In my view, and as someone who's never used instant messaging, it should be a small accommodation to make for a friendship. In the same way that I would be happy to provide a vegetarian option at a dinner.
The analogy doesn't work because providing a vegetarian option is something you only have to do once, or at least only the few times the vegetarian friend has dinner at your house. Changing your messaging platform for a friend is more like becoming a vegetarian yourself and convincing all your other friends to go vegetarian to please your friend (because a messaging app is only useful if most of your friends are on it).
There was a time when you could contact anyone on any platform through a centralized application which simply called into libpurple. Really the problem here is that you along with everyone else have caved into big tech's insistence on being incompatible with everything.
Also, more people understand your morale position of "I don't want to kill animals".
Few people understand "this messenger is slightly less privacy focused. It's owned by Meta. It's against my principles".
I am vegan so I would definitely break ties with friends that make mean "jokes" about veganism or myself. But I certainly would never let go of friends because they want me to use WhatsApp.
Probably true. Still, perceptions change over time. Not too long ago vegetarianism (never mind veganism!) was widely seen as an irrational fringe position.
Similarly, I live sans messaging for the simple reason that I never upgraded to a smartphone. In the 2000s this solicited reactions of amazed befuddlement and surprise, occasionally mirth. Nowadays, in my experience, most people intuitively understand the decision.
I don’t get your analogy having multiple messaging apps on your device is not forcing you to do anything. Just to get in the right messaging app to talk to your different communities. I mean my kids are doing that all the time between snap (their friends), whatsapp (family) or Signal (me) (and I’m pretty sure they use at least a lot more channels (discord, insta, etc.)
That can work if groups of contacts are still grouped by app, like friends and family using different apps and you don't need to talk to both at once. But in the example given by the OP, if one friend wants to use a different app than other friends, it would be really awkward. You'd have to copy every message to your friends twice -- once on the app with the other friends and once in the app for the contrarian friend. In practice, that friend would be left out of many social events.
Sure. The point was more about the many small frictions that may or may not exist in any given friendship, with a lack of messaging capacity being no more egregious than any other.
Demanding all your friends switch or kill their messaging apps is quite another matter, and an eccentric one at that.
Let's say that person A refuses to use $APP and person B only communicates through $APP.
Then, from A's perspective, it is just a small accommodation for B to communicate through alternative means. And from B's perspective, it is just a small accommodation for A to use $APP.
"Look, I am not letting Zuck suck up my personal data and watch ads if there is an alternative that's owned by a non-profit, does not show ads and end-to-end encrypts everything as a rule."
Asking to use Zucks apps anyway as a small accommodation would paint the one asking as an ignorant who is being unreasonable and does not take care of their digital hygiene properly. Sure, they might resent the other person for pointing their own failings out, but it's hard to actually argue.
I think it's pretty clear at this point that most non-techies place no value on digital privacy. So, from the perspective of someone whose friends all use Zuck's app, the other person is trying to complicate their life for no benefit.
Within their value system, they're not being ignorant. Rather, they're perfectly rational.
Yeah, if memory serves, the reviewer in this case was 'housing' editor at Whole Earth. At the time he was into geodesic domes and Buckminster Fuller, a worldview and technology he would shortly disavow.
The reviewer's blog is worth a look if you're up for a bit of architectural hippydom. [1]
As for Gen X. Well, My Morning Jack apparently did an album inspired by the Whole Earth Catalog. [2]
I thought process philosophy's emphasis on dynamic interactions and transcendent organization might be of interest to HN. Like you, I suspect it could make for an fruitful exercise or two.
Regarding James, Heidegger, Dewey: I don't think it's so much the willing or teleology as an inclination to emphasize process and becoming over being and permanence. That and a penchant for fusing subject and object.
Nietzsche is maybe a stretch, I agree. The author of the piece is a fan. Perhaps that goes some way towards explaining his inclusion?
>>... it's just a complementary way of presenting the question "what is the meaning of life?"
Yes and no. The framing implies the answer and is fully in keeping with Camus's brand of admirably droll epicureanism.
Try to imagine a parallel in your own personal sphere. If a friend or loved one came to you and declared their intention to think of a reason not to kill themselves, would you see it as sign of philosophical depth?
