I feel like a chicken scratching through garbage when I’m searching for information online, wondering if I’ll ever find a single grain of wheat. How do you guys sift through all this useless information to find what’s actually useful?

We live in an artificial society built on enforced scarcity. Everything has a price tag, even pleasure. I’ve spent years trying to understand my purpose, being told it was my career, my family, or my future. But none of that was the truth. Those were just illusions we cling to because they give us brief hits of pleasure. The real purpose is pleasure itself. Bhoga.

I once told my dad I was sad. Not for myself, but for the fact that our entire world runs on money. Without it we are nothing. It defines our worth and dictates our happiness. It captures pleasure and sells it back to us after we labor for the right to feel it.

Then I open Instagram or TikTok and the algorithm feeds me videos echoing the same thought. The futility of all this. My dad would talk about twenty year olds drifting through life, drinking, laughing, doing a few DoorDash/food delivery runs, then enjoying themselves again. I asked him what was wrong with that. They are simply using what society gives them. If anything it exposes the fault in a system where laborers are treated so poorly that educated youth would rather float than submit.

Every time I see these videos I wonder what the fix is. Changing my life through tech or becoming a founder is one path, but that does nothing for us collectively. What do we do as a people. How do we find truth. How do we learn to enjoy our lives without sinking back into survival mode.

Waking up is not enough anymore. We need to come together and decide what comes next.

Any ideas?

It feels like the world died.

I just can't find any media (e.g., books, movies, shows, games) that give me the same excitement as the classics before.

I know some people will say this is just due to age, but I think it is more than that.

I think there has been an actual reduction in quality. Maybe everything has already been explored/there are no new concepts. So the more recent material is just filler/repetitive.

It seems like I already watched all the good movies, already watched all the good tv shows, already read all the good books, already played all the good games.

I don't remember the last time I got that rush of starting a new book/show/movie and being sucked in and invested. Now it is just a time passer.

Seriously, when was the last time a new actually funny sitcom was made?

Maybe there are some good movies here and there, but it seems like significantly less than before. Same with TV shows.

I wish I could go back to the beginning of for example starting the Harry Potter series for the first time, watching the office for the first time, watching LOST for the first time, playing classic groundbreaking video games for the first time, playing my first online FPS for the first time, that excitement when batman the animated series theme song comes on Saturday morning, first time feeding my neopet, etc..

It seems like everything is already over and there is just numbness left. And no, I am not depressed. This is not depression. It is numbness/lack of novelty. There is a clear difference and I have enough life experience to know the difference. In fact in terms of mental health I am overall better off than the times I used to enjoy those classic novel media that excited me.

Though I agree part of it is age, but not related to media. Rather, more related to things like relationships. For example, getting that rush of meeting a good friend for the first time. But with enough like experience you become jaded and get better at understanding human behavior and it loses its magic/you see the ugly truths. Also it is relevant to experiences. For example as a kid going to the amusement park seems like magic, as an adult you are indifferent. The more experiences you tried, the less novel and exciting they get. But the thing is, even if I try a completely new experience I never did, I don't know, say skydiving, I just know I still won't get that excited over it, it might be good enough to motivate me to go through with it, but at the end I would probably at the very most rate it a 7/10. I just don't find myself being able to have a 9/10 or 10/10 experience in anything ever again. Or even having one of those 5 minute literal rolling on the floor laughing sessions you would have with friends as a kid and remember for the rest of your life. Sure I still, sometimes even harder, but I have not had one of those level laughs in I don't know how long. That magic rush of novelty or excitement, I don't remember the last time I felt it.

So I know fashion for women is cyclical and for some reason there's a bit of like mom jeans '80s things happening right now. But I'm watching this thing on Al Capone on PBS right now and just love all the short haircuts and cute flapper dresses that the women wear and just wondered why this never came back?

I have been wondering about this lately.

So much of online conversation seems built around quick reactions, short opinions, and immediate responses. There is nothing wrong with that but I sometimes miss conversations where people take their time with an idea and genuinely explore it.

For those of you who enjoy slower, more thoughtful conversations, where do you find them online?

Have you found communities where people still ask open questions, disagree thoughtfully, and think together without everything becoming a debate or a race to respond?

I’d love to hear about your experiences with this. What helped you stop comparing yourself to other people, or at least made it easier to deal with?

Say someone's commited the most heinous crimes possible. They escape justice and set out to spend the rest of their lives alone, in a secluded place. What's guaranteed is no human contact ever again. What's not guaranteed is their long-term survival or happiness.

Would you be fine with such terms, even though they don't necessarily guarantee punishment? Or, should they necessarily be hunted down and brought to justice? Which is to say, jail on taxpayer's money, or execution?

If doing the right thing consistently made your life harder, while doing the wrong thing made everything easier, how long could you realistically keep choosing the harder path?

Sorry if I sound like a moron, but what actually is a bot? I see people mention them on Reddit all the time and I’m assuming it’s some kind of fake account/AI or something but what actually is it, why do people make them and how do they work?

i just realized that i only like my best friend because he makes me less lonely ​​and occasionally help with my mental problems. i still care for him of course but its like caring for a stranger. do i love him or do i love his benefit?​

They have the most insane commercial that would never be put on TV. Do you think after everything the past 5 years or so the next administration will change the standard? Investigations even for false information

I have a brother who tends to get into conflict with every boss he has had. He is a good man, but he has never gotten a job he's happy with, and when he tries to either not be pushy, or annoying, or nice, he always ends uo having conflicts with a supervisor that sucks or a new employee at the company. He tends to either get fired or quit to every single job he's had. I wish I could help. Are there any ways one can survive in something that doesn't require having such a strong hierarchical system we have here in America when it comes to work or life?

He is no artist, and he has no passion for the trades. He isn't much of a businessman. Wanted to be a cop but cannot get into the academy despite decent scores. He has no money to move. I appreciate any thoughts

I live in Canada and doing anything feels expensive, but I want to try and live in the moment and enjoy my life more in a non consumeristic way

I have a brother who tends to get into arguments at work with superiors, his boss, and coworkers. Mostly, he's said it's because the work environments are toxic or not what he wants to do with himself but needs to pay the bills. Snd can't find anything else. Makes me think and wonder why people would end up burning bridges after they feel that there is no room for growth or don't get what they were hoping to get?

Hypothetically, if we were to have the technology to colonize Mars/ Venus, how would we go about it?

These days, I can't help but think that everything I've been doing my whole didn't really have much impact, max it did was to make me happy for a while. I could have spent countless hours on something good rather than binge watching Netflix shows but I can't do anything about my past. Regarding my present and future free time, I really want to do something that gives me that feeling of contentment. I have seen many reddit posts talking about trying different things, setting small goals but I can't think of anything that can motivate me to get up from my cozy bed. I have tried quitting social media thinking I might start getting creative ideas, but it didn't help much. Due to certain circumstances, I can't try any activity that requires getting out of my home so the options are really limited. I do home workout sometimes, and it helps a little but I always end up getting stuck in the same loop again and again.

Lets assume we all believe in objective morality for this question. What I wanna know is what things you could base these on.

To me it seems like basing it on anything subjective does not work. F.e. I have heard many people argue that you can base it on moral intuition. But everybody has different intuitions. What makes a psychopaths moral intuition less objective than a person who is not one? How do you know which moral intuitions are actual intuitions and not just adapted from society?

The easiest answer I could come up with is just saying there is a moral god and he engrained objective morals into the world.

Another answer I thought of was to accept some truths as objective but Im having a lot of trouble. Lets say I try to ground my morals by saying "causing unintentional suffering is immoral" is an absolute truth. But I immediately have more questions: Isnt suffering itself subjective? Is it reasonable to just accept some statement as if it is an axiom like in math? What even makes this statement objective and not some random diffrrent statement?

And since Im not utilitarian Ive been trying to find some other statements that could be used similarly like "actions that help our biological nature of reproduction are moral" but this would justify many forms of egoism and rape. Or "Trying to be a moral person is inherently moral" but this doesnt say anything about what trying to be moral means.

Please tell me if there are any fundamental problems in my thought process. I would like to know how some of you may ground your objective morals.

Also if you wanna say "god is the only possible answer" please offer an explanation .

Thanks for reading.

Wouldn't this just make the lives for the locals harder as things would naturally become more expensive?

I’ve been thinking about how often we treat consistency as a willpower problem.

If someone keeps skipping exercise, the usual answer is that they need more motivation or discipline. But I wonder how much of it is simply friction.

A 40-minute workout might involve getting ready, travelling to a gym, parking, waiting for equipment and travelling back. Put the same basic equipment at home and the exact same habit suddenly requires far fewer decisions.

The same idea applies elsewhere: keeping healthy food nearby, putting your phone farther away when working, or leaving a book somewhere visible.

At what point is “discipline” really just good environment design?

Have you ever made a positive habit dramatically easier simply by changing your surroundings rather than changing your motivation?

Howdy, I am an undergrad student studying computer science. I find myself interested greatly in political, economic, psychological, and philosophical ideas and discussion. I would like to know how grown individuals responsibly obtain their knowledge about world events; I want to be a responsible individual and educate myself in order to better myself and my community, and I don't want to make the same mistake I see my peers make when they get their information solely from TikTok or Instagram (or Reddit I suppose). I am also practically broke, so I worry about paying for subscriptions to sources full of misinformation and or propaganda. I also know that many news articles contain true but irrelevant information, or information that will be irrelevant a week from now.

My understanding is that the internet the and its algorithms have a tendency to create non-representative groups of commenters, so I would appreciate a-political advice, though any advice would be helpful.