this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 81 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Poof, Pennywise is suddenly a billionaire profiting off the suffering of others! OoOoOo scaaaaarryy!

[–] [email protected] 53 points 3 months ago (5 children)

tbf, a billionaire right in front of you isnt that scary even if thats what you're afraid of, its the abstracted effects of their power and actions. A billionaire right in front of you in the flesh is something you can physically harm with your own two fists alone, a widespread system is not.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

How about a billionaire in some sort of bulletproof pope mobile surrounded by an army of security who all happen to be people who didn't qualify to become cops?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Funny thing about "bulletproof" glass is not all bullets are created equal

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

How many types of bullets do you carry around

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Just the ones heavy enough to supersede the bulletproof qualification.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Yea honestly that’s a fucking gift right there.

“I’m Donald Trump now”

“…wait except I won’t get in any trouble for caving your face in? Oh HELL yea!”

“Wait no no NO NO NO”

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Well in this comic it seems like he clearly gets bummed and has empathy unlike a billionaire

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I was taught dangerous dragons should be killed.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

I thought you were talking about my username for a second before looking at the context and was concerned x3

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's what you say, but if Elon Musk was in front of me, I'd be terrified that he'd do one of his many failed attempts at being funny.

They hurt. They really hurt.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Maybe if the kids stayed in the town and "IT" was in the town factory destroying the town water, air, and making indentured servitude.

[–] [email protected] 60 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Fucking Instagram. I'm not going to sign up just to browse this user's posts.

Aha! I finally found the original on https://bananatwinky.tumblr.com/

[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I was expecting the clown to tell him that they are the same person but from the future.

The cost of living is so high that you're required to work multiple shifts across multiple timelines just to afford a -420 sqft⁴ apartment.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

We'll be living in quadratic dimensions.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Imaginary space

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago (2 children)

This is actually the plot of the book IIRC. Pennywise can't become the fears of adults because they're too abstract, so he preys on children. Which is what leads to him being defeated by a child orgy

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

Woah, woah, woah! The child orgy helps them find their way out after defeating ol' pennyboy the first time and getting lost. The power of friendship (and some help from Gan) is what does the trick. Let's get our fictional facts straight here.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Is it really an orgy, though? More like running a train, right?

I don't know why I felt I should start a discussion about the semantics here, so don't ask me about that.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago

He didn't lie, he turned into existential dread.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago

How "meta" - by sharing our insecurities, we can give our insecurities... insecurity! :-P Take that my personal demon!:-P

img

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I mean, it's pretty obvious free will is an illusion if you stop and think about how the universe functions. If everything is governed by physics, then why would we be special? In order for "true" free will to exist, it is necessary to exist outside the realm of physics in order to make decisions without said decisions being affected by the chemical and electrical signals in your brain. You have to be able to make choices that won't be influenced by the physical world, which, afaik, there is no evidence for.

However, even from a philosophical standpoint: if we rewound time to the last major choice you made, so that you could make it all over again, would you do anything different?

Keep in mind that we rewound time and you don't have any new knowledge that you acquired after originally making the choice.

Personally, I can't see a reason why I'd make any other choice. As such, that seems like a much larger existential crisis in the same vein that you should be concerned with.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I don't agree with this version of the free will argument. I prefer to ask the question, is anything outside the local system affecting my decisions. Think of a toaster. It has buttons and levers, but once you press them, it can do whatever it wants. It's a contained system. It was preprogrammed or designed to respond a certain way, but if it short-circuits or something inside changes, it does that independent of your will or input.

In your case, you are made of chemical and electrical signals, so your argument is like saying, do I have free will if my brain is making the decisions? The real question is, is there anything outside your brain that is affecting your decisions. Otherwise, congratulations! You have free will!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The real question is, is there anything outside your brain that is affecting your decisions. Otherwise, congratulations! You have free will!

Well, yes. We are a collection of inputs and outputs. We cease to be in a vacuum. I can't find the study, but I'm almost certain I remember reading about an experiment where scientists removed a rat brain and studied what happened when they gave it everything it needed except external stimuli. They found the brain atrophied and eventually just stopped. That doesn't mean the same would happen to humans, but it suggests that external stimuli are necessary for consciousness.

Our lives appear to be a chain of cause and effect impacted by our surroundings. Any prediction or anticipation we do is in response to external stimuli priming us to expect some form of action or inaction to occur.

To try and put it another way, your response was predetermined, as is mine. The text on the screen released photons in a pattern my brain could recognize, which were then focused by my cornea and projected onto my retina. Those photons were translated into a mix of chemical and electrical impulses that traveled up my optic nerves and into my brain. From there, they were filtered through a highly complex series of algorithms that used things like prior experience and personality to decide whether or not I should respond, and if so, how I should do it. At no point in this did I actually get to choose, everything was cause and effect with my choice being an illusion.

This isn't some grand conspiracy theory about lizard men hijacking your brainwaves; it's just simple cause and effect. You responded the way you did because deep inside your brain, you decided that what you wrote was the best way to respond based on prior experience, and so you did. The same is true for me.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Two things: 1. Considering we can't even predict which slit a photon will go through in a double-slit experiment or a stochastic system like the precession of a top spinning, it's difficult to say that our actions, each of which the results of many millions of synapsis firing in concert, are predetermined.

  1. The complex series of algorithms including personality and prior experience are who you are. Furthermore, they're fully under your review, so if you don't like them, you can change them. You also have the ability to change your environment, i.e. inputs. So saying that our responses to stimuli are predetermined can only be true in the sense that you yourself have predetermined them.

Even if we were able to create a complete replica of our brains to the synapse level, that model would not be able to predict our future responses 100% because synapses are always changing. So who you are 2 minutes from now is not the same as who you are now.

All this to say that the belief that we have no control over the cause and effect in our lives is facetious at best and cowardly at worst.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Almost everything your brain decides is affected by things outside of it.

We are a mixture of chemical desires and social + cultural outputs. Free will is an illusion. Its been done. Philosophers did to to free will what they did to God and capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I suppose the real question is, is my brain part of me or am I inside of it somewhere/how? If it's part of me I'd argue it's the part I use for free willin', just like my butt is the part of me I use for poopin'. If I'm inside of it...well... I don't know? I think it's more the first, anyway, so I guess I don't have to know lol.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Ok but that's different than free will as in, the premise of a society in which a person is able to choose their path in life

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Which we also don't have, since our choices are greatly restricted by the economic class that we're born into!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

"I'm you from the future. I didn't invent a time machine or anything, but I did promise to try to scare you into doing more with your life. Clown school is SO MUCH fun though!" pulls out a syringe, shoots up right there, overdoses, dies

Now its an existential crisis. Please the people that are so petty they'll send him back in time to traumatize themselves, or go enjoy Clown School? Crippling New Fear of making decisions: unlocked.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

We are in fact part of a system rigged against us and free will is a commodified illusion, pseudoscientifically speaking.

Too little time to experience what we want and what we want is a choice within our means of what is available.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Eat shit Pennywise, you wanna know what's scary?

Being crushed under a lifetime of debt you know, no matter what you do, no matter how much shit you get right, you're still permanently fucked, but you can't stop or you will die. You continue because you have no choice and you know you will die a wage slave. There is no escape.

Fucking werewolves...

Get outta here with that bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

My son's worst nightmare is a mannequin. Not like a moveable mannequin, but like a clothing store mannequin.

It would give him plenty of time to run, that's for sure

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Has he watched Doctor Who, the first Christopher Eccleston episode, by any chance?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Is that the one where he rescues Rose from those clothing store dummies turned alive? No.

We don't watch any Doctor Who, every single episode would make him cry lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

I could relate

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

and we'll all float on okay...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Fam just needs to take them to the Halls of Illusion.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Free Will Denial is so cringe

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

what if I'm part of the 1% and I don't know it.