First I thought to myself, "I seem to use too many commas." Now I'm no writer, but I've noticed that professional writers (and editors) clearly use less commas than I do.

For example, here's a sentence in a book that I'm reading: “As the victim was usually unconscious it was obvious they were totally reliant upon third parties and whatever action they took would determine their fate.”

I thought it was interesting, because I would've put a comma after "unconscious" and a comma before "and."

So, I found this helpful resource on grammar rules: https://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/commas.asp. 4a and 5b in particular were situations where I learned I could get rid of commas.

Still however, in the example sentence above, you'd think to put a comma before the "and" to separate the two clauses. I haven't found an explanation for omitting it, other than some writers are grammatically correct in a stricter sense, and others use commas more stylistically.

Is the use of commas more of an art, if you will, than I thought? How do you use commas personally?

Interested to read others' opinions!

So,this has been on my mind for a long time and i have tried some available/widely known methods to learn japanese language.So far iam not satisfied with my results.Can someone suggest me some ways that worked for them preferably for free/cheap.The main problem is the letters or characters.i can comprehend and manage to speak a very basic levels of the language mainly from consuming media from japan,some duolingo and such.....
any and all advice is appreciated
Help me out guys

An interesting, although quite academic, read I was recently suggested was Moral Uncertainty by Krister Bykvist, Toby Ord, and William MacAskill. Does anyone here have any suggestions on (modern) philosophy that you have currently been reading or are interesting in reading?

“This study was undertaken as part of a broader research looking at the interplay between early social complexity and gender inequalities,” study co-author and University of Seville prehistorian Leonardo García Sanjuán tells PopSci. “As part of this research, it became obvious that there is a serious problem in the identification of biological sex in prehistoric skeletons, which are often found in a poor state of preservation.”

Now redubbed the “Ivory Lady,” this woman’s tomb was first discovered in 2008 in Valencia on Spain’s southeastern coast. The find dates back to the Copper Age, when the metal was used for construction, agriculture, and even creating engravings of owls that may have been toys. The grave is also a rare example of single occupancy burial at the time and the tomb was filled with the largest collection of valuable and rare items in the region. These treasures include high-quality flint, ostrich eggshell amber, a rock crystal dagger, and ivory tusks.

All of these trinkets and single tomb initially indicated that the remains must belong to a prominent male, but peptides and DNA don’t lie.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-36368-x

A summarized transcription of the video No One Wants Sensuality.
Source PDF

Q: Bhante, you once said that the only reason one gives into sensuality is because one doesn't want it. What do you mean by that?

Ajahn Nyanamoli (Nm): Well, what I meant was that universally, literally every human mind, regardless of the culture, education or religion, when a desire in regard to anything obtainable through the senses arises, that desire is oppressing. Desire is a need, a thirst, a hunger, it pressures you to act. You don't have to act and that's the whole point. As a human being you have a choice. But when desire arises, the automatic response is to give into that pressure of desire, and why would you be giving into the pressure of any desire? It's because it's unpleasant. If the pressure of the desire is neutral or pleasant, you wouldn't then make any effort and spend time trying to gain what your desire wants, because you'll already be at ease. But that desire is already unpleasant and in order for you to try and deal with that displeasure, you just give in to whatever the desire promises. That's what I mean, by engaging in sensuality, you do so to be free from the sensual pressure of the desire. When people say, "No, I enjoy my senses." That's a mistake, because if they were to stop and think, "When there is an unsatisfied desire, is that pleasant? Is that what I want?" They would realise that it isn't, or, "Can I fulfil desire by giving in to it?" No, you can never fulfil desire, because the point of desire is to stay a desire.

Q: It's based on non-satisfaction.

Nm: Exactly, it requires non-satisfaction for it to be. That's why if you stop and think about it you realise the only reason you are engaged with sensuality is because the pressure of sensual desire is unpleasant and you don't know any other escape from that pressure other than the temporary release of sensual indulgence.

That's the whole point, whenever you encounter any form of displeasure, your only way of trying to deal with it is through acts of sensuality, which is why and how people turn to food, music, sexual intercourse or even meditation hoping for some pleasurable experience to lift them up when they're feeling down or depressed, they just commit harder to sensual activity, because that's the only thing that seemingly relieves oneself of that pressure. However, you're just making it worse because the more you're dependent on running away from that pressure of sensual desire, the more pressure that desire will exercise over you.

Q: So what should you do?

Nm: Well,in a way, you don't have to do anything. If you start seeing your own sensual desires as something that's controlling you, something that you are enslaved by, then you have to start seeing that 'nature' before you give into the desire. And then it becomes obvious, clear as day, that it's very unpleasant. Even sometimes when you can satisfy your desires, but maybe not quick enough, that's unpleasant. Either way, that desire is rooted in a disagreeable feeling, i.e. that pressure that's very unpleasant. So if you want to free yourself from it, you have to first start restraining your senses and from making it worse through giving in to that pressure of desire.

You're training yourself to be stronger than something else. But in order to start doing that, you need to start resisting that thing. If you just habitually give into desire, and at the same time expect to somehow magically be free from the pressure of the desire, well that's just a contradiction in terms. Restraint needs to come first if you want to be free from desire. Then the obvious painful nature of the desire in itself becomes apparent. Initially when people start restraining, they notice more pain and they assume that it's because of their restraint. But it isn't. The restraint cannot cause you pain, it can only reveal the underlying pain of the desire that is already there.

Imagine that you're tied to five powerful animals and they are running towards the objects of their desire, you naturally run with them to avoid that extra painful pull that you will experience if you try standing your ground. The animals are stronger than you, they pull you. It's unpleasant. But that doesn't mean that that initial pain is not there if you run with them. Running with them enables them to pull you even harder. So initially, you have to accept that sharp pain of restraint, which eventually you can see that actually it's not the restraint that's the problem, the restraint just shows you what happens when these animals are pulling in their respective domains. If the animals wouldn't be pulling, there wouldn't be any pain revealed by the restraint. Imagine the animals are tamed and calm, and they just move around slowly and you can just remain seated and not have to run with them. You are restrained, the senses are tamed and there is no pull, no pain.

It's something anybody could benefit from, just learning how to say no to themselves, gradually, in regards to this and that, in regard to unnecessary things like luxuries and indulgences. Because each time you give in carelessly like that, the animals get more to feed on which means they get more powerful, which means each time they pull you, you'll be less and less able to resist those desires.

Quite often, and I'm pretty sure many people can relate, your own desires take you to places you don't want to be, that you know you will regret even before you go there, yet you can't help it and you're just dragged there. How will it then be when old age or sickness sets in? When your senses start to fail, yet your mind is fully dependent on that pleasure that you get from that temporary satisfaction of your desires. When the only resemblance of relief from any disagreeable feelings, is now taken away. When the senses can't enjoy sense objects anymore, when eyes can barely see, when it's hard to hear, when it's difficult to chew, when the body doesn't move correctly, when it's not young and doesn't have that much energy. Yet your mind is dependent on that constant chasing after sense pleasures and now that's just taken away. How will it be when the unpleasant feelings arise, and they will, and you have even less ground to deal with it.

Q: It will feel like an unwanted solitary confinement.

Nm: Exactly. That's why people are terrified of solitude. They can no longer escape what they have been running away from.

Intro

This will be something of a long and theoretical post, but I'm interested in others' opinions on this - and a quick google search of Robert Nozick and Fediverse turned up literally nothing, so I'm thinking that this is a new connection. The recent news about Beehaw defederating from other instances, and the wider discussions about how federation might or might not work reminded me of Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), which I imagine anyone who's formally studied philosophy will have come across. The main point of this book is to make the case for the libertarian minimal state, with the overall thesis in the preface being:

Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified; that any more extensive state will violate persons' rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right. (p. ix)

The book, while influential and important, is I think deeply flawed, and there's some general agreement about this in the philosophy departments I've been involved with. (Same with many of Nozick’s general opinions.) Unfortunately, the parts of the book that tend to be taught are the first two, and in particular the Wilt Chamberlain argument (pp. 160-2) in which he argues that unequal distribution of wealth and goods is fine as long as the unequal distributions were caused by a history of mutual freely consenting exchanges.

I say 'unfortunately' because– while the first two sections and the Chamberlain argument are definitely important and influential– Part III, Utopia, is the strongest. I'm not a libertarian, but it's a novel, well-structured, and interesting argument for the minimal state, based in part on possible-world semantics, and I think it looks a lot like what the Fediverse is going for, which is why I'm interested in the crossover.

The Possible-World Model

Nozick begins by defining Utopia and identifying its main issues:

The totality of conditions we would wish to impose on societies which are (preeminently) to qualify as utopias, taken jointly, are inconsistent... The best of all possible worlds for me will not be that for you. The world, of all those I can imagine, which I would most prefer to live in, will not be precisely the one you would choose. Utopia, though, must be, in some restricted sense, the best for all of us; the best world imaginable, for each of us. In what sense can this be? (pp. 297-8)

He then sets up this perhaps rather convoluted idea, based on the concept of imagining possible worlds. The core idea is this: that in any possible world you can imagine, it must include that all other rational agents in that world will also be able to imagine other possible worlds, and that (if they prefer) they can then move to those possible worlds.

The question then moves to: is it possible for this to be stable? Because Nozick is interested in whether utopia as traditionally explored by utopian theorists and authors (and note that to an extent he’s subtextually talking to socialist utopians throughout) is possible, the key question is whether worlds will keep being created over and over, with people moving over and over, or whether there'll ever be a world where everyone in that world chooses to stay. And stable worlds must then:

[satisfy] one very desirable description... namely, none of the inhabitants of the world can imagine an alternative world they would rather live in, which (they believe) would continue to exist if all of its rational inhabitants had the same rights of imagining and emigrating. (p. 299, his emphasis)

This is, given that people are able to move to worlds they imagine (which Nozick calls 'associations' - as opposed to 'east-berlins' in which inhabitants are unable to move to other worlds).

He puts this also in set theory terms (quoted just below), and then points out an equivalency of members of S choosing to form an association of their own, vs. members of S refusing entry to those members of A who are not also members of S.

if A is a set of persons in a stable association then there is no proper subset S of A [note from me: 'proper subset' means it's a part of the whole but not equal to it. So {1, 3} is a proper subset of {1, 3, 5}, but {1, 3, 5}, although a subset of itself, is not a proper subset of itself] such that each member of S is better off in an association consisting only of members of S, than he is in A. For, if there were such a subset S, its members would secede from A, establishing their own association. (p. 300)

There is then a fairly lengthy section expanding on this, caveating it, and also doing some more in-depth logic/set theory, which I'll skip over as it's not as relevant (and this is already getting long). It's pages 301-6 if anyone's interested in reading, though. Page 307 onwards is where Nozick begins analysing how this model laid out above could be seen in the real world.

The Real World

Obviously, the above possible-worlds model is very idealised, and there are several limitations in the real world. Nozick lays out the following four:

1. In the model, we can imagine infinite possible people to associate with (although we cannot have an infinite number of people in an association); in the real world there are firstly not infinite people and secondly we can't create them. So even if I can imagine the perfect association for me, it might not exist; same with a community I might want to join.
2. In the model, the only ways associations interfere with each other is by drawing away its members - in the real world, communities impinge on each other in all kinds of ways.
3. Information costs - it takes effort to find out about other communities in the real world; in the model it's instantaneous and easy.
4. In the real world, some communities don't let their members know about, or move to, other communities.

It’s worth noting here that Nozick was writing in 1974, before the advent of the internet (and to a lesser extent, globalisation in general), so point 3 is less of an issue here. Particularly regarding moving and travel costs, which are vastly, vastly, reduced online. In fact, I think these issues are all reduced on the internet, which is relevant when it comes to the potential for implementation. I say more about this at the end of this post, and it’s one of the main things I’m interested in hearing opinions about.

Nozick, now, is interested in the implementation (or influence) of the possible-world model in the real world, and his key point ends up being this:

The idea that there is one best composite answer to all of these questions, one best society for everyone to live in, seems to me to be an incredible one. (And the idea that, if there is one, we now know enough to describe it is even more incredible.) (p. 311, his emphasis)

The ‘questions’ he refers to are questions of values, of activities, of interests. Security or adventure? Luxury or austerity? Private property? Religion? The fact, Nozick thinks, that utopian authors attempt to imagine a utopian society demonstrates a blindness to the heterogeneity of human nature. Which is demonstrated by the fact that they all have their own visions of utopia, and the fact that the inhabitants of their visions all lead different lives.

The conclusion Nozick draws is that there is no sense in having one type of community in a utopia - rather, that “Utopia is a framework for utopias” (p. 312, my emphasis because it’s the most important point here). We should be aiming for a kind of “meta-utopia”, and this is where the real-world limitations flagged above come into play. The meta-utopia is necessary precisely because of these real-world limitations. What does this look like?

[T]he environment in which utopian experiments may be tried out; the environment in which people are free to do their own thing; the environment which must, to a great extent, be realized first if more particular utopian visions are to be realised stably. (p.312)

Nozick thinks this conclusion can arise from a few forms of arguments. One is, that people are different, and so thinking there’s any ‘best’ world for everyone is foolish. That’s what’s happening when he states that there’s no composite answer to the questions of how best to live/structure society. But what if there is a society that’s the best society for everyone? Nozick reckons that that still leads to this meta-utopia. His reasoning for this involves what he calls “design devices” and “filter devices”.

Design devices basically attempt to structure an ideal society from the ground up, with a bunch of people discussing what the best society is, constructing a model for this society, and then implementing it.

Nozick basically thinks that this is a non-starter. I think this analogy puts his ideas well:

It is helpful to imagine cavemen sitting together to think up what, for all time, will be the best possible society and then setting out to institute it. Do none of the reasons that make you smile at this apply to us? (pp. 313-4)

EDIT: I want to note that I mean that this analogy puts his ideas well. I share the scepticism of design devices, while simultaneously thinking that many societies denoted as 'primitive' tap into important and valuable aspects of human communities which 'modern' societies dismiss.

The complexity of the human condition is also a large part of his reasoning here why design devices don’t work. So, the alternative is filter devices, which “involve a process which eliminates (filters out) many from a large set of alternatives” (p. 314). This is desirable for a few reasons:

1. It requires less knowledge than design devices. Filtering processes don’t need to know precisely what an end-product looks like; they can just have some ideas about what they don’t want and begin with that.
2. The filtering process naturally improves with time. When you have a filter for new candidates, then those candidates are, on average, of better quality (however that’s defined in this particular community), so the filtering process now has better material to work with.
3. New material creates novel ideas, which would not be accessible with a design process (Nozick doesn’t outright state this, but I think it’s clear that he thinks it).

Moreover, one single filtering process will be insufficient. Nozick describes it thus:

[P]eople try out living in various communities, and they leave or slightly modify the ones they don’t like… Some communities will be abandoned, others will struggle along, others will split, others will flourish, gain members, and be duplicated elsewhere. Each community must win and hold the voluntary adherence of its members. No pattern is imposed on everyone, and the result will be one pattern if and only if everyone voluntarily chooses to live in accordance with that pattern of community. (p. 316, his emphasis)

Some advantages he lists to this: given that the filtering process is largely constituted by people leaving communities they don’t like, this will cause communities which people want to live in; mechanical processes are limited “given our inability to formulate explicitly principles which adequately handle, in advance, all of the complex, multifarious situations which arise” (p. 317) - this one is very, very similar to many recent discussions I’ve seen about moderation and the ‘don’t be an arsehole’ clause.

So what does all this lead to? Basically, that the utopian framework should be one that is informational. Whichever framework provides the best means for finding out about various communities, is the one that should be adopted– first, because that is what best facilitates the filtering process, and second, because it best mitigates the real-world issues laid out at the beginning of this section.

Conclusion

Ok, so, that’s the bulk of what I wanted to put down. The rest of Utopia focuses very much on the physical world - it’s well worth a read. (NB I’m using ‘physical world’ rather than ‘real world’ or ‘actual world’ (which Nozick uses) because the internet is part of the real world. As opposed to the ideal world, which one example of is the possible-worlds model laid out above.)

I was initially going to offer my own thoughts about how this connects to the Fediverse and the internet in general, but just the sharing of Nozick’s framework has gotten long enough that I think I’ll leave it there. Part of my motivation for sharing this is that, although I’m very much not a libertarian, this is imo one of the strongest defences of the minimal state; in addition to this, I’m much more sympathetic for a kind of meta-libertarianism when it comes to spaces like the internet, especially if they function to facilitate filtering processes.

That said, I still have worries about the way this can be, and is, implemented. There’s been a lot of discussion on Beehaw defederating from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, and although I personally don’t see a problem with it, I can understand why people are annoyed. I wonder if this is a consequence of people thinking they’re existing in the meta-utopia, when in fact they’re existing in an instance of it. I also don’t want to label the Fediverse as the meta-utopia, although I do get the sense that that’s what they’re aiming to become.

Nozick has a relevant section on the Beehaw thing, actually, and I’m just going to quote it because I’ve just about reached my energy limit for explaining/elucidating philosophy lol. Feel free to skip it, it’s a side-note to this post and not a main point.

A person will swallow the imperfections of a package P (which may be a protective arrangement, a consumer good, a community) that is desirable on the whole rather than purchase a different package (a completely different package, or P with some changes), when no more desirable attainable different package is worth to him its greater costs over P, including the costs of inducing enough others to participate in making the alternative package. One assumes that the cost calculation for nations is such as to permit internal opting out. But this is not the whole story for two reasons. First, it may be feasible in individual communities also to arrange internal opting out at little administrative cost… yet this needn’t always be done. Second, nations differ from other packages in that the individual himself isn’t to bear the administrative costs of opting out of some otherwise compulsory provision. The other people must pay for finely designing their compulsory arrangements so that they don’t apply to those who wish to opt out. (p. 321-2)

Another reason why I’m interested in opening up this discussion, is that I’ve experienced almost no discussion on this section of Nozick’s work in my experience of academic philosophy. The other two sections– and particularly Wilt Chamberlain– are talked to death, but Utopia has relatively little engagement. On one hand, I get this - a large part of philosophical education is understanding the history of ideas, and Utopia is comparatively uninfluential. You need to know Wilt Chamberlain if you’re entering academic philosophy; you don’t need to know all this. On the other hand, it’s a shame, because I think it’s the strongest part of Nozick’s work.

I also think that it’s somewhat more relevant to the internet than it is to the physical world. Not because of the legitimacy of its ideals, but purely because of the relative ease of implementation. The four issues mentioned above are really reduced in online spaces.

1. We still don’t have infinite people, but the variety of people we can interact with is potentially wider. Potentially. The issues with lack of– or exodus of– minorities, which I’ve seen discussions about on Tildes while searching past posts, is an important one here. I’m not necessarily referring specifically to Tildes here - I’m too new to the site to really have a good sense of the community. But just like in the real-world, I can’t conjure up people and create my own version of Tildes which includes all the people here currently and also all the other people I’d like to see.
2. Communities on the internet obviously interfere with each other, just like physical-world communities. This isn’t that reduced, perhaps only in terms of stakes. Physical-world community interference can cause wars, financial boycotts, etc. Maybe doxxing or the like is analogous? Regardless, it’s reduced although not eliminated in severity, as far as I can see.
3. The difference in information costs should be immediately obvious. It’s much easier for someone to try out Tildes, than it is for someone to try out France.
4. Relatedly, internet communities don’t have the same power as physical communities to limit information, although there are definitely still issues here, especially with an increasingly-corporatised internet. On the other hand, the internet itself does work in breaking down these barriers in the physical world, at least in terms of information (not in ease of moving countries). At least, there’s usually no real financial costs to hopping platforms.

Guess I’m leaving it here? Maybe all I’ve accomplished is sharing some cool philosophy– at least, I think it’s cool.

The page numbers all reference Anarchy, State, and Utopia - I don’t know if I’m allowed to link PDFs here, but suffice to say it’s the first one that shows up.

This Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy page also includes some useful context, and a bit of discussion on the Utopia section - although, again, relatively brief. Nevertheless a great source.