I mean, can you imagine the desire, of being able to leave behind your real world, your dirty, exhausting, imperfect real world, where you are weak and ugly and unsuccessful and going to a virtual world where you can experience whatever you want?

All just through a head set? I honestly don’t quite buy this (admitting fully that I might be wrong) and really can’t relate to the desire you are describing either.

It’s not real and won’t look / feel real. So maybe there is a one or two hour entertainment to be had, but I can’t see this overhyped potential and VR being used “everywhere”.

Consider all the video chats we are having since the pandemic at work. What did 80% people do pretty quickly? Turn off their cameras, turn off their mics, while they are browsing the web in the background or doing the dishes, letting the meeting/call pass by. Would any of those go into VR to experience a virtual version of their colleague without being forced? I don’t think so.

I think the problem people see is more with creating an equivalence of political opinion and mental health.

The full quote about anti-capitalism doesn’t say anything about what makes someone an extremist. It doesn’t say anything about rational criticisms and irrational ones it just relates political attitudes. It doesn’t say anything about how we would separate rational criticism from extremism. That is a problem, no?

The take home message doesn’t help at all when a dissident deals with an oppressive system. E.g. how would that message be applied in Germany in 1933? Or 1939? Or 1942? I don’t think it can at all. How would it be applied to say US intervention, or colonisation? Again, I don’t think the message would hold up.

Do you think that the scientific method is applied here in an appropriate way?

I haven’t seen this. What I’ve seen is that people say that the abuses do not occur.

There is a difference between people advocating for human rights abuses and people saying that some actor does in fact not engage in human rights abuses. The difference is stark and even there, if the actor would in fact in engage in human right abuses.

An open society must tolerate the later. I.e. we must tolerate that people dispute that human right abuses occur or occurred. This is because you cannot judge someone purely due to getting the facts wrong or not knowing them.

If we wouldn’t allow this, we would de-facto argue for a totalitarian state, since we wouldn’t allow people disputing facts (which can be proven or disproven). We would have to nominate some entity that judges what is fact and what isn’t, which is the opposite to gathering evidence and engaging in an open, society wide discussion.

To be clear: Allowing discussions around whether abuses occur is notably different to letting people get away with advocating for abuses. The latter is what needs strong responses. The former is what requires engagement.

I don’t see anything on lemmy or in the mastodon thread that shows that human rights abuses are advocated for. What I do see is that there are some fractions that show sympathies to China which you would otherwise only see for the USA. I think its useful to compare these sympathies because they seem to express themselves in similar ways.

With all that said, I think the opinion expressed in the mastodon thread is not particularly useful. It, in many ways, minimises real human rights abuses that occur world wide, day to day, in China, USA, and many other countries in East and West.

Let’s call out the abuses, let’s discuss and present the evidence for them, let’s not alienate people and create polarity that looks like us-vs-them.

But it is just starvation of “lazy” people not of “normal” people /s…

You’re still included :)

I’m by no means an expert on China. But reading the article couldn’t the whole thing be just about elite infighting?

As far as I’m aware China has some pretty extreme surveillance implemented. I can’t see how such a move would be compatible with any idea of an egalitarian or fair society. Surveillance always creates an inbalance in regards to who controls the surveillance, its purpose and consequences.

Also re “The top 10% of families in China account for 47.5% of household wealth, the IIF estimates”.

I don’t know the IIF. However I offer this resource as a counter that puts the top 10% wealth share in China closer to 66% with a clear, non-socialist trend:

https://wid.world/world/#shweal_p90p100_z/US;FR;DE;CN;ZA;GB;WO/last/eu/k/p/yearly/s/false/38.199000000000005/100/curve/false/country

Happy to be proven wrong on this one. But otherwise, let’s not glorify authoritarians that feel the need to maintain their power through widespread surveillance.

Just out of curiosity, why would you try to ungoogle chrome? Why wouldn’t you just use Firefox? I’m using one at work and one at home and can’t really tell too many differences in terms of performance.