They shared the chat using Google’s built in sharing feature, so it seems legit.

Many ancient practitioners of stoicism were wealthy statesmen, including emperors. And, the literate elite were certainly enamored with it. I’m not a historian, but stoicism was shaped by wealthy and powerful people, as was every popular philosophy.

I’m not opposed to it. I like aspects of Stoicism. But, When it comes to wealth, it always rubbed me the wrong way. It seemed so often to me that wealthy stoics make a virtue out of possessing, but not coveting wealth, and in doing so make a vice of dissatisfaction with one’s wealth. For a rich man, this is reasonable. However, a poor man is correct to be dissatisfied. Poor men need to be angry, and to rise up and demand wealth (in my opinion), their pain and anguish is meant to be felt and to stoke action.

Stoicism is not often presented as compatible with this mindset of mine. I’m sure there are types of stoicism which address this, but most influencers seem to present Stoicism though a relatively uncritical lense.

My caveat to this is that many of the foundational individuals to stoicism, as well as present influencers, are members of the upper class, and while there are a lot of great ideas in there, stoicism can often be distilled into a philosophy of rugged individualism which is more easily achieved with wealth, power, and privilege.

I am of the opinion that stoicism is good, but a disproportional number of those who practice it are often out of touch.

Tons of people already are. The following site is useful for searching papers using ai https://consensus.app/

If you don’t mind me asking, why don’t you like this other girl? Was she mean to you?

I’ll be honest, this is confusing as hell, so I might be misunderstanding.

I think it’s a little hypocritical that you want it to be a chill, no drama space with the bros, but you also want to exclude a girl because you see her as competition for the guy you like who is in this group.

I understand you had a bad experience with her, but you said that the guys don’t know that. From their perspective, you’re just excluding other girls for no other reasons than seemingly to be the only girl in the group and perhaps to have exclusive access to your crush.

Probably if there is some sort of universal intelligence evaluating our actions and decisions, it would turn anyone entertaining this idea into an worm in their next life. The premise that the good fortuned should be passive to suffering, and enable it, out of some misguided moral calculus is absurd. You can’t game the system.

The attrition is slow, but every user lost to Linux is likely lost forever. After a year or so of totally free software, who is going to build a new windows compatible PC, buy a Windows 11 license, and pay for subscription service just to do word processing, or play a few incompatible games?

Windows completely overestimates people’s willingness to throw out their laptop or PC just to get a new OS paintjob. For every person who does it, another one will leave their ecosystem forever.

In some respects, I can see this. Games such as unscrupulous MMOs are often carefully engineered to distort your ability to manage time and money. However, many games are still produced as entertainment products meant to compete on a basis of artistic or entertainment value. The addictive aspect doesn’t come from a manipulative design, but Rather just plain old fun, and in those cases similar arguments could be made about strawberries or books.

I would like to reiterate that there are addictive video games which really do try to manipulate you. Just like how a breakfast cereal might market itself as healthy and balanced while loaded with sugar and deceptive portion sizes, leading to unhealthy habits, a money first video game will contain elements carefully crafted to distort player’s perception and reasoning.

It’s just… All mixed together.