Conglomerates in general, and especially Japanese ones, are heterogeneous enough that those are basically two different companies. The British "Fujitsu" was an acquisition that I'm certain they now deeply, deeply regret.
Probably not, Japanese firms excel at hardware and generally build extremely poor software. This a hardware product, so consequently it is probably fairly good.
This is just my hypothesis, but I believe the language barrier is an issue. English is effectively a necessity for programming because real programming languages with ecoystems, error diagnostics, documentation, and useful articles/blogs/books are written in English. Japanese software developers know enough to get by, but they're still by-and-large insulated from the Anglosphere learning culture, where ideas and best practices rapidly propagate in the open. I'm not involved in hardware, but I'm guessing this is less of a barrier for hardware because hardware/documentation tends to be proprietary rather than open anyways, so whereas the Anglosphere gains a cumulative learning advantage from an open source + technical blogging culture in their fluent language, this does not manifest so much in hardware.
Japanese software don't get much recognition. Nintendo Switch(1 and 2) isn't running Linux, and it supports NVIDIA graphics stack. That shouldn't be possible unless Nintendo is actually capable of building a graphical operating system, which it is. Hardly anyone realizes this. There are also tons of (trashy)software embedded in Japanese hardware and none of those somehow mentally register.
Japan is also extremely weary of getting in the way of US. Software is one of few remaining consumer high tech domains that US leads. Challenging that without a good reason isn't a great idea.
I think Ruby would be a counterpoint - although it's the only one I know of.
I worked for a Japanese company although in a local office with local management. Through all those layers of protection I got the impression that they suffer from what all corporates suffer from - no software engineers that have made it to the top. Software companies run by people who have no clue.
In the US, for example, I think some people who have a clue or a partial clue have made it up the ladder in some places and therefore although everyone there has their horror stories of idiotic behavior it is probably somewhat better.
Honestly, no idea. In my career I have worked with a lot of Japanese firms and have always found their engineers to be excellent. I used to think it was a lack of consideration for UX, but that obviously can't be true when you see excellent examples of UX in hardware (e.g. Switch controls), even though its exceedingly rare on the software side.
If anyone on HN knows (there are several other commenters more deeply steeped in Japanese engineering culture), I would love to know why as well.
Japanese culture and work culture is very hierarchical/top down. They excel at waterfall but it's basically impossible to do agile in a Japanese office environment, and waterfall is suitable for hardware but terrible for building software.
＞Japanese culture and work culture is very hierarchical/top down.
This, and the 'rise or climb to the top' is more about seniority and social standing than anything else, especially at large Japanese conglomerates. The result us that there are almost none of the software competencies in senior management, and even if there were those would be software competencies from the 1970' and 1980's who are still leading while being 80 years old. There is also a 'filter' put in place at most organizations which are sufficiently large or diverse, such that middle-management is moved across multiple divisions every two or three years during their career. This is presented as a cross-training/cross-competency, but has an effect of preventing those with the most direct contact to the production staff from building enough localized social capital and systemic capability which would enable changes to the workflow not directly from the top. The middle stays in the middle, and the top gets to keep their seat well past any reasonable capability to adapt to the changing world of business.
This leads to the situation, where if leadership were changing with incoming capacity and points of view, there would be a motive and opportunity to admit to company errors; such as acquiring an international subsidiary which produced a faulty product that directly harmed people, because the newer leadership could say: "Sorry, that was a series of bad decisions, and as new leadership my role is to correct the course of business operations."
However, when the leadership is still the same clique that made the errors in either acquisition, oversight, response to the negative outcomes, then that "Sorry" statement would be a career ending move and result in massive social penalties beyond simply a forced retirement which would have lasting socio-economic impacts on the entire clique's family in every facet of business and later prospects. Combined with the strict social responsibility of a large enough scale of harm could lead to actual, not-figurative, suicide.
So, no, there's not going to be any 'mea culpa' for the direct actions of a foreign subsidiary, because those negative outcomes of those poor decisions are not in the direct social awareness in Japan of those surrounding the entrenched leadership and thus do not impact the daily social standing of that clique to the extent that a formal 'taking responsibility' would.
Instead, there will be very public announcements of improved capability which has the indirect and implied meaning of: "Engineering a way to make a better product will keep that from happening again" without ever directly addressing the existence of the faults. Social and economic uplift to counter any negative pressure in the local social awareness equals a success, not a failure.
In order for Japan to actually become successful at software in the near and medium time-frames, there will need to be a large shift in the work-life balance and internal social structure of new startups. This is beginning to happen in small scale, and to the extent that those newer 'brands' can avoid becoming subsidiaries of the larger established conglomerations will determine the slope to that success.
The groups which can empower and embrace a 'star' network topology inside and among organizations instead of 'waterfall' hierarchy will both; struggle to reach the social equity available through corporate-government-financial integration that is strongly entrenched in the established systems, and will outperform those entrenched systems in terms of real productivity through reliable delivery of improved capacity.
The socio-economic inertia of the giant keiretsu-gaisha are immense, but the geriatric cliff is already here and the nation and it's business cultures are at an 'adapt or cease operations' threshold. It's questionable whether any of the globally well know names will remain operational in their prior fields of production over the next 50 to 100 years without a significant shift in developing a way to build direct connections to capacity and applied skills at every tier of each company.
The 25 to 30 year old employees group in every main workforce is barely a fraction of what it used to be, and handling that small group as if it needs a 'filter' to keep the authority concentrated at the top is a significant risk for these organizations.
Those workers at the start of their career who are looking hard at the work-life balance aspect of employment have an inertia which is at odds with that of the organizational behemoths. Many of them are in a position to be drawn out of the crowded city, embrace a rural lifestyle and remote work without the centralized office and it's toxic overwork for underproduction culture. The rural municipalities are developing stronger incentives to attract this mobility, including relocation assistance and direct support with childcare and family building resources. Some prefectures and town offer up to several years of basic food and housing subsidies, low to zero cost fibre internet; next-generation FLET'S Hikari Cross or NTT's eqivalent 10Gbps in a HOUSE instead of a tiny apartment. The major central large conglomerates are going to find that the local in-office work pool will stagnate as the most capable and best informed no longer flow in directly from university and fill every available desk from a waiting list.
The "bigs" have insulated the ledger books with massive foreign investments, so they have the capability to stay 'in-the-game' for quite some time, so long as those investments continue to be productive, but the hollowing out of the main offices in Tokyo is pretty much guaranteed in the next two generations as rural Japan's liveability and economics for raising a family continue to grow, because the 80+ hour workweek labor staff in the city has no incentive to pair up and have kids, and the kids who are graduating in this and the next generation's rural school graduates are less and less likely to stay in the city after university if they want a family.
It's pretty much Japan's only way out of the population crisis that is still worsening. So, either they will adjust and become a productive, blended high tech semi-rural powerhouse without the high stress office culture that developed in postwar recovery, or they risk becoming a history lesson about over-concentration of inflexible management culture and loss of productivity.
The third option: succeed AND keep hyper-concentrated power is dependent on the types of moves that Fujitsu et al. are making today, find a way to automate more and more capacity via Machine Learning and robotics in the hopes of not actually needing an influx of skilled workforce for production.
If this 'hail Mary' play actually were to succeed it only cements a productive income for the shrinking population without resolving any of the causes of that shrinkage, i.e. the population still works 80+ hours a week in a socially disconnected state that in antithetic for raising healthy youthful progeny.
Taken to an 'in extremis' view: Within another 60 to 80 years, this might result in a well funded country of the elderly being waited on by robot butlers with until there is no one left to be waited on or fed the produce grown in automated fields.
I think that he most likely path will be a mixture of all three, in varying measure and with an array of outcomes. We live in interesting times indeed.
This was a fascinating reply to read with an outside perspective. Thank you for your comment.
> It's questionable whether any of the globally well know names will remain operational in their prior fields of production over the next 50 to 100 years without a significant shift in developing a way to build direct connections to capacity and applied skills at every tier of each company.
With this, is it your contention that the demographic problem in Japan is so existential that even large established companies may quite literally "die out" because there is nobody left that knows how to operate them?
How does that square with increasing foreign investment? Does it seem like there may be a shift towards foreign control of these large companies via equities markets instead? (Ala US style PE / zombie brands)
> Taken to an 'in extremis' view: Within another 60 to 80 years, this might result in a well funded country of the elderly being waited on by robot butlers with until there is no one left to be waited on or fed the produce grown in automated fields.
It does seem that way, but it seems at odd with the cultural values espoused in the media. Do those at the top not feel any social obligation to ensure continuation of Japanese society beyond serving their own selfish needs?
> ... that even large established companies may quite literally "die out" because there is nobody left that knows how to operate them?
We are already seeing this in the catastrophic system failures at major Japanese mega-banks like Mizuho. These failures are the classic symptoms of this exact condition: senior cliques that do not understand the underlying technology and by trying to manage massive systems via hierarchical edict combined with a side effect of greed made possible by institutional shortfall of observation and analysis and the inevitable results are operational paralysis and collapse.
> Do those at the top not feel any social obligation to ensure continuation of Japanese society beyond serving their own selfish needs?
I would refer you to:
The Psychological Consequences of Money by Kathleen D. Vohs, Nicole L. Mead, and Miranda R. Goode
Science 17 Nov 2006, Vol 314, Issue 5802 pp. 1154-1156
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1132491
The Abstract:
"Money has been said to change people's motivation (mainly for the better) and their behavior toward others (mainly for the worse). The results of nine experiments suggest that money brings about a self-sufficient orientation in which people prefer to be free of dependency and dependents. Reminders of money, relative to nonmoney reminders, led to reduced requests for help and reduced helpfulness toward others. Relative to participants primed with neutral concepts, participants primed with money preferred to play alone, work alone, and put more physical distance between themselves and a new acquaintance."
These effects are observable across many cultures and social ideals. So, yes, those at the top do view themselves as distinct and independent of the larger society, as demonstrated by the highly selective and insular lifestyles that they actively seek and engage in. Exclusivity is very nearly a defining feature of that 'filter' which is applied at Japanese organizations as I explained above, such that mid-level employees find an enforced social ceiling to keep those who are not already in the leading cliques from rising into a controlling position.
> How does that square with increasing foreign investment?
Foreign investment into Japanese industry is not the same as foreign investment into other jurisdictions, like EU, UK or US. Foreign investors do not gain actual control of the Japanese parent corporation. Companies will allow foreign investment in strict minority positions. This applies in most industries even without official legal requirement, and the regulatory review threshold for control in any critical; semiconductor, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, medicine, rare earths is as low as 1%. Investment in these requires approval BEFORE not after finalization.
Agriculture is another field with strict foreign investment rules. Non-Japanese citizens cannot purchase Ag. zoned land, period.
It is not likely that foreign investment, i.e. PE will find much room for capture of potentially closing Japanese companies. What I think is more likely will be a blend of collectivization, as many operating companies are already highly leveraged from banking and national investment due to the durable extremely low interest rates of the last three decades. The firms which have successfully invested heavily overseas and have restrained those investments from repatriation, in order to maintain the low inflation rates, have immense capacity to absorb local productivity downturns. These 'external' finance pools do not appear on the Japanese companies balance sheets due to how those investments are structured, and will enable these companies to dwindle to extremely low staffing levels while maintaining the level of comfort and financial wherewithal for the executive board members.
Yes, rsnapshot is excellent, I'm glad the article mentioned it. I use it for my weekly backups. So wonderfully simple. I wish the config file weren't quite so strict about syntax, but I only need to change it about twice a decade so no big deal.
People keep highlighting very minor and accidental similarities, like the OP, or some surface-level similarities between the two texts you cite. Yet they seem to ignore essential and basic differences, not only about the Divine Nature but also about very basic questions like whether change is real or illusory, or whether a person exists from moment to moment. I just listed a bunch of them in my previous post. I don't see how anyone can realistically claim Christianity is syncretic with anything eastern. And historically, it was persecuted for three centuries precisely because it refused to be syncretic -- the Romans were happy to tolerate additions to their partheon but couldn't abide Christianity's claims to exclusivity.
You didn't actually point to anything substantial; you kind of hand-waved at what you presumed "eastern religions" posit, but there are literally hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies that do in fact have very different attitudes towards the divine and basic metaphysics. The very first sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya--the Brahmajāla Sutta--has a section where the Buddha directly enumerates and engages with 62 of them present just in his neck of the world. Sectarianism, too, is as prevalent in the East as it is in the West. None of these things are monoliths. The world is large.
I honestly don't think you have the wisdom, the charity, or breadth of experience to understand or appreciate anything that I've written. And that's okay. You have a very real and meaningful investment in dismissing a priori the claims that I'm making, which is entirely understandable, especially for a Catholic who takes their faith seriously, as it would be for anyone else whose beliefs are jeopardized by implication. That's exactly the firewall that I'm talking about.
I don't expect the firewall to fail, in any case, so don't worry there. Catholicism is lindy. And if that firewall ever does fall and any of what I've written is integrated into the Standard Narrative, I'm sure Catholicism will also adjust to it, just like they've done every other time it has happened.
You seem to be responding to something I didn't say. I have no doubt that "there are literally hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies", or that the Buddha is reported as engaging with them.
In your previous post, you claimed something different:
>>> [T]here is almost 2,000 years of culture and the metaphysical beliefs of well-more than half of the human population predicated upon their beliefs being entirely unique and an off-shoot of Judaism and not a fundamentally different syncretic import from the east.
This is a different claim entirely.
Christianity is not 'a syncretic import from the east'. One way we know this is by looking at its differences with eastern ideas. What would first-century Christianity make of the denial of diachronic identity (the self is an illusion), or the denial of the idea that God is personal? You accuse me of 'hand waving'. I'm not sure where I do this. Am I wrong to claim that the ideas I listed are associated with the east? Does the undoubted fact that there are hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies undermine the claim?
Do you agree with my point that Christianity "was persecuted for three centuries precisely because it refused to be syncretic -- the Romans were happy to tolerate additions to their pantheon but couldn't abide Christianity's claims to exclusivity"?
There's quite a bit of mind-reading (in the CBT sense of the word) in your post that I don't really want to respond to because it doesn't advance the argument.
>Christianity is not 'a syncretic import from the east'. One way we know this is by looking at its differences with eastern ideas. What would first-century Christianity make of the denial of diachronic identity (the self is an illusion), or the denial of the idea that God is personal?
You're still doing the exact same thing. "Eastern ideas" is a leaky set and faulty abstraction. You have pointed to no actual bounded idea or ideology within that set. You proceed to attribute two ideas--the illusory self and non-theism--to that set, again without referent to anything.
>Am I wrong to claim that the ideas I listed are associated with the east? Does the undoubted fact that there are hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies undermine the claim?
You're wrong to claim that association is in any way relevant to what I've written. If I said "Christianity believes that Jesus visited North America" it would be rightly seen as the words of someone who had so little understanding and charity to the concept and diversity of Christianity that it would fall into the "not even wrong" category.
>Do you agree with my point that Christianity "was persecuted for three centuries precisely because it refused to be syncretic -- the Romans were happy to tolerate additions to their pantheon but couldn't abide Christianity's claims to exclusivity"?
I do contest that -- specifically because proto-Rabbinic Judaism was specifically categorized as a monotheistic religion that was largely recognized and exempted from Roman suppression because of its connection with temple Judaism. That Christians were persecuted by the Romans was not solely due to their monotheistic (or rather anti-polytheistic) beliefs, but that it was rapidly becoming expressly a gentile and proselytizing religion.
In any case, you first argue (wrongly) that "eastern ideas" can't be syncretic to Christianity because of a lack of personal deity, then you argue that Christianity is unique and was persecuted specifically because it denied personal deities.
In one breath, you treat theism as the relevant dividing line between Christianity and “eastern ideas”; in the next, you treat religious exclusivity as the relevant dividing line between Christianity and Rome. But those are entirely different axes, and neither establishes anything about the historical provenance of the ideas under discussion.
I would really like to continue to be charitable to and engage with you, but you have a continued fixation on the Roman attitudes of 1st century CE as evidence of an argument based on what was happening in the Mediterranean world in the 2nd century BCE--again, entirely reasonable from someone catechized within the Church--and the ability for you to even provisionally evaluate my argument on its own terms seems insurmountable. You've a priori stated more than once "Christianity is not 'a syncretic import from the east'" which already shows that this isn't really a dialogue.
I think you presume that I am ignorant of Catholicism and the history of orthodoxy. I'm not. I was raised by a traditionalist father who ran around with SSPX back in the 80s and then the FSSP. I ceased being Catholic for the same reason Cardinal Newman said "To be deep in history is to cease being protestant." Well, it turns out that history is much, much deeper than Newman supposed and doesn't end with Polycarp, Clement, and Ignatius.
If you honestly want to seriously engage with my position, here are the questions that would help clarify where we actually disagree. You obviously don't need to answer all of them if you don't want to (and there's a non-trivial possibility you won't even have read this far before noping out), but these are the substantive points I don't think you've addressed:
Where is your evidence that the Buddhist traditions relevant to this discussion posit that “the self is an illusion” in the undifferentiated sense you're invoking? Which Buddhist school, which period, and which text or tradition are you talking about? If you're going to use that proposition as evidence that Christianity could not have incorporated Buddhist material, you need to establish what Buddhist position you're actually comparing it to.
Likewise, what do you mean by “Buddhism denies that God is personal”? Which Buddhist traditions, which period, and which conception of God are you referring to? Why should the theological position of those particular traditions be treated as representative of “eastern ideas” generally?
How do you explain the independent emergence of a gender-inclusive monastic tradition in Christianity that so strongly resembles the general form of Buddhist monasticism found throughout its various sects, especially given that we have evidence of Buddhist missionary activity in the region predating the emergence of Christianity? If you think the resemblance is coincidental, what is your positive account of the parallel development? What historical mechanism do you propose produced the same unusual institutional configuration independently?
What is your explanation for the specific structural and narrative parallels between Christian ascetic literature and Buddhist material that predate or are plausibly independent of the Christian tradition? It appears you might have inferred that I was speaking about the content of Mark 7 and MN 55, but I wasn't. I was speaking specifically about the recurring structure found in both. I'm not asking whether Christianity ultimately gives those narratives a different theological interpretation. I'm asking what you think accounts for the historical similarities.
How do you account for the presence of Indian philosophical material in the Hellenistic world independently of Christianity? In particular, what do you make of the evidence concerning Pyrrho and the Greek encounters with Indian philosophers? If you reject the possibility of influence on early Christian intellectual culture, what is your explanation for why those demonstrable pre-Christian channels of transmission are irrelevant to the hypothesis?
If your position is that these similarities are insufficient to establish influence, what evidence would you regard as sufficient to establish influence in principle? And, applying that standard consistently, which of the existing pieces of evidence fail it, and why?
>>Christianity is not 'a syncretic import from the east'. One way we know this is by looking at its differences with eastern ideas. What would first-century Christianity make of the denial of diachronic identity (the self is an illusion), or the denial of the idea that God is personal?
> You're still doing the exact same thing. "Eastern ideas" is a leaky set and faulty abstraction. You have pointed to no actual bounded idea or ideology within that set. You proceed to attribute two ideas--the illusory self and non-theism--to that set, again without referent to anything.
You wrote:
>>>>> The problem is that there is almost 2,000 years of culture and the metaphysical beliefs of well-more than half of the human population predicated upon their beliefs being entirely unique and an off-shoot of Judaism and not a fundamentally different syncretic import *from the east*.
This claim is predicated on the term "east" (in its philosophical sense) refering to something real. If it's impossible to associate concepts with 'the east', then your own assertion is as meaningless as mine.
In any case, the word 'east' (in this sense) can't be accurate in the way 'grass' or 'human being' can be accurate. It has multiple meanings, unlike them. But it doesn't follow from this that it has no meaning. One can assert things of 'the east', in the way that one can assert things of 'communism' or 'protestantism' or 'long-haul flight' -- other terms where one could argue over the meaning. If we can't assert things of the east, then we can't assert things of those terms either.
But we can assert things of these terms. There is a common agreement about what they mean that's sufficient for meaning to be shared. We can say 'Protestantism teaches salvation by faith alone', or 'Communism calls for the abolition of private property', or 'transatlantic flights are long haul', even though there may be some examples of all of these where the predications are wrong.
It's the same for the term under discussion. Most if not all of the meanings of 'the east' used in discourse today[0] contain the ideas I asserted (illusory self, etc). Therefore your argument -- that my assertion that certain ideas are 'eastern' is meaningless -- fails. Had it succeeded, it would have fatally undermined your main assertion.
>> Am I wrong to claim that the ideas I listed are associated with the east? Does the undoubted fact that there are hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies undermine the claim?
> You're wrong to claim that association is in any way relevant to what I've written.
Re-read your words I just quoted, which is what I object to, and which I keep trying to come back to. Is the association really "not relevant"? I have asserted that a) certain ideas are commonly and correctly associated with 'the east'; that b) said ideas are anathema to Christianity, in fundamental ways, and therefore c) your claim that Christianity is a 'syncretic import from the east' is false. That is pretty much my whole argument[1]. If you can show that either of my premises is wrong, you nullify my objection to your statement. It's not only relevant, it's central.
> If I said "Christianity believes that Jesus visited North America" it would be rightly seen as the words of someone who had so little understanding and charity to the concept and diversity of Christianity that it would fall into the "not even wrong" category.
I could easily deny that though. Only one tiny and very new sect believes it. You can't claim that about my assertions, you've merely claimed they're not relevant.
> You've a priori stated more than once "Christianity is not 'a syncretic import from the east'" which already shows that this isn't really a dialogue
I was responding to your point where you stated the opposite. The disagreement, or the dialogue, is over which belief is true.
> If your position is that these similarities are insufficient to establish influence, what evidence would you regard as sufficient to establish influence in principle? And, applying that standard consistently, which of the existing pieces of evidence fail it, and why?
There is influence in a certain sense, clearly. But your statement is much stronger. You asserted that Christianity is a syncretic import from the east, not that it was influenced by it in some sense, which is obviously true.
[0] Remembering that words exist by convention!
[1] This includes my statement about the Roman persecutions. My point when bringing this up was to show that Christianity considered itself the only way for everybody, which also undermines your assertion that it's syncretic, and is also a major difference from the east. My point was not that monotheism or anti-syncretism was the cause of the persecution. I'm neither asserting nor denying this: it's not relevant to the discussion.
(EDITED slightly to hopefully improve clarity a bit)
Thanks for letting me know that there was at least one other reader. It means a lot.
If you're at all interested in looking into the topic more deeply, I'd highly recommend this paper, showing just how deeply transmission west into the Hellenic world occurred, including bilingual koine Greek and Aramaic translations of Buddhist material:
There are possibly deeper, more controversial parallels--Naraka (Hell), punarjanman aka reincarnation (gennēthē anōthen or "born again"), Dhamma (Logos), the Triratna (the Trinity), dukkha/kamma (Khowba (חובא) -> opheilema/harmatia or debt/trespass), āpatti-paṭidesanā (confession), arhat (hagios or saints), etc. ad nauseam--but as you've seen, even provisionally entertaining these notions is beyond the ken for most in the West, whether academic, religious, or otherwise. Elsewhere in Buddhist thought there are also forms like Pure Land that end up resembling certain strains of later Christian forms, despite independent genesis.
But ultimately, whether my perspective is true or not, or whether the metaphysical claims between the traditions differ (they do, especially at this point in time), the right course of living isn't really that different broadly between the two traditions--focus on one's own conduct rather than others, do good for others in the world and not merely oneself, forgive others, and always keep in mind that there is a moral law in the universe that is inescapable in its consequences. If you struggle to do it yourself, find others pursuing the same goals, and you'll eventually find the way.
I specifically stick to monasticism because Christianity is the odd one out of all the abrahamic religions in advocating for monasticism, and monasticism started in Egypt which had significant enough presence of Buddhists.
As far as I am aware, Christianity is the only non Indian religion to advocate for monasticism or asceticism.
It's really only Jainism and Buddhism that advocate for it other than Christianity (Hinduism picked it up from Jainism and Buddhism).
That being said, your reaction is exactly what the guy above was saying was an issue.
You conflate Buddhism with Roman polytheism. Buddhism is not dogmatic. Buddha is a man who saw idolatry all around him and quickly determined it was ineffective and false. A core part of Christianity is that God needs to reveal himself. Being before Christ, Buddha would not have known about the resurrection or that such a thing was possible. He made some observations and literally said if he was wrong ignore him. While many modern day incarnations of Buddhism are dogmatic and some have descended back into the very superstition the Buddha advocated against, the core story of Buddha is complete the opposite of Roman polytheism.
Again we see the parallel with Christianity where a bunch of people were marginalized for advocating against Hindu Polytheism, with Buddhism eventually winning the support of the great empire of the time (the mauryans).
Thanks. Very briefly, I haven't commented on Buddhism or the Buddha's teaching at all (except to agree with the other guy's claim that the Buddha engaged with many philosophies), and have been very careful to avoid doing so. My beef is specifically with the claim that Christianity is syncretic, and with the unsaid implication in the OP that all religions basically teach the same thing.
I get the author's not trying to write a watertight syllogism, but the point he's trying to make (his last sentence) doesn't follow from the obvious fact that beliefs can influence each other.
Christianity and worldviews typically associated with the 'east' (as I've seen them discussed here and elsewhere) disagree in both their view of the 'building blocks' of reality, and in their 'big picture' view. They disagree on base questions like if there is really a "you", or whether change is real, or whether the material world is real, or whether multiplicity is real, or whether the truth of A implies the falsehood of not-A, and so on. (I've heard all of the above answered in the negative here.) And they disagree on 'big picture' things like the goal of human existence, the nature of the Absolute, what it is to live a good life, whether evil is the result of illusion or is (in addition to this) a defect in the will and caused ultimately by an indescribably malevolent being, whether a human being can reach a 'blessed' state by his own power, etc.
So the differences are vast and essential, on both the macro and micro levels. The fact that some beliefs and practices influence other beliefs and practices doesn't change this.
(The emergence of the "18 year old who just read Dawkins for the first time and thinks science disproves sky-daddy lolz" atheists on this thread is also most unfortunate.)
That has to be the universal one, no? I feel like basic moral principles, at least directed towards the in group, are pretty universal. I'd argue they are more base than even humans and are shared with certain intelligent animals.
Some believe one should come to forgive their enemies. Some believe that one should purge one's enemies from life itself. Some believe that one should have no enemies.
Some believe that material wealth is fine to a point, some believe that the desire of possesing material wealth is a source of discontent, some believe that it is the source of many or all other discontents.
Some believe that wanting to improve one's station is a source of discontent.
Some are fine with removing life if it is inconvenient (like bugs) where others value the life of a bug equally to their own.
Some are okay with their friends and family members murdering foreigners actively engaged in warfare that threatens their own life and livelihood. Some are okay with their friends and family killing the friends and family of the enemy combatants. Some are okay with killing anyone just generally in the vicinity of enemy combatants. Some say literally poisoning the well is a step too far, but that we had to write that down is evidence of other's believing differently. Some believe it's okay to murder people, communities, and entire populations because they'd rather use the land for themselves, or maybe their noses are too long and their skin is indistinguishably different.
Rereading your comment, I see the "in group" disclaimer. What's the in group? Some believe it's just their family, the people on the block, the people who have lived within a certain number of miles for a certain number of years, citizens governed by a particular government, the citizens governed by a group of governments, the people living on a particular continent, people in general, humans in general, life in general, or everything. There are people to whom no human should ever murder another for any reason. You might agree with that in theory, but would you allow a conquering force that is literally raping your friends and family to simply do so unquestioned? Would you feel vindicated striking back? There are some who have decided that the morally correct thing to do is to simply quit the land and or life itself rather than to fight back, because to them murder is wrong period.
The good life is deeply personal and absolutely not universal.
But it all comes down to an expectation of some altruism. Yes you may vilify the out group but are the basic dynamics of helping your fellow person out really so different across space and time? I don't think so. Every culture has villages and relies upon others for mutual benefits. That is what I am talking about with this sort of universal baseline level of morality. Yes there could be a spectrum of acceptable cruelty but generally you have to think about these things in terms of a playground scenario vs the context that leads to a military operation involving poisoning a well. Would you play with someone who slapped you in the face and pulled your hair on the playground? No, and that is universal.
>Yes you may vilify the out group but are the basic dynamics of helping your fellow person out really so different across space and time?
I believe that the bible teaches the purpose of life is to glorify the God of the universe. If a religion's "purpose of life" is about "interacting with other humans, and not about God" then we have opposing "purposes". I saw something similar about Secular Humanists: they claimed they align with the bible "Love God and love your Neighbor"... but they don't believe God exists, so they - on a fundamental level - can't follow thay commandment.
>Would you play with someone who slapped you in the face and pulled your hair on the playground?
Having made friends of enemies, I may or may not depending on the persons development in future, and that's my point. There are many people who would agree that just because someone had done something bad in the past does not warrant continued future negative engagement. But there are also people who will make a lifelong arch-nemesis when getting cut off in traffic.
In the same village model, you'll see villages who will excommunicate people over relatively minor things, some only in severe cases, and some who will offer paths to redemption in all but the most severe of cases. A church might give you a life time ban for skipping a meeting, wearing the wrong clothing, talking to the wrong people, or any of a list of what an average person might call small transgressions.
Homophobes will taunt and even shun their friends if their friends talk to queers, god forbid befriend a fag. Christians will admonish those who talk to declared Satanists, those who listen to satanic music, etc. Some christains are homophobic, some are not. Some Satanists are homophobic, some are not. Some Christains don't mind homophobia, some can't tolerate it. So what's the core good life shared between all of these match-ups? Does the one universal good life include gay people and communication with gay people? How is that there can be these groups of people who are happy to hate on gay people if the one universal good life does not include bigotry? And you can't say that the one universal good life includes bigotry because there are many people who cannot abide such a stance toward anyone.
Even if you abstract all the way to "all in groups are wary of their outgroups" you're still not saying anything entirely true because their are in fact groups of people who believe that all are genuinely equal in all things. Do I personally? No. I believe that there are bad people and that there are people that humanity would be better off without. But, I also know that there are people who do not believe that there are bad people, only bad actions - that everyone is elligible for equality at some point.
I think this is true up to a point. But you find chasmic differences as well. Polygamy is an obvious example, or lying to non-brethren (absolutely forbidden by Christianity, permitted I believe by other religions), or the caste system (unthinkable in Islam or Christianity, a base part of reality in Hinduism), etc. You find a very different attitude to wealth in many varieties of Protestantism compared to the Catholic Church. Also, as I said, whether a human being can reach a 'blessed state' by his own efforts, which I believe most eastern religions posit, and Christianity denies. Human sacrifice is an obvious example of a disagreement with very practical consequences for conduct. It was, as is well known, widely practised in parts of the Americas until the sixteenth century. Today in the west, you find people disagreeing very passionately over 'culture war' issues, which is surely a disagreement about what the good life is. And the people who say the culture wars don't matter are positing another view of the good life, different from them both. Etc.
> or the caste system (unthinkable in Islam or Christianity, a base part of reality in Hinduism), etc.
The historical prominence of the slave trade in both the Christian and Islamic worlds should make it quite clear that it was hardly "unthinkable" but instead very rationalizable.
Rigid systems of social power hierarchy and oppression based on ancestry, perceived race, and occupation (which is a lot of what the worst part of caste is) were very much features of Christian and Islamic societies, even if their religions didn't codify them.
Right, but that proves nothing. The fact that human beings who profess religion R engage in behaviour B does not imply that B results from said profession of R. But I think you'd struggle to argue that the caste system doesn't result from Hinduism.
> But I think you'd struggle to argue that the caste system doesn't result from Hinduism.
The "Hindu" caste system results from the history of social hierarchy in the Indian subcontinent. What you are calling "Hinduism" is a relatively recent construct that has emerged as a response to religions with more centralized/uniform doctrines and institutions. There are belief systems categorized under this "Hinduism" label that overtly reject caste systems (and have done so for centuries), while others overtly uphold it.
Other societies also have caste systems, just differently rationalized than the one present in some belief systems that fall under the "Hindu" banner. I'm not excusing any of these systems whether Hindu or not - they are all a blight on humanity - but they are also a feature of many societies whether or not they use the particular term "caste".
Some clear examples of excluded/oppressed castes outside of the South Asian context are the Burakumin in Japan, the al-Akhdam in Yemen, and the Mestizos with more indigenous ancestry in Latin America.
True, I was speaking loosely, but that doesn't affect the point. If you change my statement to 'the caste system results from some belief systems categorized under the Hindu label' then the original point (which is that you find enormous differences resulting from different belief system) stands.
The existence of caste systems outside Hinduism doesn't change this either.
Some objects are red in and of themselves, while others can be made red by something outside them. Likewise, some beliefs cause people to act in certain ways, while other people may act in the same ways tangentially to, or even despite, their belief.
>Today in the west, you find people disagreeing very passionately over 'culture war' issues, which is surely a disagreement about what the good life is.
All window dressing imo over the real morals at play under all these layers that society puts on top and frequently changes by the decade. What do liberals and conservatives want out of their countrymen for example? The same exact thing ultimately: good people who might lend them a cup of sugar and won't club them over the head for one. Of course propaganda has blinded people on either side into vilifying what is at the end of the day a fungible human with the same basic needs and wants as most other social animals. At the most base we have the moral principles a stray dog seeks out in either fellow dogs or a sympathetic human: let me find someone who won't fight me off and may in fact share things and help me out while I do the same for them.
It's astonishing that people accept advertising as normal and acceptable. It's psychological abuse.
Obviously this doesn't apply to classified ads or their electronic equivalents. But what we normally mean by advertising, where people are paid vast sums of money to think very, very hard about how to manipulate you to hand over money for shit you don't need, is vomit-inducing. Billboards are even worse because they deface and degrade the public landscape, and ugly landscapes can contribute to depression, anxiety, irrational anger, and other problems. They are as bad as littering.
The ads have changed. Back in my adolescence, I would read the back pages of Byte, Nintendo World, Sega something, Computer Shopper. I devoured them, there was no scorn.
These days it is ads of folks around my age doing a yoga type of a thing on a beach and stretching joyfully at sunrise.
The ads are about some meds that can cause suicidal thoughts and constipation (in small print and quick blah blah blah) but "may" help your arthritis.
Then, a $150K Ranger Rover ad, a thing I'd never want to be seen in even if I could afford it.
I've worked in digital ad tech for many years, I like ads, but I want good ads. Never bought anything from a 180 second long ad on Amazon Prime Video.
One would think that with all PII that's been gathered, a brand could scratch an itch, but nah, it's just useless carpet bombing.
I've been to France and I've seen the ads on public channels on a hotel TV. They were very innocuous compared to merde we are fed in the states.
I think it is the boiling frog experience. It has just slowly happened over time, and sometimes they push too hard and get blow back. So you step it down a notch but keep pushing forward until one day you look back and can't remember a day where there were no ads.
I have ad free household. We treat ads like a poison, like there's a fire. Over the top reaction to shut them down if they creep in. It has taught my own child to avoid ads like the plague (unlike their peers).
I have no idea how people use the Internet with all the ads, no blockers. It is just bonkers, and even at work it is an uphill battle to convince people ad-blockers should be enforced just to protect the business from malicious ads, let alone their own brains.
I want to lobby to have all adverts removed from public transport, but I am unsure how to do that in Australia, but I will work it out.
Yeah I've taught my kids to treat ads the same way, and we make a joke about quickly turning the screen off when ads come on. Of course we have UBO and Unhook installed, plus DNS blocking. I tell them what I put in my post above, that advertising is a form of deceit, manipulation to get you to act against your own interest. Naturally we don't have a TV, because why would anyone want to do that?
I don't know what I'm going to teach them about politics when the time comes, since (what most people mean by) politics is essentially a particularly malevolent and dangerous species of advertising, but at the same time I don't want to make them too cynical.
I don't know if the boiling frog thesis explains it, since it's gone from near-zero to 100 in non-western countries over the past couple of decades, unlike the west where it's built up slowly over the past century and a half.
I'm far from being an engineer, but I can code a bit and have an engineering-adjacent role, and 3.8 27B "seems" -- purely subjectively -- miles ahead of 3.6 for the medium-difficulty tasks I give it. In particular, it's only started looping once in the 2 weeks or so I've had it. 3.6 did so every day.
I normally run with thinking low but it's still miles ahead.
I had been annoyed at not being able to run 0731 locally, but now I'm not sure I need it. I think I could leave 3.8 running overnight without waking up to find my office sweltering at 80F and seeing eternal loops on my screen.
How do you deal with security issues? Up until now, I've only run agents on a separate machine on its own physical subnet. (Admittedly this is paranoid and I could probably run it on a VM.)
I would love to give a local-LLM agent full access to my (very modest) homelab, but can't trust it not to delete my files or do something crazy. Maybe giving it its own non-root username, and therefore read access, allowing diagnosis but not fixing. But even a non-root user can do some damage, or exfiltrate system info just by using curl.
I worry about this myself but find some solace and peace in my backup strategy. I treat the harness as a user and set permissive authorizations where needed. I even let it suggest why and which permissions it would need for specific items and note these down in the wiki as well. The idea is that the LLMs takes into consideration why it has the permissions it has and doesn't try and work around them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
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