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befriend reason

Reminder to elf when and why the other is now your friend.
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[Category:Web:Social Media:Friends]

A remark when befriending someone why you did so. Some background about posts they make or other stuff. If not available in your social media app, have it as an addon that detects you befriending someone and gives you some information about what you recently saw about this person or entity.

pashute, Dec 08 2020

They admitted social media is programming us https://www.wakingt...-is-programming-us/
Some very good reasons for not using facebook. [spidermother, Dec 11 2020]


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       This implies that each relationship is a means to an end. Is that not ethically problematic?
pertinax, Dec 09 2020
  

       I liked your ideas so I befriended you
chronological, Dec 09 2020
  

       ^^Depends on the end.
spidermother, Dec 09 2020
  

       I don't have very many bakers as friends. I am feeling lost and alone this Christmas season, and I'm retiring at months end which means it's just me, the cat, and the pc...till death do us part.
blissmiss, Dec 09 2020
  

       Cheer yourself up. Ditch the cat, get a dog. And more computers. Lots more computers ...   

       // Is that not ethically problematic? //   

       Gr. "morally problematic".   

       No, not if you're a sociopath. Your point is ...?
8th of 7, Dec 09 2020
  

       [bliss] Please don’t feel alone! We are all with you through our enjoyment of your contributions here. Have a great Christmas and take care of yourself.

Often I am able to work out the reason someone is my ‘friend’ on Facebook by looking at who our mutual friends are.
hippo, Dec 09 2020
  

       That wouldn't work for [xenzag], who doesn't have any friends...
8th of 7, Dec 09 2020
  

       //I don't have very many bakers as friends// Is that your choice, or theirs? If theirs, you have my heart-felt sympathy. If yours, you have my heart-felt empathy.
pocmloc, Dec 09 2020
  

       Your recent ideas have been underrated, [pashute]. Makes me wish I could see a list of all the ideas I have bunned...
4and20, Dec 09 2020
  

       //That wouldn't work for [xenzag], who doesn't have any friends...// It’s true. I only have lovers! ha
xenzag, Dec 09 2020
  

       'Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.' - Terry Pratchett
8th of 7, Dec 09 2020
  

       [blissmiss]; being alone doesn't mean you should feel lost. I'm mostly "just me & the cat" too, but I'm OK with that. It depends on your personality-type, & if you need to be among other people or not.
People I know who have retired found they became MORE busy afterwards; always going places and doing things.
(And just ignore [8th of 7]...)
neutrinos_shadow, Dec 09 2020
  

       //I don't have very many bakers as friends.//   

       Yes you do. You may not see them every day, but you're in their heads, and they're in yours.
pertinax, Dec 10 2020
  

       Yes. [blissmiss], you definitely have friends here. I popped over to your page, and not a fishbone to be seen! You are well-liked around here :-)
neutrinos_shadow, Dec 10 2020
  

       <whispers>
we're in your head... there is no escape
  

       I'll be your friend blissmiss
chronological, Dec 10 2020
  

       // we're in your head.//   

       Yes ... and it's pretty cramped. Quit shoving, will you ? And it could do with a bit of a clean and a tidy up ... look at the dust ...   

       Even [Ian Tindale] was preferable to this ... all this junk and clutter ...
8th of 7, Dec 10 2020
  

       can't find the LIKE button on Spidermother's anno. @Jutta?!   

       Also 8th's, bliss, hippo, 4and20 (btw you CAN see all ideas you bunned recently. using HB Views) , pocm, xenz, neutri, 2fries, and chrono.
pashute, Dec 10 2020
  

       I meant it seriously. There's no getting around the fact that relationships with other people are always a means to an end. If the desired end is respect, trust, fairness, honesty, then I'm on an ethical path. When someone* refuses to choose friends carefully my thought is "See, this is why we can't have nice people."   

       (Incidentally, just as there is only one Donnie Darko movie, there is only one kind of friend. 'Friend' is not a button on farcebook.)   

       *such as my self, but hopefully less so lately.
spidermother, Dec 10 2020
  

       //respect, trust, fairness, honesty//   

       These are good things, but aren't your notions of respect, trust, fairness and honesty crystallized out of relationships you had earlier? Or do you take a more Platonic view of these things?
pertinax, Dec 10 2020
  

       // relationships with other people are always a means to an end //   

       At the most fundamental level, they're the means by which your DNA gets to duplicate itself. And to your DNA that's all that matters.   

       Evolution selects for an irreducible amount of self-interest rather than altruism*, because altruism is something that gets selected out.   

       *Although there is plenty of "apparent" altruism within species and particularly in groups of related individuals, as Richard Dawkins so eloquently describes.
8th of 7, Dec 10 2020
  

       [pertinax] A bit of both. I've learned to trust my intuition, partly because one time that I ignored it, the results were disastrous; and intuition is probably mostly crystallised out of previous experience. On the other hand, I have some explicit rules, such as 'never use the other's vulnerability to one's advantage', which if broken, tend to turn the switch marked 'friend' to the 'off' position.   

       Having said that, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by Platonic in this context.   

       And having said _that_, even my explicit rules are at least somewhat crystallised out of previous experience. My meta-rule is something like 'If things reliably go horribly wrong when someone does X, then a) don't do X, and b) don't associate with anyone who does X.
spidermother, Dec 10 2020
  

       In Plato, concepts, including virtues, are assumed to have an absolute existence, to be discovered like mathematical ideas. So, for example, the "form" of Respect exists, always has and always will, whether or not any people describe or practise it.   

       You might say that Plato is the opposite of someone like Derrida. Does that clarify things?
pertinax, Dec 10 2020
  

       I think Plato was onto something, though I don't think those things exist in any way other than as a reliably predictable consequence born from the interaction of earlier postulates - a kind of Euclidean Platonism if you will where triangles for example exist, but only as purely abstract consequences of points, lines and space. These things themselves only exist within some rational system, but the fact that they do, means that system has the property that it can contain the concept of triangles. Maybe there's a Platonic form for that entire system, but a perfect ~Triangle~ can't exist in isolation from it.   

       And please, all present, consider yourselves having been copiously besteemed with seasons instafriend likeemoji status - valid for at least 3 weeks. Heart heart unicorn smilyface partypopper cake rainbow.
zen_tom, Dec 10 2020
  

       Yes, thank you.   

       In that case, when it comes to human relationships, I take more a subjective view than a Platonic one. In other words, I'm as hurt as I feel. I deal with such things as respect, betrayal etc. by forming policies, rather than by treating them as absolutes.   

       But that's not in any way to deny the Platonic concept, as you describe it. Trying to find absolutes in ethics is called natural law; it's possibly the most important, and ignored, topic of all. It's precisely why when someone refers to 'the law' as if it means nothing more or less than the insane rantings of narcissistic control freaks with the audacity to call themselves 'government', my reply is 'Them's fighting words'.
spidermother, Dec 11 2020
  

       There's a halfway house between platonic ideals and learning through prior personal experience, and that is if the concept (e.g. respect) exists in the wider pool of Human society and natural language. That way you can listen to bedtime stories about exaggerated consequenses of lack of respect or misplaced trust (and the wolf ate them all for dinner) without actually having to suffer it personally.   

       There's an interesting argument that human folk tales and religions embody evolved packages of such emotional learning, and the breakdown of inherited traditions of folklore and religion contributes to the disfunction of modern society. On the other hand there is a counter argument that the natural evolutionary process of refining and improving the moral learning of intergeneration oral traditionary stories has been hijacked for a hundred generations or so by organised manipulators who have adjusted them to serve their own personal and institutional interests at the expense of wider society.
pocmloc, Dec 11 2020
  

       [pocmloc] Thank you for about the best pair of arguments to which to apply the Hegelian dialectic that I have seen.   

       The obvious synthesis is that both the argument and the counter-argument are true, and are not in any way incompatible.
spidermother, Dec 11 2020
  

       A good way of summerising the longest-running scam in history is that when someone claims 'I wrote it down because it's the law', there's at least a possibility that he's telling the truth; but the idea that 'it's the law because special people wrote it down' is so obviously absurd that you'd have to torture generations of children in age-cohort-divided day-prisons for it to be widely accepted.
spidermother, Dec 11 2020
  

       I hear you [spidermother] regards there being a distinction between the idea of "natural law" and the regular kind, and my view is perhaps jaundiced by a lively first month studying rudimentary business & employment law back in the 90's, where our teacher spent great pains thoroughly dis-acquainting us with any vestige of the idea that law is just, fair, right or even natural. His view, which he successfully imparted upon us, was that the law (of the land) is just was precisely what it is - a completely neutral thing, devoid of merit, justice or kindness, an empty cold thing, that just was. A thing that had come about via one or another of various completely arbitrary processes.   

       That doesn't mean we shouldn't be interested in trying to align what we might consider natural law with whatever laws are codified in the jurisdiction we happen to live in. Justice is something we should all want, and law is a blunt instrument that (if you're feeling optimistic) helps stand in the way of the most egregious divergences from natural law - albeit at the threat of state*-sanctioned action (which I suppose is the fundamental stone upon which any set of laws stands). If you're feeling more neutral, then it's also a driver for unanticipated (?) consequences that can sometimes be more damaging than the original thing the law was supposed to fix - and *that's* assuming further (and this is truly an assumption too far) that benevolent intentions were held by the people drafting those laws in the first place.   

       But as good people who (again optimistically) have some democratic power bestowed upon us, it should be our hope and aim to try and reduce any gap between the two - even at the risk of causing there to be a conflation between what is right, and what is law due to what we would hope to be an ever closing alignment. That doesn't mean we should trust law to be good - I agree with my old law professor that we need to carefully consider the law as being entirely an ethically empty vessel - but it does place an obligation on us to try and make it better.   

       * I considered using the word *group-sanctioned here, since families for example can agree on a set of rules to follow, or any group of people - but I think we're talking about more formal legal frameworks here.
zen_tom, Dec 11 2020
  

       I suggest you consider the possibility that your teacher sold you a crock of shit.   

       For a start, natural law, BY DEFINITION, is not an idea, but reality.   

       You are right to take care over the use of the word 'state' as opposed to other terms for groups; but I would ask you to consider, what is the difference between 'the state', and any other group (such as 'the mafia'), outside of beliefs inside the minds of the victims? (hint: there is NO such difference).
spidermother, Dec 11 2020
  

       //For a start, natural law, BY DEFINITION, is not an idea, but reality.//

Nah! "Natural" law is merely a concept that humans have adopted in order to try & understand or explain what we perceive as happening in our reality. That doesn't mean that they are either binding or correct.

If you nip over to the "List of Hardest Ideas to Grasp" thread, you will see a link to an article about the Wigners Friend experiment. It posits, & apparently proves, that two distinct realities can exist at the same time, which rather drives a coach & horses through current theories of both 'natural' law & social & criminal law, as they mostly all depend on a binary outcome (i.e. something either did or did not happen).

I wouldn't recommend using this as a defense the next time you are in court though. You'll probably get charged with contempt on top of any other offenses you are alleged to have committed.
DrBob, Dec 11 2020
  

       By the way, in my mind natural law IS the regular kind (there's a nice pun in there for the linguists); my favourite definition of the other kind is 'scriblings of the insane'; but I'll settle for the more neutral 'political laws'.
spidermother, Dec 11 2020
  

       [spidermother] I think I failed to get my point across - it's not to say *natural* law isn't real - but that the "law of the land" law is completely arbitrary and divorced from what we might consider natural law - the two are distinct things - which unless I completely misunderstood your point - was what I thought you were saying.
zen_tom, Dec 11 2020
  

       "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"   

       Surely "law" is just a set of arbitrary rules that people agree is the Law?   

       What does "natural law" even mean?
pocmloc, Dec 11 2020
  

       Natural law (at least as I'm interpreting it) is what we might all consider to be justice. Ethics, morality, fairness. The law (of the land) is an arbitrary set of rules defined by whoever wields the biggest stick. In a democracy (one hopes) that the direct stick wielding is done under a system of rules that we (largely) agree to abide by, and have the means to change should we collectively get our shit together to do so. In a mafia organisation, that power is wielded and (most likely informally codified by) whoever's whacked the most wise guys.   

       One (the law of the land) is a neutral ethics-free set of morally empty rules that define behaviour at the threat of sanction, and the other (natural law) is what's actually right and fair. We might *want* the law of the land to align with natural law, but it's a mistake (as my college professor would have said) to believe that they actually do. We were studying actual law of the land law, and not natural law, which might have been the subject of a philosophy or ethics class, not Business & Employment Law for thickos like me who failed to get into proper university and got to study Business Management instead.
zen_tom, Dec 11 2020
  

       //what we might all consider//

Well you've got a problem right there, zt, haven't you!
DrBob, Dec 11 2020
  

       It's not a problem as long as nobody actually goes into the details - as a concept, we can all agree that rightness, and properness are things. Beyond that, as you rightly say, it gets more complicated.   

       Interestingly, I think this is one reason why the law (of the land) completely abdicates itself from concepts of ethics, rightness and properness and concentrates instead on details of what is and isn't "lawful". If you make it emotionless, then everyone can agree that it's quite possibly an ass and get on with it. It's a pragmatic decision, quite possibly made on purpose to sidestep this very issue.
zen_tom, Dec 11 2020
  

       //justice. Ethics, morality, fairness// Yes all totally arbitrary and subjective really.
pocmloc, Dec 11 2020
  

       Again, [poc] I think I'm with [spidermother] on this one - those things are real, the fact that we can't agree on exactly what the details of them might be is a separate issue. I know that sounds like a bit of sleight-of-hand, but I think it's possible to objectively believe in right and wrong.
zen_tom, Dec 11 2020
  

       //we can all agree that rightness, and properness are things//

Can we?

As an example, person A might think it is entirely reasonable & just that everyone stays in isolation for a while in order to restrict the spread of, say, a global pandemic. Whilst person B might think it is an unjust restriction on their God-given right to roam wherever the hell they like & if you don't want to catch a disease then stay the hell off of my golf course!

Meanwhile, person C, believing him/herself to be the only sane & sensible peron on the planet, might think that person A is a dupe of government propaganda & person B is a deranged madman.

Also, Hitler. (I thought I'd just throw that in so we can reset the counter on the "Days Since..." idea).<snigger>
DrBob, Dec 11 2020
  

       I agree that the concept of rightness and rongness is a real thing.   

       I am unsure whether the categories of wrightmess and wrongness are wreal   

       I am pretty sure that there is no real thing that could be said to be a natural member of either such category.
pocmloc, Dec 11 2020
  

       //It's a pragmatic decision, quite possibly made on purpose//

Yes, it absolutely was. If you go back through history, you will see that laws were mostly established in order to create a uniformity of what a kingdoms subjects could expect to be punished for by the crown. It was nothing to do with wrong or right but was, essentially, your 'undemocratic' mafia bosses establishing just who was in charge around here.

Many of those early laws still persist today, many by dint of historical inertia, i.e. that's the way it's always been & nobody can agree on a suitable replacement.

It has always* amused me that most of the laws we live under were made up by people who are dead & that young people (anyone under 50 for the most part) live under a set of laws that they have had no hand in creating. There's justice for you!

* I say "always" but that's obviously a massive exaggeration.**
** Well, a lie really.
DrBob, Dec 11 2020
  

       1. Natural law is what happens in reality, whether we like it or not, and regardless of our beliefs and opinions.   

       2. The science of natural law is the attempt to discover the principles that determine what happens in reality.   

       3. The law of the land (legem terrae) is the set of rules that (essentially) everyone in a given group agree to be the right way to behave.   

       4. The common law, at least in theory, is the expression of the law of the land, primarily in the form of findings by juries ('the people's common law), and secondarily (again, at least in theory) by judges or magistrates ('judges' common law').   

       5. Legislation (defined sometimes as 'the written will of the legislative department') is another thing altogether. No-one - I repeat, no-one - who has studied these conceps carefully, and who is honest, ever asserts that legislation creates binding obligations on anyone. And yet nearly every adult uses the term 'the law' as if it were a synonym for legislation, but is unable (or unwilling) to articulate that they are doing so. Legislation IS NOT the law of the land, although it may coincidentally agree with it.   

       I find that I can have productive discussions about these concepts with roughly 5 to 7 year olds - whose minds have not yet been filled with absurd crap - and with (a few) people who are seriously studying law at a post-graduate level, and have therefore had to go back and carefully re-learn the basics.
spidermother, Dec 11 2020
  

       OK, so [spidermother] it's the use of the word "law" as being crudely synonymous with "legislation" that you take issue with. Fair enough. I think it's clear we understand the distinction between ethics (into which I'd class your points 1 and 2) and legislation (within which I'd crudely and perhaps strictly inaccurately lump case law as well as written acts of parliament, or your points 4,5)* even if we differ on strict interpretation of terms - I'll be honest, I'd not come across this specific idea of "law" as not being synonymous with legislation before.   

       *Interesting is point 3 which to me expresses a kind of prototypical form of common legislation as it may have stood in (parts of) England in the 1200's. This is either an arbitrary accident of a specific time and place, or something more lofty. It's certainly historically of interest and likely has its own roots in a mix of Norman, Saxon, Viking, and going back further, Roman and Celtic mores.
zen_tom, Dec 11 2020
  

       Yes; specifically, I see conflation of the term 'the law' with legislation as incorrect and dangerous. De Jasey [edit - it was actually Albert J. Knock] made the point that the belief in legislation, and in the right of judges to interpret that legislation, is a way by which 'anything can be made to mean anything'. Some of the 'founding fathers' similarly warned against the idea of judges' determining 'constitutionality'. I would put it this way: if one group of people can decide what is the law of a different group of people, that situation is not so much the potential for tyranny, it is already full-blown tyranny.   

       One of the most startling things that ever happened to me was when I interviewed a local councilman (he used to be Mayor back in the 1960s, and has been involved ever since, so he's certainly a goldmine of information). He actually said to me 'We're judge, jury and executioner' ('we' meaning the council, meaning the elected members and the Mayor). I think I was too shocked even to reply; but I thought 'Well there's your problem! Division of powers? Kangaroo courts? Hello!?'   

       The elephant in the room here is applicability. For instance, most people in, say, Florida would not think that the Canadian tax code applies to them and creates obligations on them, and they'd be right; conversely, most people in Florida would think that the US tax code applies to them and creates obligations on them, BUT THEY'D BE WRONG.
spidermother, Dec 11 2020
  

       I have recently deleted my Facebook account after 12 years of that nonsense. Some of those people were my real friends in my real life, some of those people are halfbakers (Who I would like to consider as friends) and some were Flickr contacts. I would prefer they were called Contacts instead of friends...   

       [bliss] You are my friend whether I am on Facebook or not!
xandram, Dec 11 2020
  

       What [xandram] said. Except I've never had a Facebook account.
spidermother, Dec 11 2020
  

       Its worth creating one just for the satisfaction of subsequently deleting it!
pocmloc, Dec 11 2020
  

       // I have a lot of friends in the physical and online realms, and no trouble remembering when, how, or why we became friends. //   

       "Trolls have a numeral system of their own, based on powers of 4. The base numerals are one (1), two (2), three (3), many (4) and lots (16), which can be combined to form higher numbers." - Terry Pratchett.   

       We suspect you have misunderstood the difference between "many" and "lots". We can just about give credence to the the assertion that you have "many" friends although counting a passer-by as a friend just because they toss a coin in your hat as they walk past the doorway where you squat may not entirely fulfill the usual definition.   

       We will concede that you probably have, on balance, more friends than [xenzag], but then there are things that live on petri dishes in Hazmat containment that have more friends than that...
8th of 7, Dec 11 2020
  

       I was thinking, but before I deleted my Facebook I actually unfriended some people who were really annoying me. Maybe if this was an* unfriend reason*, I might have more use for it. Also I consider Facebook an anti-social media
xandram, Dec 11 2020
  

       // I was thinking //   

       Dangerous habit ... don't worry, there's help and treatment available. Don't be ashamed; there's hope, many have been completely cured. Just tune in to Fox News and within hours you'll just be another slack-jawed, drooling, glassy-eyed Democrat ...   

       <Gloats over uptick in Soylent Corporation share price/>
8th of 7, Dec 11 2020
  

       8th - You forgot to mention by contrast the benefits of being a bleach drinking, hoax believing, flat earther republican. (like yourself)
xenzag, Dec 11 2020
  

       Inner cleanliness of both mind and body, what could possibly be better ?   

       Well, maybe stock options in a Sodium Hypochlorite plant ...   

       Being a Flat Earther is great - navigation is so much easier when you don't have to fuss around with all that stupid, fiddly spherical geometry.
8th of 7, Dec 11 2020
  

       I'm sorry I posted and then got terribly busy and forgot to come back. (Volunteered to pass out toys to kiddos with little hope of much more than donated toys today).   

       Thank you all for the kindness and warm-hearted sentiments. I think what I meant at the time was I don't have many bakers as "Facebook friends". I do feel as though this community has almost always been a friendly type of place to visit with lots offered up to think about, as well as laugh at.   

       And once I retire I intend to completely redecorate two rooms in my apartment, travel to Connecticut to help my bestie move to Amherst, and do a lot more watercolor paintings. Also there's never enough time to meditate, especially in these challenging times. I hope everyone is healthy in the New Year, and stays virus free. Thank you again.
blissmiss, Dec 11 2020
  

       I just felt left out and wanted to annotate to something.   

       ...and now I have.   

       uhhhh, that's better. Like cracking your knuckles but without the sound   


 

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