. We’re a couple, and we get by with just a single '06 Toyota Carola. So why not an old Subaru? Cars were better then! They have buttons!

Anyway, it definitely gets dirty enough in that engine bay that I wouldn’t want food in there.

Bots are not allowed on a forum like this. If you are simply an instrument of a bot, you should not post here.

Why would you post this trash? If people want to read chatgpt’s takes, they can access it themselves.

My own spouse, but…as the statisticians would say, that is not really two independent samples.

Tankies get paid in vodka and cigarettes

I choose to believe this is literally true. Like Russia or China is running this really, really weird international psyop. They find depressed edgy American teenagers online, and literally send them shipments of vodka and cigarettes, on the explicit bargain that they have to post Russian or CCP propaganda. Or Hell, maybe it’s North Korea doing it. You know, it has to be North Korea. This feels like their type of weird. Regardless of the source, it’s a vast shill/edge lord army literally paid for in vodka and cigarettes smuggled over the border. I know it’s ridiculous and completely impractical logistically. But damn it, I do not care. From now on this will be my internal image of tankies. American teenagers literally paid in North Korean vodka and cigarettes.